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

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

Garbage have finally discovered a hint of the blood-pumping human heart underneath their icy exterior.

Ivy specialize in nebulously oriented dream-pop: too ethereal for straight pop fans, too structured for the 4AD crowd. The result is rather like Swing Out Sister playing with all the rock and roll abandon of, say, the Sundays.

A fresh, if unfocused, work saturated with zany personality.

Deep Down & Dirty is the group's hardest, most animated and strongest-sounding album to date.

If it's energy that it is the single strongest selling point of God Bless the Go-Go's, well, that's kind of where they came in anyway, back in the day when lead singer Belinda Carlisle was a butch-haircutted pudge and "We Got the Beat" was, literally, just about all the Go-Gos had going for them musically.

Perhaps his most humane album and warmest work to date.

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"

Happily deviates from the Moon Safari mold of new wave kitsch and sugary pop, guiding the knob-twisting duo's retro-synth sensibilities into a darker, more brooding realm.

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

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.

A mostly disappointing misfire that seems too eager for commercial pop success.

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.

She lets [the songs] drift off into the kind of embalmed chamber music respectability often synonymous with the Nonesuch label.

Here's music tailor-made for cruising down the road with the wind blowing through your mullet.

A strong, expressive singer, Usher is particularly adroit at seductive, late-night ballads.

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

Although he's the primary MC throughout this album, it's his studio skills that keep listeners on their toes...

Time Bomb is loaded with two things that are markedly absent from most of today's hard rock scene: memorable melodies and a loose but swinging rhythmic foundation.

A work that retains their signature sound while embracing a more mature and cautiously positive outlook on matters of the heart.

With guitars down in the mix (when they aren't unplugged altogether), Clapton's ever-evolving voice is the real centerpiece.

Like a cross between Fatboy's cheekiness and the Chems' psychedelia, Super Sound is certainly slick, but it also confirms suspicions that big beat has hit a creative dead end.

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

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.

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.

The duo's most commercial and downright joyous album to date.

While the album stays true to the group's legacy of alcohol-themed, head-nodding party anthems, it falls short by schematically aping other artists' music.