Once you reconcile yourself to the idea that Lerche has made a jazz-pop record, the songcraft, laid-back approach and Lerche's sweet vocals might just win you over.

It's more of a proper album than Loose Fur itself was, but having fun making music together still sounds like the main priority on Born Again, which, once again, also makes it a lot of fun for Wilco and O'Rourke fans.

The duo... have actually improved, and the album sports stronger songs, a fuller sound, more emotional weight, and an exuberant soul that spills out of the speakers like milk and cake at a kid's birthday party.

This disc has been rendered with creativity and panache, and it features hooky songwriting so compelling that it's easy to listen to the mere 35 minutes of material (divided into 11 three-minute long, radio-friendly songs) on a continuous loop.

Rouse sounds perfectly at ease, as if he were just playing for fun with no tapes rolling.

Yeah, sometimes Quasi get a little too carried away with themselves and the album seems a bit directionless, but that's only when they move away from the grit and into the prettier, synth-based tunes.

Maybe he's no longer breaking new ground, but his eccentricities are now an attribute, not a curse, which goes a long way in making his trademark blend of funk, pop, soul, and rock sound nearly as dazzling as it did at his popular and creative peak in the '80s.

It gets a little long in the tooth in places and samey-sounding.

A good album that should please fans of any type of hip-hop.

Cannibal Sea is the equal of anything the Ladybug Transistor have released (which is saying a whole lot), and is better than just about any indie pop or rock circa 2006.

It's all done with skill and to great effect, and the album is good for mood-setting background or forefront reflection, or for some combination of the two.

A very detailed, though still utterly bewildering, glimpse into the producer's musical thought process.

At first, the album seems slightly anticlimactic and even perplexing, but upon repeated listens, All at Once shows that Young People remain fascinating.

Although the uniformly sweet pop songs on Kicking the National Habit sound influenced by the likes of the Police, Men at Work, Duran Duran, and the rest of the more commercial side of the early MTV era, the arrangements are more electronic in nature.

More so than on Kamakiriad, or on the tight Everything Must Go, there is a sense of genuine band interplay on this record, which helps give it both consistency and heart -- something appropriate for an album that is Fagen's most personal song cycle since The Nightfly, and quite possibly his best album since then.

Hard-Fi's desire to create something solid enjoyable in the midst of everyday monotony is what makes Stars of CCTV an enjoyable first effort.

Some will be left wondering just what the hell Merritt is up to -- those poor sad kids who hung on every post-rock word of the Magnetic Fields records as if Merritt's abandoned them. And then, of course, there are the rest of you who will be delighted, puzzled, and intrigued by the sheer originality of this recording.

Unlike Dunger's previous albums, which tended to have a specific musical theme, there's a kind of scattered, everywhere at once quality to Here's My Song.

Coxon's ambitions on Love Travels at Illegal Speeds may not be grand -- he has simply made a punky pop album (which is different than punk-pop) -- but his execution is exceptional, which makes this a very appealing album.

Cuts Across the Land is a strong, self-assured debut, even if the Duke Spirit needs to work a little harder to escape the long shadow of their forebears.

As delightfully stylish and immediate as Supernature is, it's still hard to escape the nagging feeling that Goldfrapp could make its ethereal sensuality and pop leanings into something even more compelling.

Though there are hooks galore to be found on Flat-Pack Philosophy, the tempos have eased up a bit so that Diggle's and Shelley's guitar parts have more room to interact with one another.

The set ends on a gentle note in "Where We Start" -- so much so that it may make some scratch their heads and wonder where the cranky, diffident Gilmour has wandered off to, but others will be drawn into this seductive, romantic new place where musical subtlety, spacious textures, and quietly lyrical optimism hold sway.

Just about any of the album's selections would have fit perfectly on a vintage 120 Minutes episode.

Even more than Margerine Eclipse, Fab Four Suture sounds like Stereolab has adapted -- if not fully healed -- from the loss of Mary Hansen.

Under a Billion Suns is one of the hardest and tightest albums this band has ever made.

Immediate without sounding dumbed-down, Mr. Beast shows the band at the peak of their powers.

Ballad of the Broken Seas is a superbly crafted bit of late-night introspection that brings out the best in both Lanegan and Campbell.