The soundtrack is faultlessly authentic, though you might wish it weren't so damned reverent. [Mar 2004, p.130]

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

Dawson tunefully balances girlish zeal with womanly maturity. [Nov 2004, p.132]

He specializes in layered harmonies, not deep lyrics. [Aug 2006, p.117]

There isn't a bad song or performance on it. Unfortunately, there isn't a new song or performance on it either. [Jun 2005, p.117]

ven the weaker material is nothing worse than pleasant, but it outweighs and obscures the better-than-pleasant; the middle of the album dissolves into an anonymously sweet haze.

Rhett Miller’s lovelorn lyrics remain respectably literary, while his pretty singing and his pals’ pretty playing turn increasingly wan and half-cooked.

DiFranco seems less the compulsive confessor here, more the storyteller. [Mar 2005, p.139]

The songs are weirder and darker than their gentle melodies indicate. [Nov 2005, p.141]

Combines guitar-driven, slightly Weezer-esque songs with the odd moment of touching musical beauty. [#17, p.133]

[Beans] makes music for MCs to scratch their heads to. [#15, p.120]

The music tends to drift along unobtrusively.

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

The scholarship is too obvious at times... But at their streamlined best... it's like Britpop's glory years never waned. [Oct 2006, p.137]

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

While yet another geography gimmick song ("The Mesopotamians") might try the patience of anyone older than 8, goofiness also inspires them. [August 2007, p.118]

When it comes to creating nuanced and irreverent, yet oddly touching, pop and rock simulacra, no one really touches pseudonymous Pennsylvania duo Gene and Dean Ween, still together after 23 years.

A set of abrasively melodic pop songs. [May 2004, p.124]

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]

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

They're not the kind of band that ages well... [but] one hot summer is all they need. [Aug 2006, p.107]

Strange and compelling. [Sep 2005, p.132]

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

This music is better hazy, its messages garbled and out of reach. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.82]

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]

Smarter, bouncier and more full of insidious electronic hooks than its predecessors. [Aug 2003, p.124]

Trice puts a playful swing into his unlikely rhymes. [Nov 2003, p.122]

Witness the birth of a new dance genre: fantasy-core!

The Hazrds Of Love is a medieval romance that feels like homework. [Apr 2009, p.80]

Kweli’s rigid delivery and obsession with self-empowerment remain liabilities.

The more her follow-up slugs [Lucinda] Williams' bourbon'n'romance on the rocks, the drier it gets.... When she shakes it up just right on the sinister libido-rocker "Back To Me," she sounds familiar and like no one else. [Apr 2005, p.116]

There’s an exhilarating and ruthless intensity here, mingling the grimness of country murder ballads with the simplicity of girl-group pop.

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]

Because he clearly aced his Beatles/Beach Boys classes, Noir's elaborately multitracked recordings... make his gentle bitching irresistible. [Aug 2006, p.113]

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

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

Swift has the personality and poise to make these songs hit as hard as gems like 'Tim McGraw' and 'Our Song' from her smash debut, and, once again, she wrote or cowrote them all.

Nada Surf settle comfortably into adulthood. [Nov 2005, p.138]

The moody disco on Couples is both sleeker and spookier than the sexed-up indie rock of th Blondes' promising 2006 debut, "Someone to Drive You Home."

Sky Blue Sky often feels like the Dead's American Beauty if Jerry Garcia had taken Paxil instead of acid. [Jun 2007, p.103]

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

Thankfully, Brightblack's mellow mysticism never comes at the expense of a frisky groove. [Jul 2006, p.97]

[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]

YYY cram their furious music full of twists and spasmic enthusiasm, filling every second with motion. [#8. p.127]

Continues Cash's no-fun, high-literary period. [#15, p.121]

Fervent and fierce, with a half-earned world-weariness that can recall Johnny Rotten himself, the Dresden Dolls mean to make goth theatrically smart. Quite often, they do. [July 2008, p.71]

Production by Bjork’s longtime collaborator Valgeir Sigurosson paradoxically plays up the transparency of Brun’s music, floating ghostly string arrangements and vocal harmonies nearby without ever making her sound less alone, or less mournfully serene.

Sometimes the sumptuousness feels a little excessive, like an ice-cream headache. But most of these love songs are uncommon, illuminating and elevating, just like the real thing at its best.

This Austin trio makes a uniquely wigged-out noise, like genuine Lone Star lone wolves, mixing psychedelic boogie and spastic punk (á la ’80s titans the Minutemen) into shifty, sharp songs that whirl by like tornados with ADD.

Kayne West once again saves his friend from the NAACP lecture circuit with soul-snapping beats that effectively turn the headliner into a guest star on his own album. [Aug 2007, p. 110]

Over skeletal guitar and drums, An Horse balance scruffy musicianship with offbeat melodic beauty as Cooper narrates the day-to-day drama of a flailing relationship.

Only a central, three-track lull--where grooves are preferred over songs--sours this eclectic, irresistible stew. [Jul 2005, p.114]

Weird, hook-filled, and irresistible. [Nov 2004, p.146]

Rejected Unknown proves why those fans are so devoted. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.106]

Urgent, atonal post-punk. [Nov 2003, p.113]

For the tunnel-visioned Zeppelin fan, there's enough vintage Plant here to hold interest. [#8, p.121]

Unfortunately, the ticked-off one breaks up the most consistently grooving album of his career with too many well-meaning but intrusive conspiracy-minded skits. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

The ponderous lyrics sound cribbed straight from A Mighty Wind, and LeMaster's nasal whine is hard to take. [Apr 2004, p.134]

Feels like an episode of her growing-pains TV show Moesha. [Aug 2004, p.130]

Thompson's pure, effortlessly soaring vocals feel undimmed by time. [#9, p.156]

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

On this produced-in-Paris gem, they beef up chilly synth-pop tunes with elegantly distorted guitar, German-industrial drum loops and plenty of goth gloom.

Strange stuff, but oddly appealing. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.111]

The songs on Cuttin' Heads are his strongest since 1993's Human Wheels. [#4, p.120]

She spices mountain purism with rich instrumental and vocal harmony. [#9, p.153]

The lyrics [are] darker than your average soul/R&B debut. [#7, p.114]

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]

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

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

Sung in his almost icy, stentorian cry--and outfitted with mega-choruses--the tracks feel as epic as Havok's themes. [Jul 2006, p.97]

Doves' best songs are full of life and genuinely moving, like an older, wiser Coldplay. [Apr 2005, p.113]

The two Louris/Tweedy writing collaborations stand with the best work of both. [Aug 2006, p.108]

Offers a twisted melancholy David Lynch would applaud. [May 2003, p.120]

Slug pushes against the beat like he's afraid it'll pass by before he's done, returning to the challenges of coupledom. [Oct 2003, p.114]

They’re crotch-pumping arena pimps and introverted minimalists.

Think 1993's hit "Regret," but with tougher guitars, rockier grooves and a more up vibe. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.113]

Maladroit feels like a bloodless quest to write the perfect song. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.100]

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

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.

Cardinology lays even deeper into the language of rehabilitation, grace and renewal.

While it can tend toward the tuneless, the upside is language that differs plenty from a Jay-Z or Eminem but stands beside them in terms of power--a flow that, once you get used to it, becomes its own form. [May 2006, p.110]

He lays it on so thick, the music all but drowns in pretty surfaces. [Oct 2003, p.129]

Practically every song sounds as though we've heard it before--because, well, we have. [Sep 2003, p.122]

Unlike similar records... this has a unity of aesthetic purpose, a competitive wallop, even (kind of) a seriousness. [Mar 2004, p.127]

The songs are more blustery than ever. [Jun 2007, p.108]

Farrar revives Neil Young's habit of presenting the same songs in different styles. [#17, p.134]

No Line on the Horizon is U2’s third killer in a row--by now, it’s bizarre to remember that just 10 years ago, everybody thought they were headed toward the dinosaur band tar pits.

The end of the working day, the mark of Cain, to win, darling, we must pay--these phrases, variations on ones he's used previously, arise on his fifth studio album in seven years, until it seems his uncharacteristic prolific streak comes partly from lazy songwriting, maybe done with a set of Bruce Springsteen Lyric Magnets.

If recession-era Jeezy sounds a lot like boom-time Jeezy--describing coke cooking and the cars one gets in reward—that’s because he has always fancied himself an educator, a Learning Annex lecturer, an inspirational-desktop-calendar hustler.

Guitarist Kerry King physicalizes Araya’s emotional investment; his mad, crunched-up playing is anxiety rendered in sound.

Cheery and unassuming, Underwood is a pleasant oddity: a pop star whose central belief is her own powerlessness.

The melodic shortcomings of M!ssundaztood show that those eye-popping videos aside, she's no Madonna. [#4, p.122]

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]

You sense Timms has seen it all. [Oct 2004, p.130]

Traces of Joni Mitchell, PJ Harvey, Björk and Cat Power are all proudly on display in the unpredictable arrangements and off-kilter emotions.

Endearing hints of '60s pop glow faintly beneath the frictionless surfaces of Gane's loops, chirps and austerely percolating rhythms. [Sep 2008, p.84]

What keeps the songs interesting isn't his understated singing but his delectable arrangements. [Sep 2005, p.138]

Viva La Vida still manages to seem downsized compared to the band's gradiose early work. [July 2008, p.69]