Dismantle, reconstruct, then split, and The Greatest Story Ever Told earns decent marks--it's just hard not to focus on the handful of cuts that point to what could have been.

As always, that easy touch is Travis' greatest strength, as it gives the best songs authenticity and makes the weaker songs palatable--and as Around the Bend is a fairly strong set of songs, it's easy to enjoy Travis' gentle authority.

Mar Dulce has to be counted as a success, certainly because the combined effect of songwriting, performance, and production sounds of a piece, with few seams showing.

The sound is terrific, the presentation is handsome, the sound and selection are amazing; and negotiations with musicians are not done on colonial terms.

Here, they [Beck and Danger Mouse] deliver enough substance and style to make Modern Guilt an effective dosage of 21st century paranoia.

Some of ¿Como Te Llama?'s individual songs are stronger than the material on Hammond's debut, but as a whole, it's a shade less engaging than "Yours to Keep"--though it's still enjoyable enough to please most Strokes fans.

It's a flat-out joy.

Exit Strategy of the Soul isn't just an experiment that succeeds, it's one of Sexsmith's strongest and most affecting works to date, and it's truly a pleasure to hear.

Instead of changing their sound to accommodate a wider palette of sounds, they wisely chose to incorporate them into their aesthetic. It's an inspired move that will help them keep their old fans and still allow the duo to progress musically.

As with most endeavors in uncharted territory, some songs miss the mark (an unnecessary ambient keyboard instrumental "Flush," for instance), but the straightforward beasts like "Billy Fish," "The Smiling Cobra," and the majestic title song "Nude with Boots" showcase the Melvins at the top of their game, while the lumbering brutality of "It Tastes Better Than the Truth" and "The Savage Hippy" shows that their warped sensibilities are still intact and that they're far from softening, even after almost 25 years in the game.

Despite its faults, it is one of the most unique albums released by a major label in 2008.

Poetry and music are so closely aligned anyway that at their best, they become one. This is a stunning, awe-inspiring, love-soaked example.

Though a few songs border on being filler, The Black Ghosts is still a promising debut.

Far from being a throwaway side project, this unique album is as refreshing as a gapper to right center, providing, of course, it's your team up at the plate.

Well worth the wait, Blood, Looms and Blooms offers more proof of why Leila has been hailed by Gilles Peterson, Aphex Twin, and Björk since she started making music.

It's too bad such a fine record has to end with a misfire, but you can just hit stop before you get there and be completely satisfied with the really good album Son, Ambulance have crafted.

Skeleton is one of the more interesting releases of the summer, and proves that Abe Vigoda are more than worthy of joining their peers in the spotlight.

The album is still enjoyable and damn catchy in spots — but knowing as much as we do about this talented trio, it seems like it could have been so much better.

It's ideal music for headphones, where the clever production can reveal all of its layers.

Despite a few stumbles, Identified achieves its goal: it anticipates that Hudgens' fans will outgrow "High School Musical" soon enough, and gives her a better chance of staying relevant to them as they move on to other kinds of pop music.

Even with its wobbly mix of yesterday, today, a better tomorrow, T.O.S. is much closer to classic than failure and should reassure fans this slow-moving tank is pointed in the exactly right direction.

All in all, Forgiven proves that Los Lonely Boys are around for the long haul, making records that separate their sound from their influences, and further establishes their identity as one of America's premier roots bands.

Dirty Pretty Things move their music forward with this album, but they've sacrificed their clarity to achieve that.

There's no evidence Three 6 had a fully formed "Most Known Unknown"-styled album in them either, so consider the uneven Last 2 Walk a fair and necessary placeholder effort with a bit of "back to basics" thrown in to satisfy the faithful.

What really puts the album over the top as something else is not just its ideas-stuffed brevity (46 minutes in its original form), but its material not made explicitly for the club.

After a while the tracks all begin to sound the same, disco beat with Seal style R&B vocals, no bad thing but nothing much original and nothing to come close to the single 'Black And Gold.'

On Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust you can really hear the human hearts behind the wall of sound, and while the emotional impact is on a smaller scale, somehow it is even more affecting.

Real Animal is an album about life--both as survival and as the faces and moments that fill our days on this Earth. How many artists could make two masterpieces in a row that are so different?