At times, Yang's ethereal monotone is the attention-getter. Elsewhere, the music takes over, often in the form of lengthy guitar solos and a slow, bittersweet weaving of instruments traditional... and otherwise.... This is smart, deep-thinking slowcore.

Gerald ups the ante again, incorporating astounding vocalists, intricate bass and drum patterns, and mood-altering melodies and tones to take the electronic dance community by storm.

Harding has streamlined his lyrics and placed them in taut, soulful settings à la John Hiatt...

Unfortunately, the heavy-handed folk-pop production... doesn't serve Williams well here.... In general, the overwrought keyboards and Steve Holley's percussion... could use a good slapdown.

Even though Mirror drifts toward the pop end of the spectrum, this session is undeniably more satisfying.

Actually, all through this, his second solo disc, Wyclef goes for skin-deep musical ideas.... Still, most of Wyclef's little ideas are terrific.

Simultaneously more tossed-off and expressive than 1995's Elastica album, The Menace is a frustrating listen, oscillating between actively courting the listener and fashioning a more tangential state somewhere between punk momentum and wearisome breakdown

On G.O.A.T., LL Cool J has renewed his old-school style for a new generation of fans while still retaining old-school support.

At once epic, playful and a little bit strange, the duo's latest effort perpetuates the brothers' patented geek-chic, though things come across as more introspective and ambient this time around.... Alternately excellent, kitschy and lackluster...

Incorporating free-jazz squonk into sultry bossa nova with tempo-defying breaks and ethereal atmospherics is no easy feat, but somehow, the London duo pull it off.

Unified Theory play melodramatic art rock (with a capital AOR) in a Meatloaf-meets-Jane's Addiction kind of way. Their music plods along with all the grace of a Pinto sans muffler, substituting grandiosity for grace and thus failing to achieve the dramatically transcendent sounds that Roy Orbison and Jeff Buckley once made.

It's hard to imagine The Golden D as having much of an impact.

The resonant and smooth singing takes some getting used to if you're familiar with earlier, craggier, quirkier recordings, but by the gallant train-wreck tragedy of "Engine 143", I found myself singing along.

This time around, the group eschews player-hating specificity but hits equally hard (albeit with subtler blows) against the commercially dominated empire of gangsta and hoochie rap.

He's responsible for some of the most classic (and controversial) jams in the history of hip-hop.

The spy-music fetish and dubbed-out paranoia of the band's first two albums are traded in for earthy Stax soul and sprightly disco funk, along with plenty of turntable wobbles, wah-wah scratches and analog squiggles...

They may not always transcend their influences, but even when they don't, they make wallowing in them a helluva lot of fun.

In an age of "been there, done that" cynicism, Rancid come across like true believers...

The results are unfortunately as atrocious as they are blasphemous, setting a tone that keeps Vavoom! mostly falling flat on its straining-to-jump-jive-an'-wail face.

If you fish around a bit, you'll find several good ideas here, some of which may have worked better in different hands.

Featuring vocal contributions from Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, punk-blues aficionado Jon Spencer and ex-Tricky collaborator Martina Toppley-Bird, Bow Down to the Exit Sign is a dark, soul-wrenching trip through an even darker world.

It's ironic that for all of his intelligence, passion and obvious talent, Canibus chose to stoop to the caveman mentality so apparent on this release.

While love- and life-torn Alexakis might lyrically be working familiar terrain here, he has the smarts to place his odes to abuse and regret into an intriguing assortment of different contexts, making this album well worth listening to

Would this band be getting so much attention if Keanu Reeves wasn't the bass player? Of course not. Do they stink? No. Are they any good? Maybe.

The result is entertaining but so bound by the requirements of Jamaican and American clichés that there's not much room left for his own personality to come through.

Imagine Charles Bukowski or Irvine Welsh reading poetry with musical accompaniment provided by Joy Division, and you've got the general idea.

There's almost no drama to be found on Alone With Everybody... [t]he songs don't turn corners, and they fail to elicit any real emotional response.

Horns, keyboards and acoustic guitars dominate the 10 tracks here, with an overall live sound that steers clear of the studio effects the band embraced with their last release, Guerrilla.

A strong rebound that finds lang supported by the sleek, techno-lite production of Damian leGassick?

On this latest offering there's hardly any indication that the band was ever the product of post-grunge Seattle.... But this refined sound is also where The Rising Tide starts to sink.

When you can make out their lyrics... you realize that these guys are really the artier, more nuanced and textured cousins of Korn.

The resulting sonic model represents a giant step in the evolution of sound sculpture

Even though O'Connor adopts a penitent tone on Faith and Courage, this album is no concession to anyone or anything. O'Connor is still O'Connor: strident, contradictory, motherly, seductive.

Isaac Brock's goofy, hyperactive child voice, capable of earnest whine and arch speed-rap, peels the lid off his inability (refusal?) to come across as cool.

Although Sound of Water, Saint Etienne's fifth album, may not be as overtly clever as 1991's Foxbase Alpha or as thematically consistent as 1998's Good Humor, it is as subtle as an Antonio Carlos Jobim tune and as mysteriously satisfying as a lazy summer night.

Why is Quality Control -- an album no doubt many will love simply because of its hip- hop politics -- so damn bland? For all their good intentions, J5's results are so monochromatic, of such a singular focus on staying true to a specific kind of hip-hop blueprint, that even the inclusion of grinning left-field randomness... lacks the fun it means to inject.

With Movement in Still Life however, BT (born Brian Transeau) offers something many of his peers have failed to deliver: an album that accurately and convincingly reflects dance music's present state and, possibly, its future.

The writing shines throughout... Steve Earle seems able to do anything he cares to.

There's creepiness all over Fold Your Hands, from the deceptively sweet kiss-off "Don't Leave the Light on Baby" (RealAudio excerpt), and the raped narrator of "The Chalet Lines," to the self-conscious self-parody of "Nice Day for a Sulk"

Van Helden continues to battle being pigeonholed by throwing disparate musical elements into the mix; unfortunately, the resulting musical tapestry is uneven.

Perhaps what makes The History of Rock most interesting -- and what ultimately validates Kid Rock as the real deal -- is that these old tracks prove that his love affair with rap and rock wasn't something he just cooked up to weasel onto MTV's "TRL."

In small doses it's wonderful stuff, though in total it's a little sickly sweet.

MCs Evidence and Rakaa's shortcomings are amendable because they do have a great scratchmaster in DJ Babu. The problem is that this inventive DJ is allowed to shift gears and twist and crawl only after the rappers have said their pieces.

A relatively bloodless album, a work that seems formatted to satisfy the demands of the marketplace without really transcending them.

The problem is, as the album drags on, young Master Mathers wastes his considerable wit and opts to grouse in the guise of a rampaging reactionary. Song after song finds Eminem viciously baiting real and imagined enemies, as if that's all he knows how to do.

Communicate's energy level lags in places, trying to make up for in quantity what it lacks in consistent quality.

Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) finds Partridge and Moulding at the top of their game, making the collection a fitting match for past XTC triumphs...

ESG may have been heard mostly in other artists' songs, but A South Bronx Story is an impressive attempt to focus attention on the force behind the samples.

For the most part, the seven new tracks on The First of the Microbe Hunters, which is technically an EP, feel all too similar to last year's Cobra Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night...

It's an uneven mix that frustrates by offering just samples of what Pearl Jam increasingly does best, namely, provide clear and, yes, quiet stories about the travails of everyday life.

Certain moments find the quartet keying in on the same fugal intertwining of beauty and dissonance that Television explored back in the late 1970s.

Spears' new album does sound exactly like her last one.

Feeding everything from polyrhythmic samba marches and interstellar jazz excursions into his mixer-microprocessor, then topping them off with obsessive beat-programming, Tobin blurs the boundaries between organic and prefabricated, as if the coexistence of the two should be an undeniable rule.

Make no mistake: This album represents a small step for a band, not a giant leap for mankind. But it is energetic, entertaining and several polymer configurations less plastic than the teenybopper product currently being manufactured in Orlando and elsewhere.

Wishville is seamless, expansive and full of go-nowhere moments.

Call this music "experimental easy-listening" -- neither strident enough to warrant serious commercial attention, nor sufficiently free-form to attract all the independent obsessives.

Some of the finest music of their already sterling career.

On the evidence of her work here, one would have to say there really isn't any pop-rock composer writing more sophisticated material these days than Mann.

Ween are at their best when they either dive headlong into ridiculousness or play it totally straight (admittedly, they don't do the latter very often). Here, however, they walk a rickety platform between those extremes and frequently fall into the ironizer's pit.

The band's new sound appropriates slabs of dance music, free jazz, rock and techno to create a menacing landscape of rattling beats, thundering bass and crippling distortion, dotted with lyrics that evoke urban decay and social disgust.

Overall, though, this is one of those odd little albums that the ever-prolific Young comes up with periodically -- dotted with a few flashes of inspiration, ultimately sunk by a lot of by-rote artistic adequacy.

At first audition, Broadcast is disposable John Barry-inspired pop drenched in overcharged organs, egregious electronic overproduction and languorous vocals that somehow have no residue.

Call it thinking-man's pop from a reluctant star, but Figure 8 is a "grower." However weird it may sound initially, it merits repeated listenings.

In the five long years since that multiplatinum release, these SoCal rockers have nearly been torn apart by fame, and the accompanying mixed-up emotions are manifested not just in the lyrics but also in the album's musical genre jumps.

Continues the musical evolution that was evident on last year's Knock Knock, with a collection that goes beyond Smog's standard home-alone-in-the-basement-with-a-four track-and-a-weird-mood aesthetic.

There are more flashes of the old White Light/White Heat Reed than the old crank has provided even diehard loyalists in years.

Even at its slickest moments, Gung Ho is worthwhile, not only for Smith's lyrics but for her soulful vocals. At 53, she sounds much like the jazz vocalists who develop and train their voices as they age.

[rating only; no review]

The duo deliver an evocative, mostly instrumental set that effectively serves their inspiration, as well as their fanbase.

From its thunderous beginning to its quiet, echoing end, MACHINA/the machines of God is perfect dancing-in-the-dark-with-yourself-'cause-you-have-angst-in-your-pants music.

Two Against Nature marks a timely return of two chilly, heartless hipsters.

The most memorable tracks on Pieces in a Modern Style feel like high-brow Puff Daddy songs...

And while not so instantly accessible as much of the band's recent output, the songs still manage to be catchy, if elusively so; this is an album that rewards repeated listening.

This is classic Cure music, straight up (or should that be straight down?): lengthy songs (most more than five minutes) with plenty of cold, alternately chiming and grinding guitars, fluttering keyboards and, of course, Smith's mournful yowl, which hasn't sounded this intense since the The Top's "Shake Dog Shake" in 1984.

This album shows a band eager to expand its creative range. One wonders, sadly, what might have come next.

Wildly uneven -

It ain't Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis, but it's close.

Midnite Vultures is the album of a great entertainer, not a great artist.

When the Pawn Hits ... is so good that the next album could have a 900-word title and I wouldn't even scratch my goatee.

By my count, you've still got 50 keepers out of 69, give or take a few songs. And about a third of those sound like classics.

Remedy is the next great step forward for house music.

A trip into the prettiest altered states the Lips have yet kissed.

Play is a modest, charming little record built on a few simple ideas, and a winner on its own low-key terms: Moby has made the first electronic blues album.

Methodical, often sprawling and sonically messy, 13 isn't a charmer, but it is awfully seductive.