When a reviewer cites a band’s “maturity,” it frequently means the group has exchanged spontaneity and freshness for calculation and predictability. That’s certainly the case with the Peppers, whose latest has generated raves from easily pleased scribes, even though it’s basically two discs’ worth of been-there-done-that-better-in-the-past. Stadium features loads of…

Some listeners will interpret the Girls’ third disc as the sort of mainstream move currently being attempted by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — but the alterations in their sound seem inspired more by creative concerns than by commercial calculation. Instead of replacing former guitarist Nathan Thalen with another ax-wielder, the…

In the past, New Orleans’ Terius Gray, who’s over 30 but still Juvenile, has cared more about coochie than about current events. “Back That Azz Up” doesn’t exactly qualify as a political statement. It’s little wonder, then, that “Get Ya Hustle On,” a Reality Check track about the Hurricane Katrina…

U.K. music scribes have always been addicted to hype — but their ballyhooing of Arctic Monkeys is over-the-top even by their standards. The group couldn’t live up to their praise if it featured Jesus on vocals and Mohammed on guitar. (We’d illustrate that, but we’re fond of the building.) So…

As its moniker implies, Twin Cinema essentially doubles the theatricality of previous Pornographers efforts. While the title track constitutes hooky indie pop, the album as a whole conjures images of a Rent-like musical, with most numbers custom-made for cast members to belt toward the balcony. The shifting ensemble assembled by…

Artist-salute discs make plenty of sense from a business standpoint, since they let labels milk material that was paid for long ago. Problem is, they’re almost always lame — and this homage to Freddie Mercury and friends certainly doesn’t buck the trend. There are lots of ways to go wrong…

Unlike the Secret Machines, the Wallflowers resist the temptation to tackle a Bob Dylan song on their new disc — but they’ll likely do so sooner rather than later. Playing that card may be the only way Jakob Dylan, Zimmy’s son, will be able to attract attention in the future,…

“Lean Back” gave Fat Joe a chance to make the really big money, and he’s taking advantage by embracing the mainstream. He came across as a genial glad-hander while working the red carpet at the recent MTV Movie Awards, and he makes repeated bids for airplay on All or Nothing,…

Ryan Adams couldn’t be more full of himself if he were the corpulent Mr. Creosote, as the Cold Roses packaging makes clear. These 18 songs could fit on a single disc, yet they’ve been spread over two CDs to justify a gatefold design that mimics the classic ’70s double albums…

Plenty of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden buffs have been hoping Audioslave would produce a great album on its second try, but they’ll have to settle for pretty good. Although Out of Exile is solid and listenable, Chris Cornell, Tom Morello, Brad Wilk, and Tim Commerford are ultimately pushing…

In a span of five years, Chris Martin has gone from being an irritating bloke mewling about yellow stars to his current role as movie-star boinker and fruity-name bestower. Inside the music business, he’s also seen as the man most likely to resuscitate the industry, and X&Y, the latest from…

Moz is the current poster child for career resurrection, ’80s rock-star division — and if issuing Live less than a year after the release of 2004’s You Are the Quarry, his studio comeback, seems ill-advised, the set’s quality more than justifies its existence. The album is a satisfying musical retrospective…

Once upon a time, the existence of Jennifer Lopez CDs was entirely justified by the photos included with them. Given that she’s now 34 years old and has become one of the most overexposed celebrities to tread the planet’s surface, I figured this would no longer be true — but…

The youngest MTV viewers know Xzibit primarily as the host of Pimp My Ride, in which he comes across as the benign, good-humored benefactor of shitbox autos. Musically, though, his grin turns to grim on a regular basis. Weapons is characteristic of his work: a spare, stern hip-hop foray that…

I wouldn’t consider us a throwback, but I also wouldn’t say we’re reinventing the wheel of rock ‘n’ roll,” says Ronnie Vannucci, drummer for the Killers. “We’re taking the best parts of the music we were influenced by, putting them in our songs, and making them our own.” The Killers…

Sometimes I wish I were a 12-year-old girl. I wish I wore flirty fashions my parents hated without realizing how stupid I looked in them. I wish the mere sight of Shia LeBeouf caused my heart to race. I wish Madison Avenue loved me the way it loves every other…

O.A.R. Guster. Hootie & the Blowfish. God Street Wine. Lisa Loeb. The Spin Doctors. Edwin McCain. The Wallflowers. Soulhat. The Cranberries. Jack Johnson. Toad the Wet Sprocket. The Dave Matthews Band. Vigilantes of Love. Shawn Mullins. Counting Crows. Tonic. Jewel. Jars of Clay. Rusted Root. Better than Ezra. The Freddy…

The cover shot of this CD includes the image of Ms. Knowles wearing a bejeweled variation of the beads people hang across open doorways. Sure, it’s capable of inspiring impure thoughts among impressionable youths. That’s fine. But “Naughty Girl” is an awfully blunt attempt to raise heartbeats and so on,…

Colin Meloy, the singer-songwriter at the heart of the Decemberists, spent his musically formative years in Missoula, Montana, but you couldn’t prove it by Castaways and Cutouts. The first full-length by his band, which is currently based in Portland, Oregon, sounds like the work of a hyperliterate Brit. “Leslie Anne…

Darryl Worley’s song “Have You Forgotten?” attempts to split the patriotic difference between Toby Keith and Alan Jackson, waving the flag while showing some class, to erratic effect. The country star deserves points for rhyming “forgotten” and “bin Laden” (it’s certainly better than, say, “income-tax deduction” and “weapons of mass…

In every musical movement, there are innovators — the acts that introduce stylistic breakthroughs — and there are popularizers, who co-opt the new genre’s freshest elements, homogenize them, and feed them back to the public in an accessible, easy-to-digest form. As a result of this process, popularizers often outsell the…

If there’s anything that irritates Fred Sargolini, half of the forward-looking hip-hop/electro duo Ming and FS, it’s artists who think they have to color inside the lines. “A lot of them don’t realize they’re doing it,” he believes. “They say they’re open-minded, but they’re really puritans. It’s like they’re doing…