Artist: Disturbed Review: In June, these Chicago metalheads had the Number One album in America. It's not hard to see why: With meticulously constructed guitar skronk, serrated verses and cathartic refrains on cuts like "Enough," the album has clear pop appeal in its own dour way. Singer David Draiman says Indestructible is Disturbed's darkest record yet — it was partly inspired by the band's experiences performing for troops overseas — and he does his best to back up the drama. Wailing like a leather- and... Rating: 2 Stars

Artist: Billy Joel Review: In 1977, Joel's fourth and best album replaced Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water as Columbia Records' all-time top-seller, establishing Joel as a titan of adult contemporary ­ America's answer to Elton John. The Stranger also launched Joel's longterm collaboration with producer Phil Ramone, who distilled the Piano Man's music to its essence, a hook-packed blend of AM-radio pop-rock and Broadway schmaltz. The hit single was the gooey "Just the Way You Are," but there's impressive... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: David Banner Review: Much of David Banner's charm lies in his bulldozer flow, his political awareness and his innovative production skills: His xylophone-laden beat for Lil Wayne's "La La" was one of the best on Tha Carter III. But on his fifth album, Banner battles with his urge to bring standard-issue Dirty South chart-toppers and cred-building hardness: The Greatest Story Ever Told is long on brawling tracks like "9mm," which banks on overbearing rhymes about gunplay. There are also pop-wise club jams like... Rating: 2.5 Stars

Artist: Journey Review: If a band sticks around long enough, it turns into a tribute band. For years, Journey have slogged around the oldies circuit with a rotating cast of singers trying to impersonate Steve Perry, who belted out the group's Seventies and Eighties hits. But this double-CD set, which also includes a live DVD, features the most unlikely Perry sound-alike yet: Arnel Pineda, a 40-year-old Filipino who spends an entire disc delivering note-for-note remakes of classics like "Don't Stop Believin'." On the se... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Black Kids Review: It's true: Black Kids know how to get down. The interracial crew's "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" was last year's hottest indie-rock tail-wagger — a campy mix of pillow-fight synth-pop and B-52s giddiness. Rerecorded versions of "Boyfriend" and other songs from the band's 2007 EP, Wizard of Ahhhs, make up the best moments of their sugary debut LP — which is a tad worrying. But with Brit-pop vet Bernard Butler behind the decks, these Floridians still toss... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Alkaline Trio Review: When My Chemical Romance struck platinum, Alkaline Trio might have wondered, "Why not us?" The Chicago group has spent more than a decade evolving from a Misfits-inspired hardcore act into craftsmen of exquisite doom-pop. Having recently signed with a major label, the Trio grab for the brass ring with Agony & Irony, enlisting producer Josh Abraham (Linkin Park, Velvet Revolver) to spin their big-hooked tales of funerals and heartbreak into radio-friendly cluster bombs. That new sound fits them... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: The Offspring Review: If you only remember the Offspring as pop-punk jokesters — SoCal boys who quip about clueless white guys — then the band's rather serious eighth album may surprise you. Over hardcore-punk grooves and a mess of guitar wreckage, the multiplatinum quartet deliver their thesis: "Stuff is messed up." That's the title of the ninth track — a smorgasbord of carping on which frontman Dexter Holland disses the media, the Iraq War, reality television and, uh, celebrity fundraisers. But th... Rating: 2.5 Stars

Artist: Girl Talk Review: Big ups to the fair-use principle of United States copyright law: Pittsburgh DJ Gregg Gillis says that's what allows him to use hundreds of unlicensed samples in his music. On 2006's breakthrough, Night Ripper, Gillis proved he was a true party-starter, effortlessly combining dozens of hip-hop, pop and rock hits in every song. Feed the Animals ups the ante, implementing more than 300 samples to make an utterly virtuosic mash-up record. On "Like This," one 90-second sequence alone works in... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: Three 6 Mafia Review: It's getting easier out there for a pimp. On their first album since they added an Oscar statuette to the gold-plated goblets in their trophy case, these Memphis rappers are in a triumphant mood. "I showed 'em, I showed 'em," bellow DJ Paul and Juicy J in "I Told 'Em." On Last 2 Walk, every track is compelling, with synthesized strings and the usual depth-sounder bass lines inflated with reverb into miniature symphonies. Recently, MCs Crunchy Black and Lord Infamous quit Three 6, leaving the... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Coldplay Review: Coldplay's fourth release has been billed as their experimental record, as well as their political record. And it is both, relatively speaking. Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends opens with an anthemic riff played not on guitar but on a Persian santur — a hammered dulcimer common to the traditional music of Iraq and Iran. The album's lead single, "Violet Hill," describes a scene in which "priests clutched onto Bibles/Hollowed out to fit their rifles." Half the album's tracks float... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Martha Wainwright Review: Part of Martha Wainwright's charm lies in her Tourette's-like impulse to overshare: Check out her 2005 ode to her singer-songwriter dad, Loudon, lovingly titled "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole." Her folky second album mostly spares family members, but old boyfriends aren't so lucky. On the dusty-road rocker "Comin' Tonight," she seeks revenge on a musician/ex-lover: "I could steal a melody. . . . 'Cause you would never sue me, baby/It wouldn't look good." Wainwright's relentless self-analysis and... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: Martha Wainwright Review: Part of Martha Wainwright's charm lies in her Tourette's-like impulse to overshare: Check out her 2005 ode to her singer-songwriter dad, Loudon, lovingly titled "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole." Her folky second album mostly spares family members, but old boyfriends aren't so lucky. On the dusty-road rocker "Comin' Tonight," she seeks revenge on a musician/ex-lover: "I could steal a melody. . . . 'Cause you would never sue me, baby/It wouldn't look good." Wainwright's relentless self-analysis and... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: Adele Review: Like fellow crooners Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash, Adele Adkins polished her skills at the Brit School in south London — as good a finishing academy as American Idol. Her debut, which topped the British charts earlier this year, lacks the bad-girl brio of those grads, but it shows off a vocal instrument that smokes the competition. Check out "Cold Shoulder," a lover's blues, produced by Winehouse's secret weapon, Mark Ronson: Over swirling strings and a snare pattern borrowed from James... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Motley Crue Review: All the filth and fury of their Eighties heyday, finally funneled into an album Mötley Cüe have created a cottage industry out of rehashing their excesses: Their tales of debauchery have already fueled dozens of books and a standard-bearing episode of Behind the Music. Now they've woven those stories into their first album in eight years. Inspired by their 2001 sleazeography, The Dirt, Saints of Los Angeles finds Vince Neil flashing back to the band's golden age: gigging on the... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Katy Perry Review: "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf/While jacking off listening to Mozart," Katy Perry tells her metrosexual ex on "Ur So Gay." Risqué words, coming from the daughter of two Christian pastors who only let her listen to gospel tunes as a kid. Now 23, the L.A. singer bucks the WWJD'ers with a debut full of mall-punky, grrrl-power tunes produced by Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette) and Dr. Luke (Avril Lavigne). But her attention-grabbing doesn't feel very rebellious: On the New Wave-y club... Rating: 2 Stars

Artist: Dr. John Review: He's not talking about Cleveland. City That Care Forgot is the New Orleans soulman's impassioned lament about the natural destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the man-made tragedy of the aftermath. Over ominous funk ("Land Grab"), gospel-inflected blues ("You Might Be Surprised") and horn-boosted R&B ("Time for a Change," featuring Eric Clapton), Dr. John's bourbon-and-sandpaper vocals reflect the bitterness of a man who can sense that "the smell of death still hangs on the honeysuckle vine."... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Lil' Wayne Review: OK, it's true: he really is the best rapper alive. Lil Wayne made that claim on his last official CD, in 2005, and since then, he's unleashed an astonishing torrent of mixtapes, leaks and guest appearances to back up the boast. So his long-anticipated "legit" album follow-up feels a bit gratuitous. Still, Tha Carter III is useful as an exclamation point. It establishes beyond a doubt that the zeitgeist in 2008 belongs to one artist: a dreadlocked dadaist poet from New Orleans with a... Rating: 4.5 Stars

Artist: Dennis Wilson Review: Within the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson seemed to be the friendly foil to his visionary older brother Brian — he was the fun-loving surfer/drummer who loved booze and women. But this solo set proves he was also a soulful songwriter. Released in 1977 and out of print since 1991, Pacific Ocean Blue is a cinematic meditation on loss, both personal and environmental. A trio of wrenchingly intimate songs about a failed relationship anchor the album: ?Thoughts of You,? a piano-based ballad... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: My Morning Jacket Review: "Evil urges, baby," squeals Jim James in the title track of his band's fifth studio album. "They be part of the human way!" A slinky funk strut delivered in Prince-like falsetto that blows up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel, "Evil Urges" rallies you to "Dedicate your love to any woman or man/No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions" and notes that "evil" is often in the ear of the beholder. But coming from a young band whose first three albums earned them a reputation as... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: N.E.R.D. Review: While writing their third album, N.E.R.D. watched a Discovery Channel show about synesthesia, a neurological disorder that causes people to experience sounds as colors or as objects in their minds. Superproducers the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) and their rapping buddy Shay Haley were inspired to create music you could envision as a live show. Does that creative concept work? Hard to say, but the results are experimental and expansive: Specked with ostentatiously weird groov... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: The Fratellis Review: In 2006, this scottish trio burst onto the U.K. charts with their debut, Costello Music, where they sounded like popwise lads who'd downed a steady diet of T.Rex, Oasis and beer. Here We Stand keeps up its predecessor's swagger, but the album's debts to glam and Brit-rock forbears (there's some Bowie and Clash here, too) give you a vague sense you've heard these songs before. Still, that doesn't mean tracks like "Shameless" and "Mistress Mabel" — both of which pack stellar bar-rock... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Alanis Morissette Review: Nothing gets folks on your team like losing your fiancé to a Hollywood bombshell. So just imagine what Alanis Morissette has been doing since her ex, actor Ryan Reynolds, traipsed off with Scarlett Johansson. Writing about post-romantic stress disorder isn't new for Morissette, but her latest album doesn't rage like "You Oughta Know" — it sounds more like grief. Producer and co-writer Guy Sigsworth (Björk) frames Morissette's candid lyrics with a vaguely New Age grandeur — ele... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Gavin Rossdale Review: "Oh teardrop you know you make me so sad/This heartbeat could be my last," sings Gavin Rossdale on his first solo album. The former Bush frontman may share a house with the world's most manically upbeat pop singer, wife Gwen Stefani, but denominationally, he's still grunge: a dour rock dude, scowling and growling as he bears down on another B minor chord. With the help of Bob Rock (Metallica), Rossdale gives Wanderlust a slick sheen, swabbing power ballads like "Beauty in the Beast" in a... Rating: 2 Stars

Artist: The Ting Tings Review: Both members of this U.K. pop duo — singer-guitarist Katie White and drummer Jules De Martino — used to play in second-tier teen-pop acts. Their earlier experiences clearly left them with harsh feelings about the music industry: De Martino has admitted that their thumping disco single "Shut Up and Let Me Go" is a breakup song written for their former record label, not an old flame. But those formative years also gave them an instinct for industrial-grade pop hooks, which is pr... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Steve Earle Review: All dressed up in his outlaw-biker best, Steve Earle launched a political fireball with 1988's Copperhead Road. On the Skynyrd-style boogie of "Snake Oil," he raged against Reagan: "Well, ain't your president good to you? Knocked 'em dead in Libya, Grenada too." And he advocates for gun control on "The Devil's Right Hand," punctuating his message with big drums and ringing acoustic guitars. But Earle undermined that song's credibility a few years later when his own handgun accidentally... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Larry Norman Review: Most people who have heard of Larry Norman at all know him primarily as a sixties Jesus Freak who pioneered today's multi-billion dollar Contemporary Christian Music industry. But Norman, who died in February at age sixty, was anything but a middle-of-the-road musical sheep who followed a prescribed formula of simplistic shout-outs to Jesus. He was an eccentric, psychedelic music-loving, politically left-leaning hippie folksinger who also loved the lord and wanted everybody else to love hi... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: Carolina Liar Review: After leaving his native South Carolina in 2002, Carolina Liar frontman Chad Wolf strummed his guitar in many L.A. coffeehouses before being rescued from obscurity by an internship with songwriter Diane Warren and a paid gig dancing in a Celine Dion video. His story is a typical Hollywood fantasy — which might be why four tracks from his band's New Wave-y rock debut have already been featured on The Hills. Fusing the anthemic elements of U2 and the Killers with the electro productio... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Islands Review: On their 2006 debut, this Montreal six-piece were like a pothead carnival of bloopy synths, African rhythms and pop-culture references. But on?Arm's Way, gifted singer-songwriter Nick Thorburn broadens the band's quirk-pop into wonderfully shambolic arena rock — for an arena of 5,000 people. Guitars mingle with viola, clarinet and piano, hopping genres and tempos with an Of Montreal-style theatricality. "Pieces of You" begins with a gypsy bop, moves into a harmonic bridge worthy of... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Old 97's Review: Over the past 15 years, Old 97's have evolved from country-punk yahoos into master-class rock & roll songwriters. For proof, see their album opener, "The Fool," a speed-strummed joy ride that tells the story of two doomed lovers in Day-Glo detail. "He came from Phoenix in a borrowed VW Bug," sings frontman Rhett Miller, already breathless; the girl he likens to "a drug/Hallucinogenic with no hangover at all." And yet, after some LPs focused more on popcraft than adrenaline, there's... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: Foxy Brown Review: Midway through her fourth album, Foxy Brown claims that her "piss is clean" — a sensible thing to boast, since she's addressing her parole officer. Recently released after eight months in prison, the New York rapper spends much of Brooklyn's Don Diva covering her pre-jail legal problems and pesky media coverage: On "We Don't Surrender," she raps, "I got a 32-shot clip aimed at Page Six." Despite the tabloid-worthy subject matter, a couple of bangers are invigorating, with Foxy... Rating: 2.5 Stars

Artist: Review: Bono deserves props for global stumping on Africa's behalf. So it's good that this tribute is a rootsy thank-you, not a world-music cheesefest. Guinea's Ba Cissoko reinvents "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with kora-harp ripples, guitarist Vieux Farka Touré turns "Bullet the Blue Sky" into a dusty Malian blues, and Cheikh Lô makes "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" into a chattering Afro-flamenco workout. Great songwriting makes translation easier. Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Orchestra Baobab Review: Reunions rarely rival history. But with this collection of burbling grooves, these Senegalese legends recapture the Afro-Cuban bliss of their 1982 classic, Pirates Choice — imagine the Buena Vista Social Club weaned on motherland polyrhythms. The secret weapon remains Barthélemy Attisso, a guitar giant with a touch as delicate and melodically sublime as Jerry Garcia's. His lines on "Nijaay" and "Cabral" are so chill they'll buckle your knees. Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: The Last Shadow Puppets Review: As the leader of Britain's Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner creates spiky neo-post-punk that avoids any revivalist fuddy-duddyism. But Turner's new side project, a collaboration with Miles Kane of Merseyside indie-poppers the Rascals, is a shameless nostalgia trip — and it's still compelling. Their debut pays homage to the moody symphonic sound of early David Bowie, Lee Hazlewood and other stars of the late Sixties and early Seventies. While reverb-swathed acoustic guitars churn in minor... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Tokio Hotel Review: It's official: these guys are the greatest German bubblegum-neo-glam-goth-emo boy band. Ever. On their English-language debut (they're already huge in Deutschland), the four fresh-faced lads from Magdeburg unveil a genre-and gender-bending act that justifies superlatives. Much of the credit goes to lead singer Bill Kaulitz, an 18-year-old androgyne whose stupendous electroshock hairdo stands a good six inches taller than Tina Turner's Eighties coif. Kaulitz is a technically limited vocal... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: The Last Shadow Puppets Review: As the leader of Britain's Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner creates spiky neo-post-punk that avoids any revivalist fuddy-duddyism. But Turner's new side project, a collaboration with Miles Kane of Merseyside indie-poppers the Rascals, is a shameless nostalgia trip — and it's still compelling. Their debut pays homage to the moody symphonic sound of early David Bowie, Lee Hazlewood and other stars of the late Sixties and early Seventies. While reverb-swathed acoustic guitars churn in minor... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Phantom Planet Review: Phantom Planet claim their fourth full-length was inspired by the music of Charles Manson and David Koresh — not quite the album you'd expect from the California boys who sang The O.C.'s theme song. Still, like those cult leaders, Raise the Dead gives its macabre subjects (and its lighter ones) an oddly upbeat spin. Jumping from Bowie glam to disco punk, the band tosses in synths, arch backing coos and riffing saxes for songs that are both expansive and strange. "Leader," which is... Rating: 3.5 Stars

Artist: T Bone Burnett Review: The best song on T Bone's relentlessly noir new album is "Kill Zone," a lyrical, Roy Orbison-style ballad — which Orbison himself co-wrote right before his death in 1988. That fact only hints at the oddity of this collection: Burnett, best known as producer to the stars (Robert Plant/Alison Krauss, John Mellencamp) and curator of soundtracks (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), started writing these songs years ago for a revamped production of Sam Shepard's 1972 play... Rating: 3 Stars

Artist: Gavin DeGraw Review: Gavin DeGraw first hit it big with 2003's "I Don't Want to Be," an anti-fronting anthem with the long-winded chorus "I don't want to be anything other than what I've been tryin' to be lately." Five years later, dude's still verbose. He packs bizarre metaphors into the faux-jazzy "Cop Stop": "I won't tell you lies/Or treat you like a rental car like other guys." (Thankfully, there's no mention of handling his stick shift.) And on "Medicate the Kids" — a power-chord-filled rant agains... Rating: 2.5 Stars

Artist: Joe Higgs Review: Jamaican singer—songwriter Joe Higgs mentored the giants of reggae music. He taught harmony singing to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in the yard of his Trenchtown home, toured America with Marley and Jimmy Cliff, and wrote "Stepping Razor," which became Tosh's signature song. More important, Higgs was one of the first Jamaican singers to bring the ghetto experience to the forefront of reggae. Yet Higgs never gained much of an international following before his death in 1999. That's a shame, be... Rating: 4 Stars

Artist: Otis Redding Review: This two—cd set doubles the pleasure of Otis Redding's third album with B sides, outtakes, period live tracks and the entire record in mono and stereo versions. But Otis Blue was already perfect in its original 11—song edition when released in September 1965 — an achievement that is even more remarkable because all but one of the tracks were recorded inside 24 hours, in two lightning sessions at the Stax studio in Memphis, on July 9th and in the early morning of the 10th. The... Rating: 5 Stars