The new Ben Folds is a lot like the old one: as unpredictable as he is talented.

While the result is hit-or-miss, the Charlatans manage to hit much more than they miss.

Listeners might tire of its mechanical edge, but luckily Daft Punk folds in a few more layers. Whether the listener believes it or not, Discovery postulates that club music can possess depth of sound and be more than a never-ending beat that simply marshals your body along with it. Thus, the songs are shorter, more eclectic and rife with hills and valleys of beat that urge you to stop and listen.

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

There's the sense that, in trying to be a Tribe-meets-Portishead hybrid, the Manchester, England, production duo of Mark Rae and Steve Christian have missed the target, as if true brilliance lies just around the corners they didn't turn.

With Sailing to Philadelphia, however, Knopfler fully reclaims his near-unique position as an instrumentalist of purpose -- one whose every note seems to have a reason for being. That reason, of course, is in service of his beautifully written and masterfully arranged songs.

On Let It Come Down, Jason Pierce successfully peels away layers of pretension and exposes the humanity at the heart of his music.

A 28-minute, 10-song romantic pop album that includes two gems that handily best their early geek anthems "Buddy Holly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)."

On the surface, Callahan sounds like he's getting out more.

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.

When System's at their best, the Los Angeles four-piece evokes most vividly punk politicos the Dead Kennedys.... Yet the band sputters out when the lyrics are awash in vagueness.

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.

Red Dirt Girl is a model of tasteful genre blending: a little bit country and a little bit electro-ambient pop.

Most of the new disc sounds like noisy grooves in search of songs, and the mechanical accompaniment makes the accomplished jazz-rock fusion of such mid-1970s Beck classics as Blow by Blow and Wired sound downright earthy.

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.

All for You is every bit as impressive a collection as Control, her first collaboration with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fifteen years ago.

Melissa Etheridge's Skin belongs in a tradition of breakup albums that includes Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love and Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear.

Such lightness of touch is missing from the between-song skits, which have Franti posing as a DJ on a community-radio show, conducting interviews and dispensing commentary on the death penalty. But the between-skit songs are terrific.

It's all remarkably effective. In capturing "the ghost in the machine," Mirwais has made a most warm and humane album.

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.

Producer Don Was allows the surprisingly girlish, persuasive part of Midler's style to shine, working in harmony with the production and the material.

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

Ultimately, the four-on-the-floor rhythm and riffing quickly become repetitive, blunting Get Ready's impact.

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.

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

Shangri-La Dee Da stands with the band's best work -- a furious tug of war between strychnine-laced grunge and acid-stoked psychedelic pop. In fact, it may be well be the brooding California group's pinnacle.

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