The band is in top form, sounding every bit as fresh and relevant in 2005 as they did 15-years prior.

A debut that sounds a lot like New York urbanites the Rachel's and the Clogs, but a little more dangerous.

Country, garage rock, American poetic bile, and sheer venomous energy fuel this terrific set that ranks among Oldham's finest moments on record.

While she succeeds rather handsomely on those modest terms, it's more than a little odd to hear Madonna scaling back her ambition and settling for less rather than hungering for more.

Overall Ladd has made a divine album indeed.

Kicking Television is the best sort of live album -- a recording that doesn't merely retread a band's back catalog, but puts their songs in a new perspective.

Pair Akron/Family with Angels of Light and what you get, apologies to the label-sensitive, is Grade A art rock.

There's no pushing of the envelope because there doesn't need to be. Aerial is rooted in Kate Bush's oeuvre, with grace, flair, elegance, and an obsessive, stubborn attention to detail.

But if 12 Songs does occasionally come across as slightly affected in its intent and presentation, it also is inarguably Neil Diamond's best set of songs in a long, long time.

The problem with The Road and the Radio is that the songs just aren't very memorable.

Scab Dates is yet another intriguing window into the Mars Volta's world, instead of just a live album holdover.

While it's often an absorbing listen, it's hard to fathom this appealing to anyone but the terminally obsessed.

While the album's ambitions occasionally get the better of the actual music, For the Season's intermittent brilliance is worth digging and waiting for.

This is for all the listeners who liked Phish's good taste, eclectic nature, and Anastasio's playing, but never liked one of their albums.

A bland, friendly affair that disappears into the ether the moment it's finishing playing.

This is a gorgeous recording, one that in a very intimate way opens up an entire universe of possibility for understanding, integration, and brokenness. A fitting tribute indeed.

It's simply unlike anything else out there -- except perhaps Just Another Diamond Day.

The album cements the band as a love-them-or-hate-them proposition, but the Fiery Furnaces remain true to themselves.

With Descended Like Vultures, Rogue Wave have become just another indie rock band, one that has delivered a strong album without a weak song on it, but a real band just the same.

The group sounds freer than ever before, almost as though they've never bothered with rock in their lives, and have only happened upon a bare few LPs before beginning their recording career.

The Campfire Headphase lacks the transcendent grace that made Music Has the Right to Children and even Geogaddi classics in their field.

Like the best Depeche Mode, almost everything on the album will make an initial wowing impact while remaining layered enough in subtle details to surprise and thrill with repeated listens.

With this outing, Harvey establishes himself not only as a fine composer, but as a songwriter.

At its most chaotic, Hypermagic Mountain could tear open a wormhole into Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral.

A uniquely powerful and moving set of songs.

No matter how hard Simpson tries, no matter how foreboding the surface, beneath it all she's still light and frivolous. But that doesn't mean, by any stretch, that this is bubblegum music, since that term implies that this music is frothy, fun, and, most important, hooky, and I Am Me is none of those things.

A Time to Love finds the two halves of Wonder's adult career finally coming to home to roost in peaceful harmony with one another, and it's one of the finest records he has done in decades.

The skimpy run time is noticeable and downright perplexing coming from an album that ambitiously delivers otherwise.