It's more consistent than Laundry Service, and maybe even more irresistible. [Jul 2005, p.120]

The riffs blast as if it's 1971 all over again. [Jun 2006, p.148]

Their most sure-footedly solemn performances to date. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Despite Wilson's wrecked voice, it's surprisingly grand and moving. [Nov 2004, p.146]

Bubbles with kooky sounds and melodic invention. [Apr 2005, p.112]

These are big songs, and Moore's voice fills them out spectacularly, without turning the enterprise into a retro stunt. [Nov 2003, p.117]

Her coy delivery suggests a seething everywoman concealing her rage under an ominously bright surface.

Tweedy whittles down the arrangements and drops in enough experimental nuances to make the whole thing sound refreshingly lo-fi. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.116]

They've got more sweet-and-bitter guitar muscle than ever. [#8, p.122]

His bleakness was never this naked or all-consuming. [Nov 2004, p.143]

This album stands on its own, with... an emphasis on beats rather than technical tricks. [#27, p.149]

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.

This is the brightest, breeziest, giddiest record Fall Out Boy have ever made.

Young sounds fresher here than he has in nearly a decade. [Apr/May 2002, p.110]

The Clan's lyricists remain as aggressively word-drunk as ever, balancing the music's pop conciseness with oblique rhymes that compel repeated listening. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.116]

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

Shimmers with a newfound sophistication. [Apr 2004, p.136]

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

It’s epic, mercurial, high-impact progressive rock that moves like a whirlwind.

Without playing "best since" games, just say it ranks near the top of the eight [albums] they've manufactured since 1980. [Oct 2005, p.142]

It'll do just fine for now. But here's hoping for a torturously difficult third album. [Oct 2005, p.140]

Elbow's lifeblood is equal parts rain and alcohol. [Mar 2006, p.111]

The arrangements pound and lurch through acrid garage-punk riffs with crazy sureness. [Dec 2005, p.145]

In a style gentler and more richly textured than the crudely amplified minimalism of the series’ debut by Konono N°1, the songs swell in and out of expansive and hypnotic patterns, forming clouds of interwoven rhythms.

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

They sounded great in the lounge; the garage suits them even better. [Oct 2006, p.130]

[Their] constant shifts in perspective aren't distracting, they're divine. [Oct 2004, p.126]

Strange, spooky and brilliant. [Apr 2006, p.114]

Ceaselessly enthusiastic European dance-pop that's deliriously colorful, vividly inane and usually about themselves. [Aug 2003, p.126]

They've given up on ugliness for its own sake, trading it in for prettiness, which allows McCracken to rest his throat. [Oct 2004, p.128]

Ladytron's doom-laden arrangements feel as accomplished as Radiohead jamming with the Pet Shop Boys. [#10, p.120]

The album is wonderfully cohesive. [May 2005, p.119]

THe music is scarily gripping... his best computer blues since 1994's The Downward Spiral. [May 2007, p.108]

Her music is exhilarating, enigma-packed and, despite the unceasing noise barrage, winningly sweet.

It's an attractive kind of stoner-folk, whose dimensions she controls on a minute level, with enough gradually shifting detail to get lost in. [#27, p.139]

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

Despite a short-circuited sequence of electroclash songs, the girls are winning throughout. [Apr 2005, p.116]

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]

Seal remains one of the best half-dozen male pop singers drawing breath. [Sep 2003, p.129]

The music is by turns atmospheric, quirky and joyous. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.126]

Keeps the orchestral Americana on an ambient, after-hours simmer. [Mar 2004, p.123]

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

Bejar's most accessible album yet. [Apr 2006, p.111]

The result is music that is excitingly in and out of time. [Aug 2008, p.88]

Valhalla, they are coming! [Jun 2005, p.114]

Much of [Sheets] sounds like a pop-punk update on Springsteen. [Nov 2004, p.137]

Its surging orchestrations and and acoustic subtelties seem willfully out of step with current trends, taking time to reveal their unique, and very British, charms.

Elevator has the zing of classic pop--and its sureness too. [May 2005, p.115]

Thanks to a sneaky sense of emo self-awareness and shambling, expansive instrumentation, they avoid cute overload. [Apr 2008, p.80]

For the most part, the formula still works fine. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.107]

If this is soul, it's soul for 21st-century sociopaths. [Apr 2008, p.77]

The Drift is like a nightmare you look forward to repeating. [Jun 2006, p.148]

Of the nearly 59 minutes of music here, about 40 induce deep pleasure. [#16, p.125]

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]

This LP, which matches "Transatlanticism" as Death Cab's best. [June 2008, p.71]

They've made a great record of choogling and--surprisingly for the wonky Malkmus--tender tunes. [Apr 2003, p.125]

Hebden treats software as a rocky road to hummable compositions of seductively intricate invention. [#17, p.135]

The songs on Fever to Tell swerve like they're being followed by the police, constantly changing and transforming. [May 2003, p.124]

The most tightly hook-larded, colorfully produced, listenable Decemberists record to date. [Nov 2006, p.138]

Santogold bursts with the arrogance of a world-beating hip-hop debut while thriving on vulnerability.

The Ritalin generation may have found its Bob Dylan. [#9, p.143]

Where melodies once surged with hand-clapping giddiness, they're now august and restrained, balladic, not bubbly--fitting songs strung between hope, resignation and regret.

"Get Ur Freak On," the frenetic lead single, relies on boilerplate hip-hop braggadocio, but the beats are something else: head-snapping electro-funk spiced with tablas that herald Missy and [Timbaland's] return as the rulers of the hip-hop avant-garde. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.106]

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

Sheik's sparklingly clear voice and subtly tricky guitar shifts transcend the pop-rock melodies. [#10, p.126]

The most original spin on indie-pop in years. [Dec 2003, p.140]

Superproducer Butch Vig is around to help transform Gabel’s strident leftism and occasionally clumsy choruses (e.g., "Protest Songs! In response to military aggression!") into swing-state-ready stadium rock.

Some of Dizzee's insecurity is replaced by newfound swagger. But swagger works, too. [Oct 2004, p.112]

The barn-burners are still grimy with brawling guitar, but more than ever shot through with delicate light... and the pithy ballads are crisp as cold beer. [May 2006, p.108]

Far from the usual collision of greatest hits and "Hello, Cleveland"-type bluster. [#4, p.122]

There are few high or low moments--which might put some listeners off--but texture and content, rather than pulse-raising histrionics, have always been Q-Tip specialties.

After decades, Waits's theater of musical cruelty is familiar stuff. But the old dog's tricks still have bite. [Applies to both Alice and Blood Money, Jun/Jul 2002, p.111]

More tuneful and less experimental than their debut. [Aug 2005, p.113]

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

Pleasant at a distance, the stealthy Son is downright mindblowing at close range. [Jun 2006, p.142]

His voice comes as sharp as a rusty switchblade. [#8, p.125]

Diamonds is pointed, pulled-back and juicily considered instead of massively jammed-out. [#15, p.120]

It does what it's supposed to, giving Usher a grown-up R&B sound without reducing his boyish charm. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.131]

[His] loquacious, dizzying delivery and disjointed imagery paired with the abstract soundscapes of [El-P and Blockhead] make for occasionally uneasy listening. [Nov 2003, p.108]

Sounds like the best bar band in the world. [May 2005, p.122]

At 62, Reed apparently has indulged in the drug that rejuvenated Bob Dylan's career: enjoying himself. [Apr 2004, p.135]

Sweaty, sloppy and desperately quick. [Jul 2006, p.102]

On her third album, Clarkson finds a Third Way: She makes nice with the pop machine and takes back the mall while keeping her integrity and personality intact.

[Frontman Jim] Adkins loosens the reins with darker themes and longer songs... but the guitars and harmonies have never been brighter. [Nov 2004, p.139]

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

Despite the odds, their fifth album is arrestingly, chillingly good.

E=MC2 is Carey's most-fun album, and her best.

Even when the Wire slow way down, their densely layered riffs reward wall-shaking volumes. [Oct 2008, p.83]

Where once he growled his rhymes through gritted teeth or abortively gulped them down altogether, now the beats let him breathe. [Jul 2007, p.113]

Vampire Weekend’s version of globalization is too tightly and smartly woven to be mere dilettantism, and at times Koenig is emphatic, even desperate, about escaping white-bred familiarity.

Amid the frenzied melancholy, there’s filler and a histrionic misstep or two, but for those willfully lost in the perpetual adolescence Smith has always documented, here’s the new soundtrack to Saturday night.

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

After decades, Waits's theater of musical cruelty is familiar stuff. But the old dog's tricks still have bite. [Applies to both Alice and Blood Money, Jun/Jul 2002, p.111]

Credit four supportive guys rolling out unkempt riffs at tempos so punky they reveal the guitar line of Joy Division’s 'She Lost Control' for the pop hook it is (with saxophone icing).

Even when he tips the sensitivity scales too much... Rice’s innate, anti-lite-FM intensity saves him.

Ego War doesn't disappoint, offering an instant hit of raucous energy via choppy rave-house dynamics, high-density Daft Punk-style production and a refreshingly anti-epic approach to songwriting. [#16, p.114]

While Love's voice is as scratchy and corrosive as ever, unfaraid to veer off-pitch for a good sneer, the album is big-time Hollywood rock. [Mar 2004, p.112]

They sound comfortable in their own skin--and able to get under yours. [May 2003, p.127]