A challenging debut that sidesteps inflated expectations by staying close to the group's established sound while still demonstrating a flexibility conducive to future musical development.

For all its grandiosity, American Idiot keeps its mood and method deliberately, tenaciously, and angrily on point.

Tracking the spiritual crossroads of hip-hop, reggae, soul, and flamenco, Joyful Rebellion stirs each of those ingredients into an album that, at the very least, deserves acclaim for blending classic and often forgotten Afro-sounds into 04's hip-hop scene.

A quarter-century after its first release, London Calling is still the concentrate essence of The Clash's unparalleled fervor.

Banhart's disinterest in obvious narratives is, for now, his greatest strength.

Their caveman take on 70s nostalgia-- simultaneously misguided and entirely too obvious-- renders them mostly forgettable and entirely ineffectual.

Her voice has matured to a fine saw-toothed rasp, and carries with it the echoes of every hard minute through which she's lived.

Some of the rowdiest Giant Sand music since the near-grunge of 1992's Center of the Universe.

Their forlorn, polished California pop is like the sprawling Valley suburbs: nice enough, if that's your sort of thing.

Ultimately, It'll Be Cool succumbs to the general lack of ambition that has always been Silkworm's Achilles' heel.

Timms has made some perplexing choices in song selection.

Outgunned is a mess of unfocused energy and uncomfortably irrelevant sonics, an odd mix of cartoonish immediacy and tired youth-cult ideas that would be the perfect soundtrack to Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie: The Movie.

The Handler only meagerly amplifies what he was already doing, probably pleasing his no doubt respectable cadre of core followers, but handily turning off the rest of humanity.

The album naturally lacks the shock of the new, the jolt of Boy in Da Corner-- instead, it's a consolidation of his strengths, lyrically and sonically, and a more satisfying listen than its predecessor.

Their songs fuse Ashlee Simpson mall-punk with the retro 80s fetish of former tourmate Ryan Adams' recent high-profile stinker.

So long as we're unable or unwilling to fully recognize the healing aspect of embracing honest emotion in popular music, we will always approach the sincerity of an album like Funeral from a clinical distance. Still, that it's so easy to embrace this album's operatic proclamation of love and redemption speaks to the scope of The Arcade Fire's vision.

Their mistake is in forcing too many ideas into every possible second.

Radio 4 can be commended for at least trying to move past the purposeful lo-fi of Gotham! and into fresher territory, but there's no bell or whistle in the world that could energize the utterly impotent songs at the core of Stealing of a Nation.

About half of it works reasonably well, though the end result is somehow closer to Low-era Bowie or Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain than anything truly contemporary or avant-garde.

There's a disarming simplicity and artlessness... with an increased emphasis on persistent pop melody over crafty wordplay.

It picks up right where Thickfreakness left off-- outside the bar in the gravel parking lot, swinging aggressively with Dan Auerbach's ferocious six-string and Patrick Carney's cymbal-and-snare seizures-- and brings the noise one step further.

Well-paced and cleverly sequenced, it is, in many ways, a throwback to the great records of the 1970s, and fresh enough not to sound like one.

The band's saving grace is its commitment to and execution of its textural aesthetic, owing as much to David Lynch's oneiric odes to Los Angeles as any musical counterpart.

It's brilliant at points, exhibiting the casual, grimy grace that laced Up the Bracket through English countryside benders, sing-alongs, and pub anthems, but evidently, The Libertines are creatures of excess, and even a good thing can be overdone.

It continues Björk's run of releases that sound nothing like their predecessors, yet is, as ever, particular to her.

But while the album is stylistically and sonically brilliant, it still suffers from the primary flaw of the band's four previous albums: Their songwriting hasn't made the same leap as their chops.

Anyone looking for [an] unpretentious, laidback and solid full-length is hereby invited to check out what's made Kilgour one our most consistent performers for 25 years.

To say that the album is over-produced is an understatement; you could bounce a quarter off of most of these songs.