Every track is at least fleetingly familiar, often having that feeling of the B-side that you haven't heard in years.... Still, adding a few hits wouldn't have hurt the soundtrack's shot at longevity...

Some of Hatfield's best work ever... [v]irtually every track here is memorable, and often heart-rending, revolving around Hatfield's strengths as an artist: her baby-girl voice; her frank, naive lyrics; and her acoustic melodies.

As always, the acoustic pop tracks remain the Go-Between's most effective.... It's clear that the band's heyday, those heady times that supplied fans with a surfeit of astonishingly good pop songs... are over, but there's also no doubt that McLennan and Forster can still turn out quality goods.

She's older, wiser, and more steadied in her approach across the 11 songs that make up the album, but had this disc come out in 1997 or 1998, it would've been seen as a somewhat less-impressive follow-up to Relish.

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

The songs, however, are principally concerned with creating atmosphere, as has always been the band's strength. Only this time the atmosphere is centered on Michae [Timmins's] contemplations of his own mortality, and it seeks musical complexity, not simplicity.

It's just, well, it's just another Depeche Mode album -- a solid near-hour's worth of moody, darkly insidious tunes about such time-honored topics as love, death, and pain... and love and death.

Unlike fellow retro-futurists Chicks on Speed and Sylvester Boy, Ladytron doesn't completely upend new wave conventions to make a jarring artistic statement, nor are its songs as transcendent as those penned by Stephin Merritt (the Magnetic Fields) for his Future Bible Heroes project. Regardless, "604" is a smart, frisky, and invigorating listen...

The band continues to mine both the rock and dance worlds with a jagged gruffness that is simultaneously abrasive and catchy.... The end result, though pleasing at times, is ultimately disjointed and erratic.

The Black Eyed Peas are much better musicians and rappers, and play the majority of the instruments on Bridging the Gap. Their songwriting, however, is somewhat suspect...

Well-constructed but largely uninspiring... Its lyrics offer little that's dynamic or artful, so what are listeners really left with? Decent melodies, to be sure, and nicely produced tracks... But deep down, the music and lyrics rarely match up, and few songs establish a mood for long enough to hang your heart on.

It seems that the usual brilliant, blunted band has been replaced by an upbeat upstart that's only recently discovered this thing called funk, while also becoming increasingly enamored by rap -- all at the expense of its sultry, seductive star vocalist, Skye Edwards...

Matchbox Twenty never claimed to be original or challenging or anything more than a lightweight and entertaining pop band. Which is why Mad Season, with its rather casual and jammy feel, is so surprising, so substantial, and much more satisfying than expected.

Pretty self-indulgent and insular, sounding at times like it was made for its creators' pleasure and little else.

Though clever in origin, once these sounds have been identified, the songs themselves are rarely compelling enough to prompt return visits.

P's best effort yet, a 70-minute affair with not quite as much filler as he's weighed in with on past projects.

Singing in an airily accented voice that brings to mind fellow Brit popsters Robyn Hitchcock and John Wesley Harding, Cole evokes aural images of indie radio circa 1985.

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

It comes off softer than its predecessor, and not nearly as affecting.

When Mullins hits his mark (as he often does on Beneath the Velvet Sun), the results constitute Southern-flavored pop at its finest. Just don't expect your world to be rocked by lyrical insights or musical innovation.

The band hasn't taken the same sort of strides it has in the past. That's not to say Wishville isn't a strong album, but in the realm of Catherine Wheel recordings, it doesn't deliver on the promise of Adam and Eve.

As with all her solo work, Sunny Border Blue practically bleeds with catharsis and introspection, but foraging through its dark interiors yields moments of strange, exquisite beauty.

Somewhat surprisingly, for a band that hasn't toured much in its 12-year career, Live is full of edge-to-edge dynamite performances dating from 1990 to 1996.

White Pepper may make listeners put off by Ween's crudeness give them another chance.

They've offered us more inventive, more substantial work in the past...

This disc is all over the map, in terms of style, energy, and overall execution.... the band sounds fine but too often lapses into cuteness with songs that don't hold up beyond novelty appeal.

Stewart is surely a fine singer, but not quite at that level of being able to make the phone book sound like a masterpiece. He needs the songs, and on Human, he's only as good as the material that others provide.

Ratdog is... weighed down on its debut by a sense of its own mortality.... And, like the Dead, Ratdog's forays into spirituality, notably the dippy "Two Djinn," only serve to give unbelievers more fodder for ridicule.