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

The ceaselessly blistering tone does get overbearing. [Nov 2004, p.145]

Happily, [their] dogged consistency works in their favor. [Jul 2005, p.117]

Tempering his usually piqued voice and strumming with uncharacteristic restraint, Darnielle marinates in shadowy aloneness.

On the album’s best moments, he pours his hopeless longing into sweaty, inebriated celebrations of love’s boundless optimism.

Barat lacks Doherty's flash of unhinged genius, but his grasp of rock's basics is far firmer. [Sep 2006, p.139]

Zeitgeist’s orgy of avalanche rhythms, cascading riffs and sky-licking guitar is as grandiose as ever (the solo on "Tarantula" sounds like a nuke hitting a Guitar Center), but the bombast is softened as Corgan reaches out for shame-sharing community.

A sound that is almost vintage Bowie.... Even so, many of these 12 perfectly harmless songs plod where instead they should spring. [#8, p.115]

Their songiest record in more than a decade. [Jun 2006, p.145]

Filling the shoes of Jay-Z and R. Kelly--collaborators on two albums--is no easy feat, but thanks to slick production and stay-in-your-head melodies, the duo nearly rises to the challenge.

The best moments are [Jenner's] least intelligible. [Oct 2006, p.141]

He never quite rises to this lofty occasion, and without anything to prove other than that he can come back whenever he pleases, he reverts to gloating. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.81]

In updating the duo's dirty old sound, Ball makes the arrangements clunky, too clean and dangerously close to the blandness Almond bemoans. [#10, p.126]

Borrowing liberally and transparently from Bright Eyes, the Cure and mid-1960s chamber pop, the band sublimates familiar expressions of indie gloom with string flourishes and twink­ling piano lines, giving Olenius both a shoulder to cry on and, in soaring songs like 'Tonight I Have to Leave It,' a source of joy.

If Borrell's originality ever equals his confidence, Razorlight might be as good as he thinks they are. [Nov 2004, p.141]

The trilogy signals a deep strangeness in this tour through his psyche. Fortunately, it has a fairly shredding soundtrack.

Fireflies' best songs are varied-tempo singalongs--this isn't hardcore but anthemic country. [Oct 2005, p.138]

His guitar reinvigorates age-old lines on neat and tidy arrangements, but he's even busier exploring the limited expressive range of his singing voice. [May 2004, p.119]

Harder, denser, uglier. [#15, p.128]

Her wispily aspirational singing tugs hardest on 'Fall,' cowritten with Natasha Bedingfield, where escapism and realism do battle and her pretty pony of love rides a beautiful rainbow that may or may not lead to the glue factory of hobbled dreams. Stay tuned.

Merritt's lyrics are typically playful, and Claudia Gonson coos them with dreamy detachment. [#9, p.146]

50's signature wit is notably absent, so the fate of G-Unit hinges largely on his posse. [Jan 2004, p.104]

The anti-sentimentality gets a bit relentless over 18 songs. [Aug 2006, p.118]

It improves on the debut, slightly. [#10, p.114]

His bandmates... elevate Boyd's self-indulgent nonsense with rich noodling and searing flashes of metal. [Mar 2004, p.120]

While Banks's wicked wordplay is impressive, his one-liners get him only so far. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.134]

13 tracks of Disney-channel-ready pop, buffed and Pro-Tooled almost beyond recognition--and it's not half bad. [Apr 2007, p.111]

All too earnest. [May 2007, p.105]

Finally, an album that bridges the gaping chasm between hipsters and Rennaisance Faires. [Jun 2005, p.112]

The dark spaciousness that boosted BRMC's uneven 2001 debut is replaced with garage-rock fist pumpers, which are all catchy but cramped. [Sep 2003, p.119]

It's always peculiar, and often a mess; it's also occasionally brilliant. [Jun 2006, p.142]

The softening of his hardcore tendencies makes for a fruitful middle ground between his threats to foes and his pleas to Allah.

Tweekend lacks the immediacy of Vegas, but it works better the further it strays from Ecstasy-fueled breakbeats and squawking electro-hooks. Unfortunately, it doesn't stray too far. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

When he's not being sour, Folds' flair for melody and simple, economical arrangements can create wonderful moments. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

It's better written than her previous CDs... But this new old style is far less suited to her talents. [Jun 2007, p.110]

Combines guitar-driven, slightly Weezer-esque songs with the odd moment of touching musical beauty. [#17, p.133]

If his subject matter is getting stranger, however, his semiacoustic music is comfortingly familiar and expert. [#11, p.135]

There's a surefootedness and subtlety here to shame many elders. [Mar 2005, p.139]

For [O'Connor] to record a full reggae set, covering each song exactly like the original, rivals Gus Van Sant's odd shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho. [Oct 2005, p.141]

At worst, Matsuzaki's delviery can make this manic style-juggling sound irritating where it might otherwise be captivating. [Mar 2007, p.134]

Overall, Dig Out Your Soul is a dark, heavy, chart-snubbing record that acts Oasis’s age (main songwriter Noel Gallagher is 42) and is their first in eons that doesn’t seem desperate to please. Oasis have their devil back.

Trying to express her actual feelings, instead of inhabiting a fantasy, she leaves us looking for an authenticity and vulnerability that isn’t in her skill set.

Faithfull could use more stories to work with: she's a better singer of narratives than exotic phrases. [Mar 2005, p.140]

Lyrically, Nashville... is about as insightful as a Hee Haw rerun. But... his warm, reedy voice gives comfort where his words can't. [Apr 2005, p.125]

The group's unreconstructed P-funk would sound tired were it not so irresistibly spry. [May 2006, p.105]

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]

Too bad, then, the album drifts off into the ambient sighs and murmurs of their recent movie-soundtrack work, minus the diverting visuals.

It's all clever and overstuffed with ideas, guaranteed to bug dance-music purists just as much as it annoys their parents. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Sometimes the sumptuousness feels a little excessive, like an ice-cream headache. But most of these love songs are uncommon, illuminating and elevating, just like the real thing at its best.

This is a transitional album: Mould sprinting away from his past. [Apr/May 2002, p.116]

A slice of British street life with strut, and guitars. [Apr 2006, p.112]

Works both as satire and actual make-out fare. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.113]

It's not as good as 1988's South of Heaven, but there's enough speaker-shredding guitar noise to make up for any vocal deficiencies. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.128]

Essentially Californication 2, a reprise of their last album. [#9, p.142]

Showcases the melodramatic but never overstated croon of a showman who, in another era, might've been a Las Vegas legend. [#14, p.135]

They’re crotch-pumping arena pimps and introverted minimalists.

A record that encourages global consciousness shouldn't sound so isolated and chilly. [Aug 2005, p.110]

At times you wish Branch and Harp would dig deeper. [Jun 2006, p.149]

Finding new targets for their thrashing contempt, Slipknot make ugliness sound just a little bit pretty.

The samey, smothering beats make it inaccessible to anyone without a pacifier in their mouth. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.111]

Farrar revives Neil Young's habit of presenting the same songs in different styles. [#17, p.134]

Odditorium buries its subtle hooks deep with endless, shape-shifting jams. [Oct 2005, p.136]

will.i.am... does push [Big] beyond her Sly Stone safety zone. [Apr 2007, p.111]

The basic Slipknot sound has improved. [#27, p.147]

Not for all--or even most--tastes, the result is abrasive and weirdly haunting. [Nov 2005, p.135]

A whip-smart, 13-song satire on FM-radio machismo and lyrical cliches. [Nov 2006, p.140]

One of Vega's best. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.114]

As self-indulgent side projects go, this could be a whole lot worse. [Apr 2004, p.139]

What makes this more than just efficient dance-floor fodder are the guest vocalists. [#9, p.158]

Unlike the rousing punk-, Kinks- and new-wave-colored mosaic of Parklife, this one sticks to sepia-toned, dub-nodding abstractions. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.86]

Not surprisingly, their debut tends toward brooding, bluesy rock—a worthy soundtrack for those dark, whiskey-soaked nights of the soul and the regret-filled mornings after.

There’s a happy messiness throughout: At heart more jazz improviser than control freak, Hebden sounds happiest when things are just about to slip through his fingers.

14 Shades is nominally heavier than the group's two previous albums, though the band tempers its harsher instincts to let Lewis ruminate unmolested. [Aug 2003, p.132]

Many songs start out as radio-friendly rockets before shooting off into a disorienting psychedelic haze. [May 2007, p.106]

A band of arty studio veterans give him a new set of choppers, and he knows what to do with them. [Jun 2005, p.116]

Much of the CD feels as though it could have been made anytime in the last 15 years.

Not everything is as heart-stopping as the velvety, elegiac "Bitter Apple," but there's enough quality to suggest that Depeche Mode could use a few Dave Gahan songs. [#17, p.135]

Maladroit feels like a bloodless quest to write the perfect song. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.100]

Julian Raymond's production gives the good-timey guitar-and-bajo sound a sharp kick in the butt. [Sep 2008, p.78]

Expert, tuneful and profoundly inoffensive. [Dec 2004, p.134]

A pretty wild ride, but it's not always clear where they're headed. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.112]

Dignified and confident but slightly starved for ideas. [Aug 2003, p.125]

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.

His songwriting isn't a strength, and his ballads often drown in their own inanity. [Apr 2004, p.132]

Solid, sometimes brilliant. [#11, p.146]

ven the weaker material is nothing worse than pleasant, but it outweighs and obscures the better-than-pleasant; the middle of the album dissolves into an anonymously sweet haze.

Get past Roth’s pinched-sinus tone and penchant for overpronounced internal rhyme and he is a different animal [than Eminem].

JSBX still crackle like firecrackers soaked in kerosene. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.114]

McGrath sounds both sexier and more gentle, sensitive and more irresponsible. [#17, p.143]

While yet another geography gimmick song ("The Mesopotamians") might try the patience of anyone older than 8, goofiness also inspires them. [August 2007, p.118]

Full of hard beats and soft sells. [#11, p.136]

This is feel-good stuff, the sound of a rejuvenating artistic vacation. [#12, p.136]

This is the hip-hop equivalent of an all-stops pulled, Oscar-ready performance: mushily sentimental, self-righteously indignant and constantly in your face. [Nov 2004, p.138]

Glasvegas are often compared to the Jesus and Mary Chain, another great Scottish band that worshiped Phil Spector and the whammy pedal, but Mary Chain’s appeal was a chilly remoteness. Glasvegas make it cool to care.

Brilliantly restrained throughout, ESG's sparse, mechanical funk remains unique and vital. [#12, p.142]

The good news is that practically nothing has changed. That's also the bad news. [#10, p.133]

It's in the quieter moments that Sparta truly shine. [#9, p.154]

The male affinity is so intense, it approaches homoeroticism. [#27, p.138]