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]

Waits returns to spare storytelling. [Oct 2004, p.130]

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]

Rising Down is tightly focused and appealingly modest in its ambitions.

Rubin pointed the direction, but credit goes to the band-which, for the first time on record, includes new bassist Robert Trujillo-for recapturing their old sound and reconciling it with what followed.

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

A worthy successor to Surrender.... This is dance music that still outstrips anything else in its class. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.113]

These 12 songs... cleave to the theme of hope-is-all-we-have, while stopping short of an unnecessary, pat moral. [Jun 2005, p.116]

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

May be the best CD of his career. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.112]

Her effortless cool has gained range. [Sep 2004, p.144]