The guitars are processed into high-tech oblivion, and every song is eight minutes long when it should be five. [Aug 2003, p.100]

The A-side sports some significant drive and heft. [Jul 2003, p.122]

All beautifully realized, the kind of album critics say they love and then file far, far away. [Jul 2003, p.113]

Educational and motivational. [Jul 2003, p.126]

It's still early to see if they'll transcend the hype, but Dying In Stereo bodes well by keeping it real over simple old-school beats. [Aug 2003, p.108]

How many times can rock return in one year? [Jul 2003, p.122]

His brilliant mash-up of dancehall, techno, booty bass and stomping glam is a guaranteed floor-filler, whether you're laughing or not. [Jun 2003, p.109]

Ex Models make the cleanest and most non-metal racket you're likely to find. [Jul 2003, p.113]

Alternately maddening and enlightening. [Jun 2003, p.110]

Painfully pretentious, plodding, self-indulgent drivel. [Jun 2003, p.97]

Another genre-bending album full of scavenged sounds. [July 2003, p.113]

Since when is pairing Jewel's poetry outtakes with modern-rock riffs groundbreaking? [Aug 2003, p.102]

There are enough sparkly pop moments here to suggest Rooney could become, like the best Hollywood exports, a guilty pleasure. [Aug 2003, p.105]

Packs more moods and minx-like mischief than many albums twice its length. [Jul 2003, p.114]

There's plenty of killer talent to be found here. [Jul 2003, p.108]

After four very similar albums, they seem to be in danger of painting themselves into a corner. [Jun 2003, p.93]

His honky-tonk piano ballads are a little less haunted and more memorable. [June 2003, p.104]

Lound insanity is sexy; quiet insanity is sexier. [Sep 2003, p.118]

The army of noise behind his bitterness is at once massive and impressive. [Jul 2003, p.117]

If vocal distortion is to indie rock what the vocoder is to commercial pop, then Pleasure Forever's Alter is Sub Pop's answer to Cher's "Believe." [Jun 2003, p.97]

Boasts the accessibility and ambition of a true star. [Jul 2003, p.124]

Easy Listening has enough great riffs for Big Star and Cheap Trick to share, with leftovers to spare. [Jun 2003, p.103]

The closest punk has come to the dread of Robert Johnson, the mischief of Bessie Smith or the joy of Mahalia Jackson. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Consists entirely of samples yet sounds as organic as a 1960 Impulse! LP, largely because Hebden broadens his instrumental palette, fattens his beats and even gets cinematic. [June 2003, p.109]

An impressive, albeit highly schizophrenic, release that takes multiple listens to even begin to comprehend. [June 2003, p.98]

The kind of album that functions as both background BBQ beat and windows-down sing-along. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Original, brilliant and so avant-garde that less than one percent of the population will be able to sit through it. [Jun 2003, p.110]

A pop pin cushion that's incurably catchy, and as prickly as it is pretty. [Jun 2003, p.97]

A menacingly sweet and sweetly menacing set of electro pop. [June 2003, p.109]

Frankly, we think this is better than One Bedroom. [Jun 2003, p.98]

In the indie universe, rarely do groups making such live spectacles have albums to back up the show--but this charming, smart, lush pop is a notable exception. [June 2003, p.97]

A tame but rather satisfying affair. [Aug 2003, p.105]

On Song In The Air, they rock harder than ever. [Jun 2003, p.96]

While her songwriting is strong enough, it's Hayes' love of smeared guitar noise and other wordless joys of progressive production that are really on her side for this album. [June 2003, p.96]

Shine is simultaneously gentle and forceful, letting its dusky melodies and subtle surface tension shape its relatively less inventive subject matter. [June 2003, p.104]

For every great line on the album, there are three throaway verses. [June 2003, p.96]

All Around doesn't take you anywhere, but it does make where you are a little bit brighter. [Aug 2003, p.105]

There's nothing bad here, but also nothing new. [June 2003, p.103]

Has the abrupt, spasmodic intensity of an epileptic seizure. [June 2003, p.94]

A collection of delicate love songs with a back-porch feel, but the electronic warbles add enough texture for a new generation of stoners to space out on. [June 2003, p.96]

It's the beautifully austere, grown-up pop album we've been waiting years for Mac McCaughan to record. [Jun 2003, p.97]

Unflinchingly heavy, this midtempo metal won't disappoint believers. [June 2003, p.101]

Their most challenging album to date. [June 2003, p.98]

There hasn't been a song-oriented psychedelic album that's had this sort of life-affirming, full-bodied roar since Mercury Rev's 1993 classic, Boces. [June 2003, p.110]

What you hear on Thickfreakness is no less faithful than what old black guys on porches on the Delta have churned out for the last hundred years. [June 2003, p.105]

These five songs show the band branching off into some surprising directions. [Jun 2003, p.103]

Fans will enjoy his latest installment of heartbreak set to piano. [Mar 2003, p.92]

A crank-it-up-Friday-night blowout that's pure exuberance. [Apr 2003, p.74]

Longwave aren't so much groundbreakers as they are purveyors of haunting, earnest pop. [Apr 2003, p.80]

[Jurado] may be our generation's Neil Young. [Apr 2003, p.78]

Finally makes good on Malkmus' claims of musical maturity. [Apr 2003, p.80]

A smart, slashing set of B-plus-level pop-punk. [Apr 2003, p.78]

It's roots music that hums and rattles, hearing the dissonant sound of America singing and finding beauty in the collision of opposites. [Apr 2003, p.73]

This should be in everyone's stereo this spring, as it may go down in the history books as the Pet Sounds for the aggressive-rock world. [Apr 2003, p.82]

The quintet's Molotov mixture of suburb surrealism and sonic extremity is the perfect scrub for everything you've been subjected to in culture and daily life. [Apr 2003, p.73]

M. Ward's creations have the fragility of drawings made in the dust that's settled on a china cabinet. [Apr 2003, p.87]

While their occasional reliance on wide-eyed sloppiness isn't endearing, when the band clean up, they have some irresistible pop nuggest in them. [Apr 2003, p.80]

Their music is just too smart. [June 2003, p.96]

Much of Dust is nearly indistinguishable from the British trip hop Muggs' tripped-out productions helped inspire. [Apr 2003, p.82]

Sing The Sorrow soars with the kind of melodies hit singles are made of, yet it somehow persists with AFI's esoteric darkness. [Apr 2003, p.69]

A rock record that sounds a lot like Sebadoh with an aspiring guitar hero. [Mar 2003, p.94]

Feels a bit like Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home--a record where bravery is found with volume. [Apr 2003, p.85]

Asstoria radiates a childlike glee and naivete you'll wish you still had. [Apr 2003, p.70]

The sound is a little too consistent, as every spastic outburst starts to sound like the last midway through the album. [Apr 2003, p.86]

An enthralling emotional powerhouse propped up by fantastic post-punk that rips your head off and then gently sews it back in place. [Apr 2003, p.74]

The Coral blow through genres like Top 40 radio does flavors of the week. [Apr 2003, p.74]

A hint of what Pet Shop Boys would sound like with guitars. [Apr 2003, p.72]

A solid album, but a must-have only for Tweedy completists. [Apr 2003, p.82]

Sprout is doing a fine job of keeping his legacy untarnished. [Apr 2003, p.73]

Points to a genius that should overtake the world of IDM like a funky tsunami. [Jul 2002, p.81]

Giraffe hums with the kind of lush, emotive pop New Order were making circa Power, Corruption and Lies. [Mar 2003, p.94]

Amazing. [Mar 2003, p.92]

Hi-Fi are catchier this time around, continuing to trip through their songs with the joy of a teenager who just learned the chord change from "Smells Like Teen Spirit." [Apr 2003, p.72]

Comatose-inducing. [Mar 2003, p.94]

Shimmeringly beautiful and richly unpredictable. [Mar 2003, p.92]

The project is pretty perfect, really.... Give Up ultimately becomes a beautiful lesson in how to dance life's pain away. [Mar 2003, p.100]

Recalls the band's earliest days. [Apr 2003, p.74]

This is Calexico at their finest. [March 2003, p.86]

It's category-defying: raw and cooked, muscular and cerebral, shifting gears in seconds flat. [Apr 2003, p.70]

Musically, it doesn't seem like Chan has gone anywhere. [March 2003, p.88]

Packs enough bite to nourish a Third World country. [Mar 2003, p.96]

It's a magnificent accomplishment, the sound of one long night spent waiting for someone, but never being certain if you want them to arrive. [Apr 2003, p.87]

Far from essential, but... a good jazz starting point for the unitiated. [Mar 2003, p.90]

Finds the fearless foursome cruising right along with the same carefree glee that made us pay attention in the first place. [March 2003, p.100]

White it's Oye's endearing melancholy that holds Unrest together, the Human League synth sounds are what give the disc its quietly indulgent charm. [Feb 2003, p.72]

This journey to Nocturama's not to be missed. [March 2003, p.88]

On Hearts, riffs exist in cutting words and soulful guitar lines, not glittery axe solos; and every intricately timed punch to the throat is mastery. [Feb 2003, p.64]

Unfortunately, as with many Verve albums, Bar's dreamy tempos and strung-out riffs, while fragile and beautiful, start to fade into a middling mess of sameness around the middle of the disc. [March 2003, p.98]

The problem: Semi-masked in the Healers, he's short an originality chromosone. [Feb 2003, p.70]

It's hardly the pop album the liner notes indicate, but it's sweetly spellbinding, slouching toward another corner of the underground. [Mar 2003, p.92]

Nears indie-pop perfection. [Feb 2003, p.70]

The result is aural perfection. [Feb 2003, p.68]

Sinister and atmospheric, the band have raised the intensity since their last release. [March 2003, p.86]

Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" loosens up into a glittery anthem, while the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" should have stayed a karaoke favorite. [March 2003, p.94]

A welcome return to form in which [Corgan] plays rock music not out of obligation, but out of celebration. [March 2003, p.83]

While at times a bit plodding, Sunshine's dizzying musical excursions become more exquisite with each listen. [Dec 2002, p.74]

Sounds like a good Wallflowers record. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Sole's willingness to bust lyrical caps in the asses of the left as well as the right make him a fairly revolutionary revolutionary--one whose musical journal keeping, for all its excesses, is worth deciphering. [Apr 2003, p.85]