Offers up one superb song after another.... Even if you don't consider yourself to be much a Latin music fan, do yourself a favor and check out Canto.

Choosing from a wide variety of Waits' material, Hammond infuses these unusual tracks with a bluesman's spirit and a crackling energy that practically reinvents the songs, instilling them with an ominous, rhythmic swampy feel.

To the duo's credit, Matmos avoids making A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure grisly or gross; Andrew Daniel and Martin Schmidt approach the album's concept with their usual playfulness and an appropriately clinical detachment, resulting in some clever and surprisingly diverse songs

In the same vein as Saint Etienne, Ivy, and Emiliana Torrini, Autour de Lucie casts a spell.

Signals the welcome return of one of pop's finest groups.

Stag is punk done in the tradition of Patti Smith and the Replacements rather than the Sex Pistols. It is punk in its rebellious spirit, its contagious energy, and its anti-establishment calls to action. More than that, though, it is pure Amy Ray -- her activism and her artistry melding and achieving something remarkable.

Combines instantly accessible power pop, synth-pop, glam, grunge, and Brit-pop influences with the resulting songs fitting together so seamlessly to be somewhat indecipherable from each other.

The Blake Babies are back, melodic hooks and great songs in tow.

Their passion for hating Margaret Thatcher, the royal family, and the tyrannical moves by Parliament is a common theme comically twisted throughout the dozen track set list on We Love the City.

There may be some satirical, post-ironic thing going on here, but you'll be too bored to notice or care.

A few too many songs share tempos, melodies, and moods to make this a great Kristin Hersh album, but it's still a very good one that her longtime fans will appreciate.

Ten years since Rocket's first full-length, the sextet still sounds like they're on a live wire with an endless power source, as inspiring here as ever before.

Though Uh-Oh! wisely avoids overtly contemporary electronic styles in favor of exotica, lounge, bossa nova, soft rock, and analog synth tomfoolery, its 18 tracks are strangely amorphous, the aural equivalent of a lava lamp — equally kitschy and hypnotic.

The Minus 5 record really works when it gets close to power pop, such as "Got You," the sprightly "You Don't Mean It" and the wistful "A Thousand Years Away."

Though The Little Red Songbook and Stars Forever would be better introductions to the wonderful world of baroque pop, Folktronic is a must-have for Momus fanatics.

This is easily Sheik's strongest, and most mature record to date.

Arab Strap's gradual refinements have hit a peak, but don't expect anything new. Slithery programmed beats, tingly guitars, plodding rhythms, and whispered/warbled sing-speak lead the way yet again, with occasional piano licks and strings thrown in for very good atmospheric measure.

It's not that the music is now simplistic, since there's still some tricky rhythms and shifts in tone, but the group doesn't have much room to stretch in Ballard's precise arrangements. In a sense, they sort of benefit from this increased focus, since the group's instrumental excursions can be a little flabby, but it still robs them of much of their character.

Because Knight seamlessly incorporates a 2001 music sensibility to this recording, At Last can comfortably sit alongside works by Destiny's Child, Toni Braxton, Faith Evans, and other younger musical counterparts.

This is a kaleidiscope of pop culture arcania and it's witty too... pure, simple, hard-rocking, giddy fun.

A collection of songs that are as clever and intelligently crafted as they are danceable.

Spoon's most mature, accomplished work to date and a fine balance of fire and polish.

Simple, subtle, and quite beautiful, the 37-minute album rewards during deep concentration and as use for background.

Overall, Standards has a few detours for fans conscious of any band's "progression," but plenty of interesting songs and great musicianship for less vested listeners. Though it doesn't develop the evocative or impressionistic side of Tortoise (as heard on TNT), the band is certainly as inventive as ever

A spellbinding tribute, with a commanding presence and sustained intensity that most songwriters can't manage even with their own material. Like a reverse version of Bob Dylan and the Band's The Basement Tapes, 'What's Next to the Moon' turns songs that were loose, irreverent, and even silly or one-note in their original readings into songs of timeless beauty and depth, their passions, pains, and torments made agonizingly palpable.

Envision a penny dreadful being sung aloud inside a pub while Roni Size tries to squeeze drunken gospeltronica out of his sequencer banks.

He is honest, without offending, and gives the impression that he genuinely has no biases -- he's just a curious observer of life. And the world, through Rollins' eyes, is an interesting, offbeat, and funny place.

Both dreamy and earthy, complex and immediate, and challenging and soothing.... The Sleepy Strange is the band's most cohesive work to date, yet it keeps all of the spontaneous beauty of their previous releases.