The great iconoclast of techno returns with a smooth, sacred and exhilarating record. Play's concoction of breakbeat rhythms, ambient mixology and inspired blues and gospel samples cry out across musical genres and histories, imparting a time-tested wisdom to beat-driven ears. Moby's devout faith-in both God and his own musical whims-give this approach a sort of legitimacy that another, less sincere artist would never have. That sincerity reverberates through the beats and instrumental eclecticism like a pulse. The soulful refrains and proclamations in "Find My Baby" and "Natural Blues" somehow nestle between straight-up dance-floor rave-ups ("Bodyrock") and melt-in-your-mouth ambience ("Inside") with an effortless grace. Moby reaches across his turntables and finds something pure-almost organic. In fact, the album feels more natural than techno is ever supposed to feel, more spiritual than DJs are supposed to be able to muster and more alive than it has any right to be. Check out the spellbinding compilation Natural Blues to hear the original source material from blues and spiritual singers such as Etta James, Vera Hall and BB King. -Matthew Cooke.

Torrential creativity has fast-forwarded the artistic evolution of former Whiskeytown frontman Ryam Adams from country-rock boy wonder to despondent troubadour with a 1960s fixation (his solo debut Heartbreaker), but it may also explain why listeners often need to wade through some pedestrian material just to find a few pearls of poetic excellence. Gold is no exception to that trend, a sometimes engaging middle-of-the-road roots-pop album that's both overlong (70 minutes) and at times overindulgent. There are high spots-such as the bouncy, breezy opener "New York, New York" and the plaintive ballad "When the Stars Go Blue" (which features a vocal turn reminiscent of Morrissey)-but much of the disc gets lost in forests of indistinct guitars and plodding percussion that never nudges Adams into actually rocking. Gold is the work of a notoriously prolific songwriter who hasn't yet learned to play to his strengths, one whose execution doesn't yet match his vision. -Anders Smith Lindall.

The death of the singer/songwriter (someone for whom an acoustic gig was an everyday event, not some MTV-style special occasion) has been inevitable for some time, so releases like Figure 8 should be cherished. With no obvious singles, no clear fashion statement and nothing but a handful of melodies, a paper-thin voice and a piano or guitar for protection, it's clear that Elliott Smith is living on borrowed time. This is a shame, because-like Bernard Butler-Dallas, Texas born Elliott, after four solo albums, is only just finding his feet. Mixing peace loving folk ("Everything Reminds Me Of Her"), drugged up ramblings ("Everything Means Nothing To Me") and honky-tonk tales of serial killers ("Son Of Sam"), this makes for some pretty special listening. Figure 8, like his much acclaimed album XO before it, is a mess of beauty, ingenuity and slight insanity. If the days of the singer/songwriter are drawing to a close, this album is one hell of a way to remember them. -Dan Gennoe.

Given the chart success of their Grammy-winning country single "Who Says You Can't Go Home," it's no surprise Bon Jovi upped the ante by recording an entire album paying homage to Nashville. In some ways, it's amazing they didn't do this sooner, given the way Keith Urban in particular is blurring country-pop lines, much as Garth Brooks and others did in the 1990s. To their credit, you won't find predictably shallow invocations of past country icons or any self-conscious, in-your-face down-home twang added strictly to remind the listener of the musical premise. In fact, Lost Highway isn't "Bon Jovi goes country" so much as a meaningful tribute to the Nashville ethos done on their own terms. They honor the spirit of the town through 12 simple, direct originals. The intimate, smoldering "(You Want to) Make a Memory," the ballad "Seat Next to You,", "Lost Highway" and its roaring celebration of freedom, and "Stranger," an effective duet with LeAnn Rimes, all invoke country's spirit, and "I Love This Town," an eloquent nod to Nashville itself, ties it together admirably. -Rich Kienzle.

R. E. M. pushed the jangle out of the picture with Monster, replacing it with reverberating snaps, crackles, and pops. An album that wraps itself to 1970s glam finery while reaching out to the flannel-clad post-Nirvana throngs, it largely succeeds at demonstrating that these Georgians still know how to rock. The MTV fave "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" kicks things off on a high note as Peter Buck's distorted power chords set the tone for the 12-song set. "Strange Currencies" may be alarmingly reminiscent of the Automatic for the People hit "Everybody Hurts," but it's actually the superior song. "Let Me In" is a heavily distorted nod to the fallen Kurt Cobain. While Monster is far from R. E. [+]

Cat Stevens tends to be lumped in with the early-1970s singer/songwriter school led by James Taylor and Carole King but he actually fits in rather neatly with such wistful contemporaries as Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and Donovan. Tea for the Tillerman's "Wild World", "Into White" and "Longer Boats" indicate that he may have been a more gifted tunesmith than the lot of them. As with the best of the Brit folk-rockers, Stevens mixed melancholy with whimsy. Yes, he was prone to airy platitudes but when he harnessed his eccentricities, as he did throughout this 1970's masterwork, you had something truly distinctive. Stevens' greatest drawback was that he was a natural cult artist, à la Tim Buckley and Leonard Cohen. But that's a tough role to play when you're selling 25 million records, as Stevens did before he changed his name to Yusef Islam, established an Islamic school, and raised a ruckus by supporting Ayatollah Khomeini's death decree against author Salman Rushdie. -Steven Stolder.

The great iconoclast of techno returns with a smooth, sacred and exhilarating record. Play's concoction of breakbeat rhythms, ambient mixology and inspired blues and gospel samples cry out across musical genres and histories, imparting a time-tested wisdom to beat-driven ears. Moby's devout faith-in both God and his own musical whims-give this approach a sort of legitimacy that another, less sincere artist would never have. That sincerity reverberates through the beats and instrumental eclecticism like a pulse. The soulful refrains and proclamations in "Find My Baby" and "Natural Blues" somehow nestle between straight-up dance-floor rave-ups ("Bodyrock") and melt-in-your-mouth ambience ("Inside") with an effortless grace. Moby reaches across his turntables and finds something pure-almost organic. In fact, the album feels more natural than techno is ever supposed to feel, more spiritual than DJs are supposed to be able to muster and more alive than it has any right to be. Check out the spellbinding compilation Natural Blues to hear the original source material from blues and spiritual singers such as Etta James, Vera Hall and BB King. -Matthew Cooke.

Ever the primary conceit of mainstays Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, 1976's The Royal Scam marks the first time the Steely Dan duo actually owned up to the fact. Musically, it's their edgiest, most guitar-driven record (thanks to Becker and a murderer's row of session greats that includes Larry Carlton, Elliot Randall, Dean Parks, and Denny Dias). Lyrically, the songs cut an ever-sardonic, presciently discomforting slice of modern life that was a couple decades ahead of the game (who else was extolling the virtues of condom-couture, à la "The Fez", mid-Me Decade?). Though it didn't garner the radio attention of Aja, its more jazz-suffused, multi-platinum follow-up, Scam boasts a diverse, occasionally muscular musical rhetoric and some of the Dan's most telling portraits (the deranged, yet all-too-familiar killer of "Don't Take Me Alive", "Kid Charlemagne"'s drug-culture celebrity, the tropical convenience of a "Haitian Divorce"). Small wonder many Dan fans consider it their best. -Jerry McCulley.

As this greatest hits-style collection-unglamourously entitled Singles-serves to prove, Suede were fashionably wasted and seedily sexy wretches years before catwalk pundits had even coined the phrase "heroin chic". Irrefutably the first great British band of the 1990s (they were, somewhat unwisely, dubbed "the new Smiths"), Suede stepped out from the despondent, suffocating shadow of moping American grunge with a head full of Ziggy Stardust and a hedonistic agenda of urban escapism, casual intercourse, recreational chemistry thrills and the sort of shoestring decadence that still makes the likes of "So Young" ("Let's chase the dragon" shrieked Brett Anderson) and "Animal Nitrate" the musical equivalent of promenading in a fur coat purchased from a charity shop. It was almost too good to last. The ironically titled "Stay Together" (why not the full eight minute version?) was more grandiose in design but the mysterious union between Brett Anderson and furry-toned guitar maestro Bernard Butler was on the rocks and their marriage dissolved over the choice of mixer for the classic Dog Man Star, herein represented by the anthemic "We Are the Pigs", "New Generation" and "The Wild Ones". Guitar-slinging Poole Grammar school pupil Richard Oakes stepped into the breach and Suede became even more complicit with the charts via such brazen glam-pop stompers as "Trash" and "Electricity". Lately, though, Brett Anderson sounds more like an observer of rather than a participant in the pharmaceutically-addled underbelly of back-street British suburbia. The two exclusive new songs are slightly underwhelming ("Love the Way You Love" sounds like a Phil Oakey comeback) but every dog has its day and Suede have, with every justification, already earned their place in history. -Kevin Maidment.

Joni Mitchell's third album offers a bridge between the artful but sometimes dour meditations of her earlier work and the more mature, confessional revelations of the classics that would follow. Voice and guitar still hew to the pretty filigree of a folk poet, but there's the giggling rush of rock & roll freedom in "Big Yellow Taxi", and the formal metaphor of her older songs ("The Circle Game", already oft-covered by the time of this recording) yields to the more impressionistic images of the new ones ("Woodstock"). The dark lyricism of her earliest ballads is intact (on "For Free" and "Rainy Night House"), yet there's a prevailing idealism here that sounds poignant alongside the warier, more mature songs to come on Blue and Court And Spark. -Sam Sutherland.

Given the chart success of their Grammy-winning country single "Who Says You Can't Go Home," it's no surprise Bon Jovi upped the ante by recording an entire album paying homage to Nashville. In some ways, it's amazing they didn't do this sooner, given the way Keith Urban in particular is blurring country-pop lines, much as Garth Brooks and others did in the 1990s. To their credit, you won't find predictably shallow invocations of past country icons or any self-conscious, in-your-face down-home twang added strictly to remind the listener of the musical premise. In fact, Lost Highway isn't "Bon Jovi goes country" so much as a meaningful tribute to the Nashville ethos done on their own terms. They honor the spirit of the town through 12 simple, direct originals. The intimate, smoldering "(You Want to) Make a Memory," the ballad "Seat Next to You,", "Lost Highway" and its roaring celebration of freedom, and "Stranger," an effective duet with LeAnn Rimes, all invoke country's spirit, and "I Love This Town," an eloquent nod to Nashville itself, ties it together admirably. -Rich Kienzle.

Ever the primary conceit of mainstays Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, 1976's The Royal Scam marks the first time the Steely Dan duo actually owned up to the fact. Musically, it's their edgiest, most guitar-driven record (thanks to Becker and a murderer's row of session greats that includes Larry Carlton, Elliot Randall, Dean Parks, and Denny Dias). Lyrically, the songs cut an ever-sardonic, presciently discomforting slice of modern life that was a couple decades ahead of the game (who else was extolling the virtues of condom-couture, à la "The Fez", mid-Me Decade?). Though it didn't garner the radio attention of Aja, its more jazz-suffused, multi-platinum follow-up, Scam boasts a diverse, occasionally muscular musical rhetoric and some of the Dan's most telling portraits (the deranged, yet all-too-familiar killer of "Don't Take Me Alive", "Kid Charlemagne"'s drug-culture celebrity, the tropical convenience of a "Haitian Divorce"). Small wonder many Dan fans consider it their best. -Jerry McCulley.