While King's songs often hew closer to contemporary classical than pop, the patient listener will discern new colors in these lovely painted-desert landscapes with each listen.

While Everything is firmly grounded in Eno and Byrne's previous work, their mutual commitment to musical exploration ensures the album rarely sounds like something we've heard before.

"Springtime" could very well be the singer/songwriter album against which all others are measured this year.

Libertad is one of those sophomore albums that builds on the strengths of the first and offers enough fresh stuff to establish a new standard for the band.

This is the definitive Moby album.

As Fiction Family, the two San Diego musicians find plenty of sonic common ground and, most important, a dozen richly crafted and intriguingly rendered songs.

Pop's understated delivery draws even the most skeptical of listeners in, bathing his hushed voice in beds of stark piano and tremolo-washed guitar.

This is one beautiful record.

It's that mix of sad-sack circumstances and cautious optimism that makes the Scottish quartet's debut such a rich exercise in self-aware spleen-venting.

Mac minions will find this electric-flavored, band-sounding album pleasing, but there's also the avant ambience that's Buckingham's stock in trade.

In its entirety the album is a great debut, toe-tapping and catchy with just the right blend of familiarity and individuality, and it should send a message to new bands: Simplicity is key.

There's not a clunker on "The Weight is a Gift," even if the band never veers far from the indie comfort zone of vague melancholia.

It is a testament to Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin's production acumen that the songs here sound so organic despite their computerized origin. [22 Oct 2005]

The album may consign the Raveonettes further to cult-level status, but like a challenging mate, it seduces us into coming back for more.

Even with the added string section, Gray has not lost his knack for combining lovely melodies with bittersweet lyrics. [17 Sep 2005]

Picking up the lyrical gauntlet thrown down by such neo-soul sistahs as Angie Stone, Jill Scott, and musical influence/labelmate Rachelle Ferrell, this Houston-bred singer/songwriter sparkles with colorfully imaged songs about love won, lost, and anticipated -- laid against an R&B backdrop rhythmically punctuated with hip-hop, Latin, pop, jazz, rock, and country.

Sonically rich, Lost in Space is home to some of Mann's most intimate storytelling.

Nothing makes as quick of an impact as 'Crazy,' but give the tunes time and you'll find they stick around.

Although much of the album is about saying goodbye to the past, Morrison uses the performance to breathe new life into the songs with a band that can follow anywhere he leads--jazz, folk or soul.

With poetic melancholy, absurdist whimsy and direct shout-outs to a world no more just than it was on his last album, there's enough to carry fans until Chao's next one.

As if almost effortlessly, Travis proves track after track the difference between bravado and stone-cold brilliance.

It's a strange balancing act that Rutili and crew capably pull off, straddling the chasm between the straightforward and the self-consciously left of center.

Serenade is most compelling when Earle snarls in his irrefutable way at Middle East warmakers ('Jericho Road') and rural drug pushers ('Oxycontin Blues').

With this album, Costa comes defiantly into her own.

Murs' command of his rhyme scheme -- and the uniformly banging, soul-drenched beats of his labelmates -- make this one of the most engaging hip-hop records of the young year, even at just over a half-hour.

The sterling set is signature Sade.

All the elements are deftly held together by the MC/songstress' ability to make each track her own.

"The Shining" documents the totality of who Jay Dee was as an artist and performer.