Sweaty and thick, convincingly urgent and highly sexual. [Jul 2006, p.210]

Monochrome is marred by Hamilton's vocals. [Sep 2006, p.218]

Quite an impressive start. [Aug 2006, p.206]

Each of the dozen tracks on his debut is a fully realized vignette that makes a particular locale startlingly vivid. [Sep 2006, p.230]

Revelations is Muse's best work yet primarily because of the fluid balance it keeps between excess and restraint. [Aug 2006, p.220]

If anything, the quality of Stevens' B-sides further validates the folk-hero legacy he's begun. [Sep 2006, p.212]

Somewhat mirthless and at times downright android-sexy, The Eraser is what many Radiohead fans have come to expect from Yorke in recent years. [Sep 2006, p.228]

Unsurprisingly, he's at his best when he's melding heartfelt lyrics with otherworldly noise. [Sep 2006, p.230]

This restless, rootless disc suggests Cex hasn't settled on his future destination just yet. [Aug 2006, p.222]

Dusk And Summer is proof that Carrabba's ability to drop hugely emotive choruses into three-minute pop songs has become its own form of classic American songwriting. [Aug 2006, p.199]

It's hard enough to decipher his demented verses without constant interference from squelchy synth-bass farts. [Aug 2006, p.222]

Sometimes it's pretty unpleasant, but it's the rawness that makes it so genuine. [May 2007, p.162]

That rare double album with enough life in it to deserve that much real estate. [Aug 2006, p.208]

The sound of growing up has rarely sounded so self-assured. [Aug 2006, p.218]

The 10 drone-y songs on Brightblack Morning Light sound more like a soundtrack than a traditional album. [Aug 2006, p.206]

What really makes News And Tributes impressive, despite lacking the immediacy of its predecessor, is that it captures the Futureheads comfortable in their own skin. [Aug 2006, p.218]

Transcend[s] the alt-country tag. [Aug 2006, p.206]

Hot Chip strip down their influences, reworking scores of sound into new, distinctly original machinations. [Aug 2006, p.222]

Pundits say there's too much hype for Def Junkies, but with records like this, there's good reason for it. [Aug 2006, p.224]

Finds [Chasny] in peak form. [Aug 2006, p.224]

Rather Ripped is the sound of a band no longer setting their distortion pedals on stun, and, as a result, the best songs are as low-key as a small town on Sunday morning. [Aug 2006, p.218]

Did we say "hard to resist?" Make that "impossible." [Aug 2006, p.224]

Much more songwriter-based than [his] early discs. [Sep 2006, p.230]

For the most part, the band's jagged guitars and bludgeoning backbeats play by the punk rulebook. [Jul 2006, p.186]

Shines with a matured level of song composition. [Aug 2006, p.208]

While there are some nice moments of orchestral pop here, that's hardly enough to carry an entire album. [Aug 2006, p.208]

The whole glorious mess creates a dramatic Wagnerian opera that's (barely) held together by Congleton's yelping. [Aug 2006, p.206]

There's hardly a stinker in the bunch. [Jul 2006, p.206]

Walker has gone as far into the atmosphere as one can travel while still being earthbound. [Jul 2006, p.210]

Whisper encompasses everything a rock band should be in 2006. [Jul 2006, p.202]

Yet another rock-solid album. [Aug 2006, p.204]

A Hundred Miles Off is nearly 100-percent on. [Jul 2006, p.204]

Ageless and deeply affecting. [Jul 2006, p.210]

The real pleasure here is hearing what Jack White can do when he's away from the confines of the White Stripes. [Jul 2006, p.202]

What none of these songs has... is a hook that sticks with you. [Jul 2006, p.204]

Dulli is in peak form here. [Jul 2006, p.194]

Though parts of the album veer a bit too close to the synthetic hippie pabulum you hear upon entering the Nature Store, there's enough dark charm on Espers II to make it essential listeing for those of us who prefer our CDs caked with actual resin. [Jul 2006, p.208]

The band's anti-everything style can get annoying if you don't have the patience for heavy doses of idiosyncrasy in your rock. [Jul 2006, p.204]

The focus on time and its ravages may seem to place this in 35-and-over territory, but Sexsmith's songs are timeless. [Mar 2007, p.136]

Depending on your worldview, Art Brut are either the most whimsical folks in Britrock or the most sardonic bastards you've ever worshiped via air guitar. [Jul 2006, p.186]

Bewitching from front to back. [Jul 2006, p.192]

Cat finds the band still evoking the Flaming Lips and Neil Young during a journey filled with dashed hopes and the desire to get away. [Jun 2006, p.188]

When Last Secrets works, it's awesome... but thanks in part to sequencing, it drags toward the end. [Jun 2006, p.180]

Fascinating as it is, Matmos' complex creative process would be for naught if it didn't generate music you want to hear more than once. [Jul 2006, p.208]

The infusion of new blood, thankfully, seems to have put the Stills' post-punk posturing and emotional distance to bed for good. [Jul 2006, p.194]

For all the offbeat touches... Dawson's wide-eyed hope and wonder are the album's most affecting qualities. [Jun 2006, p.180]

One of the few albums that deserves its Pitchfork-generated hype. [Jul 2006, p.204]

How We Operate shuffles between exuberance and wistfulness like a drunk stumbling through a crowded bar--and yet, oddly enough, it's also onoe of the more coherent albums in Gomez's career. [Jul 2006, p.192]

As with everything in Tool's oeuvre, 10,000 Days packs enough beauty, heartache and triumph that it will be dissected, studied and envied by younger bands for years to come. [Jul 2006, p.196]

City is a rare thing: a disc that reconciles a band's need for discovery with the familiar characteristics that define them. [Jun 2006, p.171]

Riotously catchy pop songs that fall somewhere between boisterous pub anthems and artsy bursts of haphazard punk. [Jun 2006, p.190]

[A] thrilling trip to the sold-out stadiums of inner space. [Jun 2006, p.190]

Skinner's delivery is as appealing as ever. [Jun 2006, p.192]

His low-riding G-Funk has morphed into a faster, catchier brand of soul that's often a dead ringer for early Prince. [Jun 2006, p.192]

It's a testament to Starlight Mints' kitchen-sink approach that each listen yields varied results. [Jun 2006, p.180]

Taking Back Sunday should be commended, not for just choosing not to rehash their older work, but for truly trying to branch out artistically--and succeeding most of the time. [May 2006, p.155]

An intriguing album. [Jun 2006, p.178]

The Dolls' music... is as gripping as ever. [Jun 2006, p.188]

Epic and memorable. [Jun 2006, p.188]

Despite the oddball showpieces, the Furnaces have refocused the lens on their homemade-pop kaleidoscope, and the result is a unversally resonant album that's not just more joyful than it's companion; it's also more essential. [Jul 2006, p.192]

The songs are mature but not boring; nicely layered but not overproduced; well executed but not sterile. [May 2006, p.164]

Curses is all jutting hips, attitudinal riffs and massive kick drums that demand fists be pumped in the air. [Jun 2006, p.186]

A gorgeous set of spectral, ambitious and carefully crafted songs. [Jun 2006, p.188]

Hughes and his crew blow through the kind of drums 'n' acoustic booty jams that would make R.L. Burnside do ankle-grabs in his grave. [Jun 2006, p.188]

Elan Vital is easily the band's most adventurous disc to date. [Jun 2006, p.178]

Another instrumental masterpiece. [Jun 2006, p.192]

They... seem to be getting better at distilling their myriad of influences into dreamy, quietly elusive four-minute pop songs. [Jun 2006, p.178]

At times beautiful, at times shambling. [Jun 2006, p.194]

It has a hard time hitting the kind of peaks required to make a singer-songwriter disc truly memorable. [Jun 2006, p.180]

In simplest terms, this is emotional catharsis put to pop music. And it sounds fucking great. [Jun 2006, p.174]

Ever wonder what an all-star band featuring Burt Bacharach, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd would sound like stoned on the final reel of 2001: A Space Odyssey? [May 2006, p.172]

A romantic, self-referential collection of songs that, even though we've heard this inimitable voice singing the same old tune for years, manages to avoid staleness. [May 2006, p.174]

Stellar. [May 2006, p.176]

They do possess the skills to enhance everything they tweak. [May 2006, p.178]

Amid the highlife guitars and percussion that give Sea a delightful Afro-pop sheen... it's impossible to ignore the creeping conventionalism of the disc's best tracks. [Jun 2006, p.178]

The band sound bigger and and more self-assured than ever. [Jun 2006, p.190]

Has a curiously timeless sense of eclecticism. [May 2006, p.166]

At once loud and elegant, Karmacode raises Lacuna Coil's heaviness tenfold without sacrificing a drop of the band's mystical ambience. [May 2006, p.168]

Show Your Bones is the sort of second album that, rather than being a sophomore slump, makes you anxiously wonder what albums three, four and five will sound like. [May 2006, p.176]

Where [Interpol] often seem weighed down by their own miserable aura, Editors sound brightest in teh depths of their blackened pop gems. [Apr 2006, p.204]

The disc may be too weird for people who like their music categorically cut and dried, but adventurous listeners will want to bang Liars' Drum often. [May 2006, p.178]

While no Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, [it] will still placate fans excited to see where Tweedy takes Wilco next. [May 2006, p.174]

Maturity beat[s] out playfulness. [May 2006, p.162]

Their newfound nods to pop music... overshadow the expected balls-out rockers. [Apr 2006, p.220]

Infectiously noisy. [May 2006, p.166]

Everything All The Time is almost pitifully lacking in soul, and it suffers from a few real snoozers, to boot. [May 2006, p.162]

Essex Green do a fine job of staying on retro's good side. [May 2006, p.162]

More fun than most of the original NYC no-wave bands to which the Seconds pay tribute. [May 2006, p.178]

Coxon rocks it in a class of '77 Brit-punk style that'll make record-collecting fetishists in search of Adverts and Chelsea demos soil themselves. [Dec 2006, p.198]

Should you find yourself craving the fleeting rush of a dark, well-crafted pop song, Cuts Across The Land does wonders for, well, the spirit. [May 2006, p.176]

A more ambitious, punchier take on that electro-pop retro fetishizing at which Brits excel. [Mar 2006, p.138]

A compelling spin. [May 2006, p.164]

Their best record in years. [Apr 2006, p.218]

While Mogwai once seemed too ambitious for their own good, Mr. Beast perfectly distills the essence of the band's raison d'etre. [Apr 2006, p.214]

A match-up like this one needs the right balance between angel and devil, and... Campbell's fragile alto is just no match for Lanegan. [May 2006, p.162]

An astonishing collection... that should leave Case's peers eating a cloud of Nashville dust. [Apr 2006, p.204]

A bona-fide motherfucker of a stoner jam. [May 2006, p.170]

Hella fun. [May 2006, p.166]