The production seems to capture a band that's playing live, with the guitarists constantly pushing each other and tunes evolving on the spot. [#11, p.122]

Jean's histrionic singing and simplistic lyrics can intensify his material... or derail it via self-parody. [Dec 2003, p.138]

All in all, time well spent. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

With help from someone who’s been through it all and had time to think about it twice, Carlton has made music for growing-ups that is neither cloying nor pretentious.... Yet a sneaking sense remains that she can reach deeper.

Still recovering from 2004’s tepid Tical 0: The Prequel, Meth hints at the bluster and wit that made him an instant star nearly 15 years ago.

[Some] attempts at genre-mashing suffer from some uncharacteristically sluggish Muggs production. [May 2004, p.120]

Matthews's singular skill is adroitly tipping his elastic, emotive voice and sorority-seducing melodies from buoyant to melancholy. [Oct 2003, p.123]

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

If there's a fault here, it's in the slightly hand-wringing lyrics, which, of not overwrought, are certainly pretty darned wrought. [#4, p.123]

For every killer raise-your-hands hook there is a snoozer of an SWV-esque torch ballad, and she can't seem to tell the difference. [Jul 2005, p.116]

A handful of tracks--the shuffling 'Fill Me In,' the swinging 'What It Is'--work an assured swagger, but Wood never quite nails his role model’s tomcat growl or sly nonchalance.

None of it is groundbreaking. [Oct 2003, p.120]

His desire for gravitas, though, is dragged down by his lack of imagination. [Nov 2006, p.153]

Some of her material still has an emotional earnestness that would make Bono blush. [#16, p.121]

Simple pleasures rarely get any simpler--or more good-natured. [Dec 2007, p.152]

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

The album's an impossible mess, but so lively that it's worth sifting through the shrapnel for the tasty bits. [May 2006, p.106]

Luckily, all the ironic distance doesn't blunt the band's attack. [May 2006, p.109]

The music is sexy in the dirtiest possible way, which makes up for the band's stoopid posing. [May 2003, p.114]

A handful of affectionate Neil Young pastiches, a rocked-up hymn, and some tipsily swaying ballads. [#10, p.122]

May demand close listening compared to the boisterous immediacy of most dance efforts, but it proves utterly entrancing. [#10, p.120]

This collection seems less pointlessly abstract than 1999's similarly staffed Cobra and Phases. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Even the strongest songs... are hobbled by sickly vocals and Mick Jones's pallid, needle-thin production. [Mar 2006, p.109]

Mood enhancers like 'Blind Confusion' and 'Blister on My Soul' set tart melodies to a guitar punch that compensates for a shortage of coherent content. But from there, things slow down and bloat up.

It's great fun, but Come Feel Me Tremble has more ballast. [Nov 2003, p.123]

Only the relatively sprightly "Just Got to Be" and the haunted-house voodoo of "Strange Desire" cut through the mire. [Oct 2006, p.130]

The production feels lethargic and unmelodic... and Foxx's lyrics are all corny come-ons and cheesy sentimentalisms. [Mar 2006, p.113]

The five new songs all feature Merritt's meaningfully inexpressive monotone, shrewdly minimal arrangements and flatly clever lyrics. [Jan 2004, p.107]

Mostly, though, this is vintage mid-'90s Everclear. [#15, p.122]

The band replicates the surface effect of Otis Redding ballads, New Orleans jams and Motown pop-soul down to the last tambourine rattle, but their material rarely goes deeper than nostalgic genre exercises--which means it never satisfies like the real thing.

Fink's pretty, dusky voice moves like time-lapse clouds over earthy beats that build to cymbal-crash storms. [Sep 2005, p.133]

A retread of a retread. [Nov 2006, p.148]

The results are either stiffly egalitarian... or stripped of personality altogether. [Jun 2006, p.143]

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]

By now he's decided he'd rather be Bob Dylan--recent Dylan, that is, devoted to phlegm-clogged blues-codger grumbles about how he's ready for his pine box. Producer T Bone Burnett proves a willing accomplice. [Aug 2008, p.88]

Song after song is undermined by too-precious gestures, and the occasional bursts of speed and volume can't mask Grandaddy's exhaustion. [Jun 2006, p.137]

Her subject matter is goofier, her flow is dumbed down and her beats are staler.

He lacks [Daft Punk and Justice's] wit or personality, and the album turns into a sucession of flashy vocal cameos and samples. [Apr 2008, p.81]

On their debut, this trio of fashionably dour West London lads crafts wildly overwrought goth-pop weepers with choruses that would make excellent Robert Smith High School yearbook inscriptions.

He tries to atone on the bluesey and somber 'Cadillac on 22's Part 2,' but--like much of this album--the sequel is a downgrade compared to its wrenching and confessional original. [Aug 2008, p.82]

These dozen R&B songs boast all the verve and sex appeal of a busines plan. [Apr 2009, p.61]

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

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

On album three, he tests out heartbreak, and his emotional wiring doesn’t cooperate.

Overall, the tracks range from overserious and plodding to cloying and jumpy.

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]

Assured but tame. [Nov 2006, p.139]

Too often, though, Pebble is like a falsely vintage digital photo with specks, grain and worn edges Photoshopped in--it’s convincing on the surface but crumbles under close inspection.

Feels desultory and numb, verging on autistic. [Apr 2005, p.116]

Mostly plays it safe. [Nov 2005, p.140]

A few fast, punky songs suit her pout, but more than anything, Hilton makes celebrity sound boring.

Pondering his parents divorce or describing intricate and delicate sex acts, Mraz's tasty tenor remains a modestly classy pleasure. But he's lost crucial cool. [June 2008, p.75]

T’nT use gnarled-up keyboard sounds and mix tricks the way third-tier punk bands use screaming and feedback--to disguise the lack of something to say.

It's the sound of a group treading water. [Jul 2007, p.110]

Every white soul traditionalist from Hall & Oates to Duffy demands catchy, impactful songs, yet that’s where Thicke is thinnest.

Matt's solo joints continue to advance his kooky, obscurantist aesthetic, though they miss the distracted smolder of his comely foil. [Sep 2006, p.140]

What's missing so far... is the offbeat charisma that would make the Subways into something more than a high-school cover band that got lucky. [Apr 2006, p.118]

A strained, washed-out, sluggish record. [Oct 2004, p.129]

What's most impressive is that music of this caliber got left off their albums. [#13, p.100]

For all its ambitions, Detours aims too low.

She keeps the tone light and playful, but her shopaholic-hottie raps seem written for someone with less emotional baggage. [Nov 2006, p.145]

Trademark G-Unit, pakced with a few thunderous club jams and too little else. [Oct 2006, p.128]

Mostly he just sounds bored, a pretty boy tired of being denied his inner turmoil.

The album could easily have come from Boards of Canada or any number of downcast groups--if it were shorter. [May 2008, p.78]

Sadly it's undercut by music that tirns Brian Wilson into merely another Brian Wilson imitator. [Sep 2008, p.85]

They've grown noticeably more centered and serious-minded--and maturity was the last thing that needed to happen to them. [Jul 2006, p.99]

Weezer dwells on his well-documented obsessions with bad girlfriends and geek nostalgia, but without the usual giddy, mathematically precise songcraft.

The protest ballads plod, and even the song about praying for God to drown the president sounds more weary than pissed. The Nightwatchman is that rare crusader whose secret identity is more exciting than his alter ego.

Anything involving a string section is disastrous, but a couple of choruses are suitable for both raucous fist-pumping and rampant pouting.

Surprisingly pedestrian. [Nov 2005, p.134]

Woodruff is never anything but coweringly passive, a trait about as appealing as it is annoying. [Apr 2006, p.112]

Simon wasn't born to sing over drum & bass. [Jun 2006, p.148]

They fluctuate between those two poles while their by-the-book hard rock continues to split the difference between Black Crowes and Guns N’ Roses--though no longer with the wit that fueled their coke-y 1999 breakout, 'Lit Up.'

Beneath the heavy petting, he displays a pleasant touch for soft '70s soul.

These ringers are lively, and complement one another surprisingly well. So why is the record so underwhelming? That’d be the men at the helm.

The Denver foursome is spectacularly anonymous: poignant enough to bring out the waterworks, but generic enough not to get in the way of someone else’s story--making them the perfect soundtrack for prime-time melodrama.

When Cornell strains for significance, he squeezes the life out of his music. [Jun 2007, p.105]

When he tries to get serious... Drew comes across as nothing more than a self-important shock artist, way out of his element.

There's something undeniably irritating but strangely satisfying about lyrics so baldly declarative, especially over riffs this explosive. [Jun 2006, p.144]

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

It’s strange and sometimes fascinating to hear R.E.M.’s oldest songs played so differently, though vintage tracks are rare in a set concentrating on 2004’s mostly inert "Around the Sun."

Like his debut, is a coffeehouse classical-guitar-and-voice affair long on tonal beauty but short on melody and emotion. [Sep 2007, p.126]

Some Loud Thunder is certainly uncompromising--which isn't the same thing as "good," although it's got a handful of very good moments. [Mar 2007, p.131]

Despite its boldness, Perfect Symmetry is as swollen with corny grandeur as a political convention, guided by the delusion that a pompous speech somehow becomes fun if it’s accompanied by a balloon drop.

It's hard to catch much buzz off fun that sounds so much like work. [Dec 2006, p.170]

Song after song in praise of ass, thongs and female compliance. [Aug 2005, p.116]

After contributing smart songs and sly vocals to Al Green’s 2008 Lay It Down, Anthony Hamilton seemed poised for a breakthrough. This isn’t it.

Throughout, the Foos are as tight as ever, even if the songs are mostly unmemorable. [Oct 2007, p.108]

The melodies are often limp, the rhythm section disappointingly friction-free, and Cumming’s main lyrical M.O. is to name-drop coke constantly, like the doofus at a party who mistakes a key bump for a badge of cool.

A downer. [Jul 2007, p.116]

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

No distinct personality emerges. [Oct 2006, p.132]

Hit-and-miss. [Jul 2006, p.104]

It sounds half-heard no matter how many times you hear it. [Sep 2006, p.142]

If she doesn't follow commercial formulas, she's following creative ones, and selling herself short in the process. [Jun 2005, p.111]

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]

Roman's politically spiked lyrics sound shrugged-off and flimsy. [Sep 2004, p.141]

This is a classic 1970s-style headphones record that is both arty and unusually undisciplined. [Nov 2003, p.108]