Unfortunately, Harding misses more than he hits.... musically most of the tracks sound forced and untrue.

Pulling it all together is her beautifully rough voice, which has grown more precise without losing any of its raw, bluesy power.

The quartet has cooled its eclectic babbling, and "Hot Shots II" whirrs and purrs like a gleeming silver sports car.

When it clicks, "Aaliyah" transforms the confusion of young adulthood into exhilarating freedom

The music is rarely up to the task set by the lyrics. Truly successful union of melody and words occurs only twice—on the sparsely arranged stream of consciousness titled "Bonefields" and on the album's most original piece, "Another Plane Went Down," which teeters beautifully on the edge of dream and reality.

"Amnesiac" deepens the mystery that Radiohead began with its curious, largely electronic 2000 release, "Kid A," and certainly won't satiate those awaiting the lauded band's supposed return to guitar-heavy epics.

The wildly disparate influences and sensibilities mesh to great effect on this stunning album.

A typically bruised and beautiful collection of lovelorn ballads, Raymond Carveresque character studies and darkly romantic confessionals.

The admittedly catchy, three-chord pop structure isn't as effective as in previous DCFC releases--as a basic approach, it seems more thoughtless than deliberately anaesthetizing this time.

"Lateralus" is primarily a collection of puzzling time changes, haunting vocals and beyond-intricate percussive patterns that create a theme rooted more in Eastern philosophy than in rock and roll.

Burnside's singing is the strongest it's been in years, hitting aching falsettos in "Bad Luck City" and then, on the title track, letting his voice get as dark and gritty as the silt of the Mississippi River.

Rarity collections can often times be largely unsatisfying to anyone but die-hard fans, but not so with ASTH. Songs such as "Bring Your Lovin' Back Here," "78 Stone Shuffle" and "Steve McCroski" stand up against the best of anything the band has recorded.

Pierce enhances his trademark electro-scapes with rich gospel choruses and grand orchestral flourishes for operatic effect.

The album's meticulous attention to detail never overshadows Jackson's frisky good mood.

Anyone hoping Etheridge has channeled her recent ups and downs into anything resembling vital rock and roll will be disappointed. Instead, she's sticking closer to the middle of the road than ever before.

Having traded in affected spooky vocals and idiosyncratic song structures for straight-ahead rock, however, Black seems to suffer a crisis of confidence on "Dog in the Sand."

There are moments on this album when you remember Nirvana used to open for J Mascis' old band, Dinosaur Jr. There are many such moments, gloriously ragged snatches of rock.

Something of a mixed bag, "Production" teeters between grating aimlessness and uniquely dark, claustrophobically compressed runs through the Vocoder-happy lands of French house music.

"Cuttin' Heads" isn't covering much new ground.

Demonstrates a virility missing from [1993's "Republic"].

The band, while heavy on charm, is light in its ability to demonstrate any diversity in its songs.

Following a path forged by fellow U.K. exports Badly Drawn Boy and Travis, still-wet-behind-the-ears quartet Coldplay prefers a folksy, familiar approach to guitar pop.

Manson still has the most bloodcurdling scream in rock. But the flat-footed musical backing on "Holy Wood" leaves his delivery sounding strained, like an overburdened star left naked on an empty stage.

You're going to have to dig through a barrage of radio-ready songs to find the excitement of previous albums.

A platter of hot-buttered R&B popcorn, liberally sprinkled with salty social critique, "The Id" finds Gray getting disco-freaky while instigating her "Sexual Revolution," and playfully rapping about her kids with Slick Rick on the funky burner "Hey Young World II."

It’s way too often here that everything new and interesting about two-step gets brushed aside for suspiciously lite jazz and limp mixes of dancefloor hits.

The new Tom Tom Club album is a lot like its title: a pop-culture reference whose impact fades upon inspection.

Like the group's previous records, "Turn 21" sticks to a formula based in familiarity—so familiar that one questions the value of this recording.