It will likely be written that Up is R.E.M.'s most accessible effort to date. It has space enough to let anyone in, even if it's not so shiny and happy as some of its more recent forerunners. Those so inclined can dissect Stipe's lyrics and ponder his dissatisfaction with religion, his belief that spirituality is in here and not out there. The man almost begs such analysis now, putting his words out front for the first time -- no more burying his head in the sand. Never has R.E.M. made an album that begs to be listened to over and over. It's a reassuring release, proof that every now and then, a band doesn't grow old. It just grows up.

-- Robert Wilonsky

PJ Harvey
Is This Desire?
Island

Two-time Grammy nominee Polly Harvey is among a handful of artists who are consistently able to reinvent and redefine their sound without losing sight of themselves. A proverbial bluesman (sic) trapped in a female art-rocker's body, Harvey has been a groovy riot girl, a Steve Albini-produced post-grunge anomaly, a low-fi home fiddler and a gender-bending chanteuse. On Desire, her sixth release, Harvey plays the part of a dark, meditative songwriter who seems to have just now realized that she has more than one chance to tell her story. The result is a less hurried and more pensive approach than on past albums, a groovy, backwoods swamp opera that showcases Harvey's continued artistic growth.

Granted, this isn't exactly a surprising direction for Harvey: increased atmospherics and shorter, less direct compositions. But the way in which she twists her postmodern experiments into songs keeps things unconventional. Again she teams up with producer Flood (Smashing Pumpkins, Depeche Mode), with whom she crafted 1995's To Bring You My Love. And she gets vocal assistance from dark princes Nick Cave and Tricky. But it's Harvey who provides the salient details, allowing the instrumentation to set the mood (most not-ably the mucky low-end of the bass guitar) while her amazing lungs pinpoint its direction.

But not all of Desire's pleasures are derived from Harvey's voice alone. When "My Perfect Leah," with its sparse, distorted synthetic rhythm and mechanical squeals, segues into the chiming guitars, live drums and gurgling bass of "A Perfect Day Elise," it's the sonic equivalent of opening the shades on a sunny day. Brilliant.

-- David Simutis

Better Than Ezra
How Does Your Garden Grow
Elektra

It's been more than four years since Better Than Ezra's major-label debut, Deluxe, sold more than a million copies and made the New Orleans band 1994's somewhat more convincing version of this year's Matchbox 20. Chart-topping alterna-popsters with a penchant for emotional, hooky songs, BTE was striking out into a less well-charted territory back then, slugging it out with Oasis, Pearl Jam and Hootie to find some kind of middle ground between pure pop, grunge and frat-rock, and for the most part was succeeding. Deluxe's 1996 follow-up, Friction, Baby, was essentially more of the same, albeit with edgier production.

While 1998 finds most of their former chart-topping brethren still stuck in Clinton's less lively first term, Better Than Ezra mixes it up on How Does Your Garden Grow, gracefully avoiding the third-album jinx. This time out, the band recorded with producer Malcolm Burn (Iggy Pop, Patti Smith) in their own Fudge Studios. Burn's influence can be heard in BTE's freshly layered, vaguely electronic sound, but it's the songwriting that makes this album by far the group's most adventurous work.

Working with a supportive producer, and in a studio without a clock ticking off big dollars, BTE simply jammed away with the tape running, switched instruments a la Talking Heads and ended up with an album that veers all over the place stylistically as it stays true to the band's melodic rock roots. The first single, "One More Mur-der," was assembled from an hour-and-a-half workout that found the band indulging in a haunting piano intro, funky bass lines and Kevin Griffin's pensive, Bono-esque vocals. By contrast, "At the Stars" could be from any of the band's previous albums -- minus the tasteful strings. That might sound like good news for fans looking for more of the same. But for those looking for the band to grow up, Garden is a gaggle of eccentric odds and ends waiting to be unearthed.

-- Seth Hurwitz

John Mellencamp
John Mellencamp
Columbia

One of the few mentionables in a long list of '80s holdovers, John Mellencamp has somehow managed to increase potency with age. At times, it seemed like the only thing keeping this headstrong Indiana anomaly going (aside from fried foods and nicotine, of course) was his sheer will to stay relevant. Bluntly put, Mellencamp has never been a natural. As late as 1983's Uh-Huh, his heartland hunk rock registered closer to John Cafferty than Bruce Springsteen in narrative depth. Still, that stubborn nature disguised as insolence back in his "Cougar" days has served him even better in later years.