Timbaland has revitalized Nelly Furtado both creatively and commercially.

Die-hard fans might rush to judge Under the Iron Sea as sounding a bit too much like U2.

Her self-titled debut sounds a wee rushed and sometimes meanders its way into background music territory, but this comfortable effort is pleasingly homegrown, warm, and poignant in parts.

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.

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

It's not bad, it's just not as profound as Shineywater and Hughes would like everyone to believe it is.

Yes, Victory for the Comic Muse has its funny moments, its sad asides, and some of the now standard Nyman minimalist moments, but in the Divine Comedy's overall discography it's a rather slight and often flat affair with unfortunate suggestions that Hannon might have milked the comic cow dry.

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.

One can't help but think that just a little bit more spice might have elevated all of these beautiful ideas out of the trappings of their now painfully insular song structures.

It's like listening to early New Order records for the first time, waiting for the next one with a little bit of excited anticipation to see what's going to happen next with every new song.

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.

He makes his tracks entertaining, but he occasionally falls prey to a common trap -- educating the listeners but not enlightening them.

Though he's as loud as ever, he has never sounded more tired.

The Sun Awakens is the record he's been promising. Where School of the Flower was a leap, placing his singing and guitar playing in equal measure -- though there were numerous instrumental pieces -- The Sun Awakens is the place they burst forth, fully entwined, completely formed.

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.

After decades of giving us good and even fine work, he's finally treated the faithful to a masterpiece.

Even as the guys stretch and flex their songwriting muscles, they never fail to remember where they came from, instead using their past work as the foundation to their essential growth.

Even though Be Your Own Pet were more consistent, or maybe just easier to keep up with, on their EPs, there's still plenty of hyperactive fun (or rather, fuuuuuun) to be found here.

You might not find heartache as enchanting as this anywhere else.

What makes the album rather extraordinary is that it's as much celebration as it is protest.

The work would not have been out of place on a more skeletal version of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Unlike his early classics, Laugh Now stumbles occasionally and fails to keep the momentum going through the whole fourth quarter.

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

Some serene, wide-angle numbers toward the end help a lot, making this safe album easier to recommend to the longtime trance addict.

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.

With Garden, Zero 7 have created what could be the ultimate summer evening record: warm pop hooks, lush instrumentation, unobtrusive electronica elements, and '60s-style harmonies that all come together into superb, wonderfully descriptive songs.

It's their simplicity and lack of pretense that's so refreshing to hear and what makes Free to Stay so listenable.