The six solo albums that Stephen Patrick Morrissey has released since the Smiths broke up are models of iconoclastic British record making. Occasionally these albums have been goosed by hot producers, sometimes they have glam-rocked up a storm, but generally they have clung fast to the bass-guitar-drums foundation that helped make the Smiths superstars in otherwise popped-out Eighties Britain. That expansive stinginess was part of Morrissey's charm; his albums were like absorbing old books -- nineteenth-century histories of badminton or moths. They weren't larger than life; they were barely larger than breakfast or an e-mail.

You Are the Quarry, Morrissey's seventh album, reverses this career-long complexion. He submits a dozen songs to crystalline modern engineering and arrangements that place selective bits of mandolin, flute, harp and synthesizer in guitar-and-rhythm grooves, moving forward without losing his identity.

The songs are top-shelf. On "America Is Not the World," Morrissey rises up to speak for the current European hostility and heartbreak concerning U.S. foreign policy. "America, your belly's too big," he sings; but before you can write him off as just a player hater, the Los Angeles resident finishes the song by repeating, "America/I love you." On "Irish Blood, English Heart" and "I Have Forgiven Jesus," Morrissey returns to his famous critiques of, respectively, U.K. society and organized religion. In a spectacular bit of contradiction, he follows "Come Back to Camden," a stirring ballad where Morrissey ends up promising a lover that he'll "be good," with a calmly defiant no-apologies dance tune titled "I'm Not Sorry." The album, like Morrissey's tenor, never stops defining and reinventing itself. The world, as Morrissey leaps to declare in one song, continues to be full of crashing bores. But You Are the Quarry is a triumph of maladjusted vitality. (JAMES HUNTER)

Alanis Morissette So-Called Chaos (Maverick)

Ever since Alanis Morissette traded dysfunctional pop rock for ponderous self-help bluster, she's lost much of what made her a mid-Nineties cultural supernova. Coming off 2002's self-produced Under Rug Swept, she has teamed up with producer John Shanks (known for his work with Michelle Branch and Jewel) for an album that attempts to reverse the sliding record sales following 1995's unbeatable Jagged Little Pill. So-Called Chaos begins with a bang that recalls Morissette's milestone album: "Eight Easy Steps" unleashes self-deprecating fury as she offers to teach listeners "How to play all pious/When you're really a hypocrite" as thrashing drums and guitars lash out a beating. But after that delicious, brain-embedding blast, her tunes and hooks get mighty slight, and when they're bogged down with overdubbed guitars, sitars and unwieldy lyrics, as they are on "Knees of My Bees," they can't support the weight of her pretensions. How can Morissette expect her introspection to be taken seriously when her songs sound like vintage Bryan Adams? (BARRY WALTERS)

The Streets A Grand Don't Come for Free (Vice/Atlantic)

Two years ago, when the Birmingham, England, two-step musician Mike Skinner, a.k.a the Streets, released his debut record, Original Pirate Material, he was hailed as a lot of things: the British Eminem, the gutter poet of a loutish generation, the long-awaited pudding proof that limeys can rap, and other such nonsense. Perhaps the hype pissed Skinner off; maybe he began to believe his own press. Either might explain A Grand Don't Come for Free, because it is both simpler -- in sound and scope -- than Pirate and much more ambitious.

Think Quadrophenia with E: A Grand tracks a week or two in the life of a drugging, drunken and nearly lovable heel; in the course of it, several affairs begin and end, a load of money goes missing and the narrator's mum gets her feelings hurt. "Blinded by the Light," which documents a night out, itches with a cherubic female vocal and an insistent rave-synthesizer sample, which dissolves into aquatic sound just as the song's narrator starts to come on to his drugs. "Dry Your Eyes" is the most impressive moment: With a simple acoustic-guitar strum, a high, delicate vocal from singer Matt Sladen and a very precise, descriptive rhyme, Skinner beautifully captures a tiny instant that devastates the narrator, as his girl tells him it's all over, babe.

Skinner's skills at tickling and tearing vowels, adverbs and lexicons is impressive enough, but his real gift is literary. Grand is cool because it's thoroughly mundane -- the narrator spends a lot of time complaining about his cell phone -- yet Skinner's ear for language and detail keeps it vivid, and hilarious. Surprisingly enough, at the end of the album, after lots of spare, excellent beats, there's even a cosmic lesson at the bottom of the pint glass: Be your own hero, and what will be will be. Call it Zen hooliganism. (PAT BLASHILL)

Lenny Kravitz Baptism (Virgin)

Lenny Kravitz is turning forty, and Baptism, his seventh album, reflects the approach and passing of that milestone. The exuberant "California" looks back to the joys and pure motivations of youth, and "What Did I Do With My Life?" and "The Other Side" are chilled by the creeping awareness of mortality. "Destiny," the ballad that concludes the album, brings acceptance: "If I threw it all away, would it change?/No, I would live my life again, rearranged."

And then there's always rock & roll, the faith into which Kravitz is born again on Baptism. His belief in the music has never really wavered -- he even opens this album with a song called "Minister of Rock 'N Roll." But somewhere along the line in his career, he fully absorbed his pantheon of Sixties and Seventies influences and began to sound like no one but himself. The confidence that results from that growth -- along with the knowledge that comes from having made records for fifteen years -- is apparent throughout this album.

Sitting at the center of Baptism's thirteen tracks is "Where Are We Runnin'?" A perfect single, it's an invigorating blast of raucous energy -- all staccato rhythms, distorted guitars and infectious "ooh-we-ooh-we-ooh" background vocals. "Flash," meanwhile, is a swipe at here-and-gone pop poseurs set to a stylish riff and topped off by a blistering guitar solo.

It's jarring, admittedly, to hear Kravitz, of all people, sing a song called "I Don't Want to Be a Star"; the velvet pants, muscle shirts, photo spreads, endless clubbing and model-actress girlfriends sure had me fooled. But Baptism makes the case that it's the music, not the stardom, that ultimately matters. Conviction like that will get you through forty and beyond, and will help you make albums as uplifting as this one. (ANTHONY DECURTIS)

Judas Priest Metalogy (Columbia/Legacy)

When Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979, the way was clear for a new heavyweight champ of metal. Enter Judas Priest (like Sabbath, from Birmingham, England), a quintet that had up to then released four anemically produced albums. That all changed with 1979's Hell Bent for Leather, a record that effectively removed metal's Seventies-era prog-rock flab. Songs such as the title track were compact, radio-ready blasts of fury that set the stage for every Eighties band from Motley Crue to Metallica. 1980's British Steel was Priest's pinnacle. With "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight," Rob Halford -- perhaps metal's best singer ever -- delivered lessons on how to make hard-rock fans thrill unwittingly to the fantasies of a closeted gay man. What followed -- forays into pop- and thrash-metal, Halford's departure and the tenure of sound-alike replacement Tim "Ripper" Owens -- was just gravy. Metalogy includes all the band's classics from each of its fourteen studio albums, ten live cuts and a DVD containing a 1982 Memphis concert. On that, Halford roars onstage astride a Harley -- advance publicity for Priest's reunion at this summer's Ozzfest. (ROB KEMP)

Juliana Hatfield In Exile Deo (Zoe/Rounder)

Juliana Hatfield albums have varied only slightly from one another over the years, and the fact that she self-produced her latest serves as no distraction from the winning guitar-bass-drums formula. The major difference on In Exile Deo is that lyrically she wrestles with things in the past instead of, as she did in her Twenties, on the wounds of the present. The overall effect is something dark as well as desperate, even as the melodies weave like cotton candy and the guitars crunch like Kit-Kats. It's all here in the prosaic journal entries she forces on her songs: death, addiction, regret, childhood trauma and the good and bad ex-boyfriends she wishes were still around. In Exile Deo might be all too close to the bone for many a Gen Xer, her signature girlish voice reminding us how we never quite grew up, or got it right. (TODD SPENCER)

Secret Machines Now Here Is Nowhere (Reprise)

Secret Machines are fiery Dallas guitar boys, but at times they operate like party-hearty DJs remixing their favorite classic-rock bands. On their second album, they take Pink Floyd psychedelia, Led Zeppelin stomp and Who-inspired choruses and charge them full of big-rock beats, atmospheric keyboards and all kinds of electronic whooshes. They also stumble upon a couple of memorable tunes, as on "Sad and Lonely," where they layer percolating keyboard and guitar riffs and a pounding pulse under singer Brandon Curtis' winding, Robert Plant-like melody. Now Here Is Nowhere falters on a few slow electrofolk lullabies, but for the most part, Secret Machines have managed to combine electronic textures with the old-school stuff they so clearly love. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Dirty Dozen Brass Band Funeral For a Friend (Artemis/Ropeadope)

New Orleans' the Dirty Dozen Brass Band is the rotating roster of brass players created twenty-seven years ago to lead jazz funerals. In a twist of fate, the band has returned to its roots after one of its own, co-founder Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen, died of a heart attack. Funeral for a Friend opens with the dirge "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," appropriate for the steps of the church, but soon moves into the melancholic yet ultimately uplifting "I Shall Not Be Moved," before hitting its revelatory stride with "Jesus on the Mainline," featuring the Davell Crawford Singers. It is hard not to feel transported to a cobbled New Orleans street off Jackson Square -- the production is crisp, the players' energy erupts through the speakers and the spiritual power of the music infuses every one of the ten tracks, winding up with a raucous rendition of "Down by the Riverside" and a heartfelt "Amazing Grace." The Dirty Dozen have come home with Funeral for a Friend and bring everyone with them. (ANDREW STRICKMAN)

Broken Spindles Fulfilled/Complete (Saddle Creek)

Broken Spindles' new record Fulfilled/Complete opens with the four-minute "Induction," a jerky patchwork of drum programming, keyboard loops and whispery studio blips -- it's a wash of romance and gloom and, quite frankly, an irksome indicator of what's to come. Lush and textured, the rest of the record is equally dreamy and eerie, as strings, pianos and sharp electronics make for moody soundscapes. Mastermind Joel Peterson -- also the bassist for fellow Saddle Creekers the Faint -- anchors the set with propelling spastic rhythms, underscoring his images of flesh, dying and general creepiness. By track four, "To Die, for Death," Peterson's at his most unnerving, repeating in his unaffected, stark monotone: "Ready to die, I'm ready for death." Even during the album's tamer moments -- the piano-and-string "Practice, Practice, Practice" or the tinkering-electronica of "Harm" -- Peterson still seems brooding and morbid. Nonetheless, his compositions remain enticing, with their symbolic swells and crashes -- a sophistication that surpasses simple moping. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)

Dead Kennedys Live at the Deaf Club (Manifesto)

The world really needs the original Dead Kennedys now. Alas, they are no more, but their sinew-and-silly-putty West Coast punk reverberates anew on this classic live CD. Captured at their playful-sardonic peak in 1979, the slash-and-burn set includes such anti-Establishment thorns as "California Uber Alles," "Kill the Poor" and the strangely timeless "Holiday in Cambodia." Mondo-campo versions of "Back in the U.S.S.R." and (believe it) "Viva Las Vegas" close out a short-sharp-shock of a show. Frontman Jello Biafra is in typically hyperactive form and the rest of the band, Klaus Flouride (bass), East Bay Ray (guitar), Ted (drums) and, in his last gig with the DKs, 6025 (guitar) blow the bricks loose on one of the punk era's definitive live albums. (ADRIAN ZUPP)

Sandy Dillon Nobody's Sweetheart (One Little Indian)

London-based Sandy Dillon moves resolutely away from the deconstructed blues of her 2000 album, East Overshoe, sidling closer to danceable pop. But don't expect Spice Girls cuteness on the uneasy Nobody's Sweetheart, on which Dillon seems strangely displaced. She injects a pop-like feel to her decidedly un-poplike songs, and adds subtle electronic burps and distortions that keep the guitars and beats -- when they are present -- steady but slightly unfocused. Everything purrs when the irony is toned down. There's no mistaking the emotion of "Feel the Way I Do" for anything other than abject heartbreak, for instance. The spare, oddly menacing seduction of "Let's Go for a Drive" hits the right balance of keyboard line, electronic swooshes and Dillon's childlike rasp of a voice. The descending blips punctuate the overall loneliness of the title track, and "Now You're Mine" is a teen anthem without the put-on pout. But mostly Dillon meanders between indie-rock sullenness and uninspired pop. (MARIE ELSIE ST. LEGER)

The Matches E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals (Epitaph)

For better or worse, the Matches join the long list of punk-pop bands that have made their cliched mark on today's music scene. While this quartet has all the requisite sing-along choruses, slashing guitar riffs, chunky bass lines and that "woe is me, love is hard" lyrical approach, songs like "Dog-Eared Page," "Chain Me Free" and "Eryn Smith" push them beyond easy dismissal. Add the autobiographical "More Than Local Boys," the ode to backseat mischief "The Restless" and the Lolita-inspired "Say 18" to the list of songs that will get stuck in your head after one listen. The band -- singer/guitarist Shawn Harris, guitarist Jon Devoto, bassist Justin San Souci and drummer Matt Whalen -- wear the influences of Green Day and Rancid proudly. At the same time, these songs are not weak imitations of a tired formula. Rather, the Matches rev it up to the next notch. (DAVID JOHN FARINELLA)

Jim Lauderdale Headed for the Hills (Dualtone)

Jim Lauderdale never seems to miss a chance to push the envelope musically -- an exceedingly unusual trait for someone who's worked his way into the inner sanctum of Music City, U.S.A. This time around, Lauderdale -- who's done discs with partners as varied as bluegrass godfather Ralph Stanley and jam band Donna the Buffalo -- hooks up with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter for a collection of Old West murder ballads and hard-scrabble love songs. The resultant brew, particularly darker offerings like "Crazy Peg and Darby Doyle," often evokes images of Nick Cave transported back to front Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. Lauderdale's limpid honky-tonk twang slips smoothly through the mandolin-and-fiddle latticework of songs like "Looking Elsewhere" and "Joanne," leaving a trail of tears in its dusty wake. And while Headed for the Hills is dotted with well-placed guest spots (most notably Emmylou Harris' vocal on the forlorn "High Timberline") it's most eye-opening when Lauderdale's winging it on his own, riding Hunter's crusty tales into the sunset as if they were palomino ponies. (DAVID SPRAGUE)

The Red Thread Tension Pins (Badman Recording Co.)

Sadcore, slo-core, mope rock, call it what you will. Apparently, there's an inexhaustible well from which minor chords are drawn and melancholic melodies are unearthed. The Red Thread's Jason Lakis has tapped in, as his ensemble draws the tremolo-ed guitar counterpoints of Low into the somnambulent country vibe of the U.K.'s Minibar without obviously copping either. Lakis steps things up from time to time. "New Watch" sashays with Brit-pop cheek and pedal steel only to point up just how much he sounds like -- no joke -- Steve Miller. "The Dinner Party" rolls past like an errant Meat Puppets tumbleweed, its descending surf instrumental riff cutting through the nervous shuffle. The upbeat tunes set up the acoustic numbers that are the real attraction. "Map of the Moon" (a mere minute and a half) wastes nothing, while "Clear Runs Clear" and the title track ends things with dramatic turbulence. (ROB O'CONNOR)

Delays Faded Seaside Glamour (Rough Trade)

The Delays -- the latest British import, this time from the unfashionable city of Southampton and led by brothers Greg and Aaron Gilbert -- don't have hyperbole leading their way, but they should. It's Greg's delicate, borderline effeminate, vocals (which veer towards the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser or the Sundays' Harriet Wheeler) that give the group's debut, Faded Seaside Glamour, a graceful tone. All about the harmonies, Faded Seaside Glamour recalls the happy vibes of the Hollies, the pop sensibility of the La's and the eternal summer of the Byrds. The good-tempered jangle of "Wanderlust," bolstered by a steel drum, is made for a sing-a-long moment. Soaring trills give flight to "Nearer Than Heaven," while the blissful chimes of "Long Time Coming" provide an irresistible bounce. They may have found their sound by harvesting material from the past, but with a sensitive touch, Delays have found their way to tasteful pop in their own right. (LILY MOAYERI)

We Ragazzi Wolves With Pretty Lips (Suicide Squeeze)

Looking and sounding like your average neighborhood three-piece No Wave revival band, Chicago's stealthy and stylish We Ragazzi are mod goth-rockers without the fright makeup. Tony Rolando's jagged guitar and garage-rocker vocals are jabbed by Colleen Burke's wacky keyboard sounds and Alianna Kalaba's mostly militaristic, totally Eighties drumbeat. But beyond the superficial boy/girl sweetness lies the valley of super-darkness in the songs' stories of crushed faith, disillusionment, obsession and loneliness. The band is in full-tilt-psycho mode on the bluesy lycanthropic mini-opera "Destination/Let's Be Wolves and Leave" and during the creeping noir noise of "I'm Gonna Be Fine" (with picaresque scenes of crimes in sweet home Chicago). And you don't even wanna know what the narrator suggests on "When Young Lovers Have No Place to Go." Call them the Norman Bates of their ilk: We Ragazzi don't waste time with horror movie shtick, they go straight for the kill. (DENISE SULLIVAN)

The Good Life Lovers Need Lawyers (Saddle Creek)

The original intent of the Good Life was to provide a vehicle for songs that Tim Kasher wrote that differed from those of his primary band, Cursive. With this EP, Kasher has perfected the art of writing happy songs about horrible feelings. Gone are the abundant keyboards and odd clicks and beeps heard on the Good Life's Debut, 2000's Novena on a Nocturn, replaced with warmer, more resounding acoustic guitars and a much more wholesome approach in the songwriting. The record stays under the covers with Kasher's brooding stories of emotional bloodletting, but allows a few brisk moments of hope here and there. "Friction!" could be the best song in his growing catalog; it's an Eighties-inspired rout of punk rock guitars and beautiful sweeping passages that might offer the suggestion, if even for a second, that life's not all that bad. (LANCE WALKER)

The Kicks Hello Hong Kong (TVT)

Previously known as Ashtray Babyhead, this Arkansas quartet now has a more befitting moniker for its urgent, contagious anthems like "Radar" and "MIR" (both of which have been salvaged from 2000's quickly and inexplicably deleted Radio). On a par with Weezer's 2001 comeback album, Hello Hong Kong reaches out and grabs you and rarely relents. While Scottie Cook's charming, nerd-rock pipes channel Brian Wilson on "Satellite," his bandmates play and pose with a force that would make the Foo Fighters proud. The Kicks do indeed kick ass. (JOHN D. LUERSSEN)