Zoomer has a warmth and spirit that makes the work endearing as actual songs rather than chunks of carefully manipulated data.

It is infectious in the best and most viral sense of the word -- the songs get under your skin and thrash around.

What could have been an awkward marriage of incompatible styles turned into a vibrant, invigorating blast of musical enthusiasm, free of restrictive genre definitions.

The songs here are resolutely pop, almost bubblegum, and though they're sometimes buoyant, hyperkinetic, even fun, they have almost no depth or resonance to them.

Kidnapped By Neptune is one of those rare albums that's both sexy and dirty, and isn't guilty of trying to be either.

There are no sweeping creative revelations -- are there ever, on eighth albums? -- but nothing here sullies the group's legacy either.

Wherever I Am, I Am What's Missing remains grounded in electronic composition, but the subtle distinctions between spacy trip-hop epics (see "Diamonds and Stones) and booty-shaking dance-floor numbers help to keep the band's dynamic fresh, even after ten years.

Summer Make Good blurs the distinctions of digital and analog to the point of opening new categories.

There's a shimmering sense of otherworldly grandeur at work here that captures the spirit of exotica better than any of the other so-called "revivalists".

Metric take rock 'n' roll to a smarter, more sophisticated place than do most of today's American bands.

A gorgeous work of art.

I so want to hate this album.... If only the album flat-out sucked, I'd be on much firmer ground. Too bad it doesn't.

A cracked masterpiece.... it rewards your attention with dreamy, surreal vistas, skewed poetry and flights of unadulterated musical madness.

With Teeth's biggest surprise is how immediately gratifying the majority of its songs are.

Write good songs. Record them simply. Don't preach. There's a concept that works.

Full of solid songwriting and catchy melodies that do not pander to the cliches so often found in mainstream pop/rock albums.

Unlike Leona Naess the musician, Leona Naess the album is nearly forgettable, such is the perfection of its production and cardboard cut-out lyrical and musical themes.

Everyone Deserves Music excels beyond simple good intentions because Franti and Spearhead are also at peace with their musical influences.

Despite the obviously electronic origins of most of the sounds, there are clearly thinking, imagining humans behind the scenes; this is about as un-clinical as electronic music gets.

While many rock and electronic groups amble pleasantly along without a musical thought in their heads, country's combination of tradition and musicianship just keeps producing albums, like Chinatown, of a really tremendous caliber.

This is a welcome addition to the Giant Sand corpus, and an impressive demonstration of the continuing relevance of the band, more than two decades into its existence.

The last thing you'd expect from a roster of 27 is breathing room, but Son of Evil Reindeer is full of it; I've found a lot of unexpected touches in the short time I've had the disc.

Although the group's previous outings routinely got bogged down in forced experimentalism, Broken Ear Record at least keeps the pace sufficiently frantic, which allows us to excuse some (if not all) of its more self-indulgent moments.

You won't necessarily encounter anything substantially removed from their prior work, but you will witness the duo allowing new voices to assume a greater role in rocketing each song to some bright red futon in a distant region of the cosmos.

There's enough strong material on The Story of My Life to score Carter time on CMT and get her in good with the Borders crowd, cementing her cross-genre appeal.

Skimskitta is a beautiful album. It is warm and enveloping. It is full of shadows but flashes with brilliance. It is oblique, yet often familiar. It is intelligent, inventive and inspiring. And it is very hard to put into words.

Überzone's constant changeups in style and tempo breathe fresh life into a stale genre.

Although the Cooper Temple Clause pack plenty of celestial firepower and darkwave ambiance into their six-minute movements, by the time they unveil the epic "Written Apology", the sheer compositional weight is too much for a mortal listener to handle.