Made is at once more adventurous and more accessible, with a greater respect for straightforward(ish) pop.

After 9/11, it seemed like every North American recording artist scrambled to come out with a political message album. Unfortunately for Sheryl Crow, words that to rhyme with “gasoline” have become painfully redundant in 2008.

The group’s fifth disc is an infectious collection of bright rock songs (Whose Authority) and calm, soothing numbers (See These Bones).

Lang gently pulls you into the quieter moments of domesticity on songs like 'Coming Home' and 'Sunday,' but her curled-lip drawl on Jealous Dog shows she can still surprise.

He’s crafted yet another replica batch of breezy, walk-along-the-beach jams [which] won’t matter to his fans, who keep coming back to their sandal-footed prophet regardless.

It’s Time For A Love Revolution, his eighth LP, easily ranks among his highest achievements.

With cleaner, more refined production quality to boot, Growth is an interesting and fully realized progression.

There’s good understated playing throughout, strong songwriting and a casual, immediate feel that comes from recording an entire album in six days.

Three albums and 700 guitar solos later, they sound like a band becoming a bit too comfortable in their niche.

The Vampire Weekend crew, who met at Columbia University, have clearly heard enough soukous and highlife to cop a few guitar licks to cloak their orch-pop pretensions, but almost by accident, the way their chamber strings are played over jaunty grooves makes for an engaging concoction, at least for a few spins.

Jamie Stewart, as usual, sounds like a man on the edge of checking into a white-walled care facility, but that shouldn’t be seen as a negative against Women As Lovers.

Too often these songs sound like Death Cab B-sides, like the 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark'-mining 'A Bird Is A Song.'

Fans won’t be let down by this latest collection of accomplished and almost too-smart songwriting that borrows from the classic sensibilities of piano-based jazz.

Much of Keep Your Eyes Ahead, like the softly plucked 'Shed Your Love' or the Dylanesque 'Broken Afternoon,' could easily backdrop drippy TV dramas, but that isn’t necessarily a knock. Both are beautiful tunes.

Fortress stands out as gratifyingly heavy and heady.

Phil Ramone’s austere production seems designed to let Lynne’s voice carry the album, and that’s a big mistake, since she has neither the emotional range nor the soulful finesse to convey the real hurt at the core of this material.

Yoav’s whole shtick is that he only plays the acoustic guitar, but he runs it through a looping pedal to make drum and keyboard sounds. Conceptually, it’s an okay idea, and Yoav pulls it off, but it gets boring fast.

The album's psychedelic pop runs out of gas near the end in cringe-worthy Battersea Odyssey and Let The Wolves Howl At The Moon, but by then you're won over and wondering how you slept on this band for the past nine years.

They put their cloudy heads together and came up with the power-chord-slashing and hobbitty keyboard werping goods but wisely didn’t lose all the dirty distortion and strummy acoustic bits.

Naturally, the interpretations go beyond mere homage as Marshall uses her mysterious Cat Power skills to channel the spirits of the singers who inspired her, with mixed results.

Mike Cooley steps up with some much-needed light contrast to Patterson Hood’s darker lyrical impulses, which are well represented here, sometimes with touching poignancy and others with blunt force trauma.

The Whigs are at their best when they embrace their more overt pop sensibilities over the wall-of-guitars thing, but it sounds like they need to expand their record collections.

Still, despite his naive imitations, Costa has a gift for catchy hooks, and once he figures out who he is musically, the results could be remarkable.

While the Jesus and Mary Chain might have been limited by their musical ability and knowledge, Merritt and company understand the pop principles they’re working with.

If you can deal with the nostalgia factor, it’s a pleasant but unremarkable disc.

Her control has never been better and Jimmy Hogarth’s production provides the perfect foundation for her deeply delicate expressions.

The various producers behind this all pull their weight, but as usual the star is Blige’s husky voice and that charming mix of vulnerability and over-the-top diva confidence.

The problem is that he hasn’t yet developed a signature sound that immediately identifies a track as his own, nor is he capable of writing the sort of provocative rhymes that stand out.