Overall, it’s a story of too many ideas.

His wheels may not leave the traction marks they once did, but the evidence here suggests the ride isn’t over yet.

Memory Almost Full is as good as an album as this devotee of frivolity can make in his mid-sixties.

Ben Kweller may not sum up Kweller, but it’s a worthy personal statement from a popster whose chops keep getting better.

It’s a shame that Stone and Saadiq fall for the name-dropping approach to making records; inserted like ad-breaks, the guests are easily the worst thing on the album, giving a strong whiff of one of those horrible kitchen-sink-and-rolodex stinkers in the middle of a really very good, if conservative, soul record.

Astronomy sometimes sounds like a British invasion LP given the remaster and remix treatment: dance-ready, fit for a plush couch and extra-plush headspace, and oddly misfiled in time.

Despite its exhilarating moments, The Runners Four feels like it’s missing something.

Wonderland is perhaps the biggest departure from their baggy roots they’ve taken thus far, but remains totally identifiable as their work.

Above all else, Shakira shows that highly individual, original pop songwriting can co-exist splendidly with commercial interests, and on both of those scales, this album is something of a triumph.

The basic songwriting on show here is essentially the same as ever; mid-paced, desperately sincere and earnestly simple, decorated with piano and passionless falsetto, only now with more detours into maximalist, synth-soaked modern rock epics cut from the same cloth as “Clocks.”

Its lack of focus often mutes its attempts to strike hard.

Fun and frequently powerful.

This collection actually betters the previous one in terms of diversity, but unfortunately it also gives you the sense that you’ve heard it all before.

Unfortunately, the record fails at times to live up to its largesse.

Less sparse than open, the songs resist the build-and-release structure that most other Montreal acts utilize, and they also refuse to ride a groove or play with distracting orchestration.

A bit uneven.

It’s easily the strongest album that she’s made in this millennium, but suffers from the fact that her vocals have deteriorated.

The quality of the music here, whether you agree that some of the session versions match or improve upon their originals or not, make this a collection worth picking up for sheer song quality alone.

The Dears are now less idiosyncratic but have successfully made the kind of straightforwardly satisfying album that you'd expect from a band on their second decade.

Unfortunately, Now is the Time! short-circuits early, leaving us with an empty gimmick and a few good synth-zapped riffs.

Perhaps it’s too easy to blame Fridmann for these new distractions, but I can’t imagine Ounsworth and the band leaping ahead this way without him. Here’s to hoping that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah move backward more lithely than they progress.

Like his first record Straight Outta Cashville, Buck the World is a solid-to-great Southern rap genre exercise, graced with immaculate production and boasting an all-star supporting cast.

Lif’s greatest strength remains his pissy paranoia.

The first chunk of Putting the Days to Bed consists of the kind of big-chorused, proudly conventional pop songs summers are made of... Elsewhere Roderick's voice and lyrical acumen fail him.

Can’t Wait Another Day is another album of what Ladybug Transistor does best: distilled pop and folk from another era, part doppelganger, part contemporary sheen—an indie rock album in its Sunday best.

There isn’t a track on Live It Out that stays fresh from start to finish. Some takes wrong turns along the way; others simply wear out their welcome a tad too quickly. Still, all but a couple contain individual moments or elements strong enough to overshadow the weaker links.

The transition from tracks to songs forces the group to rein in a style that needs to be no-holds-barred. When Basement Jaxx uses this restraint to their advantage... it’s easy to buy the direction they taken. When it doesn’t, Crazy Itch Radio just makes the group appear dense.

If the sound that the original Son Volt line-up cultivated began to feel oppressing for Farrar, it’s clear on Okemah And The Melody of Riot that a return in part to that sound has been good for his musical soul.

At its best, Calexico does expand, opening the range of sounds to provide for new colors of expression; when it doesn't work, that open sound means a turn toward the basic, allowing prettiness to get in the way of sonic content.

Occasionally, it does seem to forsake being interesting in order to just sink into snarky spot-the-reference games or gnash another guitar solo in the interest of vapid overstimulation.

Tempting as it may be to assume that beefing up their sound would have automatically made the Decemberists markedly better, the truth is that these strides may have at least partially come at the expense of the things that always made the band so singularly compelling.

His effort to make the most tense, uncomfortable record in the world has resulted in something that actually feels pretty straightforward, uncomplicated, and digestible.

Despite [some] fine moments, occasionally Van Occupanther can feel a little too slick and one-note.

Standing out might be the biggest obstacle facing the bulk of Right About Now's 12 tracks. It's significantly shorter than Kweli's best album, Train of Thought, but has far fewer shifts in sound or mood to keep it interesting.

Challengers certainly gets tastier after you’ve chewed on it for a bit.

The ridiculous in-the-red ruckus keeps you from noticing how hokey and contradictory the lyrics are.

Like every East River Pipe album it’s blemished by imperfections, but Cornog’s lonely, home-recorded drabness goes beyond the "sun, sun, sun" of other retro-oriented musicians to remind us that sunlight reflecting off slabs of urban concrete remains as bleak in 2006 as it was in 1974.

They’re good at what they do, but what they’re doing is painting-by-numbers from someone else’s book.

Only half of these tracks provide truly valuable alternatives to Guero songs.

Ultimate Victory may find Chamillionaire a little confused about his strengths, but in terms of establishing him as someone whose heart's in the right place, it does its title proud.

Anyone expecting a pared down, contented Sufjan can bugger off. If anything, The Avalanche chases his caprice and whimsy further down the rabbit hole.

Axis is an easygoing, engaging listen, an album whose relative triviality easily forgives its flaws.

Meaty and encompassing, Future Crayon rarely misses, even if it fails to measure up to the band’s sublime full-lengths.

Its unity keeps it solid, but it also keeps Dents and Shells free of surprises.

A Blessing and a Curse easily qualifies as the Truckers’ most straightforward album.

Release Therapy may not be the mature Ludacris record it purports itself to be, but that isn’t to say it doesn’t have some jaw-dropping confessional moments.

It doesn’t try to scrape the lofty heights of the two or three masterpieces in Heasley’s catalogue, but by not making the effort, it doesn’t sink as low as his least impressive stuff.

While the music remains modest, there are a few moments of gratifying lyrical incision and indecision befitting this being Jones’ first album bereft of covers.

As always, McGraw’s music primarily falters when the songs themselves lack sufficient emotional content for even his considerable conjuring powers to salvage.... Luckily, there are still moments when songwriting prowess and vocal mastery meet halfway.

It is when Adams veers from the hook-orientated path that the record suffers.

I’m definitely recommending Unplugged--with reservations, but it’s still a recommendation--but damn, I just wish the fun Keys seems to have on stage would translate more clearly to record.

This may be far too soon, more reflex than action, for the band to properly capitalize on their start.

Fur and Gold is admittedly not as strong and cohesive a record as "Wind in the Wires." At its finest, though, it does show off a rare talent for haunting and evocative songwriting.

Mostly, the band sticks to their strengths, making music for a party that ended sometime in the 90s, with the occasional reggae inflection to differentiate it from previous albums.

Era Vulgaris gets better with each listen, and that’s mostly due to the fact that the melodies take time to sink in.

While Ancient Melodies worked boring, repetitive structures into Martsch’s typically simple song structures, Now You Know brings new life to them. Unfortunately, this album is nowhere near as good as Built to Spill’s previous works.

Wu diehards will see it as a 35-minute core of classic Method Man, while critics should view it as a 60-minute behemoth that's a marked improvement over Tical O and Judgment Day, but still padded with pointless skits and Charmin-soft rap & bullshit.

It’s an easy and mostly enjoyable listen.

Haha Sound’s music is always competent, and often worthy of Broadcast’s debut album, but it’s disconcerting to see a band repeat a simple formula with such devotion.

The sad fact is that this rarely makes good on the promise of 2000’s masterful Mama’s Gun.

So, is this genius or is this madness? As enjoyable as it is on occasion, I’m inclined to side with the latter.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1936&PHPSESSID=c34e5fbb0933de1389469828674b499e" TARGET="_blank">It&#146;s unfortunate that this band is so unsure of themselves, least of all lyrically.</A> [score=50]; Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1937" TARGET="_blank">Heroes To Zeros strikes a balance between enervation, subtlety and creativity.</A> [score=80]

RUOK? sees Dangers with his abilities at their fullest, but with aspirations in a less interesting direction.

Overall, the impression generated by Tulsa for One Second is one of inoffensive pleasantness.

There&#146;s nothing wrong with collaborators -- and Faithfull has picked some good ones -- but the quality seems to be directly linked to who is behind each song.

At times its earnestness and self-conscious attempts to prove its own expertise make it seem more like the work of a surly, awkward late-adolescent.

Barlow has stripped away the beats that made it interesting and blurred the line between this band and his others.

This material is as inconsistent as anything off their past few records, but when they do hit upon a good moment, it tends to be really good.

It&#146;s not essential listening by any means, but an interesting look into his working methods of previous years, nonetheless.

The Furnaces&#146; brand of sonic mayhem may not be for everyone, but there are rewards for those who dare take the plunge.

If anything, it feels like Gibbard has regressed to the point where he sits in the shadow of his bandmate and producer, Chris Walla.

From its opening bars of stop/start low end, to the motivational tape samples, to the aforementioned multi-tracking, Elephant just screams and begs to be viewed as a departure from the Stripes’ well-known approach. The problem is that in between all this commotion lie the same vintage jams that the group has trafficked in for years.

When [Love is Hell] works, and it does so only sporadically, Adams creates songs of suffocating closeness and density.

<A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1752&PHPSESSID=962ece01ecbce6b79b9bf797952f15ee" TARGET="_blank">It's a much stronger record than you might expect from something that will probably wind up being, in retrospect, a transitional album.</A> [Review 1, score=80] <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1753" TARGET="_blank">It's just too much; too much noise, too much concept, too much deep NJ woods isolation, and too many witches' tales.</A> [Review 2, score=50]

Sleep and Release is both an exceptional release and an unfortunate release, and even when it&#146;s at its best and at its worst, it remains both of these- its emotional and musical scope help the album succeed and cause it to fail.

If the arrangements were given as much attention as the astonishing, rich, in-the-same-room production: 9.1

While little here strays far from the sound Death Cab has been tweaking for the past five years, it still makes for an intriguing listen for even casual fans of the group, and has its share of genuinely stunning moments.

Fire&#146;s not something we&#146;ll remember for long, but it is a surprisingly good album, with highlights that simply need to be heard.

It suffers from a lack of identity.

Since We&#146;ve Become Translucent&#146;s greatest flaw -- its dumbed-downedness -- becomes apparent and sad as the album&#146;s first half goes on.

Revolverlution illustrates that they can adapt to varying song forms, that they are open to technology and that they are still able to craft gripping hip-hop. Unfortunately, they have also kept up with the hip-hop nation by making an album that doesn&#146;t contain enough decent material to justify its near-ridiculous length.

A complacent, inoffensive set of songs that belie the talent and vision of their creators.

There&#146;s plenty to recommend this album, but rarely do Shipp and Antipop ever really come together.

It&#146;s a good voice, but it&#146;s not a good album.

There's "Karma" and "I Don't Know Your Name." You and your iPod know what to do.

Summer Sun, while constantly very good, is never creative, inspiring or great. [Editor's Note: Score listed is an average of three separate reviews/scores by this publication: 56, 60, 68]

There&#146;s a distinct lack of personality, meaning that LL Cool J&#146;s eleventh long player is merely good, and his reputation (and bank balance) will be neither tarnished nor expanded.

If the original and inspiring Icarus Line take on itself had been continued from the beginning or, better yet, the record had been shortened, we&#146;d have a masterpiece on our hands. As it is, a much better outing than Mono and a brilliant song in &#147;Getting Bright at Night&#148;.

The Grey Album isn&#146;t much more than a well-executed novelty, nor does it illuminate some genius hidden deep within The Black Album.

You can actually hear the moment when the album turns sour.

With such a subdued and steady tone, I Dreamed We Fell Apart sometimes suffers from an overdose of languidness.

A lot of these songs blur together and become indistinguishable.

Where the Donnas offer confident exhortations and definitive declarations, Kiss And Tell is dribbling with foggy contemplation and emotional explanation.

On many of the songs here, the accompaniment sounds like an afterthought, adding to the bedroom-recording atmosphere.

It&#146;s obvious that the group can write straight-ahead rock/pop songs, but only chooses to tease the listener with short glimpses of their ability in this regard.

Power is one more entry into an increasingly strong catalogue of widely varied danceable punk rock and should do little to disappoint fans.

The problem with this kind of record is not that it&#146;s hard to find fault with, but that it&#146;s hard to get excited about.

Many tracks hint at the notion that Deerhoof decided to make an entirely different album this time around, but counterbalancing these advancements are decidedly flat resurrections of past glories.