While Rap-Metal 101 drums bang away in the background, the basslines are replaced by chugging guitar riffs reminiscent of your high school hardcore band. What remains, though, is the exceptional quality of Pharrell's voice, which, unlike the bass sound, doesn't lose its intensity due to repeated radio exposure.

Although its best moments don't reach quite the altitudes of his prior releases, Skyscraper National Park, as a whole, is the most complete and coherent album in Hayden's catalog, a delightful listen from track one through track eleven.

All the clichés from French pop and house music collected in one shiny package.

Buzzkunst doesn't exactly offer any revelatory music, but it certainly is good, sometimes even great.

Buffalo Daughter produce exceptional-sounding tracks that cover a wide spectrum of genres, texture and mood; they perform well on a variety of instruments, and their voices blend nicely most of the time. But they don't write great songs-- too often, they don't even write good ones.

In the process of recording another incredible album, he's discovered that light is most visible when it's flickering alone in the dark.

Slightly-too-frequent derivative moments can be mostly forgiven thanks to heaping helpings of youthful earnestness.

Walking with Thee is neither an album of triumph nor of disappointment.

The good stuff aside, if hard whiskey, hard women and aboveground pools aren't your thing-- and I would imagine not-- it's tough to recommend Lucky 7.

But the thing is, somewhere between all the vamping and forced attempts at being hip and irreverent, they found the time to write and record a fine record.

Dense, beautiful, intricate, haunting, explosive, and dangerous, this is everything rock music aspires to be: intense, incredible songs arranged perfectly and performed with skill and passion.

Jump Leads has a few more slip-ups than its immediate predecessor, A Touch of Cloth, but I'd like to think they result from the addition of a vocalist (Steve Edwards of Presence) rather than being an indication of pending obsolescence.

It's Broder's careful balancing act between the traditional and the abnormal that makes his music so interesting.

From Here On In is inches away from being a success. It's just that it's weighed down by so many repetitive textures and songs that fail to impact.

Lacking any dynamism, complexity, or invention, the relentless drone of most of these tracks is a shallow, reactionary statement to the progress of the post-rock genre, and completely unedifying.

Is a Woman is a disappointment.

Monkey comes off resembling either a padded greatest-hits comp or an "inspired by" soundtrack for a non-existent movie. What it certainly isn't is a DJ mix where previously hidden links between seemingly unrelated songs are unearthed through the ancient art of juxtaposition.

Beautysleep's weakness is that so many songs are pretty instead of awe-inspiring-- that she gives us only a little greatness.

The majority of the album's highlights come courtesy of the songwriting tandem of Bracy and Hoffman, whose maturity as songsmiths is notable-- this record is consistently concise, punchy and poignant.

While some will complain about Boards of Canada's failure to cover new territory, the rest of us will delight in what we see as a very accomplished album packed with great music.

It's not a bad album by most standards-- in fact it's pretty good at points-- but in the end slides into a mire of adequacy after generating high expectations early on.

It's surprising to see how well Holes in the Wall holds up under the weight of its own hype.

Though thoroughly enjoyable, the album isn't always riveting, either, and occasionally the attention does stray.

There are certain things they do very well, yet they don't seem to be content with being pigeonholed as one-dimensional. Unfortunately, one-dimensional is about the only thing they can pull off convincingly.

You've got your acoustic guitar base, your occasional slide guitar fill, your Dylan-esque organ, your chug-a-lug drums, and your mildly catchy melodies. It would be offensive if it wasn't so obvious that Cracker doesn't aspire to much more than this sort of rustic middle-America mediocrity act.

It's the first good 2002 album I've heard.

Taking into account the sometimes spotty songwriting and its overtly dreamy similarities to Mojave 3 (like if they'd had a back massage and 1200mg's of Valium), there isn't much to save it from solo slump status.

Their music,... while pretending to be candy-coated pop-rock, shares all of emo's key indicators, including melodramatic vocal delivery, seamless production, and shameless overambition.