Even the fiercest moments never fully detonate. [Jul 2005, p.114]

It's the sound of a 24-year-old accepting death, as imagined by a lifelong misfit aging gracefully. [Nov 2007, p.158

Lacks some of the cocksure oomph of his debut, though RZA does try to broaden his sonic palette. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.128]

For all their craft, the songs are bland and vague. [May 2004, p.126]

Feels curiously behind-the-curve. [Oct 2005, p.142]

Pete Yorn’s songs sound so damn good, it’s easy to assume they’re not smart.

Over 45 minutes, it feels monotonous and preposterously self-pitying, but in controlled doses, it bests all the rest of the U.K.'s current wave of post-Coldplay bedwetters. [Jun 2006, p.145]

When Ville lets loose a rare scream on 'Love in Cold Blood,' it's a downer. Dude: We know you've come to suck our blood, but at least have the courtesy to romance us first! [Oct 2007, p.110]

[Hayley Williams'] Tennessee crew's second album isn't as charmingly precocious as the first. [Jul 2007, p.116]

These are among the most rivetingly unconventional vocal performances she's ever offered. [Mar 2004, p.116]

Sounds like it's been held in a vault since her heyday. [Oct 2004, p.112]

While they once sounded behind the times, they now sound outside time, with songs evoking about 30 years of guitar pop, in the vein of R.E.M. and Fountains of Wayne, though nowhere near as original. [Aug 2005, p.113]

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

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

They're not the first--or even the fifteenth--recent band to draw on that era [of the 1980s], but they're among the most assured. [#27, p.138]

Start the 18-song album in the middle, and embarrassments like Nicks's "Illume (9-11)" reced behind love songs that exorcise pain with an accusatory chorus and a skein of guitars. [May 2003, p.116]

Mostly, he's outmuscled by the production. [Oct 2004, p.122]

The pulse underscoring the album keeps it hopping when the songs meander. [Nov 2004, p.142]

Wonder has a genius for... emotional openness. [Dec 2005, p.157]

Every song has hooks so polished you can see your reflection in them. [Dec 2004, p.142]

He represents gangsta rap's evolution into pure entertainment. [May 2005, p.116]

Over the course of an entire album Twista's gift proves his curse: Uniterrupted, it can get taxing. [Mar 2004, p.129]

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

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

Blame Seger for aiming no higher than to be the soundtrack for the next Larry the Cable Guy feature. [Oct 2006, p.142]

There's little unity of sound, but more than enough passion and unity of purpose. [Oct 2004, p.125]

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

With Rock N Roll, Ryan Adams has thrown off the trappings of underachievement and grabbed for the crown. [Dec 2003, p.132]

Wheat adopt a new, far breezier musical style for their first release since 1999. [#23, p.112]

These records are too dramatic, too personal and, well, too much. [Oct 2004, p.110]

All very beguilling as long as you really, really like the sound of a melodica. [Sep 2004, p.134]

This is dramatic, radio-loving rock primed to outlive the current I Love The '80s infatuation. [Apr 2005, p.113]

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.

The music is dizzying, even mesmerizing.

Their sixth album sticks close to what they know best. [Nov 2007, p.153]

A nicely loose-limbed collection. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.143]

Easily Kim's strongest work since her pheromone-thick 1996 debut. [Nov 2005, p.136]

Has too many antiseptic beats and not nearly enough Timbaland. [May 2006, p.109]

A hedonistic debut that's thick with the stench of leatherette and fake fur. [Aug 2004, p.131]

The album splits the difference between smart and smarty-pants: The articulate arrangements occasionally overdo the left-field instrumentation, and Richard Edwards’s empathetic short-story tales flirt with fussiness.

Never before have these kings of experimental metal sustained such pulse-quickening energy, honing their tricks--cryptic lyrics, cliffhanging cries, spine-twisting rhythms--into a screaming arrow of sound.

Yes, the Jonases are squishy, vanilla and too sweet. But so is an ice-cream cone. And ice-cream cones are freakin’ delicious. Especially when they come with a cherry on top.

The gimmick runs out of novelty long before this third album is done. Even 31 minutes of show-off kiddie theater is too much.

Occasionally overblown... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.132]

[Several songs] sound way too much like Strokes castoffs, a situation little helped by... Fridmann's unusually heavy-handed production. [Mar 2004, p.125]

Odd, ambitious, confounding, and occasionally brilliant -- which is to say it's much like the five Aphex albums that preceded it. [#4, p.114]

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

The cocky songs mask a lot of misery. [Jun 2007, p.107]

Deadening, obnoxious stuff. [Mar 2006, p.115]

The raw, first-take sound of most of these songs is impressive--Suicide remain the most genuinely punk of electronic bands. [#11, p.144]

This I'm-coming-out record is an unhesitant move from songs of the heart to songs of the groin. [Dec 2003, p.130]

Some are endearingly autistic... And some are sublimely idiculous. [Mar 2008, p.97]

As eclectic as these 13 songs are, they all sound of a piece: Experlty cut and finished with fine details. [Nov 2004, p.135]

Coldplay barely scratch these levels of exultation and agony. [Apr 2007, p.111]

Mostly, these electro trances... sound like an ill-advised quest to make a Williamsburg version of Dark Side Of The Moon. [Mar 2005, p.132]

Their grooves can sometimes roll on as if unattended -- which is fine for living-room techno, but not for the pop songs they're trying to emulate. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.114]

Problem is, that kind of constant high gets as dull as life on Prozac. [Aug 2003, p.120]

They just sound cranky here, and their beats are mostly perfunctory. [Nov 2004, p.137]

Throughout the album, haunted-saloon piano and reverb-choked guitar conjure a murky, wobbly misaligned version of old R&B.

At times, the writing feels almost too weightless. But repeat listening makes these songs reliably addictive. [Oct 2005, p.133]

The bullying production threatens to obliterate what’s good here: A half-dozen gentle seeker’s songs with meditative acoustic textures and lyrics advocating reasonableness among humankind, which was always Cat Stevens’s domain.

An energetic, derivative genre exercise. [Oct 2003, p.118]

Persson does sadness the way Eminem does anger: with a conviction that takes the breath away.

The weirdest hip-hop album since OutKast's Stankonia. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.112]

The saggy country-rock complaints about corporatization and alienation [Farrar] offers... sound like submissions to an Air America poetry contest. [Apr 2007, p.121]

At Bloc Party’s best, music and message collide with astounding force.

Their tedious bravado is more entertaining than their music. [Apr 2005, p.122]

Offers few joys beyond the witty title. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]

Touching Down needs vocals, stylistic variation or any kind of respite from the relentless percussive onslaught. [#13, p.98]

This is simply a useful rampage through the best and worst impulses of the most important group in hip-hop history. [#9, p.153]

A stellar set. [Nov 2005, p.135]

Disparate dance genres mesh with impressive (and infectious) ease. [Oct 2004, p.113]

Like [J.J.] Cale, Knopfler prefers murmuring to emoting while threading fancy little guitar figures through songs that can't decide whether to shuffle into the haze or nod off. [Nov 2004, p.136]

If David Lynch were to direct a remake of the Victorian romance Wuthering Heights, he wouldn’t need to commission a soundtrack; Secret Machines have recorded it.

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

While the lyrics are strictly study-hall (“I’m no gentleman/I can be a prick” = poetry!), TAI… separate from the emo wolf pack by cribbing furiously from ’70s rock.

Celebrity shines brightest when the group matures enough to forget about its image and focus on the tunes. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.126]

Her haunting voice is perfect for these downcast dirges. [#11, p.139]

Often translates into little more than spliced Dubya soundbites and “spooky” found sounds (helicopter blades, police sirens) played over dour, noncommittal loops.

She's been kicking around the industry a few years--she cowrote Britney's 'Gimmee More'--but she still comes across as fresh on her long-delayed debut.

If shards of symbolist vision and baroque virtuosity remain, they're smoothed out on the beekeeping tip, avoiding any sharp stings, leaving barely a spoonful of honey. [Apr 2005, p.112]

It’s easy to see why these songs didn’t fit on their record but, while a full listen turns unrelentingly dour, they’re better than discards have any right to be.

Exactly zero songs on Spirit come close to matching 'Bleeding Love.' On the album, she fares best when not allowed to overindulge in her sterling voice as on the haunting electro kiss-off 'Take a Bow' and the svelte power ballad 'I Will Be,' co-written by Avril Lavigne.

Almost a novelty record--a musical version of a press release or a spin-control interview with Diane Sawyer. [#14, p.128]

Creatively cast, bonkers as ever--it’s a bright spot in the Bobby Digital series.

Flaunts their va-va-voom and their depth. [Aug 2004, p.139]

There are two vastly different Mellencamps. One is a flag-waver, singing simplistic anthems like "Our Country." The other, overshadowed Mellencamp is quieter and wiser. [Mar 2007, p.136]

Freak[s] out thoughtfully. [Oct 2004, p.129]

Tom Smith's stentorian baritone, irritating in its overenunciated approximations of gravitas, is better suited to some community-theater group than a rock band.

Michael never shies away from going pop, and the results are spectacular: Every hook on his stellar debut is instantly alluring.

Despite a new set of producers... this vivacious, club-friendly sophomore set merely tinkers with her old recipe. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.83]

The arrangements and singer-guitarist Romeo Stodart's delivery both veer toward cloying. The band also seems to have forgotten the art of brevity, resulting in too many songs that drag on past the five minute mark. [August 2007, p.115]

The joke isn't well-conceived or funny enough to sustain over an hour. [#16, p.123]

Lord’s voice is breathy and sweet without being tiresomely innocent or fragile -- it’s Candyland by way of Troubletown.

She has deepened and darkened her sound without sacrificing her platinum-plated melodies. [#27, p.141]

Picture a protest of the World Trade Organization led by Bananarama. [Nov 2004, p.131]

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

A showcase for Weiland's vocals. [#27, p.148]