Most of these concise, super-catchy tunes are as unself-consciously traditional, and fun, as an undiscovered cache of British Invasion rock. [#14, p.143]

Oye's single-minded thematic focus and velveteen baritone hold everything together. [#14, p.142]

Piano ballads and muscular thrash that hearken back to his days with proto-goth ghoulfathers the Birthday Party. [#13, p.91]

Even at their most nihilistic, these 16 songs resonate melodically, like Eminem's most haunting material. [#15, p.118]

The only standout is "Down On The Corner," built around the ear-pricking chords and lithe grace that stamp Marr's best work. [#14, p.139]

This wistful, road-trip nostalgia-pop is the sound of alt-rock after the gold rush. [#14, p.141]

Loose Fur is fun, even if it is exactly the sum of its parts. [#14, p.139]

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

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

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]

The format is so rambling and fragmented that is serves neither Poe the storyteller noor Reed the songwriter. [#13, p.97]

Recalls the Beta Band with the "wacky" knob mercifully turned down, and the wild musical eclecticism tempered by an endearing warmth and a wealth of gorgeous melodies. [#11, p.126]

Malin convincingly wraps his tortured warble around the dust-caked tunes. [#14, p.139]

There's an intensity here that's hard to resist. [#14, p.142]

They follow measured guitar burn with bone-rattling explosions, and roll mesmerizing tension into colossal release. [#14, p.138]

A fizzling delight, jettisoning previous jazzy inclinations in favor of a gorgeous electronic pitter-patter that sets off Prekop's velvety, mourning vocals. [#14, p.143]

Similar inventiveness [to that on debut album 'Vertigo'] has been markedly absent from the London duo's subsequent work, and sadly, Lovebox continues the trend. [#14, p.136]

Nas, it seems, wants his crown back. [#13, p.95]

Its attempts at a more ethereal sound crash up against Common's cumbersome intellectualizing. [#13, p.91]

For most of Charmbracelet, she sticks to a gauzy, breathy, phone-sex coo, muzzling her inner diva until the final verse or a few ultrasonic high notes in the fade-out. [#13, p.92]

What could have been an awful mess is instead a glorious mess. [#12, p.151]

Not since his debut has the Doggfather been any higher. [#12, p.155]

Phrenology is a celebration of self-determination, a nonstop joyride through some very complicated brains. [#12, p.149]

[McGraw's] best album. [#12, p.147]

There are moments when this third album is blissfully gorgeous--just not enough of them to make his song of himself interesting to others. [#11, p.125]

So Sum 41 have grown up... a little.... It's all relative, and, crucially, it still rocks. [#12, p.153]

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

Brainwashed suggests that Harrison's last years were largely comfortable, slow-paced and unaffected by any worries about his relevance. [#12, p.144]

While her wailing contemporaries go off the rails with exaggeration, Braxton merely tightens her groove and rides these mellow, meaty melodies. [#13, p.91]

Her hits are underrepresented, more recent songs are overrepresented, and [Vince] Mendoza's overly ornate orchestrations are dull, self-absorbed affairs, frequently swamping the great songs and Mitchell's vocals. [#12, p.147]

The result approaches sublimity, but remains geared toward dance floors. [#13, p.96]

What makes the stop-and-go, drum-thick music on this CD such a smooth ride, is that despite the pout, this is still the same old David. [#12, p.140]

[They] emerge from the Chemical Brothers' shadow without ever threatening to break new ground. [#13, p.93]

Reveals little beyond the surface, and generally rehashes past formulas. [#13, p.96]

Quality is full of witticisms, but it draws equal strength from sonic diversity. [#12, p.145]

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

Twain's songs are never deep, but they have hooks tattooed on their skin and harmonies that glow like bar lights. [#13, p.88]

Thomas's songs derive power from being derivative. [#13, p.98]

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

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]

There is little... to compare with either the work of his Genesis heyday or his still heartbreaking 1981 solo debut. [#12, p.139]

Tempering futurism with retro-rap here, [Timbaland and Missy] feed the old through the new and refresh both. [#12, p.142]

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]

Despite the endurance test inherent in any double-disc, his Olympian performances are worth the weight of his pretensions. [#12, p.156]

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

The album merely washes pleasantly past, tickling the ear and delivering a few hummable refrains. There's nothing here to lift listeners the way White Ladder did. [#12, p.143]

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

It's highly clinical, and Allison is as remote as ever. [#11, p.124]

His blunt, hauntingly direct performances open up new perspectives on a song. [#11, p.133]

His second proper album tempers the jollity with some beef, or at least a couple of traditional rock-guitar solos, and the result is an uncharacteristic stiffness. [#11, p.125]

At home, it's hard to see the point of these whiny raps, tongue-in-cheek R&B jams and lo-fi funk grooves. [#13, p.93]

Unlike some other singers, Timberlake never seems a puppet of his hot producers. [#12, p.154]

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

Yanqui U.X.O.'s five long tracks unfold in distinct movements, like symphonic '70s prog, but with rawer, emotional atmospherics. [#13, p.93]

Charming and enrapturing, adrift in its own unique, invented world. [#11, p.142]

They've toughened up considerably. [#12, p.154]

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

There's something forgettable and half-finished about a lot of it. [#11, p.124]

Uncommonly rich and unfashionably gynocentric, Scarlet's Walk makes the personal universal, using the stories of women lost, left and unseen to chart a map of the American psyche. [#11, p.124]

Aguilera cowrote most of the songs, and she sounds surer of her themes than [Britney] Spears did in a similar I'm-coming-out role last year. [#12, p.138]

So while there's no lack of diversity over Shaman's 70-plus minutes, that's also its undoing: it doesn't hang together. [#12, p.152]

Literate and heartfelt, the album's also a sonic riot, with gutsy electro, dream-pop and feminist rap jostling for attention beneath Sarah Cracknell's creamy vocals. [#11, p.142]

Though The Great American Songbook is bad, it's not shamefully bad--if only because it's too tasteful to risk sinking that low. [#11, p.143]

Robinson establishes himself as a distinctive singer, his world-weary yet optimistic drawl no longer beholden to the rock larynxes of yore. [#11, p.140]

Grohl's every intense metal rave-up quickly passes into a sweet, breezy melody that makes it hard to take most of the songs all that seriously. [#11, p.137]

They're like the best party band at the best party you can imagine. [#11, p.130]

The most distinctive producer-rapper Britain has coughed up since Tricky. [#11, p.143]

Taking sound collage to seamless, organic perfection, Tobin arranges his samples like he's conducting a living orchestra. [#11, p.144]

Too much about Tracy Chapman's Let It Rain is austere. [#12, p.138]

Their sense of perfection is also their downfall. [#11, p.124]

[They] channel post-adolescent despair into 10 groove-centric tracks that will gladden anyone who misses Play-era Moby. [#11, p.141]

Mostly, Ten is The LL Cool J Show -- a reliable sitcom, now in its tenth season, detailing the bachelorhood of a brawny loverman. [#12, p.146]

An utterly competent album that's devoid of politics, not to mention any genuinely exciting studio ideas. [#11, p.136]

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

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]

Their tightest, bounciest album. [#11, p.125]

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

Anyone who's enjoyed its predecessor may not find the follow-up effort entirely essential. [#12, p.145]

In their desperate eagerness to please, HHH offer a few modest pleasures. [#12, p.143]

Mascis sticks to his bombastic Dino formula on this record, but he still impresses with anthemic rockers, mellower jams and bluesy numbers that allow his Neil Young-inspired ax to shine. [#11, p.136]

Bounce may sound flat in a few years, but by then its job--to see another million people, and rock them all--will be done. [#11, p.128]

There's little to indicate an intrinsic personality unusual enough to demand your attention. [#10, p.118]

Sensitivity in excess. [#11, p.142]

Mostly, Peaches sadomasochistic come-ons sound like a satire of phone-sex services, without the per-minute charges. [#11, p.139]

Transcends their last album with lean hooks that trade urban melancholy for a surprisingly pastoral warmth. [#11, p.136]

Sadly, though, if Petty's fourteenth album fails to emulate the success of his best work, it won't be because corporations have conspired to turn off his mic, but because it's simply not as good. [#10, p.127]

While perfectly accomplished, this is big-budget background noise, purpose-built for any one of the plush cocktail bars it's soon to be endlessly played in, but lacking anything as distinct as, say, a personality of its own. [#10, p.130]

So diffuse and mechanical, it sounds as if it were recorded by rebellious microchips in a German laboratory. [#13, p.103]

Negativland's chugging cacophony seems a fitting and grisly tribute to human road kill. [#11, p.138]

This wouldn't be a Squarepusher record if it didn't flip the bird to listeners at some point. [#10, p.126]

Rimes's gigantic soprano never flags, yet remains best in ballads. [#11, p.140]

Sentimental post-country tunes knock against acute lyrics about rent, overbearing parents and other aspects of the pre-midlife crisis, as rock-out moments keep grimness at bay. [#11, p.140]

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

Much of the material features clamorous, heavy-handed production, and though Xzibit's subject matter ranges from orgies to the benevolence of his mama, his dexterous rhyming style is a little too undifferentiated. [#10, p.132]

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

A great record to play at 3 A.M. [#10, p.112]

Despite Gabriel's performances, there are no hits here. [#10, p.117]

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