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

Strange, alluring, and disarming.

Features the kind of envelope-pushing fans have come to expect.

Sprawling, funny, angry, compelling, and entirely unafraid.

Sure, Get Rich could never have lived up to the hype, it’s nowhere near Biggie's Ready to Die or Nas's Illmatic, but there's no fast-forward material here, a near miracle in these times.

It’s hard to remember that he once wrote well-crafted ballads of romantic infatuation.

Eleventh Hour, his largely self-produced fifth solo album--and first in eight years--lacks much of both the lyrical and instrumental verve of his best records.

On this album, GB make the Dead Kennedys seem subtle. And it would be nice if there were more variety to their sound.

As a whole, the album stands as a benediction to an artist whose integrity and success has prevailed in the face of endless trends and fads that have swept away many lesser talents.

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

Songs About Girls is, for sure, a big, noisy record. But in addition to the kind of hugeness, it's sometimes hard to get your head around.

On first listen, Taking the Long Way seems too somber--in need of a bit of levity and more than a couple of uptempo songs (like the sexy, '60s-flavored "I Like It") to resonate for the long haul. It also seems to lack the writing quality that Darrell Scott, Patty Griffin, and Bruce Robison brought to Home. But on repeated plays, those concerns dissipate.

The real discovery is that he's capable of making the same old racket at just a fraction of the volume.

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.

True, LCD's music is not for everyone, which may have something to do with why their fans love them as they do. If you fall into the latter category, however, Silver is gold.

Worthy of more than novelty status.

Pernice's unblemished voice is the key instrument.

Flitting between fraught ballads and up-tempo adult pop (the misguided sample-laden singles "Freeek!" and "Shoot the Dog" being the unnecessary exceptions), George here returns to the structure and mood of 1990s Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. [Amazon UK]

Another set of sad but very fun songs.

A tight disc that skitters from track to shiny track with imagination and a renewed sense of rap's widened boundaries.

For a group with one of the most unmemorable band names ever, it's funny that it's their way with words that elevates them from wannabe status.

Hell Hath No Fury isn't as well-assembled as Lord Willin' or as spontaneous as Clipse's lauded mix-CDs from 2005 but it is coldly efficient in knocking out 12 songs backed with superbly dark and sparse tracks by the Neptunes.

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

No, it does not rank with the band's best work. But yes, as long as Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey walk the earth in tandem, the Who live on.

Far be it for the imaginative contrarian to retrace Dylan's steps, and sure enough--despite an omnipresent harmonica--Ferry does just the opposite.

Some of their best work in nearly two decades.

For all of the music's surface catchiness, the writing is some of Moorer's deepest to date.

The limitations of Lanois’s vocals lend an engaging frailty, leavened with bleak, lonely, instrumental interludes.