Sweet, spooky harmonies, partly inspired by the death of a close relative, given a naked acoustic production. [May 2003, p.125]

The kind of laconic, deceptively laid-back statement that cult heroes Alex Chilton or Doug Sahm might have dashed off in their prime. [#18, p.123]

When he's not being sour, Folds' flair for melody and simple, economical arrangements can create wonderful moments. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

This is a band reborn and ready to soar. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.103]

Dido should let her socks go unsorted for a while; genuine sorrow sounds good on her.

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

If she lacks [Fiona] Apple's emotional complexity, her lovely and original debut finds the romance in despair. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.149]

Whether he’s lamenting immigration hassles or imagining himself a depressed American kid fighting in Iraq, this Muslim fan of Biggie and Bruce Lee has a common touch. He’s a universal soldier, not an exotic novelty.

Parish is at his best on songs that, for all their avant-garde trappings, are eloquent enough not to need lyrics. [#10, p.125]

So low-key that even the amplified instruments sound semi-acoustic. [#10, p.116]

There's nothing here that sticks to the ribs very long. [#17, p.136]

Perkins freewheels through American music traditions—Haight-Ashbury folk ('Hey'), New Orleans brass ('Doomsday'), junkyard blues ('I’ll Be Arriving')--with arrangements as rich as a pawn-shop display.

A surprisingly heartfelt collection, heavy on lullaby-like ballads yet still oozing with sexy noir ambiance. [Jun 2005, p.113]

With drums, strings, pianos, amps and backup singers, this is the biggest sounding record ever for a band that used to consist of one guy on acoustic guitar. [Apr 2008, p.81]

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]

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

The mood of Jones's second album is more or less the same, if slightly friskier. [Mar 2004, p.118]

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]

Only a few of Barzelay's tunes... are the equal of their sonic textures. [Aug 2003, p.121]

Its densest aural jungle so far. [#17, p.136]

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

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.

Lost in Space... pushes her in a new direction. [#9, p.152]

Unlke many underground MCs, [Levine] doesn't use a $10 word if it'll compromise the beat. [May 2004, p.118]

Tighter and more energized than anything the band has done since Vitalogy. [Jun 2006, p.142]

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]

The real hero is Sean Eden, whose lyrical lead guitar--a bit Harrison, a bit Morricone--makes even the silliest songs sound majestic. [Nov 2004, p.138]

The tunes are basically chants and the drumming is more straight-ahead than "tribal" and when the vibraphone trips in after 40 seconds of 'The Ballad of Butter Bean,' you may not bust a gut laughing, but you'll probably grin. [June 2008, p.75]

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

The bleakness is stirring as often as it is enervating. [#23, p.100]

Pop has made more nuanced albums than this in recent years, but Skull Ring is about reclaiming the franchise as unselfconsciously as is possible. [Oct 2003, p.125]

All the post-punk components are here, but they don't jell into anything more than a mannered take on the punk that punk forgot. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.112]

Her genius is not to let herself be trapped in yesterday. [#9, p.144]

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

T.I. boats one of gangsta rap's most mellifluous voices and more polysyllabic lexicons, and when he combines the two, he's dazzling, hypnotic, virtuosic. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.82]

With his buddy Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Hughes gets the details right all over Heart On.

The Dears’ breakthrough was 2004’s "No Cities Left," a post-apocalyptic expedition through emotional and political wreckage, and they’re still mining that barren landscape, trying to rebuild.

The dark spaciousness that boosted BRMC's uneven 2001 debut is replaced with garage-rock fist pumpers, which are all catchy but cramped. [Sep 2003, p.119]

The closest his polite bum comes to tearing loose is when he gives his music-hall skiffle a Dixieland bounce. [Apr 2009, p.80]

For years, Smith has excelled in her profession as rock's great heroine; at its best, Trampin' sounds more like leisure time, but it still pays off. [May 2004, p.132]

For all their wriggly noise details and fragmented language, their center of gravity is in their hips. [#23, p.101]

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]

An amped-up grotesque of torchy vaudeville and European parlor songs that starts as high-concept camp and winds up strangely illuminating. [May 2006, p.105]

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.

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]

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 vibrant, classy debut. [#10, p.126]

The music makes her giddiness contagious. [#16, p.114]

Since 1995, Jenkinson's been treating his laptop the way death-metal bands treat their guitars, and it's no longer radical, just annoying. [Apr 2004, p.136]

The acoustic Spooked surveys post-millennial life. [Nov 2004, p.135]

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

Happily, this structure is as mercifully loose as Penn's melodies are tight. [Aug 2005, p.113]

The best moments are [Jenner's] least intelligible. [Oct 2006, p.141]

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

Only the fuzzy reggae of "Power of One" is lively enough to rouse a dozing listener and hint at what the record might have been with a little less midnight meditation. [May 2003, p.121]

This rote Los Angeles studio rock is dominated by the radio-friendliest songwriters money can buy. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.112]

Kweller's skeletal songs rely mostly on his acoustic guitar, garage-y riffs and swinging, Beatlesque piano. [Apr 2004, p.130]

He's more vehement than ever before, and the music feels rag-and-bone honest. [Sep 2004, p.136]

Bitter, cold and insular, None Shall Pass is also profoundly (if proudly) out of step. [Sep 2007, p.124]

The title song is killer, but built of such familiar musical materials that when it comes around the third time, it’s plumb tuckered out. The track is one of three standouts that run over five minutes, and all three are too long.

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

Everything here, from the restrained pedal steel and drifty organ to the lyrics, reflects a gentle informality that has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with following the flow.

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

Lucid, enjoyable and occasionally full-on rockin'. [Oct 2003, p.115]

Through it all, the machines sound as juicily alive as the human beings. [Apr 2009, p.63]

Dear Heather is top Cohen. [Nov 2004, p.131]

The band's smart-boy quirks make repeated listens progressively more enjoyable. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.106]

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

The Pretenders’ ninth studio album is a pleasant roots record.

If their debut was a night of chasing skirts and drinking Jim Beam from the bottle, Heartbreak is the bitter, worn-out morning after. [Mar 2005, p.138]

These songs create a series of vivid but minimal soundscapes. [Sep 2004, p.140]

Brings Pierce's preoccupation with panoramic emotional and chemical excess to startling, transcendent climax. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.112]

The Bush-Blair era has damaged these guys, and the results rule. [Jun 2007, p.105]

There's a fine line between sounding passionate and overwrought, but [The Veils] find themselves on the proper side of that smudgy barrier--just. [Aug 2004, p.142]

This is 21st-century lounge with a Manson heart — music for unwinding, or maybe plotting crazed revenge.

The sound quality is appropriately assy, and guitarist Ira Kaplan has fun playing a pissed-off leather-jacket pimplehead. But Yo La’s gentle side naturally peeks out.

The music is cheery even when the feelings are miserable; it's like rainy-day Smiths driven by pianos instead of guitars. [Mar 2005, p.140]

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

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

They’re closer to turning monstrous dexterity into gut-wrenching metal, but for now, the oblatory goats and virgins are safe.

The utterly flavorless repertoire she sings here... steers her toward Lite FM. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.106]

[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]

A debut on par with the music of Massive Attack, Underworld or Kruder & Dorfmeister.

While none of these spare summer jams of knotty beats match his Marvin Gaye-sampling 2001 hit "Music," almost any would freshen radio. [Aug 2004, p.139]

Overly somber. [Aug 2004, p.131]

Stone’s voice is remarkably authentic, and the atmosphere she conjures is smoky and sleazy, pure mid-’60s Detroit.

Amid the fidgety guitars and twitchy rhythms are enough hair-raising hooks to reach far beyond the counters of independent record stores. [Sep 2003, p.128]

One long, shameless come-on. [Jun 2007, p.107]

A band of arty studio veterans give him a new set of choppers, and he knows what to do with them. [Jun 2005, p.116]

Eagles of Death Metal aren't air-quote ironic like the Darkness; they're a passionately played goof for Homme. [May 2004, p.120]

About as insular and pensive a rap record as anyone's ever made. [May 2005, p.120]

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

Clones feels at points like a candy store that carries only one brand--it's a damn good one, though. [#18, p.130]

Way too much fun. [Oct 2006, p.130]

[A] dense, inventive disc. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Petty, never good at deep thinking, tries to introduce some grand gestures and literary flourishes, but they're forced compared with his amiably corny odes to driving and boozing. [Sep 2006, p.147]

This is virile, excited music. [Jun 2006, p.146]

Textured mood music. [Apr 2005, p.119]