There aren't many things worse than a pretentious hippie. [Apr 2006, p.112]

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

Tones down the spazziness and turns up the googly-eyed lyrics about marital bliss. [Jun 2006, p.141]

This album is a model of aging, raging indie idealism. [Apr 2006, p.118]

The minimalist tracks rate among his best. [May 2006, p.109]

Whether cranked up high or turned down low, this music has a scrappy majesty. [Jun 2006, p.136]

There's a lot of passion and red corpuscles surging just outside the music's clean, primary-colored lines. [Apr 2006, p.112]

The unhurried, full-retail rock arrangements are splashed with lite-R&B syncopations and snazzy-jazz harmonies. [Apr 2006, p.111]

A slice of British street life with strut, and guitars. [Apr 2006, p.112]

[Moss'] raw, husky delivery [is] able to turn even throwaway lines like "I swam to the bottom of the sea for you/I climbed to the top of the trees for you" into high drama. [Apr 2006, p.111]

[A] near-flawless suite of deep, dark and powerfully sexy tracks. [Apr 2006, p.112]

On this sublime set, Case's own sweeping, backwoods melodies and bloodstained Southern Gothic lyrics finally match the drama of her wails. [Apr 2006, p.111]

[Has] a relaxed good humor and a genuine feel for the pulse of Western swing. [Apr 2006, p.114]

Most of the time he makes the profound sadness seem like the best party in either Nashville or Dublin. [Apr 2006, p.116]

Unusually crafty for a stoner-rock record. [May 2006, p.111]

Us[es] Nevermind as a trusty road map. [Apr 2006, p.116]

There's a little too much goop here. [Mar 2006, p.113]

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

Even at its weepiest, his music, thankfully, stays vivacious. [Apr 2006, p.116]

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

What elevates the Monkeys into a class of their own is Turner. [Apr 2006, p.113]

They've... picked up the tempo, sweetened the tunes and upgraded the rhythm section. [Mar 2006, p.109]

[An] assured and surprising record. [Mar 2006, p.110]

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

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

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]

The ballads, which are copious, are dull. [Mar 2006, p.115]

They're old-fashioned ballads, all very tasteful, but few hooks poke through the froth. [Jun 2006, p.139]

Without goth glamour or Fall Out Boy self-flagellation, Voices gets mired in a modern-rock middle. [Mar 2006, p.113]

Sits squarely in the middle of B&S's comfort zone: never bad but rarely inspiring. [Mar 2006, p.109]

Submit to these tongue-in-cheek disco-rock readymades and it's as if you're hearing irony and an ass-kicking backbeat for the very first time. [Mar 2006, p.112]

Orton still oversteps the foul line that separates affectingly vulnerable from irritatingly feeble, but this is a step twards something more distinctive. [Mar 2006, p.114]

There are two even matched KT Tunstalls on her debut album: One borrows from Chris Martin's bag of shopworn metaphors... The other one is more unsettling and more intriguing. [Apr 2006, p.118]

Though lighter on star power than its predecessor, this compilation... still packs weird extraterrestrial punch. [Apr 2006, p.118]

Not much happens, which seems to be the point. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.96]

A low-rent version of the Streets without Mike Skinner's wit, they're just a couple of palookas mouthing off in the pub. [Nov 2005, p.131]

It partly works. [Mar 2006, p.110]

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

These amply melodic songs offer a style manual of orchestral pop and twinkly genre touches. [Mar 2006, p.112]

The record has the relationship to "genuine" roots music that its titular ratty heirloom implies--it's a perfect fake, dyed to match the sensibility of a skeptic who won't give up. [Mar 2006, p.108]

As double albums go, it's a hell of an EP. [Mar 2006, p.114]

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

New touches only further dilute P.O.D.'s already watered-down sound. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.96]

A band that traffics in momentum can't afford to take their foot off the gas as often as Yellowcard does. [Mar 2006, p.112]

No, it ain't rocket science. But when they're headlining arenas, it's gonna look fairly brilliant. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.98]

Earth is the sound of a band coming to that inevitable realization: five patrician perfectionists who've resolved to sound sloppy, even (or especially) at the risk of fucking up. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.98]

Her ardent love songs ultimately come off not as love songs but standard ache-and-pain Mary tracks--making this album not quite the breakthrough it might have been. [Mar 2006, p.109]

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

Less scary but more melodic, Korn guns for hits, not street cred. [Mar 2006, p.113]

Baker... somehow makes them sound more outrageous--and more convincing. [Dec 2005, p.148]

Broader and more aggressive than both its predecessor and the 2001 English album Laundry Service, it also lacks a center of gravity. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.96]

Hypnotize has a little bit of everything: protest, pretension, comedy, brute force, delicacy, compassion, crassness, fury. [Dec 2005, p.143]

Political without preaching, sexy in a bookish way, this record will keep you up talking with someone you'd like to kiss. [Dec 2005, p.149]

Kweli expends most of his considerable lyrical talent touting his considerable lyrical talent. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.94]

[It] sounds as if she's happy to give the people what they want: escapism and nostalgia. [Dec 2005, p.152]

Sounds like a greatest hits set. [Dec 2005, p.156]

15 thrilling highlights. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.93]

She balances her freakiness by matching her sublime chirp with grounded glories. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.93]

The result is something of a songcraft master class.... A career best. [Dec 2005, p.150]

The melodies are strikingly generic for a star act. [Dec 2005, p.144]

The songs get lost in waves of wah-wah long before a long, slow fade into random-noise oblivion. [Dec 2005, p.149]

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 novelty of the all-star show has worn off, especially as the caliber of the all-stars has declined dramatically. [Nov 2005, p.140]

A folk-rock anti-Midas, he reduces everything he touches to a molten core of sadness. [Dec 2005, p.151]

Finally: bedroom music from a guy who seems to know his way around the bedroom. [Nov 2005, p.141]

Enough human warmth sneaks through to make this second album exciting and affecting. [Nov 2005, p.133]

A gentle, reflective and often gorgeous album. [Nov 2005, p.132]

Not for all--or even most--tastes, the result is abrasive and weirdly haunting. [Nov 2005, p.135]

What's most frustrating about them is precisely what's most appealing: Their refusal to write traditional songs, coupled with their giggling nature-child personas, adds an air of mystery and makes for some beautifully offbeat melodies. [Nov 2005, p.131]

The second half drops off badly--the band seem to think that the tonic for a weak lyric is to slow the tempo to a crawl. [Nov 2005, p.130]

The world's heaviest band turn out to have metal's lightest touch too. [Nov 2005, p.137]

The first and less snarky half of Tanglewood Numbers... is some of the liveliest music Berman has recorded. [Nov 2005, p.140]

The songs are soggier, the sentiments more banal. [Dec 2005, p.154]

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

Despite the occasional misstep... it's a welcome album to anyone who wishes the past 15 years never happened to Run-D.M.C.'s legacy. [Nov 2005, p.139]

Surprisingly pedestrian. [Nov 2005, p.134]

It's like a game of Name That Tune at a barreling 200 bpm. [Oct 2005, p.138]

It's the musical equivalent of George Lucas's tinkering with the Star Wars DVDs--some flaws are best left uncorrected. [Nov 2005, p.135]

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

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

It sounds so damn joyous. [Nov 2005, p.134]

Resistance is useless. [Oct 2005, p.139]

This is one helluva piece of singer-songwriter art. [Nov 2005, p.129]

The album's plush and detailed enough to invite extensive exploration, and varied enough to not get exhausting. [Oct 2005, p.135]

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

The band's warm way with weirdness remains; it's just flashier now. [Oct 2005, p.140]

Another brazenly varried set. [Oct 2005, p.142]

For [O'Connor] to record a full reggae set, covering each song exactly like the original, rivals Gus Van Sant's odd shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho. [Oct 2005, p.141]

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

The struggles to get over energize [Slug] far more than the perks of minor celebrity. [Nov 2005, p.131]

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

Beneath their steel-wool guitar tone, the songs swing like a slammed door. [Nov 2005, p.137]

Putnam lays fragile vocals and haunting piano melodies over tightly wound postpunk rhythms that add immediacy to lyrics about missed opportunities and broken relationships. [Dec 2005, p.151]

It's the sound of a New Yorker coming home for a breath of country air. [Nov 2005, p.130]

It sounds as bitter and cynical as most of Chilton's solo stuff since Big Star originally imploded. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Full of clever wordplay one moment, kind of pretentious the next. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Wildflower is assiduously intimate: lushly orchestrated, strictly mid-tempo and abundant with musings about balancing freedom and love. [Oct 2005, p.136]

A vehement kiss-off to California's Central Valley. [Nov 2005, p.136]