It plays like a hilarious concept album more than anything.

The songs have a measured, elegiac intensity, the sound of musicians choosing their notes carefully and making just the right choices.

In fact, "delayed," "drenched," and "dervish" pretty much sum up Goodbye. Schnauss piles on effects and layers in a psychedelic melee that would leave Ozric Tentacles and Pink Floyd standing transfixed by his stroboscopic strategies.

At once new and old, familiar and fresh.

Despite his dirty mind, Chasez has proven to be an adventurous auteur, taking his music to places where NSNYC would never venture.

Even in its duller moments--the flaccid ballad 'Shirk,' the truncated sax solo that closes 'Virgo,' rainbow messages from God ('Elliptical')--this record fails to depart from the serious verve that has kept this artist relevant and refreshing for years.

[A] provocative, if slightly uneven, album full of quirky lyrics and some irresistible melodies.

As intoxicating as a Brazilian breeze and ironic as a David Lynch night in L.A., the Los Angeles duo the Bird and the Bee make a soothingly hip, deliriously cool blend of pop.

Slideling is McCulloch's best solo offering by a distance.

The album isn't without its problems––come the halfway mark ("Sons of Plunder") vocalist David Draiman and his mates lapse into the expected, with a series of songs that are good but rarely as remarkable as those found in Act I.

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.

Fans of Norah Jones should gobble up this album, but Peyroux is no mere imitator: She's her own, very real thing.

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

His most straightforward country music to date.

As much an album for slam-dancing nights out at Goth haunts as it is music for the psychiatrist’s couch.

What's changed is that maturity has granted Jewel, now in her early 30s, greater perspective.

While the trio hasn't managed to outshine their spectacular debut, Hello Love is a CD filled with cross-generational charm and musical riches.

A perfect gift for the Christmas-inclined indie rockster.

While Dar Williams's artistic trademarks--lyrical introspection, melodic warmth, an occasional tendency toward breathy vocal preciousness--remain much in evidence on this collection, the expanded musical support adds more rhythmic propulsion and layers of harmonies to the mix.

The time apart has made the Posies come back fiercer, louder and heavier.

Get past the more pedestrian fare like "Yes/No" and "Return of the Berserker," and the full scope of the Futureheads' ambition reveals itself, particularly in the poppiest track, "Skip To The End."

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.

Few modern songstresses work a beat better.

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

There are moments of light and hope on At the End of Paths Taken, but overall it is a deliriously dark and brooding album.

Somewhere Down in Texas could have benefited from the addition of an irresistible rhythm tune or another example of the western swing that Strait embraced so fervently early in his career.

Minimum-Maximum is essentially a greatest-hits album with an audience applauding and occasionally shouting.

Making no palpable effort to crack the conventional with overflowing melodies and love songs, Bird instead latches up the intellect to create tiny packages of literature that make always leave you thinking--and snapping your fingers at the same time.