It's dark and harrowing, but "Year Zero" is the most compelling and fully realized album Reznor has made since "Pretty Hate Machine."

Cave comes on strong and rejuvenated.

"Cassadaga" is an insular, self-referential album that strives for depth and profundity and sounds instead like a high-school poetry reading, full of rhyming-dictionary couplets and banal pronouncements about life.

The everyday-ness of the songs makes them easily relatable, but, like a commute where traffic and weather happen on the 10s, the album starts to feel routine by the end.

Although it's stylistically diverse, the album feels coherent.

The real shock of the disc is the hit-or-miss results.

A sophomore effort that rarely rises above middling.

Gray's latest is an engaging, soulful effort from a singer who is proving herself to be more of a career artist than a hit-maker.

A collection of smoothly produced, soft-pedaled cowboy anthems.

It's a straight-up masterpiece, blending indie-rock attitude and clattering dance beats with lethal sardonic humor.

It's a successful experiment... largely because the differences between Marr and Mouse turn out to be more harmonious than anyone could have expected.

His songs here aren't always as memorable as on previous albums, but the good tunes are great.

While he's a fine creator of moods and verse-long vignettes, Malin often has trouble stretching a cohesive narrative for the length of an entire song.

The Impressionistic sound painting El-P has long threatened - and finally delivered.

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.

Much of "Turn the Lights Off" is inspired by '80s artists who wanted to sound like they were from the '60s.

"Black Pompadour" suffers from split- personality disorder.

Even if her vulgarity is her main selling point, she's more than just a novelty act.

It's pub rock, but smarter and more ambitious, with music as nimble as the lyrics are sharp.

The best record the Strokes should have released after "Is This It."

An atmospheric downer.

These 11 songs comprise an ambitious song cycle, and the songwriting on "Neon Bible" is stronger and more focused than it was on "Funeral."

The band sounds crisper and cleaner than it should.

Although the folk songs fit the theme of the album, they don't showcase Cooder's skills as a composer.

Essential background music, if such a thing exists.

Carpenter... us[es] image-rich, airy tunes to sweetly embrace positive persistence in the face of adversity.

In some spots, the pacing proves problematic.

A vehicle for his much-improved vocals, strong enough now to carry some songs.