Extraordinarily irrational and willfully convoluted, Jhelli Beam is avant-rap as quantum physics. Hopefully, his choir gets it.

When they stay focused and sweet (as on the sparingly orchestral 'Berlin Heart'), they soar. But when Lightburn adds spoken-word bits and überwanky guitar solos ('Lights Off'), ending with an 11-minute, church-inspired requiem ('Saviour'), you may be ready to follow his former band members out the door.

The failure to evoke anything specific is what gives Silver Eye its aloof, Bond-theme posture, but in another light, it’s alienating.

[His] most consistently entertaining album since 1999's 69 Love Songs. [Dec 2006, p.96]

Structural issues aside, the strength of the material on The London Session is enough to place the Queen back on track to relevance, after a number of less-inspired efforts had all but sapped her career momentum.

Never transcends the level of a cheeky bumper sticker. [Aug 2006, p.82]

In a narcotized haze of lounge blues, New Orleans jazz, gauzy retro soul, and understated guitar pop, he has made the most compelling record of his career.

But it's with his jarring mix of the banal and the brutal ("I will always be nicer to the cat / Than I will be to you") that Stewart shows his outrageous brilliance.

At 57, Smith can still find the ecstatic in the everyday, and she's no longer adrift in the mandolin wind. [May 2004, p.109]

Rutili still crafts a tuneful funeral dirge with the best of them. [Feb 2004, p.104]

Unfortunately, Coombes seems to have the glam era's fuzzy-brained approach to pop songwriting nailed a bit too well. [Apr 2003, p.106]

The production is muddy, the sentiments vague. [June 2003, p.105]

Singer-songwriters Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond), Inara George (of the Bird and the Bee), and Eleni Mandell convene for this relaxed, deceptively sophisticated gem of an album.

Despite frontman Rhett Miller's nice-guy tendencies, Old 97's are way more fun when he gives in to his bitchy side--which is large and in charge on The Grand Theatre, runaway-train backbeats and all.

Journeymen that they are, though, McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and Wynn (ex-Dream Syndicate) understand the poignant vindication in being remembered at all.

The songs are powerfully wiry and declamatory.

Dear All Tomorrow's Parties: Book this band immediately and meet your future.

Carter Tanton -- of the now-defunct Tulsa and still-thriving Lower Dens -- style-jumps so restlessly that his second solo disc sometimes feels like a multi-artist playlist rather than a one-man show.

They burden their appealing, childlike take on Brechtian cabaret's cold raunch with so much lush production... that it's as though Palmer is being drowned by a gallon jug of overpriced perfume. [Jun 2006, p.79]

With his unnerving falsetto, Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild, frontman for this mesmerizing Denmark quartet, suggests an exotic creature who's fallen to earth, while his bandmates fashion a deliciously minimal version of synth pop that evokes Low-era Bowie.

A few late-album glow-stick groovers abruptly shift the vibe to rave-era bliss, but until then, turn off your mind and float downstream.

It won't satisfy hook-hungry Jewel fans, but Learn to Sing wears Hersh's experience like a custom-tailored hair shirt. [Feb 2007, p.84]

Vig both sweetens and strengthens Against Me!'s attack without sacrificing the band's innate Raggedy Andy appeal.

Suck It blends the deliberateness of that record with the fleet-footedness of their still-stunning 2006 debut Whatever You Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and follow-up My Favourite Worst Nightmare.

If anything, 7 Days acts as the inverse of The Chronic, wherein a famous hip-hop producer introduced the world to an up-and-coming MC weaned on P-Funk and George Duke; now, it's a pop-cultural hip-hop icon giving a bit of shine to an adept indie producer who can elicit all strains of funk in this 21st-century Zone of Zero Funkativity. It's not the dank, but breathe deep anyway.

Taken together, Cold Dark Place affirms the band’s pursuit of technically ambitious rock with high production value, while continuing to disrupt traditional notions of genre and song structure.

The results don’t resemble the King’s hits nearly as much as Prince’s demos.

The band's latest is sublimely elegant and more maturely conceived.