A formless collection that drifts from one tune to the next, weighed down by a general sense of murk that pervades everything from Tchad Blake's production to the song arrangements and the lyrics.

Fans who have waited patiently for a proper follow-up to 1989's acclaimed Disintegration should be pleased, if not necessarily bowled over by Bloodflowers, a deeply felt album with a similarly downcast mood.

The Platform, for all its individual strengths, never hits any kind of synergy as an album.

With its grove of synthesizers, sequencers, and sonically treated vocals, it's music without pulp -- or a great deal of heart.

The results are not bad -- nor are they dynamic. It's shiny and it shimmers, but there's no fizz, no explosion.

Reed has lost neither his lyrical bite nor his sonic perfectionism.

The 10-song album... hits and misses in equal quantities, though even at its worst moments, there's at least a germ of a good idea that simply wasn't realized -- or, in the case of some of the album's longer tracks, was overdone.

The members of the group craft melodic grooves that mesh with unpolished but tuneful guitars and mellow vocals into a lo-fi ambient sound that grows on the listener.

Although its moods swing across the dial, it more than delivers on the group's initial promise.

Fifth Release is an intoxicating cocktail of beats and colors that swirl and explode like a Roy Lichtenstein collage. When Pizzicato Five gets in this zone, which they do repeatedly here, all the world's a runway, and everyone's a size four and working it on pinpoint stilettos.

Teddy Thompson, son of veteran singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, avoids the tracks laid out on his father's Celtic-tinged, guitar-centered folk rock and instead mines a pop-lite style framed in a gentle vibe.... Surprisingly, the results are better than one might expect.

Overall, God Bless the Go-Go's is a spirited, entertaining album that was worth the wait.

This is an album about textures, grooves, and sounds, but it's not really about songs. Once one is done decoding its structure, Look Into the Eyeball is an elegant but empty building.

These 14 tracks forego the polish that distinguishes today's chart-topping fare, but each one bristles with a frisson in which honesty and artifice fuse, fashioning an enduring mini-masterpiece of pop.

Scottish pop whizzes Belle and Sebastian have finally found a way to rid themselves of their onerous rep as critics' darlings: They've made an album that isn't very good.

Uncompromising and wildly unpredictable, but only intermittently entertaining.

A melange of rather unremarkable vocals; ambitious, overwrought dance-pop; and lyrics that occasionally read and sound like English as a second language.

The music on Return of Saturn... is a bit darker than it was on Tragic Kingdom, but it's no less energetic.

[Glen] Ballard's production, arrangements, and co-writing duties have massaged the 12 songs into a searing rock album.

The blond brothers' creative maturity is evident all over the disc's 13 songs.

God Says No maintains the attributes of its predecessor but also delves deeper into the groove-y psychedelia that's also part of the band's makeup.

But while it contains its fair share of hypnotic pop gems, The Geometrid is missing that extra something...

In a genre that is often as repetitive as it is flighty, the witty and musically well-informed Essential Mix, though unrevelatory, works beyond the club floor, too.

Ultimately, 999 Levels of Undo is a fascinating study of a visionary musician -- unfortunately, it's not an especially compelling listen.

There will be few albums released this year that are as exciting, artistic, and, yes, eclectic as this one, and it's scary to think of what Wyclef will be capable of when he gets all of the elements in their perfect proportions.

Building on Whitey Ford's organic folk-pop rap, Eat at Whitey's develops the songwriter's street-style troubadour fixation even further. This time, there's more singing than rapping, and his gruff vocals actually sound stylish, especially on the provocative "Black Jesus" and the memorable "Black Coffee."

Time Bomb packs an incendiary wallop that's as noisy as nighttime on the Fourth of July.

Occasionally, it all works, coalescing into something with passion and imagination... In other spots, however, Frusciante's amateur (and sometimes listless) singing proves to be a major letdown, even with souped-up reverbs and megaphonic EQ-ing.