While some might be disappointed after spending God knows what on a copy of Twoism only to find it suddenly available anywhere, others looking for more of BoC's melancholy, spellbinding compositions should take fast advantage.

Arrangements begin with folk-friendly guitar, mandolin, and violin, only to rise into soundscapes worthy of Lambchop, if not Tricky.

The singer's whiskey-stained voice infuses those words with a fierce mix of pride, hurt, resignation, sadness, strength, and humility--traits that make her one of the finest R&B singers of her generation. There are other riveting moments rivaling that from this deeply moving set.

These 50 minutes of music are as cohesive as they are conquering.

Few bands... make slowing down sound this risky.

An album that's smart at every level.

Twice is a sweet, mercurial foray into lip-quivering American indie-rock infused with the blissful aroma of Creation-style ambience and the woody scent of paisley-clad cosmic country.

While Corgan's tendency toward self-indulgence results in the tedious 14-minute "Jesus, I/Mary Star of the Sea," it is just a minor lapse considering the rest of the big, glamorous rock on display here.

This is music you listen to when drugs don't work anymore.

Fabulous.

Scott weaves through the music like a woman who's taken her time contemplating what feelings ought to sound like.

Another set of sad but very fun songs.

Shakira's bleating, biting voice is in fine form, and it gives the material an electric urgency.

100 Days, 100 Nights makes for a very welcome addition to any avid listener's contemporary soul music library.

A little more subdued than the songs on its firecracker debut, Make Out?, yes, but hardly lacking brains or bite.

By marrying ambitious rhymes to a series of increasingly hot beats, Nappy Roots have effectively avoided the sophomore jinx.

Compared to ambitious contemporaneous concept albums by peers such as Common and the Roots, Quality feels unexpectedly conventional--a strong collection of songs in need of a unifying force.

You're presently reading about what may be the best album of 2007, hands down, by the most under-accorded American musical genius.

Wincing is neither the clever genre recombinant exercise of their second album nor is it the perfect little self-contained universe of their debut. This is not the Shins' best album; it's their growing pains third record.

A masterly exercise in restraint, subtle sophistication, and melodic playfulness.

While previous releases have found the pride of North Mississippi exploring various manifestations of their musical identity, on Electric Blue Watermelon they pull everything together and bring their artistic progression full circle.

Accelerate puts the 2007 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame group once again firmly behind the wheel of alternative rock, a genre R.E.M. helped invent.

Those who are intrigued by electronica but find it's too chilly for their tastes would be wise to check out Psapp.

Moments of playful mixing magic are at times followed by baffling inanity.

Cease punctuates its magnitude among Sub Pop's top-drawer power elite (The Shins and Iron & Wine), asserting this Band of Horses' fast-rising run for the roses.

On The True False Identity, Burnett substantiates his role as a composer and performer steeped in traditional American music.

Fogerty's voice sounds great throughout; passionate, more committed and comfortable with these songs than he has seemed in years.

Isbell's best songs will remind you of Richard Buckner, Raymond Carver, and Neil Young.

A truly remarkable progression, and a great album to boot--Antenna is the work of a band that's constantly moving forward.

With her expressively breathy vocals and uplifting melodies, Mindy Smith expresses both the romantic and spiritual dimensions of rapture.

A travel kaleidoscope of a neverending road passing by the window.

No one can breath breezy, sun-splashed melodies into three-minute fits of aggravation and despair quite like songwriting maestro Joe Pernice.

What could have been a curiosity is instead a hallmark in the catalog of each artist.

Meltdown is easily Ash's best album since 1977; this is the sound of a band becoming interesting again. [Amazon UK]

Both her most musically spare and artistically complex [album] to date.

Many, many gosh-darn dudes go in for the "vaguely weird indie-rock music with oblique lyrics" schtick, and yet it's still an utter joy to hear Dan Bejar do it.

We Were Dead... is denser than its predecessor with tunes that seem willfully harder to penetrate.

There's a resonant bearing to the set as a whole.

The band parlays its tuneful edification into an experimental collage, bouncing between art school rock, guitar-heavy psychedelia and keyboard hippiedom, yet interconnected by lyrics that are both shrewd and satisfying.

Pernice's unblemished voice is the key instrument.

Finds Welch showing more warmth, ease, and openness as both singer and songwriter.

All in all, this is a calmer Truckers set, less ragged and more polished.

It takes a few listens to sink in, but Everything is transcendent, shimmering, layered, and smartass emo-pop fully ready for stadium saturation.

Finn's knack for a melodic ballad remains firmly in place as Time on Earth coasts on his dreamy voice and introspective, hook-laden pop choruses.

Another accomplished collection that adds richer arrangements and instrumentation to Cary's mix of rock, folk, and country tunes.

The Sonic Youth ringleader goes at it acoustically, far from his customary cacophonic experimentation, forming a venturesome trio with the Fleeting Skies' Samara Lubelski (violin) and SY's Steve Shelly (drums) and giving his lyrical verve the latitude it deserves.

The melodies still rumble with elegance. The choruses are instantly unforgettable. And the band's original members--Maginnis, Bill Janovitz (guitar/vocals), and Chris Colbourn (bass/vocals) - remain intact and chillingly in synch.

If the new album goes farther in advocating a political conscience--"On with the Song" takes jabs at the jingoistic rubes who dissed the Dixie Chicks, while "Why Shouldn't We" insists we'll have worthy heroes in office again one day--it largely invokes the same quiet, warm, and conversational tone as its predecessor.

Don't expect a derivative mash of smudgy, nostalgia-filching sounds, though, because despite its retro leanings, what's in store somehow crackles with currency.

Merritt's lyrics remain as sharp and funny ("We belong together/Like sex and violence," he croons on "Heather Heather"), but it's the ever-inventive arrangements--like the offbeat blend of ukulele and harmonium on "One April Day"--that make these gems especially memorable.

Gil Norton's production has taken the band to new heights, allowing the music to have as much grit, substance, and dynamics as the lyrics.

Tambourine may not quite live up to the Dusty in Memphis comparisons, but it may very well wind up the album of Tift Merritt's career.

If the tasteful, lissome country-folk backing of steel guitar, fiddle, piano, drums, and harmony vocals from Cindy Wasserman is a tad shy of adventurous, the sound suits the ripe, romantic, and dreamy mood of Phillips's songs.

His first recording of his own material in four years reminds that he has few peers among contemporary singer-songwriters.

The Outsider may be a cut below its predecessor, the artistic, critical, and commercial breakthrough that was Fate's Right Hand--perhaps the element of surprise is gone, perhaps the songs aren't quite as sharp, perhaps it's just not possible to catch lightning in a bottle twice in a row--but that was a tough act to follow, and this one's none too shabby.

Mitchell's songwriting shines brightest at such singularly poignant moments where specificity of images meets the vagaries of the instrumental arrangements, and, in the end, these and other highlights ('Bad Dreams,' 'Night of the Iguana') definitively carry the torch.

Jesse Sykes is hard to pin down--and that's a good thing indeed.

The entire album is seamless and offers new facets with each listen.

It's pretty dour stuff on the whole, but delivered with playfully melodic wit and a certain poetic resignation usually found only in the hearts of forgotten souls and madmen (and maybe Tom Waits).

Happiness in Magazines is riddled with glorious pop songs, and in a sane world would yield several hit singles. [Amazon UK]

Smith adds subtle layers of piano to the formidable 'Wild West Love Song' and the bluesy, Zeppelin-like 'Jesus in the Temple.' But even more newsworthy, her jazzy stylings have rubbed off on the Bielankos.

Blige, never far from the thoughts of the lovelorn, didn't need a breakthrough, but anybody with an ear for artful confession will be glad she's given us The Breakthrough anyway.

Watershed has an intimate feel and a sophisticated sound that highlights the warmth in Lang’s voice, the maturity of her songwriting and the simple beauty of her arrangements.

The album serves as both an ambitious travelogue and as a graceful rejoinder to the bitterness and frustration that inspired it, with Amos wading through swells of sadness ("I Can't See New York"), anger ("Don't Make Me Come to Vegas"), and insecurity ("Your Cloud") with velvety grace.

[It] has more powerful and propulsive arrangements than is often the case with the artist.

Trash's capriciousness and experimental willingness are what gave Malkmus an audience in the first place--and what promise to keep it coming back for more.

Lead single 'Rainin in Paradize' alone should propel Chao (née Oscar Tramor) into the kind of stateside fame he's long enjoyed in Europe and South America.

What we have here is easily Mr. Young's finest work in years, one that erases the memory of his well-intentioned but anemic 2006 protest album, "Living with War."

District Line, Mould's seventh solo album, is a swell follow-up to his bracing 2005 return-to-rockishness record "Body of Song."

One of his best-balanced albums in years.

The first studio release by the Sadies in three years represents a big sonic advance.

It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums.

If her album is musically uneven at times, her artistry and strength continue to shine as undimmed beacons.

An impressive, mature effort that expands a predictable Brit-pop sound into something with varied textures, shades and nuance.

Grand National's main skill lies in their ability to twin their fine songs to tight electronic productions, striking the perfect midpoint between live organics and cool digital sequencing.

While the material seems to document the end of a relationship and the hope for romantic renewal, there's a freewheeling playfulness to the arrangements.

A return to form in every way.

Even the contemporary numbers sound like classics.

Coyne is a shrewd observer of human nature, and an even shrewder songwriter and this album stands as his greatest and most varied work yet.

Imagine the Mars Volta undergoing electroshock treatment or Blonde Redhead at war with an army of feral cats.

The curiously titled Reunion Tour (four years between albums but they never disbanded) ups the lyrical ante ever more with contagious tunes like 'The Last Last One,' 'Hymn of the Medical Oddity,' and 'Relative Surplus Value.'

As always, the directness of Doiron's writing and performing is subtly compelling.

The wide array of musical reference points show rap's sonic possibilities.

Brilliantly melds the aural imagery of Andrew Hill's '60s Blue Note classic Judgment! with contemporary electronica effects.

Just a Little Lovin' achieves the unlikely: a tribute to an immortal artist which both glorifies its subject and elevates the worshipper kneeling at her altar.

With results that transcend category, Willis sounds like an artist renewed.

More skilled than the debut, Lunatico is no sophomore slump, though hardcore house music fans may want to wait for remixes.

Each [song] is epic (and not in the bad Creed "arms-spread-on-the-mountaintop" way): packing in more drama, billowing guitar solos and stealth pop hooks than the Strokes' entire back catalog.

Working Man's Cafe feels like exactly the album a 60-something rocker would craft--assured and direct yet searching and restless, a glimpse into the head of a man who's comfortable in his skin but still wonders how he fits into a world that seems to be turning faster and stranger as the years pass by.

Even when he turns down the volume, he never tones down the creative intensity.

Although this isn't the masterpiece that the self-titled Black Mountain disc was, it certainly gives devotees lots more music to listen to until their next disc comes around.

The less successful interpretations simply fail to differentiate themselves from the spirit of the originals.

I Can’t Stop blows away the dust and finds more life and gutbucket flash in a seemingly inexhaustible vein.

Corralling such a large cast into anything like a coherent vision is no easy task, but it's one that the Concretes manage with some aplomb on a consistently spectacular album. [Amazon UK]

Some of this music is oddly affecting; much of it is merely odd.

Stirrat and Sansone revisit the immaculate production of their previous work, but with greater cohesion and broader instrumentation.

Pay the Devil reiterates Morrison's own musical diversity and flair for making any song his own.

The freshness of the arrangements appeals throughout.