Is there another "Float On"? It scarcely matters: 10 years into their career, Modest Mouse have stumbled into their best album yet. [Mar 2007, p.137]

The result is a happy souvenir, best experienced among 12,000 of your closest, Ecstacy-popping friends. [Dec 2007, p.144]

His fire-and-brimstone confessionals are as complex as they are venomous. [Mar 2005, p.140]

Regret comes in many shades, but Westerberg never makes it boring or mopey. [Nov 2003, p.123]

The only emotion here is the hothouse loneliness of an overintellectualized mind. [Nov 2006, p.154]

A condensed, highly disciplined work. [#17, p.147]

Streetwise, self-aware and clever. [Aug 2003, p.124]

An unexpected delight. [Apr 2004, p.132]

Ambulance Ltd have good ears and an even better imagination: They run their influences through a filter of solid gold. [Apr 2004, p.126]

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]

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

This new material could benefit from the kind of friction that kept Whiskeytown from being stable for more than a few months. [May 2003, p.115]

[A] patchy, protege-heavy collection that has little in common with its near-classic predecessor. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.85]

Produced by hip-hop head case Danger Mouse, who is half of Gnarls Barkley, Modern Guilt mixes ancient rock--mainly the incense-and-peppermints-flavored ’60s psychedelia of Revolver-era Beatles, the Zombies and Pink Floyd--with the woozy, abstract beats Danger Mouse manages to turn into freaked-out fun.

She still goes into circles sometimes, but you might too if you could roll a phrase around your tongue the way Wainwright can. [July 2008, p.77]

The fourth disc from her Toronto foursome Metric adds brawn, finesse and grandeur to their new-wave drive and Morse-code guitar scrapes.

Refreshingly... [Northern State] would rather rhyme about feminism and softball than about hip-hop's tired polarities. [#17, p.139]

On record five, their lovely, surging melodies suggest a minor-league Coldplay, while singer-guitarist Matthew Caws recalls a lost golden age “when I could fix anything with sound.”

His sonorous, self-assured drawl adds an air of unflustered authority to his alpha brags, and he pours it into unexpected patterns. [Jun 2006, p.147]

Once Again sets out to rebuild the dramatic storytelling and redemptive power of soul music on a hip-hop foundation.

The duo fight back with song after song full of cutting takedowns and brotherly wisdom--they get petty, they get mean, but aided by Arcade Fire orchestrator Owen Pallett, they turn their bitchfests into grandiose melodrama.

The CD is loosely tied together by a browbeating concept that condemns the glorification of Scarface-style violence and disposable pop-rap, but the moralism is as trite as a Tony Montana reference.

Imperial Teen deploy the familiar language of pop-rock, then subvert it with strange, chewy tales, making music that wraps arsenic in a candy coating. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]

The five new songs all feature Merritt's meaningfully inexpressive monotone, shrewdly minimal arrangements and flatly clever lyrics. [Jan 2004, p.107]

[They] emerge from the Chemical Brothers' shadow without ever threatening to break new ground. [#13, p.93]

As a songwriter, Carrabba is growing: this album shows more melodic and tonal variety than his previous efforts. [#18, p.118]

Somehow, amid all of this assault, the band builds some excellent tunes. [Sep 2005, p.136]

South won't win any prizes for originality, but their songwriting is endearing enough to mask the stink of opportunistic career change. [Nov 2003, p.121]