The band reassembles its signature elements and evaporates concerns about age by showing some fresh spring-loaded party pop.

Hammond's lyrics and vocals aren't as distinctive as those favored by Strokes singer Julian Casablancas, but the guitarist's music breathes in ways Strokes songs don't.

City of Refuge is an eerie, archaic record, and even the CD version sounds as though there's years of thick dust packed into the grooves.

Thunderheist prove more winning than most, due to Isis' knack for calm, rhythmic flow, all one- or two-syllable rhymes and the schoolyard-inspired spelling out of words.

The highs aren't as high on "Sam's Town," but it's a better album overall.

There are a few clunkers, and the three songs sung by other band members don't add much, but the so-called "Red Album" is better for its unevenness.

There are glimmers of appeal elsewhere--the understated soul 'vamp on 'Day Too Soon,' or "Buttons,' the hidden rocker tacked onto the end--but the tunes feel too often like surface exercises that lack heart.

The Crawling Distance, Pollard's umpteenth disc since officially going solo in 2004, offers more of what listeners have come to expect.

On her second album under the name A Camp, Persson drapes herself in breezy '60s-pop arrangements, lamb's-wool duds that dress some deadly ideas.

Though these songs, like 'Feeling Better,' are the album's goofiest, they present the band at its most sincere, celebrating the vitality, if not the emotional immaturity, that precedes one's 20th birthday.

An uneven album with some tremendous bright spots.

His vocals here are mostly murmurs, and the musical accompaniment, though skillful throughout, lacks the punch of his previous albums.

At times... "Introducing" sounds like the long-sought missing link between neo-soul and future-soul.... When "Introducing" falters, however, it's done in by the twin killers of modern soul: too much sex, not enough melody.

The current Who takes what seemed, conceptually speaking, like a really bad idea - that is, recording without Entwistle - and turns it into a triumphant re-emergence after nearly a quarter-century of creative inactivity.

It's worth giving it a second (or third) listen.

As a placeholder for Hudgens' future career, Identified serves its purpose, even if it's seldom identifiable as her own work.

Although the alter-ego suggests that Banks would be happy to keep his own name out of it, the fact is that Julian Plenti is ... Skyscraper is the truest reflection of Banks' musical impulses, which don't always shine through in the democracy that is Interpol.

It's the mark of a great band when each new album is better than the one before it, and with Only by the Night, Kings of Leon shows once more just how great a band it has become.

Sure enough, we know these devils: they're the ones who make so many latter-day metal bands look like hopeless poseurs.

Among Manson's most compelling records.

Adam Duritz and company haven’t sounded so committed, so determined, so tuneful, in years.

Although Donkey has a sleeker sound than its predecessor, CSS keeps its focus squarely on booty-shaking beats and pulsing bass on songs alternately about rocking your face off (opener 'Jager Yoga') and overcoming emotional turmoil.

An atmospheric downer.

There's no denying the passion and skill behind the group's fourth album, its most accessible collection yet.

She has fresh relationship issues to work through on Flavors of Entanglement, her first set of new tunes since 2004, but she has difficulty striking a balance between soul-searching and dance grooves on a set that doesn't distinguish itself with either.

The drum machine hallmark of his 1980s heyday is a staple of MPLSound, a disc that hauls that sound into the present with mixed results.

Folds is clearly having fun, but is he laughing with us or at us? Sometimes it's hard to tell. But it's even harder not to smile.

The 33-year-old from Arizona keeps things interesting with low-key traces of gritty personality, a quality that rears its head on Feel That Fire and elevates the appeal of its carefully manicured rowdiness.