These days music fans will be hard-pressed to find an album so satisfying.

Tour de France Soundtracks is a successful record on anyone's terms; it's one that fans won't need to cringe from, and one that newcomers will be able to enjoy for what it is.

If Earthquake Glue isn't a masterpiece, it's as close as this band can be expected to get, and is the rare Guided By Voices effort that's imaginative enough for longtime loyalists and tight enough for dabblers at the same time.

Franti and Spearhead almost made a deliberate attempt to stray from the typical hip-hop beats and go for something a bit more organic and acoustic than their previous efforts -- and the experiments more than pay off.

A tautly crafted, thoughtful album, Shine a Light more than follows through on the promise of their debut, and proves that the Constantines have the ability to be both down to earth and dramatic within their grasp.

It all adds up to a very good record -- one that is interesting, and one that satisfies musically.

Youth and Young Manhood isn't sonically adventurous, but in the new-millennium pop realm, some greasy licks sure sound good.

Haha Sound may not be Broadcast's most superficially perfect album, but it's a more challenging and exciting one because of its deliberate imperfections.

Carrabba's work is so specifically stuck in adolescence that, even if it's presented in a prettier package as it is on A Mark, it's still very difficult for anybody past sophomore year in college to really connect with his music.

If you're looking for a wild blues party, Voice of Treason isn't quite it, but if you want to hear musicians who can respect their influences while kicking it out, then the Soledad Brothers are right down your alley.

The results are goofy but undeniably exhilarating.

If nothing really catches hold as a song, there's still a lot of tuneful, appealing material here, and it functions well as a party album for those hot days of summer.

While Killing Joke's discography has more than its fair share of awkward and overly ambitious albums, they've once again returned to the fury and focus of their classics.

Just a shade less stunning than his last full-length, Emotional Technology at least establishes him as one of the better album constructors in the singles-driven world of dance.

This is Pure Guava performed with the precision and cleanliness of White Pepper -- perhaps a mixed blessing for some (those who long for the Scotchguard-fueled madness of The Pod), yet it's a sheer delight for those who patiently sat through the longest period between Ween albums yet.

Packed with great songs and performances, it re-establishes Golightly as a beacon of grace and restraint in a world sadly bereft of both.

While Luke Steele's influences show through on all of Lovers' tracks, somehow the album avoids sounding totally derivative; instead, it just reveals Steele as a pop chameleon and an expert at pastiche.

Living Outside is as conscious a follow-up record as there can be, but it's likely also the record Sense Field would've made anyway, even without the band's mainstream ascendancy.

The constant changes of direction can be a little jarring on the first couple plays, but they eventually become one of the album's charms.

The power of Jane's Addiction is undiminished by Strays (this is still a band creating music unlike any other artist), but the imagination, bravado, and songwriting smarts apparent from previous classics is sadly missing.

Phantom Power is a very good album (and, again, compared to many of SFA's peers in 2003, it is far ahead of the pack), but it does lack some of the things that made earlier Super Furry Animals so exhilarating -- the grit, the wild abandon, the absurdity, and the sheer unpredictability, where it was impossible to tell what would happen next.

It's All in Your Head doesn't have the punch that Eve 6's previous albums possessed.

Betke wisely abandons a sound that had been developed to its full extent, yet the outcome is a set of hip-hop/dub hybrids that stumble out of the speakers with a fatigued skank.

Blessed with a voice that immediately announces itself, Gray still hasn't found a musical personality to complement it.

Red Dirt Road is not just one of Brooks & Dunn's most ambitious records, it's also one of their best.

Satisfying but rarely challenging, Quixotic is a fantastic start to a solo career, and its display of range, talent, and charm suggests that Martina Topley-Bird has an endless well of creativity at her disposal and that she is most likely destined for greater things.

There really isn't another dance/rap act on the scene that combines snarky teenage style with seriously slammin' retro dance beats the way Fannypack does.

The Violet Hour not only perfects the gorgeously hazy pop of their previous releases, it also adds a guileless freshness to it that is completely apt for their debut album.