That's not to say that the transition is seamless or without difficulty. There are obviously more demands on time, emotion and energy. There is less space for creativity and fewer hours for practice. And there are even more basic questions to deal with. Like, how do you tour with a 1-year-old in tow? Does the venue have a highchair? And who takes care of the baby while you're onstage? To get a sense of all that is involved, we talked with four artists about the choices they made.

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And yet anyone not predisposed to despise U2 will agree that the band's latest is an elegant reawakening. It's shimmering and mystical, as if they have found a reason to believe in music as a healing force unlike any other.

But three recordings by the '80s icons, despite their considerable merits, don't reflect the year in music. Of the tens of thousands of songs released to the buying public or their (circle one) thieving/borrowing Napster-using counterparts, the only song that crossed divides of culture, generation, income and ethnicity was "Who Let the Dogs Out" by Bahama's Baha Men. Groan if you must, but that was the extent of America's shared musical experience.

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Alongside Oasis, Elastica, Pulp and Blur, Radiohead were one of five candidates to head up the so-called British Invasion of the 1990s, and if Blur's Damon Albarn isn't choking on his press cuttings right now, I for one will be surprised. Like Blur, Radiohead took one look at "success" and decided to rewrite the rule book.

Think about it. Elastica? Six years to follow up their debut album, and they come back with ... more of the same. Pulp? The inspiration for a thousand sad bedroom soliloquies have been silent for over two years. Oasis? Their implosion was as ugly as it was predictable. Only Blur and Radiohead have lasted the course; and their tactics, like U2 before them, consisted of following up a brace of smash-hit records with a barrage of dirty, spaced-out noise.

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Movie soundtracks can be so annoying. Too often they sound like ill-conceived mix tapes, the songs chosen with lottery randomness. Of course, it's a bit difficult to avoid the clunky combinations. The songs are meant to add to the experience of watching various movie scenes, so it's not surprising that the typical soundtrack sounds not like a coherent, organic product, but a bunched-together afterthought. Movies with music as a central theme ("High Fidelity," "Diner," "American Graffiti") and a few other rare exceptions seem to avoid the typical soundtrack pitfalls. Even the much-lauded "Pulp Fiction" album suffered from movie dialogue that broke the flow of music.

Produced by Randall Poster, Joe Henry and Tony Margherita, the soundtrack to the new film "Jesus' Son" comes tantalizingly close to being an example of how to choose songs that work individually for the purposes of the movie and together as a thematic whole.

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The lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Seattle indie-rock trio Modest Mouse, Brock -- with bassist Eric Judy and drummer Jeremiah Green -- has just released "The Moon & Antarctica," the group's first foray into major-label territory after several singles and two full lengths for Up records.

Much has been made recently of the dark side of popular music. Goth cartoon Marilyn Manson and the reprehensibly misogynistic Eminem have raised hackles -- and, not surprisingly, their profiles -- with lyric content that is as calculated to shock as it is to rake in the bucks. But the darkness professed, or rather explored, on "The Moon & Antarctica" is of a very different order. It is, as the title suggests, a visit to desolate regions, both geographic and spiritual, where a post-apocalyptic Mad Max landscape serves as a metaphor for emotional barrenness.

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You're forgiven if you've not yet heard of Gray. "White Ladder," his fourth album, was released just last week in the United States by ATO (According to Our) Records. ATO is owned by Dave Matthews and Gray is the first artist to be featured on the fledgling label. Matthews undoubtedly hopes that Gray will have as much success in the States as he has had with the Celts. Unfortunately for the 30-year-old Gray, that's not likely unless he somehow convinces four teenage boys to join his band and leap into the fresh-faced feeding frenzy that is American pop music these days.

There are other reasons why "White Ladder" may find difficulty attracting an audience, mass or otherwise. It's simply not that compelling an album, musically or lyrically. Gray's supporters, and there are many, like to compare him to Bob Dylan or Van Morrison. And although it's probably unfair to compare any artist to either of those icons, none of the material on Gray's album comes close to approaching their wisdom, intensity or creativity. More often, he sounds like the hangover from some ill-conceived, mid-'70s singer-songwriter cocktail.

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For the decade-old Pumpkins, this recording marks in many ways a return to its beginnings. Jimmy Chamberlin, who was kicked out in 1995 for drug problems, returns to give the band the forceful drumming it had not had since his departure. The album also features original bassist D'Arcy Wretzky, who was recently replaced by Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur. Since leaving the band, Wretzky has been arrested and pleaded guilty to drug possession.

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Danger and darkness ooze from the 29-year-old Tacoma, Wash., resident's rather brilliant second full-length CD, "Furnace Room Lullaby." The first hint of the CD's eerier contents is a disturbing cover photograph of Case lying glassy-eyed on a cement floor. With a voice that alternates between celestial sweetness and the grittiness of a truck-stop floor, Case's unorthodox, superbly original blend lands somewhere in the badlands between Patsy Cline and Patti Smith or Dolly Parton and the New York Dolls. Trouble is a Case constant. One moment she sounds as if she could steamroll right over you ("Mood to Burn Bridges"), the next she's ready to whisper confessions that you should probably never hear ("No Need to Cry").

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While not nearly as satisfying -- or coherent -- as Modest Mouse's two full-length releases, "The Lonesome Crowded West" and "This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About," this new collection does offer a fairly well-cobbled portrait of the band's first five years. It also provides glimmers of the types of songs ("Never Ending Math Equation," "All Night Diner") that Epic undoubtedly hopes will push the group beyond the edges of its indie-only audience.

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The songs on House's third release, "til you've seen mine" (Catamount), aren't necessarily social issue songs, but they do grapple with the deeper, darker questions of the soul -- questions all the more necessary when most everyone seems to prefer unexamined bliss.

House is a misfit, a philosopher vagabond searching for at least a scrap of an answer. A poet who became a singer, he is a middle-aged Nashville outsider whose songs are far too raw and complicated to be folk songs and too wordy to be country. Many of his songs express a desire for problems to be resolved, a purpose to be revealed, or, at the very least, for something to matter. More often than not, though, the only satisfaction lies in being discontent. Or depressed. Or drunk. Think of it as existential angst dressed down as country music.

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"Field Studies" captures every shade of Quasi, from disquieting sadness to comic relief, all with spare instrumentation and florid melodies. The funny stuff includes "Fable With No Moral," on which Coomes, who sounds a bit like a cross between Matthew Sweet and Freedy Johnston, offers to sell his soul. He gets no takers until Satan rides by in a Land Rover: "He saw what I was doing and said, 'That's not yours to sell/ You'll get your check tomorrow and I'll see your ass in Hell.'"

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But G. Love doesn't know that yet. Every syllable he utters on "Philadelphonic," his fourth release, is a desperate effort to convince you that he is the original Soul Brother No. 1, that he's street, that he's keeping it real. The result is 54 minutes of cringe-inducing embarrassment, with Dutton almost Amos-'n'-Andying his attempts to sound black.

On a first album, such misguided cultural leapfrogging is forgivable; on a second it becomes tiresome; by the third, it's inexcusable. On "Philadelphonic," Dutton finds no black music style beyond his scope. He flits about between bogus quiet storm ballads such as "Relax," and a mishmash of blues, D.C. go-go and old-school rap. On "Friday Night (Hundred Dollar Bill)" he steals his delivery directly from the Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand." There's also a rather dubious attempt at a Jamaican patois on "Honor and Harmony." Even as a black singer, it turns out, Dutton has an identity problem.

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"Don't take it personally Joe, we're just telling everyone that the band doesn't want to answer these anymore."

It's easy to understand why. Praise for Sleater-Kinney from fans and critics alike has been surfeit, but so too has the tendency to lump them into the decidedly unimaginative "women who rock" category -- as if Sleater-Kinney's most important attribute was simply being an all-female band.

With the just released "The Hot Rock" on the small, fervently independent Kill Rock Stars label, along with "Dig Me Out" (1997) and "Call the Doctor," (1996), the Olympia, Wash., trio has firmly established itself as one of the most important American groups to emerge in the last five years.

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He vomits words, sets them to music and somehow thinks this makes him an inspired songwriter.

Much of what you need to know about the post-punk neo-folksinger can be summed up in a verse from "One Thing Real," a song off of "50 Eggs," his recently released CD:

I'm up here singing these songs every night
Sometimes I wanna just want to make 'em all up on the spot
Maybe they wouldn't rhyme too good and they might not make sense
But then at least I wouldn't be repeating myself

As Henry Miller understood, stream of consciousness works best if your thoughts are uncluttered by clichis or obviousness. And for god's sake, even Miller had an editor. Convinced of his cleverness and facile wit, Bern plunges ahead, turning phrases with the grace of a garden slug, waxing eloquent on the trinity of Jesus, Martin Luther King and Monica Seles.

Berns' lyrics alone are more damning than any critical analysis of them could be. "Oh Sister" -- a song that proves that Bern listened to Don McLean's "American Pie" far too many times -- is meant as a loving tribute to his elder sibling. Indeed, his sister must be remarkable to put up with lines such as:

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Even in the wake of the doomed big boat, this film about a love affair between a horse-taming loner (Redford) and a high-powered magazine editor (Kristin Scott Thomas) is expected to do well. And because of that, some deserving musicians may finally get their due from a much wider audience than they are accustomed to.

Whatever its merits as a movie, "The Horse Whisperer's" remarkable soundtrack is one of the most honest and moving collections of Western and country music to ever accompany a film. Loveliness and loneliness conspire on song after song to create a palpable sense of the desperate romantic West, one that is neither sentimental nor contrived, but wrought from the unrelenting pangs of wanting, desire and hope against wide-open hope.

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Rather than fall back in the face of rejection, Lord seemed to thrive on it. Soon she was busking anywhere she damn well pleased, and on her 1995 Kill Rock Stars EP, she pulled the rug out from under the smuggest indie insiders with her deliciously wry song "His Indie World." Lines like "Just give me my Joni, my Nick, Neil and Bob/You can keep your Tsunami, your Slant 6 and Smog" made it clear that it was rock's elder statesmen, not indie upstarts, who she looked to for inspiration.

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Cervenkova (formerly Cervenka) is best known as singer and songwriter (with ex-husband John Doe) of X, arguably the most important American punk band. Last summer, after the latest X reconfiguration fell apart, Cervenkova enlisted her former bandmate, drummer D.J. Bonebrake, and Rancid bassist Matt Freeman to form Auntie Christ. On "Life Could Be A Dream," the band's Lookout Records debut produced by Sally Browder, the trio revisits the straight-ahead, speed-punk landscape that X staked out so brilliantly on their first two albums, "Los Angeles" (1980) and "Wild Gift" (1981).

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Normally, releasing a gimmick-based CD is a bad idea; listeners quickly tire of whatever novelty is involved and the only remaining consideration is whether the songs are any good. Neil Young's use of a computerized voice synthesizer on "Trans," for example, is interesting for the first 10 minutes, but only the most hopeless Neil devotee would point to that album as a masterpiece. There's no telling what sort of lemon the 40-year-old Vaughn would have released had he favored Corsairs or AMC Pacers. But the Rambler is a reliable, dependable, close-to-the-ground, straight-ahead machine with just a hint of rebelliousness hidden in its boxy frame -- not unlike Vaughn himself, who, on the catchy opening track, "Seven Days Without Love (makes one weak)," consistently delivers melodic, poppy, guitar-driven songs with a raised-eyebrow wit.

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The 25 songs which follow "Robben Island Ambiance" on "Mandela" also make a statement about the history of South Africa. Cleverly subtitled "The Essential Music of South Africa," this collection -- from the Island Films' documentary scheduled to be released in March -- points not only to the important music the country has produced, but to the vital role that music played in sustaining and transforming its people. In a nation where music and dance are an integral part of the culture, it comes as no surprise that the crossroads of politics and song should prove such fertile ground for poignant and powerful storytelling.

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