There's a complancency about this record. [June 2008, p.73]

Their weaponry is wrought from comedy gold.

The band occasionally lapse into easy irony and cheap spite. [Mar 2006, p.110]

Forth is that rare comeback record--unafraid to show its age, and better for it. [Sep 2008, p.85]

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

It's Costello at his most emotionally direct. [Oct 2004, p.118]

Her voice--half dark, lazy molasses, half bourbon with a silky finish--rings with equal parts defiance and vulnerability. [May 2004, p.128]

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

It's a perfect set for folks who think Oasis are too humble, that Pink Floyd lacked ambition. TSOOL lay down Stonehenge riffs and cosmic mumbo jumbo so earnestly and expertly that nearly every outfit they raid from the classic-rock closet flatters them.

The guitar rock here is loud, taut, buoyant--but stands little chance of getting inside your head.

There's rambling, digital fiddling and self-indulgent sprawl here, but a sense of purpose, too, even as her lips move on autopilot. [#20, p.114]

It’s an immersive, art-school-bred aesthetic that, three or four times on the band’s debut album, makes for some very good music, too.

It's sweet. And dull. And, OK, excruciting. [July 2008, p.74]

A spirited, gutsy evolution from the formalist new wave of Metric's first album. [Nov 2005, p.138]

Her story-songs about crushes gone wrong and nerdy social skills are like late-night IMs set to coffeehouse guitars. [Mar 2008, p.100]

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

This formula wears thin over the 15 cuts here. [#27, p.137]

The record's initial thrill comes from the confidence with which the Distillers and producer Gil Norton revive rock as a demolishing force. [Nov 2003, p.116]

Blink-182 have found a new, angrier way to never leave junior high. [Dec 2003, p.135]

Keith has a gift for wrapping angry thoughts in man-of-the-people plain-speak, with a Lynyrd Skynyrd-meet-Jimmy Buffett friendliness. But underneath, there's often a set of mean cliches. [Dec 2003, p.138]

3D's sheer creative vibrancy is itself a testament to Lopes's live-wire charisma. [#12, p.155]

This successor improves, sonically (recording in a studio with a producer will do that) and in its energy and sharp writing.

An hour's worth of the good stuff: churning, yearning synth-rock. [Jun 2005, p.114]

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.

The West Coast stalwart's ninth album doesn't entirely make good on 'Seduction''s wacky promise. [Apr 2008, p.82]

The gruff, authoritative Chuck and irrepressible second-banana-turned-VH1-ladykilla Flavor Flav know that uplifting kids corroded by gangsta rap means offering something emotionally fierce and reasonably current.

Creamy and precise, every coo and arpeggio blows through your ear buds like the ruffle of crisp bills.

Creeper retain their melodic ingenuity and slowly ascending anthems, but their vision is scattered -- the band can't decide on a single melody per song, so they ramble from one promising yet half-formed tune to the next. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

These songs are pleasant, stripped-down and also a little limp. [Oct 2003, p.124]

The pie-in-the-sky ambitions may be a little much, but credit Franti for dreaming up a kinder, gentler new world order. [Sep 2003, p.122]

The Texas combo strings together images that never add up to cohesive narratives. [Aug 2004, p.137]

An ultrapolite, jazz-inflected collection of tunes that will reassure coming-down ravers, but it offers little to quicken the pulse. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.104]

He has a dusky, intimate voice and a weakness for overwrought lyrics. [May 2004, p.126]

Stylistic attention-deficit disorder dilutes the focus and also dates it. [#17, p.137]

A growth statement even diehard fans of its debut couldn't have expected. [#8, p.122]

A radiant collection of pure pop songs. [#10, p.125]

These oddballs have chops aplenty, and the balancing act they pull off on Quebec is no joke. [Sep 2003, p.132]

An only sometime thing. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.112]

Scored with ramshackle grandeur by scribbly guitars, fat horns, poignant keyboards and ragtag sing-alongs, Benaim’s lyrics narrate the anxieties and optimisms of New York City’s young, educated and underemployed.

There are magical, creepy moments here. [Nov 2005, p.131]

Proves that [You Forgot It In People] wasn’t a fluke.

In fleshing out the contours of a sound once slavishly indebted to early-'80s titans like JD and the Smiths, they've nuanced the moods Banks moons over. Awesome for him. Only so-so for us. [August 2007, p.114]

Faith in the Future is built with recycled beats and borrowed sounds, relying on castoff samples and guest contributions... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.132]

Her solo debut... spruces up a vintage style--'80s SoCal new wave--with lyrical twists. [#8, p.126]

May be the best CD of his career. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.112]

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

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

McCrea is still spinning wry, keenly observed stories, though the band has broadened its stylistic base some... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.121]

These gothed-out Chicago yeomen relish a catoonishly dark lyric and if they eke new inspiration out of anything on their sixth studio album--which bounds along, as though bunny-powered, on a pop-punk beat--it's war. [July 2008, p.70]

Too often... the results sound messy and carry a hint of prog-rock pomposity. [Mar 2004, p.115]

There's no jam-band noodling, and Anastasio's indelible head-bobbing cheer is now attached to the kidn of straightforward hooks Phish preferred to twist. [Dec 2005, p.144]

The lightness and clarity that once set Hales apart is here squashed by overwrought arrangements of lesser melodies that replace pop classicism with conventional rock bluster.

Jettisons their saving grace--a big, glitter-streaked wink--for limp stabs at profundity. [Apr 2005, p.117]

Lerche originals... aren't starry-eyed vintage exercises. They're just swell new tunes. [Apr 2006, p.114]

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]

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]

Benefits from a fatter recording budget, with swooping symphonic arrangements and dazzling melodies. [Aug 2004, p.138]

Even if the high-minded concepts prove elusive, no worries. [Nov 2006, p.138]

Here, their frustration with scheming girlfriends and negligent boyfriends boils over into a cathartic froth. [Nov 2004, p.132]

Cocky and nicotine-stained, the Kills revive the cheap art of sinister underground rock and puzzling, mysterious pseudonyms. [May 2003, p.121]

Delays have found a way to combine the sparkling harmonies of the Byrds with the glorious noise of My Bloody Valentine, and still sound as fresh and surprising as a London heat wave. [#27, p.134]

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

Many of the songs here could be Peppers tracks, except for the absence of Anthony Kiedis's vocals. [Apr 2004, p.128]

Loudboxer stands apart from other utilitarian dance music in its hypnotic sense of space. [#8, p.124]

Because of his no-frills persona, the smallest suggestions of personality make a charismatic impact. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.89]

His once-believable menace comes off as forced caricature. [May 2007, p.109]

With this foulmouthed, backsliding rock, Hull and his flock do Dixie real proud.

The familiar-sounding song structures are an artfully crafted misdirection.

Osborne clearly believes that her love for this material gives her the right to make it her own--which she does, convincingly. [#10, p.125]

They resemble a Seattle version of Iggy and the Stooges. [#9, p.152]

Nellyville will be the year's only record with a bigger-than-life number with Justin Timberlake, a capable ballad with Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland, an acute dis of preachy rap veteran KRS-One, and an ode to the hip-hop footwear of choice. [#8, p.120]

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

Their fourth album toughens things up immeasurably. [Oct 2007, p.114]

As usual, Franz Ferdinand pack a greatest-hits album’s worth of melodic tricks into each tune, while Kapranos purrs the sort of pick-up lines that would earn a lesser man a gimlet in the face.

They still spit nervous energy, but Shelly's melodies have suffered, and his pubescent whines have unfortunately matured into apologies for bad behavior. [#15, p.121]

Oliveri needs a grounding element; without it, he just plays the Neanderthal wild-ass screamer. [Sep 2003, p.126]

When they're not straining to be anthemic, Turin Brakes still weave a seductive spell. [#14, p.143]

The ballads are clunky and ponderous. The groove stuff, though... exists in that blissy stratosphere the Dead visited so often. [Aug 2004, p.138]

Striking [and] confident. [Apr 2006, p.116]

Let's face it: Foo Fighters are dull. [Jul 2005, p.117]

Isbell’s recitation--defiantly unexciting in its averageness--doesn’t help. But the thing is, the guy can really write.

Angrier than ever, Bad Religion aim punk's adolescent fury at grownup targets. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.134]

The songs change, but the sensibility remains the same, more or less: plaintive to mopey, clever to smartass, and back again. [Jul 2005, p.118]

Sound[s] like bad Southern swamp songs covered by the world's most miserable bar band. [Sep 2005, p.131]

McCabe is bearable, even fun. But he oversings like a guy who's mistaken a North Dakota rock club for Madison Square Garden. [Oct 2006, p.142]

Filled with ambitious production and winsome nostalgia, Saturdays is an otherworldly chronicle of adolescence only a starry-eyed 20-something could make.

It’s a fantastically difficult record, but almost every passage of knotty head-game weirdness quickly dovetails into something dramatic and physical, and it all sparkles with crushed particles of the blues.

The music is dramatic with a glammy Britpop insouciance, and Garcia is a refreshingly earnest romantic. [#16, p.117]

The band sometimes flails ineffectually, but more often it stays streamlined and urgent. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Two things save Electric Six from becoming the alt-rock Weird Al: Their jokes hit home and their music is convincingly ferocious. [#17, p.134]

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]

Seachange wrap their songs in the glorious dissonance of Sonic Youth and the mighty alt-rock-meets-R&B rhythms of the Afghan Wigs, but underneath it all, they just want to creep you out. [May 2004, p.131]

The jam-band influence that now pervades the group's sound is as pernicious an additive as that strychnine somebody slipped into Robert Johnson's whiskey. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

This is Fountains of Wayne or the Church with real power in their power pop. [Apr/May 2002, p.116]

Every track is stellar. [Aug 2004, p.133]

Lush and idyllic. [Nov 2004, p.142]

Honors shifts in style over substance. [#11, p.124]

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