This is slick, snarky pop with flashes of brilliance. [#12, p.151]

Funnier, angrier, weirder. [Mar 2004, p.123]

If their ultraviolet jams can sometimes get lost in the gaze, here they're balanced with more crisp songcraft. [Aug 2006, p.107]

Sure, it's commercial, but Rosey's expert melding of dance beats and hippie dippiness adds up to a debut slick with beatnik cool. [#8, p.122]

A gently involving and moving album, Yoshimi could be the negative image of Radiohead's Kid A: the sound of a rock band using electronica to make music that's inclusive and warm instead of icy and aloof. [#8, p.114]

Kelly sounds exhilaratingly unhinged by passion. It drives him into territory no one else is able--or willing--to navigate. [Aug 2005]

Texturally, it's a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun-dappled 2005 The Beekeeper. [Jun 2007, p.105]

Sounds like the work of musicians who've spent just half an hour apart, not 20-odd years. [#11, p.143]

Submit to these tongue-in-cheek disco-rock readymades and it's as if you're hearing irony and an ass-kicking backbeat for the very first time. [Mar 2006, p.112]

Aside from disposable ballads and the sappy "Perfect Man," Survivor blasts haters, child molesters, and "been-around-the-block-females," keeping the blood up as they whup ass. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

It's sharp and in your face, like a scimitar. [Oct 2007, p.110]

Mastodon present a prog-metal concept that would make Stephen Hawking bang his head.

Even as they cherry-pick from seemingly incongruous sources (deep house, hard rock, smooth R&B), there’s a newfound decisiveness, a move toward heavier beats, meatier grooves and warmer sentiments.

At 72 minutes, the gorgeous gloom of It Still Moves lasts a bit longer than it has to--but it offers a host of tarnished gems along the way. [Sep 2003, p.126]

The exact opposite of background music, A Grand Don’t Come for Free demands the same attention as a movie, and that’s why some people will hate it while others will find it uniquely riveting.

The emotional peaks are so sharp, the wordplay so juicy, that all excesses are redeemed.

He's screaming louder than ever on his solo CD, but what's notable is how all the titanium riffs and loud-soft-loud dynamics now feel personalized, a little cozier and multihued than on SOAD record. [Nov 2007, p.157]

The Cameras mix sex and spirituality over a gorgeous bed of organs, harps and 12-part harmonies. [May 2003, p.120]

He has his own personality: not a gangsta or a player but a diligent pragmatist. [Apr 2004, p.124]

A riot of black humor, sex mania and mean-eyed, chaotic rock.

It's done two good things for the Stills: sharpened their songwriting and returned them after a dull Album No. 2. to the crystalline guitar minimalism of their debut. [Sep 2008, p.84]

Sounds like a greatest hits set. [Dec 2005, p.156]

Offers a twisted melancholy David Lynch would applaud. [May 2003, p.120]

The lyrics [are] darker than your average soul/R&B debut. [#7, p.114]

What raises them above the hordes of young revivalists is their way with a cranky bon mot. [Jul 2005, p.121]

Let It Be... Naked offers an experience its predecessor never could. [Dec 2003, p.154]

It's 10 tightly wrapped wads of black bubblegum, not a politicized sci-fi fantasia like "year Zero" or a two-hour drift into instrumnetal blip 'n' grind like this spring's "Ghosts I-IV." [July 2008, p.74]

Miller ups the melodic ante, staking his claim to becoming his generation's answer to Nick Lowe or Marshall Crenshaw. [#10, p.123]

Joyous and limber. [Mar 2007, p.136]

The music makes her giddiness contagious. [#16, p.114]

His sonorous, self-assured drawl adds an air of unflustered authority to his alpha brags, and he pours it into unexpected patterns. [Jun 2006, p.147]

Gleams with emotion. [Apr 2005, p.113]

Pop has made more nuanced albums than this in recent years, but Skull Ring is about reclaiming the franchise as unselfconsciously as is possible. [Oct 2003, p.125]

It doesn't feel like soapboxing; it feels like life. [Mar 2005, p.142]

Not as revelatory as Deserter's Songs, but a worthy (and lovely) companion piece. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.125]

Clones feels at points like a candy store that carries only one brand--it's a damn good one, though. [#18, p.130]

At their most thrilling, they fuse the spiky cool of Elastica with the witty self-consciousness of LCD Soundsystem. [Sep 2005, p.131]

The struggles to get over energize [Slug] far more than the perks of minor celebrity. [Nov 2005, p.131]

Amnesiac isn't a difficult album -- or, rather, it's not a mere experiment but a successful one... Nobody has ever made a record that sounds like this before. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.109]

Angry Mob delivers 13 consistently catchy tracks that bounce unrelentingly. [Apr 2007, p.115]

On Cry, Hill ripens, showing a boldness few artists ever manage. [#12, p.145]

An accessible art-punk collection. [Apr/May 2002, p.112]

The vibe is all infectious, feverish build-up. [Nov 2006, p.155]

Calla's tension-filled deliberations are similar to the calibrated push-and-pull of SIgur Ros, but not nearly as pristine. [#14, p.133]

On their lush major-label debut, the haunting Peter Gabriel-esque yawlps of singer Tunde Adebimpbe are punctuated by singer-guitarist Kyp Malone, whose raspy falsetto provides a sense of deadpan panic. [Jul 2006, p.103]

Amid the fidgety guitars and twitchy rhythms are enough hair-raising hooks to reach far beyond the counters of independent record stores. [Sep 2003, p.128]

[A] near-flawless suite of deep, dark and powerfully sexy tracks. [Apr 2006, p.112]

If their debut was a night of chasing skirts and drinking Jim Beam from the bottle, Heartbreak is the bitter, worn-out morning after. [Mar 2005, p.138]

He sticks defiantly to formula, hustling a string of synth-heavy, syncopated club jams. [#14, p.134]

Ikara Colt have clambered up the food chain by choosing the short, sharp shock of mid-'80s Sonic Youth as the template for their entire being. [#12, p.143]

Fundamental ingeniously explores political chicanery through imaginative set pieces about private relationships. [Aug 2006, p.113]

Since his 2005 debut, T-Pain has seen his Auto-Tuned swagger jacked by everyone from Kanye to Lil Wayne, but he has kept his sound fresh with a bottomless bag of hooks and a grainy rasp that the computers can’t buff away.

Point is the sound of a post-everything pop auteur rediscovering his attention span. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.111]

His best album since Vauxhall & I. [#27, p.140]

The tone of these literate tunes remains as light as Chesney's singing of them stays soulful. [Mar 2005, p.136]

The tracks are catchy, meaty and modern. [Sep 2007, p.131]

Lively and loose, cut with collaborators including her talented Scottish boyfriend Johnathan Rice, spooky folkie M. Ward and actress-singer Zooey Deschanel, the 11 songs (many of which she has performed live for years) encompass Southern-gothic folk, Appalachian blues stomps and 'The Next Messiah,' an eight-minute, Who-style rock mini-opera.

Somehow the emotions bleed through, raw as hell. [#17, p.132]

Longtime devotees may miss Morrissey's Smiths-era vocal histrionics, but his supple croon has matured into a thing of beauty. [May 2006, p.103]

Tighter and freakier than her debut. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Dear Heather is top Cohen. [Nov 2004, p.131]

The songs are weirder and darker than their gentle melodies indicate. [Nov 2005, p.141]

Movement and change remain his inspiration. [Oct 2007, p.107]

Veteran producer Phil Ramone helps Lynne emphasize the loneliness of 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' and linger in the sensual transgressions of 'Breakfast In Bed' until this drastically rearranged but delicately rendered tribute feels like a candid self-portrait painted in watercolors and tears. [Apr 2008, p.81]

Some of the brightest three-part harmony singing since Crosby, Stills & Nash first gathered around a mic 30-plus years ago. [#17, p.144]

With a thick strain of the DJ humor found in the music of De La Soul and Daft Punk, Kinky know no borders, slapping Mexican norteno with techno until it sounds like neither. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]

Her reach is remarkable. [Aug 2003, p.120]

The result is a mess but--thanks to Bemis’s passion, humor and knack for inserting multiple hooks into a single song--an exhilarating one.

The biggest draw is the Iggy-Jagger sexual charisma of 22-year-old singer Julian Casablancas, whose self-possessed cool is astonishing. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

It sounds so damn joyous. [Nov 2005, p.134]

They're so straightforward, you can forget how crafty, even sly, Smash Mouth can get. [Sep 2003, p.129]

It's not so much what Zevon says as how he says it: with an air of ragged, nothing-to-lose spontaneity. [Sep 2003, p.133]

Murdoch's gift for loopy, tender, unshakeable hymns, stomps and meditations is untouchable. [Nov 2003, p.109]

Lost in Space... pushes her in a new direction. [#9, p.152]

Hypnotize has a little bit of everything: protest, pretension, comedy, brute force, delicacy, compassion, crassness, fury. [Dec 2005, p.143]

What elevates this power trio above any number of punk revivalists... are precision and craft. [Apr 2007, p.115]

Their final album is no solemn headstone. The languid beats are hazy with heat-distortion organs and porny electric guitars; the spirit is carefree.

Streetwise, self-aware and clever. [Aug 2003, p.124]

The momentous band [on the 1980-81 disc] stretches out and jams, both celebrating and escaping the band's trademark anxiety. [Sep 2004, p.158]

Subduing the bright tinge of her country-flavored roots rock, Essence's acoustic musings mix Delta blues with Nick Drake-style nocturnal intimacy, while Williams's voice limits itself to a hushed drawl. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.102]

Beginning with "Further On (Up The Road)," Springsteen finds his footing and rides out the album on a stirring high note. [#9, p.140]

It's an "important" record... But, more crucially, it's an enduringly entrancing listen. [Apr 2006, p.123]

When the Teens youthfully chime in behind sheepish disclosures, it's like they’re arguing that a baby seat in the tour van doesn’t have to slow down the ride. And quite often, they prove it too.

Production by Bjork’s longtime collaborator Valgeir Sigurosson paradoxically plays up the transparency of Brun’s music, floating ghostly string arrangements and vocal harmonies nearby without ever making her sound less alone, or less mournfully serene.

As Zwan create a louder and less obviously pop eclat than the Pumpkins, they also turn more minimal. Their first record has one theme: the electric guitar. [#14, p.140]

Their propulsive intensity busts down garage doors, stumbling only with the wrongheaded ersatz cocktail ballad. [#8, p.117]

The Thermals are the rarest of punk bands: a three-chord, three-member outfit whose clamorous drive actually resolves into a riveting, accessible worldview. [#27, p.146]

Vespertine is her most intensely private and intimate-sounding work, a journey through an interior world that is quietly ecstatic, erotic and playful.

Grand in scope, majestic in sweep and only 57 percent pretentious. [#27, p.143]

Lanegan has finally produced his long-threatened masterpiece. [Oct 2004, p.125]

Chao’s jovial, chatty, Spanish-English-French crooning helps the ADD sensibility flow into something that feels like a happy incantation rather than a protester’s harangue against George Bush.

An album that continues their mission of yanking bluegrass into the modern era. [#9, p.149]

Crow's subtle, stirring vocal style exhibits the same resilient innocence that makes Meg Ryan a sympathetic screen star. [Apr/May 2002, p.115]

Retains electronica's futuristic rhythm-science and weird textures while still kicking out the jams. [May 2005, p.121]

Introducing some very welcome rock rhythms to his blend of folk and fingerpicked Delta blues, Ward’s disarmingly sweet fourth album squeezes big themes into modest but bewitching tunes.

It is very good.

Sounds like a band back on track. [#8, p.120]

With Encore, Eminem rediscovers his sense of play and lets it run naked and screaming across the stage. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.100]