Bronsonland is a place you enjoy spending time in or you don't, and that does not seem likely to change anytime soon.

And yet, despite such growing pains, Clark's penchant for restless, exploratory tangents ensures that Blak and Blu hits like a ton of bricks.

With nods to synth pop, electro, and funk, Sweden's Little Dragon fill their second album with bleeping keyboards and jazzy arpeggios, recalling both Howard Jones and Saint Etienne. But what sets Machine Dreams apart is frontwoman Yukimi Nagano's alternately yelping and cooing voice.

Andy Cabic's balmy folk songs pull from pert shades of doo-wop 'Everyday') and Latin syncopation ('Strictly Rule'). But his whispery voice can take on a Donovan-like sultriness, making a song such as 'Sister' far sexier than a song named 'Sister' should be.

The rare hip-hop debut that does justice to its buzz. [Apr 2003, p.104]

A relaxed, even graceful affair. [Dec 2003, p.123]

Despite their wintry chill-out origins, Nordic keyboard pair Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland create smooth, sunny sounds perfect for roller-skating on rainbows.

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]

Rough in all the right places but pleasurably smooth in others, Held in Splendor is less like the kitschy t-shirt quilt you made to remember your high school clubs and teams, and more like the perfect old blankets your grandmother used to sew: oversized, musty, and familiar even when you haven't worn them in years.

Produced by Sigur Ros' Kjartan Sveinsson, Arnalds embellishes her debut's spare guitar-voice template with discreet overdubs, including brass and strings, enhancing breathtaking tunes like "Surrender" (which features Bjork adding a swirling countermelody). For those who consider Joanna Newsom too mainstream.

The lack of a hefty, definable, or easily digestible pop overhaul here means that Little Red probably won’t hit America as hard as even its predecessor did. But it does feel like the natural progression of an artist whose narrative is so wholly and convincingly embedded in club life.

Fever Daydream is a surprisingly assured debut that, at the very least, evokes electronic music of the past and present.

Along with four new Pretenders, she's crafted a statement that's stripped bare and dangerous, just like Hynde herself, who abandons much of her haughty cool to expose some long-concealed wounds as painful as the ones that Janis Joplin unfurled on "Pearl."

The record’s biggest flaw might be that it stacks the stunning “Sun” and “Lights” as its first two tracks, setting a challenge to which the nine remaining ones can’t quite rise.

An exciting, impassioned, fuzzed-up, and smartly sticky album that plants a flag for some great forgotten sounds and practically screams promise for better glory days to come.

For its all its pleasures, Hard II Love isn’t strong enough to convince you he’s decided to stick to a lane.

Though they fit snugly inside their vintage genes, the Kings manage to make room for a surprising amount of heart. [Mar 2005, p.85]

Far snuggles between her previous efforts, linking the heady sweep of 2003's "Soviet Kitsch" to the roundabout pop treats of "Begin to Hope."

In a career fraught with obsessions over the perfection-imperfection dichotomy, it turns out to be a blessing that she put pop and its various pressures on the backburner just to deliver some real summertime sadness.

The 21 songs here are no more or less inscrutable than the hundreds of tunes Pollard has penned since he last played with this band, but they gel in ways that so many of those didn't, reveling in their limitations rather than trying to overcome them. It's the difference between the White Stripes and the Raconteurs.

Lead vocalist/head louche Greg Dulli's dark obsessions and predatory narrators manage to sound as erotically entrancing as he pushes 50 as they did when he was courting 25, aging gracefully like a snifter of peaty scotch rather than a cup of flat beer.

They vacillate between flotational devices and skull-crushers. [Apr 2006, p.91]

If this reunion... isn't a revelation, it still has its thrills. [Aug 2005, p.103]

Although False Priest, Of Montreal's tenth album, is easily Barnes' most accessible, you can still hear his estrangement in the unpredictable chord progressions, the anxiously whimsical rhythms, and the distancing effects in the melodies that counter easy consumption.

Imagine if N.E.R.D... were from France and used to make house music before going soft rock. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Pierce's flimsy voice and material buckle under the weight of the Technicolor bombast on Let It Come Down. [Oct 2001, p.127]

Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.

After a few listens, the line becomes representative of a larger realization. In acknowledging certain personal and artistic shortcomings, Presley has uncovered a hidden well of confidence and skill that couldn't be contained in his home recordings.