3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

It's not easy to admit that one of your favorite artists has made a bad album. Initially your hopes are so high, they will buoy you up for awhile. When you start to sink, you try to stay afloat by telling yourself that the album is one of those that takes time to reveal its charms, that in a few months you'll love it. But when that doesn't happen, you realize that you've been deep-sixed. This was my experience with Weezer's last album, 2002's Maladroit . After releasing two stone-cold classics and one solid power-pop gem maybe the law of averages doomed the band to a let-down. Maladroit was unfocused and uninspired, musically and lyrically. Thankfully,on Make Believe everything feels fresh again. There are several factors that might have contributed to this, but I've boiled it down to two main reasons: 1) It was produced by Rick Rubin. Can I just take a couple of moments to marvel at this guy's output? Consider that he has produced great work from LL Co...

W hat would all the Billy Joel fans do without Ben Folds? Aside from wearing out our copies of 52nd Street and The Stranger , we'd be completely bereft of piano-based pop storytelling. Songs For Silverman is the official follow-up to 2001's Roc kin' The Suburbs . In the 4 year interim Folds has kept busy with live album, a series of EPs, and collaborations (William Shatner, The Bens). Those projects were mildly satisfying, but I'm guessing this is what most of us were waiting for. Folds' musical act has always been one of balancing the silly and the sublime. Even in the Ben Folds Five days straightforward ballads coexisted with irony-and-expletive-laden outbursts. I've always been a fan of the former more than the latter, and thankfully, SFS is ballad-heavy. You could call it maturity, or you could just call it keeping the tone consistent. Without exception, the 11 songs are built with the trademark Folds sound, lots of percussive piano, great melodies, and ...