Regardless of tempo, these are some of the strongest, most involving songs the band has ever recorded.

This combination of quirky sounds and suave production lands the disc in musical territory that feels at once both innovative and familiar; something like Beck, Björk, and Velvet Underground meeting in a lazy Rio cantina only to discover they've all been listening to Stereolab and Nouvelle Vague.

News and Tributes is a far cry from the all-out rush of fun of their debut. Ultimately, though, it's a stronger set of songs.

In an era of bloated and overproduced albums, Moorer has delivered a small wonder with Getting Somewhere, and it ranks with her best music to date.

It's a solidly good album, and if taken as part of a trio of albums with Sonic Nurse and Murray Street, it shows that Sonic Youth is still in a comfortable yet creative groove, not a rut.

The album feels like getting to really know someone: at first, it's polite and a little restrained, but then its real personality, with all of its charming idiosyncrasies, finally reveals itself.

Timbaland has revitalized Nelly Furtado both creatively and commercially.

It's the sound of the band maturing, and while it's certainly more laid-back than any of Live's previous records, that low-key approach feels right for the music on Songs from Black Mountain and helps make it one of their most consistent and successful records.

He emerges here as a more "traditional" kind of songwriter; the tunes are more conventional in structure, but like his spiritual mentor Leonard Cohen, Staples' lyrics are rooted firmly in the terrain of love, loss, regret, passage, dissolution, and absence.

The album is gentler and falls much closer to the feeling of The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most.

The majority of Fundamental is like the majority of their great album Behavior in that repeat listens are required to do these rich songs justice.

Listening to this album, one can't get around the knowledge that it is a posthumous collection made in Cash's last days, but even without that context, it would have much the same impact.

It's a poetic work of circling guitars and melodic phrases and vocal lines repeating and layered like monastic chants.

Even if it's not as traffic-stopping as her debut, this album suggests that she can keep her music interesting for the long haul.

Intensely focused and steady.

At times, Return to Cookie Mountain threatens to become more impressive than likeable -- a complaint that could also arguably be leveled against Desperate Youth as well -- but fortunately, TV on the Radio reconnects with, and builds on, the intimacy and purity that made Young Liars so striking.

Ganging Up on the Sun is the work of a band who matters.

The Return of Dr. Octagon doesn't always make a lot of sense, but that's the beauty of it.

Rye rips it up on this disc, recalling equal parts vintage AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, with a little KISS thrown in to keep things playful.

You don't have to like, or even see, Who Loves the Sun to be moved by McCaughan's work here.

If not particularly important, We Are the Pipettes is both witty and filled with ear-catching melodies.

Franti's brain-stimulating songwriting rises to a new level of proficiency here.

If it's not quite a triumph, it's challenging and ambitious stuff that rocks on out and doesn't tarnish the memory of what Johansen and Sylvain accomplished so many years ago.

Putting the Days to Bed finds Roderick writing his most intimate lyrics to date while also building upon the radiant pop sensibility of 2005's Ultimatum EP.

The songs, as far as the writing goes, are routinely terrific; however, the ones that rely most on convenient synthesized elements are a bit dainty and rudimentary and deserve to be made without the limitations of a home studio.

More often than not, Avatar is stunningly beautiful, even if the definition of that word needs to expand a bit to embrace it.

The album is little different than their two previous atom bombs, De-Loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute -- tense and anxious, continually pushing the boundaries of extreme production, with long periods of dynamics that rise ever higher, followed by an explosion of release (usually screaming hard rock with storms of atonal brass and horns).

Future Crayon is a must for Broadcast obsessives and a good way for casual fans to explore some of the rougher edges of their music.