Their diverse third release occasionally finds new ways to induce grins.

"Original Prankster" is one hell of a rump-shaker... the rest of Conspiracy buzzes from skate metal to Ozzed-up pop to Chili-peppered funk-punk to Billy Squirey sleaze-core. [Jan 2001, p.113]

Never succumbing to mere cleverness, Adem achieves a singularly intimate expansiveness. [Nov 2006, p.96]

The third album (and first for a major) from this Boston-born, Mississippi- and Chicago-bred singer-guitarist is bound to inspire Sam Cooke comparisons, but Get It just as frequently stirs up Jackson 5 dance fever.

The songs are powerfully wiry and declamatory.

Dynamics or structure are not a major concern; these songs sound happy to just get the ignition working.

Positively exuberant. [Sep 2006, p.114]

You’ll discover plenty of laconic beauty wherever you drop into The House, and it glimmers with the songful club music that made its predecessor great for getting ready to go out. But a profusion of digital-pastoral vocal settings makes it unlikely to displace Pool from constant shuffle rotation.

Oyamada fuses a bristling spectrum of textures and rhythms. [May 2007, p.84]

There are the irretrievably cheesy moments.... [But] Therein lies the strength of Kiss Me Once: Minogue's ability to turn any contrived situation into something positive, magical, and utterly her own.

BAIO’s always had strange and smarts to offer in his world-class quartet; The Names finally gives us a first-person view.

Spell-casting pop and Twitter branding this is not; the excellent force of this album is how it taps into the sheer pain, anger, and sensuality of the idea of “the witch,” rather than its archetypal signifiers in pop culture.

Lotus and his fellow former collaborator Kamasi Washington turn up again here to add to the downcast din, but their inclusion only highlights Bruner’s dispositional shift.

With ridiculous Auto-Tuned hooks, filthy lyrics ("Bustin' on your ass / Can't believe I said that / Never been a racist / I left her with a wet back"), and jittery beats from Young L and the Cataracts, it's worth putting your name on the guest list.

At its best, We Fall treats its revolving door of guests less like a cavalcade of strangers than a band of familiar colleagues.

Her confidently unsteady voice has a refreshing energy, serving as a cohesive, quivering throughline for her intentionally nomadic debut, The Fool.

Despite such surface gloss, it’s clear Franz Ferdinand are still finding their creative footing without McCarthy. The taut arrangements present on previous albums can occasionally give way to moody repetition (“The Academy Award”) or sluggish tempos (“Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow”), robbing the record of immediacy. This is a small quibble, however.

Carried To Dust's songs travel a trail that seems carved out of ancient echoes. [Sep 2008, p.114]

Josephine Olausson's Ono-esque delivery remains an acquired taste, but that's surely by design: If she sang any sweeter, Love Is All's songs might evaporate like cotton candy.

Unlike much of the current post-Animal Collective psychedelia, there's a palpable, full-bodied force and galloping beat behind the bliss.

The frequent Röyksopp collaborator has clearly learned a thing or two from the dance mavens, sprinkling Ten Love Songs with the mainstream-minded, four-on-the-floor thumping that should make American pop stars seethe with envy.

That’s Storyteller as a whole: expertly arranged, dense without overwhelming the force of its captain.

Four years later, with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, he’s dropped the album that Kanye haters wanted Kanye to make.

Japandroids have a point of view (young, male, infatuated with the promise of the present) and an M.O. (excellently fuzzed-out garage rock played as if at the apocalypse), but more impressively, they've mastered another secret to swaying the public: confidence without smugness.

Those noisy, waxy workouts (“Tarpit,” “The Post”) that served to make the hookier tunes even brighter on the ’80s Dinosaur albums have mainly been left behind with the band’s youth since their 2007 return. But the swaying, softer respites on Not prove just as effective.

Both a big relief and a mild disappointment. [Mar 2007, p.90]

The Twilight Sad walk a fine line between drippy sentimentality and rough-edged realism. [May 2007, p.91]

Cudi's unrepentant attitude is partly why Indicud sounds so engaging, at least during the album's sparkling first half. (Sadly, he doesn't have enough good songs to fill out its hour-plus, 18-track length.)

Although critics of Morrissey's solo career have justifiably argued that his post-Bona Drag ensembles haven't met the Smiths' lofty bar, World Peace Is None of Your Business is the first Morrissey album that's often stronger musically than it is lyrically.

Remarkably, the songs on Avalanche are nearly as good as the ones on Illinois, although with surprising synth bursts and craggy guitar noise that were sandpapered off of its predecessor. [Aug 2006, p.79]

Listening to Non-Believers is like clasping hands with an old friend: It’s warm, accessible, and sweetly familiar.

Its finest moments ('Let It Die,' 'Sunrise/Sunset,' and the beautifully tortured opener 'Hands')--featuring the duo's heartaching harmonizing--capture a uniquely tender gloom amid the droning atmospherics.

Ignore the lyrics, Spears sounds even more like a programmed Britbot than on 2007's Blackout.

Whether he's drunk on optimism or writhing in psychic pain, his relentless quest for enlightenment is gripping and inspiring.

On W.A.R., the Queens MC is still in a linguistic fervor, rapping about being in the streets "like catalytic converters" on "Clap (one day)" and comparing himself to a preacher with a ".38 snub-nose" on "Let My People Go."

Trouble Man is his first album since that second bid; it finds him finally returning to the lane that he abandoned somewhere around the time he included two Wyclef Jean songs on T.I. vs. Tip.

Smart, left-field parodies such as 'Hardcore Gentlemen,' which sends up early-'90s horrorcore, prove that Tanya Morgan may go hard in pursuit of rap dreams, but they haven't lost their infectious sense of humor.

Early exploits including a ridiculous rhyme about T-Rex amorousness ("Dinosaur Sex"), jabs at vapid art-school scenesters ("Art Bitch" and "!Franchesckaar!"), and some indecipherable indie-dance vocoding ("I Wanna Be Darth Vader"). True Romance is a strident departure from those frivolities so far as solid, true-to-aim songwriting is concerned, but the divergence and a touch of the silliness remains.

It's yet another trip to the part of town where you really shouldn't be, in a district the Truckers call home.

While the sextet refine their surf-rockin' exotica, Nimol's wonderful Khmer-language covers are missed.

To compensate for the loss of [drummer Jerry Fuchs], the band gets by with help from former Outhud/!!! alchemist Justin Vandervolgen, who mixed the album to accentuate its disco grooves (see the title track), and Zombi's Steve Moore, who added synth arpeggiations to the epic arc of "Oaxaca."

Where Viva La Vida showcased Coldplay's sense of adventure, this one feels more eager to please; the sonic detail accrues with such speed that it's like Martin and his mates fear you'll bail if they don't grab you straightaway.

[Steele's] way-back machine is aimed precisely for 1985. [Aug 2006, p.85]

The result is seductive and understated, with familiar '60s touches. [Nov 2007, p.116]

While there's nothing quite as hugely hooky as Alright singles "Smile" and "lDN," the album feels more confidently complete.

Ditto's huge voice can't do soft, so it shoots skyward on 'ove Long Distance,' and coupled with a mechanical piano and canned beat, the band starts to sound a bit catatonic. But the rest of Music for Men is a tightly wound disco-punk conjugation.

Tracks like "VHS Sex," the complex yet laid-back "Glawio," and the robotic apotheosis of "Futureworld" send you hurtling back toward electronica's past perfection.

Confused and lapsed Pumpkins fans have reasons to rejoice... this is a necessary, welcome return. Unfortunately, MACHINA does linger a bit too long on the softer side of things. But every time the tempo veers towards screeching to a halt, there's a well-timed boost of adrenal sound.

At its best, Nobody reveals Beal as an old soul deploying the genre of old soul, not so much as an exercise in nostalgia as a surge protector to best contain his electroshock persona.

He's purely elegant throughout.

What makes Re-Engineering worthwhile is that the odd blooms Warwick coaxes from that soil are so pleasing to behold on their own terms. It's critical theory as easy listening that you can actually cut a rug to, if you're so inclined.

He refines his act. [May 2008, p.106]

The first Madonna record in years that feels as effortless as the dance-pop of her Ciccone youth. [Oct 2000, p.173]

Though sometimes courting sleepiness, the debut's barbershop harmonies, Hawaiian strumming, and lovesick melodies transform rock-club jadedness into an aesthetic fit for honeymoons, holidays, and other occasions where you savor small pleasures, even if they're quaintly recycled.

It's no Super Taranta!, but Hutz's minor-key odes to erotic revolution and cosmic evolution still pack a heady, sweaty punch.

His first Music Tapes album in nine years suggests an unhealthy obsession with Brian Wilson's "SMiLE," the wobbly-voiced outsider makes his own quaint magic.

All of these lyrical open wounds could be hard to stomach if not for the salve that Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy’s head-spinning instrumentals provide.

Skying lacks the urgency of their raucous goth-punk debut Strange House, but the broadly hooky single "Still Life" could fill an arena nicely, and the band actually sound interested enough to entertain the possibility.

Apparently Citron is ready to leave the nest. When Beverly performs live she'll work with other players and Rose will be elsewhere, focusing on her solo music. That's too bad, as Careers makes a great argument for teamwork.

Unlike U2, whose left turns have felt like oblique strategies in the band's pompous struggle to redeem rock, R.E.M.'s stylistic shifts tend to feel like survival skills. Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo or whatever, much of Reveal moves with the graceful drag of 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction, yet with more ebb and flux. [June 2001, p.143]

Despite expert camping, the title track, lodged like a splinter at the beginning of the sequence, strikes as too reliant on wintry rue. But when three-note fuzz guitar blasts answer each lyric in “Lazarus,” or Bowie harmonizes with himself on the nonsense lyric of “Girl Loves Me,” it’s hard to resist 40 years’ worth of craft resulting in so intriguing a record.

Kate Cooper's tales of awkward, broken love and chronic miscommunication don't seem ripe for selling sedans, but her reedy voice and zippy melodic guitar, plus drummer Damon Cox's imperfect harmonies, keep things from getting too depressing.

Though the album’s lyrics are occasionally vague, the moments of specificity induce raised eyebrows.

Their most mature record to date.

Isolation Drills' anthems are shamelessly charming, even bashfully moving. [June 2001, p.153]

The band's aims are more modest now: have fun, get people to sing along, share a common feeling or two. Hurley achieves those goals with something approaching dignity.

It lands in the same general ballpark as 2003's new-wave homage Rock N Roll, loose-limbed and manic, with Adams indulging his riff-rock-and-holler side.

This new batch thrashes with abandon (“Punks”) and displays a remarkable leap in instrumental maturity with its airtight chord progressions and unhinged shrieks.

The album is a dense, cinematic, always surprising and often moving album that sounds like it required the full three years that the L.A. crooner and producer spent chipping away at it to get right.

[It] focuses on Rolex-precise riffs to offset a battery of beats, rattles, and ringing bells. [Jul 2007, p.96]

Gorky's make the leap from ramshackle prog pop to meticulously crafted folk-symphonics. [Nov 2001, p.130]

The Fall has been billed as Norah Jones' rock album. In fact, it's something even more surprising: a hot-blooded soul record from the queen of the even keel.

Unbound by a verse-chorus-verse format, the songs meander unpredictably, like a milder Of Montreal, with polymorphous sex replaced by God and health problems.

The result is indie-rock as passive-aggressive blues implosion. [Sep 2002, p.128]

Perfect for Magnetic Fields fans let down by 2010's concept-heavy Realism.

His well-aged craft shows on his fourth LP in 15 years.

At its worst, Kill My Blues indulges in too much Townshend-esque noodling, but at its best, it proves that one of alt-rock's greatest howlers can operate at full power even without pushing herself to detonation.

Baroque but not self-indulgent. [Jul 2006, p.83]

His persistent self-flagellation could do with more hooks, but Remember packs pain by the pound.

Both halves are gripping, but Heim's unplugged conceit--which spotlights vocalist Jonsi Birgisson's high, ghostly howls--showcases the band's eerie pull. [Dec 2007, p.125]

Kravitz's irony-free pastiches often satisfy like the best work of his rock and soul forebears; and considering his tastes, that's a remarkably high standard.

With coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois explicitly included in the songwriting, it's an effort to tinker and rough up and refine anew their music's essence--with nobly sketchy results.

Hug of Thunder is at its best when Broken Social Scene is loose and willing to experiment with its formula.

By the time you reach the where-is-that-nicked-from riff of “I’m Not Satisfied,” it’s clear this is Lydon’s most listenable record in 30 years, though Album was a lot more fun and “Shoom,” the catchiest thing here, ain’t “Rise.”

The album’s others [songs]--all of them, except for the title track and album opener, remarkably stick to five minutes--like the skittering, piston-punctuated “Pacer,” rise to the occasion of possibly even bigger stages.

The West Coast threesome's pillowy, nostalgic abstractions veer from the sweeping histrionics of M83 or breezy gestures of various Scandinavians toward a woozy, romantic restlessness

It's difficult to sound this vintage without coming off as contrived, but Alela Diane, her guitarist/producer father, and assorted friends tap into folk archetypes that are often opaquely generalized but always disarmingly pure.

The album won't hold you rapt for the entirety of its 45 minutes, but it'll never totally release you from its grasp either, seeping its way into your pores like an insidious fog.

On Gunz N' Butta, Cam'ron and protégé Vado (a rapper with Gatling-gun nuance) are roiling and abrasive, twisting down a wormhole of multisyllabic rhymes and Araabmuzik's skittering beats.

Beauty Behind the Madness is front-loaded with fresh directions for the Weeknd that achieve the impossible: make it sound like he’s actually enjoying himself.

Venus on Earth feels impulsive and rich, rippling with surf psychedelia and exultant brass swing.

Over 38 taut minutes, these New York kids reflect the mirror-ball gleam of primo INXS and "Emotional Rescue"–era Rolling Stones onto the lives of today's young, rich, and wasted.

The only drawback is that in his expansiveness, Bilal forgot to give himself that killer tune or two that would bring it all home. [Sep 2001, p.158]

Sometimes the best results, though, come when Kelly drops the exercise completely.

Guetta can't match the inexhaustible bliss of his Kelly Rowland–aided 2009 disco smash "When Love Takes Over," but he can make 50 Cent seem like an edgy Daft Punk fanboy, which is not an insubstantial trick.

On Duskland, he veers slightly more into homegrown Kurt Vile territory, especially with the organ-saturated opener “Sundowner.”

Finally, she’s embracing the responsibility to provide stone-cold tunes without pretense.

Sonically velveteen the whole way through, it’s certainly a comforting album, though Gonzalez’s efforts to capture the commanding, immediate quality of the music of her influences feel, overall, a little too cautious.