Those looking for a direct story of how Beanie earned three years in the clink will be somewhat disappointed, but these chunks of insight into the man's turmoil -- and the couple party tunes that go with them -- add up to one hell of an album.

Sunlandic Twins is an album to leave playing while you're going about your daily business. Then see how quickly you discover its 13 tracks burrowing so deeply into your skull that it's as though you'd lived with its jerking, burbling, and never less than transcendental swirlings for ever.

It's her fierce nature -- whether saucy and confident or just plain wrecked -- that makes every twist and turn of this impressive debut so easy to fall in love with.

[A] fine collection of city-weary poetry.

Story of My Life is polished, but it's far from slick; it's honest, wears its heart on its sleeve and is full of imagination, grace, and spit.

Ex Hex can't really be called a return to form because Timony never lost it in the first place, but it's probably the most immediately appealing album in her solo career for Helium fans who missed that band's bite on her other albums.

Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is blessed because of -- not in spite of -- its excesses.

While there is a warm undercurrent of tenderness that runs through Silverman, it's never cloying or clichéd; rather, Folds can take the simplest notion, insert a gorgeous piano motif, and hit that one line in falsetto that gives you goose bumps... without breaking a sweat.

A record that's far removed in feel from the stark, haunting Nebraska, but on a song-for-song level, it's nearly as strong, since its stories linger in the imagination as long as the ones from that 1982 masterpiece.

While it's undeniably polished, it's a bit too dark, a bit too quirky, and a bit too individualistic to be part of the mainstream, while being too slick and professional to be on the fringe, but the album is all the more ingratiating for being caught between two worlds.

While there's a sense that both artists went a bit too heavy on dark atmosphere, given that both usually inject more whimsy into their creations, 13 & God is still a consistently intriguing, frequently beautiful experiment that offers ample rewards with each new listen.

It's safe to say that Cold Roses is the record many fans have been waiting to hear -- a full-fledged, unapologetic return to the country-rock that made his reputation when he led Whiskeytown.

With its imagination, startling creativity, and sheer pop soul, Oceans Apart is the first great Go-Betweens' record of the 21st century.

The group sounds a bit like Guided By Voices at times, only a Guided By Voices that want to kick your sorry can up and down the length of the bar.

Mighty Rearranger is a literate, ambitious, and sublimely vulgar exercise in how to make a mature yet utterly unfettered rock & roll album that takes chances, not prisoners, and apologizes for nothing.

Spoon continues to build one of the most consistent, and distinctive, bodies of work in indie rock -- the band makes changes and takes chances from album to album, but ends up sounding exactly how Spoon should sound each time.

It may be a spiritual cousin to Pinkerton, yet it's far removed from the raw, nervy immediacy of that album.... This has a lighter, brighter feel than any of its predecessors, not just in the music but in its outlook.

The big differences are that guitars are much more prominent than on any Soul Coughing releases, the lyrics have a more personal perspective, and the additional sounds of the album come from warmer sources like piano, Fender Rhodes and horns rather than a sampler.

Echoes of the Beatles, Harry Nilsson, the Beach Boys, and Phil Spector are everywhere, and while those aren't exactly unique or even very interesting reference points in 2005, Hal again go beyond imitation and use their influences as a good band should, as guides and not blueprints.

Homespun creativity has rarely sounded bigger -- or better -- than it does on Our Thickness.

Touch has a better batch of songs than All I Have.

By the time we get to the end of disc two, the broad strokes have coalesced into something quite remarkable; as Williams searches through the nooks and crannies of her songs, you sense she's discovering things that she didn't expect to find, and it's a tremendous thing to hear.

Lean, hard, strong, and memorable, a record that finds Audioslave coming into its own as a real rock band.

Elkington has crafted an uplifting, despondent, and always atmospheric collection of elegant indie rock that never takes itself too seriously.

Be isn't likely to be referred to by anyone as groundbreaking, but it's one of Common's best, and it's also one of the most tightly constructed albums of any form within recent memory.

It's the kind of splashy, impassioned, infectious record that could make Nikka Costa a star -- maybe not on the level of Prince or Madonna, maybe more like Lenny Kravitz, but a star nonetheless.

Not that Rebel, Sweetheart offers anything all that different from previous Wallflowers albums -- they just do what they do better than they have before.

A River Ain't Too Much to Love is a subdued, plaintive collection of songs that accompany silence; they encourage reflection without guile and unveil themselves without a hint of studied artifice.