This is the most imaginative and urgent FNM have sounded in years--not to mention the most relevant. [Jun 2015, p.96]

It's a refreshing turn from a band who easily churned out more of the same to little complaint. [Jun 2011, p.109]

While this may sound like an Oprah Book Club selection, it's Sims entertaining flow and producer Lazerbeak's ability to switch between dancefloor packers ("Weight") and worldly drum-circle loops ("Future Shock") which takes Bad Time Zoo through the ceiling.

Motion City Soundtrack have made the best album of their career and easily one of the best albums of 2010 or any other year. [Feb 2010, p.91]

Whether it's moving, restrained numbers or jarring, chilling bursts of intensity, it's a hellish journey with heavenly execution. [Jul 2015, p.97]

Hold Time exists not simply as a vehicle for the rehash of rock 'n' roll blueprints, but as the highway on which to drive home his acute pop-rock songwriting. Mar 2009, p.107]

The allure is, as ever, the trio's use of the stereo field, and their ability to pump some breathing room into these otherwise sticky and humid tunes. [Dec 2015, p.106]

Gorky's emotional punch is as heavy as it ever was--despite the bells and whistles. [Jan 2002, p.84]

Occasionally he resembles a Pakistani Bryan Ferry. Is this a good thing? It is if you like Pakistani Bryan Ferrys. [#155, p.70]

Not only have Steel Train Shed the jam-band tag with their third, self-titled full-length, they've also finally lived up to their own musical potential. [Aug 2010, p.152]

Joyce Manor successfully break through the quintessential sound of both pop and punk to beautifully curate a 10-track album that is a little weird, unabashedly intimate and all too relatable. [Nov 2016, p.90]

His most accessible and easiest listen yet. [Apr 2016, p.98]

Unfortunately, many of the tunes wear out their welcome, overextending a single inspired idea. [Apr 2004, p.88]

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]

Arguably the best record of Leo's career. [Feb 2005, p.84]

Awash with sweet bass grooves, tasteful psychedelic guitar action and the occasional Indian tone, the album nonetheless maintains a mostly melancholy quality. [Nov 2008, p.162]

The honest emotion, varying dynamics and avoidance of cliche up the record's potency, leaving you with the sense that this is how metalcore should make you feel. [Apr 2014, p.89]

Ambitious but understated, intelligent but immediate, Pedestrian Verse is simultaneously heartbreaking and life affirming--and anything but pedestrian. [Mar 2013, p.90]

On One of Us Is the Killer, everybody is firing on all cylinders and DEP sound just as urgent as ever. [Jun 2013, p.94]

What We All Come To Need finds Pelican mastering their post-metal craft while indulging the ambitious curiousities that hinted at on 2007's "City Of Echoes."

If you're looking for a little warm blood pumping through the veins of your dance music, as opposed to the droning and repetitive beat sketches plaguing a lot of the genre, this is just about ideal. [May 2008, p.146]

With stunning soloing by guitarists Mike Spreitzer and Jeff Kendrick further enlivening the proceedings, this is really is state-of-the-art metal designed to destroy everything unfortunate enough to be in its path. [March 2011, p.93]

Frustrated longtime followers will love that the XX-chromosome half of the brother-sister duo plays it mostly straightforward on her totally charming, engagingly breezy solo debut. [Aug 2011, p.114]

Oddly, they sound more now in 2002 than they ever have. [Dec 2002, p.96]

A cohesive, 100-percent successful record. [Oct 2002, p.95]

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

Rarely have they sounded more comfortable with themselves. [Oct 2003, p.116]

Delivers huge hooks, metronomic riffs and driving drumbeats, all of which enhance the Kadanes' amplified whispers. [Aug 2004, p.108]

This Steve Albini-engineered masterpiece is destined to establish these 15-year vets as one of underground's strongest songwriting forces. [Aug 2002, p.83]

It's a tight little package of anthemic hook and heft that moves with even more purpose than 2012's Harmonicraft. [Mar 2015, p.94]

Lacing together 15 tracks this tight is nothing short of a rap lifetime accomplishment. [Aug 2012, p.84]

Oddfellows is a multifaceted and consistently fascinating album. [Feb 2013, p.94]

'I Call Out Your name won't exactly smash the state, but it's a perfect little pop song. So are opening track, 'When I Died' and 'Now We Can See', where the band's return to gleefully subversive social commentary can't undermine their most infectious pop hook. [May 2009, p.110]

While The Campire Headphase sounds slightly defalted compared to [earlier] discs, it stlll has many charms. [Jan 2006, p.144]

When the dark, somber and damn loud refrains of 'Ego Death' kick in, it sounds like these guys could completely take over indie rock. [Nov 2009, p.106]

Although a more varied use of the two drummers would be appreciated, the overall echoed effect with the cleaner production offers a complete, homogenized sound, which, when consumed en masse, makes for a killer album. [Jun 2009, p.105]

1372 Overton Park is a fresh progression for Lucero that still retains their unpretentious Southern Charm. [Nov 2009, p.110]

Even though Case already pushed the envelope creatively on her previous effort, "Fox Confessor Brings The Flood," she goes one step further, using several homemade instruments resembling a music box and snake charmer's flute. [Apr 2009, p.134]

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]

Too many tunes struggle to remind listeners of their catchiness. [Aug 2005, p.166]

The Big Deep is a very good album that is hard to pigeonhole. In a time when far too many bands are playing by the rules of one sub-sub-genre or another, true uniqueness is encouraging.

With Lions have always gone big, and with Holy Shit, they succeed in being anthemic without sounding overblown. It's a difficult balance to strike, but they've had the time to figure things out.

Generals replaces Fire's starched chamber-pop pretentions with airy vibrancy and eclecticism that continually surprises and entices. [Jul 2012, p.100]

Disarm the Descent sees the Massachusetts quintet reinvigorated, leaving 2009's Killswitch Engage in their wake. [May 2013, p.86]

A gorgeous and moving album. [Oct 2013, p.86]

The raw sound of Stomachaches is just further proof that it all arrived from someplace honest and deeply personal. [Sep 2014, p.103]

It's truly an incredible piece of work that excavates the very core of human existence. [Sep 2015, p.95]

As is the case whenever [Kurt] Wagner's velvet croon wraps itself around a night that ends so late it's already morning... there really isn't a critic in the world who can touch him. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2003, p.94]

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

Don't get too far ahead of yourself--a sing-along is virtually impossible since deciphering HEALTH's lyrics is quite a challenge. They may have mature a bit, but some things will never change. [Oct 2009, p.110]

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]

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]

Velociraptor! is an energetic, upbeat, gleeful pastiche of almost every form of English pop devised over the past four decades. If you're gonna be a dinosaur, might as well be a fast one.

While they're not all winners, tracks like the lonesome, devastating "Shiver and Shake" prove Adams remains as powerfully evocative a songwriter as ever. [Mar 2017, p.80]

The band are able to overcome the production errors through Gourley's elastic vocal counterpoint, bassist Zachary Scott Carothers' pocket-groping lines and licks so gooey they recall a time when Keith Richards could speak in complete sentences. [Aug 2009, p.110]

Unfortunately, everything is so finely polished on Alternative To Love that his brand of rock lacks any grit. [Apr 2005, p.124]

While Matssib certainly isn't breaking any new ground on his follow-up to 2008's "Shallow Grave," the songs reign supreme and his emotive tenor mixes perfectly with his worn-down acoustic guitar, all captured in perfect lo-fidelity. [May 2010, p.108]

A record bubbling with fresh sounds and creativity, one that proves Alias has not only not lost his touch--he' s improved upon it. [Oct 2008, p.162]

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

The emotional tension between his folksier-Damien Rice brogue and her crystal-clear lilt, especially on 'The Verb,' keeps the listener enamoured, even if the singers no longer are. [Dec 2009, p.117]

Strange Geometry is a comely piece of old-fashioned melancholy pop, but it can also quickly turn into sonic wallpaper if you have a wandering mind. [Dec 2005, p.202]

Autumn represents Pinback's strongest album to date. [Oct 2007, p.162]

Shape Shift With Me doesn’t offer a lot in the way of answers, but watching her fumble her way through the questions is a pleasure, regardless.

A collection of stylistically diverse tunes that is cohesive and refreshing. [Jul 2002, p.76]

The Stills succeed where other time-travelers fail by emphasizing substance over style. [Jan 2004, p.108]

A brilliantly sorrowful effort: for isolated immersion only. [Apr 2014, p.92]

With brief nods to Black Sabbath and slower Slayer, Sever rolls 40 years of metal and hard rock into a big joint and smokes it all. [Mar 2011, p.92]

With some new explorations entwined, Act IV exhibits all facets of the band's alluring brand (extensive instrumentation, orchestral theatrics and experimental whimsy) in impressive form.

The Black Parade is MCR's whole raison d'etre rolled up into one mega-decibel calling card. [Nov 2006, p.179]

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

The real enjoyment of any Girl Talk album stems from picking out the first hint of a song, mentally scanning your iTunes and figuring out what it is in time to fully enjoy it before it's gone. Or, you could also just stop thinking and enjoy all of it.

Sure, their label debut feels slightly more hooky and accessible in places. But Darker Handcraft is mostly the same humble, misanthropic band, playing relentlessly, vicious, rapid metallic hardcore with their requisite flashes of D-beat, grind and thrash influence. [Apr 2011, p.122]

Beat The Champ takes you on a walloping emotional journey that proves great songwriting can compliment any subject matter. [May 2015, p.98]

Chapter Two boasts more dance-music artists than the first volume did, which allows greater leeway for the DFA to build glitteringly gritty club epics that don't stop till you get enough. [Nov 2006, p.206]

Cinder proffers the majestic sweep of a nature documentary. [Nov 2005, p.208]

You appreciate his delightful little melodies and quirky rhythmic tics more because you have to strain to hear 'em. [Aug 2003, p.110]

A little too close to the mainstream for comfort. [Jan 2003, p.91]

Often reaches back to the unfettered rawness and earthy seduction of earlier albums like Dry. [Aug 2004, p.116]

Rickly pulls off rock-god histrionics and urbane cool, as the band shore him up with a melodic roar that should convince the world to finally stop caring about U2. [Oct 2015, p.97]

Life Without Sound is rife with memorable hooks and earworms--and the substance to make them meaningful. [Feb 2017, p.80]

They're still delivering more aural discovery and attitude than both their weary, uninspired colleagues and the legion of fumbling neophyte upstarts combined. [Jul 2009, p.130]

More power to those who can do it, but from this perspective, it's nearly impossible to enjoy Man Man's Six Demon Bag while sober. [Apr 2006, p.222]

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]

It's clever, literate and pretty, but also boring as hell if you don't flip off the lights, clamp on your headphones and concentrate. [May 2002, p.88]

Bemis successfully came out of the other side on In Defense Of The Genre, producing an opus that musicians more than twice his age could only hope to create. [Dec 2007, p.185]

Instead of building on their strengths, frontman Jaz Coleman & Co. have backslid into subdued sogginess of the band's mid-period. [Jan 2010, p.91]

There’s a lot to appreciate, whether you like screamo, face-punching hardcore, pop-punk, or some combination of all those sounds and more.

The band's desire to branch out from the pop-punk scene has served them well in working to develop their sound, and Tonight Alive have certainly made some strides. [Oct 2013, p.82]

So it is wuth British quintet Hot Chip, whose progression toward traditional songcraft has reached a satisfying plateau. [Mar 2010, p.94]

Studio wizards [Fred] Deakin and Nick Franglen conjure dreamy electronic vistas that teem with languorous grooves, lush ambience and euphoria-inducing melodies. [#153, p.82]

[It] feels more put-on than intimate, more tried than true. [Feb 2007, p.109]

Everything from the swirly, '90s guitars to the harmony-laced background vocals just scream a band gazing far beyond their genre trappings. [Jul 2014, p.102]

Stagnant Pools' combination of overdrive and understated make this a surprisingly alluring album. [Sep 2012, p.94]

Well paced and thoroughly engaging, the Braxton-less Battles have accomplished the seemingly impossible with Gloss Drop: They've actually gotten better. [Jul 2011, p.107]

Wires is the type of disc that takes you on a journey--an example of how brilliant instrumental music can be when done right. [Oct 2007, p.172]

One bedroom is vaguely European, warmly mechanical and just off-kilter enough to be consistently interesting. [Feb 2003, p.74]

It's an album without pretense or misstep. [May 2014, p.88]

The band's fifth studio album mostly keeps the BPMs brisk and retro-minded programming colorful. [Jul 2012, p.94]