Unless you've just fallen off a bong, the endless whimsy lacks meat. [Apr/May 2002, p.118]

The songs aren't strong enough to hold the disparate influences together. [#13, p.91]

The quartet fills out the album by executing almost eactly the same formula [as the first track] four more times... and the dramatic shock wears off quickly. [Jan 2004, p.103]

Striding purposefully forward on vaguely cinematic fanfares and catchy soul-queen loops, Murs reveals more than you want to know about his sex life. [May 2004, p.130]

The album seems resigned, defeated, passive -- like an hour-long sigh. [#17, p.130]

Without much international color or guest flourish. [Nov 2003, p.122]

The mood is unsettling, exhausted and energetic at the same time. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Utterly entrancing. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.104]

It may not hold the attention of anyone who's been out of diapers more than five years. [#8, p.124]

Pay too much attention to these songs, and they dissolve into sweetly harmonized meaninglessness. [Apr 2004, p.130]

Despite Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga's adventurousness, it's highest points end up being the most conventional. [August 2007, p.112]

Sensitivity in excess. [#11, p.142]

Staggers under the unbearable preciousness of donkey-voiced singer Colin Meloy. [Sep 2003, p.122]

Out Of Season's usefulness as ambience almost trumps its self-importance and paucity of standout material. [Dec 2003, p.136]

His Who-tastic riffs remain belligerent and plentiful, but Pollard sounds grimmer, as if the former grade-school teacher suddenly realizes that touring in a van past age 40 isn't as much fun as he expected. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.111]

There are solid songs here... but the spliced-on attempts at gritty authenticity make every note on this record sound test-marketed. [#18, p.121]

[Brock is] adept at wringing out emotion while straddling sentimentality, but too often here, gauche studio affectations make his sap sound plain cheap. [Apr 2004, p.134]

The Coxon-less Blur seem half a band, adrift in a loopy, moody head cold. [May 2003, p.115]

The stiff, weirdly disengaged, single-note guitar solos and Kidman’s monochromatic death screams don’t make you want to keep dragging yourself through the record.

Problem is, Blood Mountain's hail of convoluted riffs and abrupt time-signature changes never settles into one of Leviathan's mammoth grooves. [Oct 2006, p.137]

His ornate, piano-driven arrangements cite a wide variety of musical sources, from indie pop to Gershwin to trip-hop and back again. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.116]

Her lustrous music can err on the side of sleepy, because she prefers atmospherics and tricky harmonies to blaring hooks. [Apr/May 2002, p.116]

So diffuse and mechanical, it sounds as if it were recorded by rebellious microchips in a German laboratory. [#13, p.103]

Case's own melodies aren't nearly as indelible as the country classics she's emulating. [#10, p.115]

In the tradition of thorny newbie bands that get scarily too big (Nirvana, Radiohead, Weezer), they’ve followed their funny, catchy debut with a less funny, less catchy second record to prove how little they trust the good times their music obviously inspires.

The results range from stupid to sexy to irresistably stupid. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.103]

Sadly, distracting overembellishments dog her sixth album. [#14, p.133]

They've all but abandoned 4/4 grooves, discarded bass as an inefficient distraction and fractured their beats into splintery beatlets that detonate in flurries. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]