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

It's full of the old-fashioned care and craft hip-hop has largely forgotten. [May 2007, p.160]

It's only the countrified twang of the Promise Ring's "Forget Me"--which should be the most emo song here--that doesn't really work. Everything else is delightful and, naturally, delightfully sad. [Jan 2015, p.94]

A Ways Away casts a spell you won't want to break. [Jun 2009, p.102]

Lazaretto finds him simultaneously unbridled as a player, yet meticulous as both mad scientist and personal diarist.

Their darkest, most impenetrable record yet--the aural approximation of staring down a mine shaft at midnight. [Jul 2002, p.75]

These are some of the most challenging songs in the band's catalog, yet they're more approachable than ever before. [Aug 2012, p.88]

The sequencing on Lost Songs is top-loaded with furious rockers that gradually dial down velocity and acceleration toward atmospheres familiar, anthemic and delicate as Conrad Keely's ragged-from-shouting vocal style continues to command attention. [Nov 2012, p.86]

The core of any Low album, though, is the unearthly beauty of Sparhawk and his wife Mimi Parker's vocal harmonies, which, after 20 years, have lost none of their emotion-stirring power. [Apr 2013, p.90]

Twenty One Pilots ramped up everything, from new influences to the number of producers (four) to the metric ton of uncertainties and fears multiplying in frontman/songwriter Tyler Joseph’s cranium. And it’s wonderful.

Their less-than-radio friendly name will likely keep them just outside of the mainstream, but what they've accomplished on this monolith of an LP is going to be impossible to ignore during this last half of 2013.

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

The result is their most haunted and harrowing album to date. [May 2011, p.98]

Segall's laconic vocals and playing style ties everything together and maintains a blunted brilliance throughout. [Sep 2013, p.92]

A grab bag of great ideas, instead of a truly great album. [Sep 2005, p.170]

He's created the "good, good pop record" he threatened with "Arm's Way," wisely getting out of his own way and letting the simple but undeniable pleasures of the Motownish title track, the synth-happy '80s pastiche 'Tender Torture' and his latest Brian Wilson homage, 'On Foreigner,' with its massed Beach Boys harmonies, shine through.

Manchester Orchestra are no strangers to reinvention, but this is a bold step. It’s a grower of a sound: folky yet enormous, like Fleet Foxes at their most widescreen, and with no immediate hooks (“The Gold” is close, though). When they do emerge, they’re not easy.

It's not brilliant, and some tracks are just dumb. [Jun 2007, p.156]

While the tracks are theoretically similar to the atmospheric vistas of other instrumental units, Jesu's melancholy--accidental or implied--offers a truly unique experience that deserves much more than background-listening status. [Dec 2010, p.114]

Though the length of the songs can prove to be daunting, the album is arguably one of Isis' finest moments. [Jun 2009, p.105]

Here's the thing about originality... You don't really need it when you play this proficiently. [Dec 2006, p.188]

Think Doug Martsch fronting the Shins and playing the sweetest Carl Newman jams ever. [Sep 2004, p.124]

Aesop Rock proves he's also a viable beatsmaker--his spacey, highly textured production is easily the best in the Felt series so far. Slug's rhymes are better than anything on the last few Atmosphere joints and MURS is on point, as always. [Dec 2009, p.113]

The New York quartet have outdone it with Lenses Alien. [Oct 2011, p.106]

The duo are branching out more than usual, finding themselves tougher, smarter and more tender all at once. [Feb 2017, p.80]

It's less mopey than Bright Eyes, less pompous than Sufjan Stevens and better than almost everything else. [Feb 2009, p.103]

Brill Bruisers leaves a lasting impression in the best possible way. [Sep 2014, p.108]

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