Despite the metaphysical yet conversational “Knowing” and a sexed-up title track that begins with his come in her hair, she doesn’t offer enough evidence that her new love is any realer than all the others she’s exulted and struggled through in eight albums going back to 1979.

[An] entertaining album. [Apr 2005, p.119]

Scored with ramshackle grandeur by scribbly guitars, fat horns, poignant keyboards and ragtag sing-alongs, Benaim’s lyrics narrate the anxieties and optimisms of New York City’s young, educated and underemployed.

Travis may have grown serious, but at least it hasn't gone to their heads. [Nov 2003, p.122]

The dramatic arc of these songs is built around the way instruments lurch into place and dance drunkenly around one another before staggering off once again.

The missing links between club night, rock show and 2001-style cosmic experience, these boys are still worth digging. [Mar 2005, p.138]

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

The best of Shadows lives in murky half-light where texture matters as much as melody. [Oct 2004, p.112]

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

This album is luxuriously, fantastically gay, a nod to the origins of disco, when the music was known for its queer fan base as much as anything else. [July 2008, p.73]

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]

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

With Simon LeBon sharpening his typically abstract lyrics and everyone bolstering the contrasting, constant hooks, Timbaland perfects the rock-techno fusion his solo album fumbled, while Duran emphasize their willfully plastic extremes. They’ve never sounded this pretty and severe.

Loose Fur is fun, even if it is exactly the sum of its parts. [#14, p.139]

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

Only on "Prison Song," a jokey fake-oldie, does the Offspring's weakness for novelty tunes lead them astray. [Dec 2003, p.145]

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]

[An] album of sharply assembled rock & roll. [Jun 2007, p.105]

Will Gregory’s sparkling webs of acoustic guitar, synth and strings allow the more slender melodies to slide into vaporous prettiness, but Goldfrapp’s voice remains extraordinary, as witchily sensual as Kate Bush’s, as otherworldly as a theremin.

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.

It's Banhart's gift for melody that ultimately carries the day. [Nov 2004, p.128]

The clarity of her frustration gives the songs an unsparing honesty, but it's also frustrating to witness. [Oct 2007, p.112]

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]

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

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

The gruff, authoritative Chuck and irrepressible second-banana-turned-VH1-ladykilla Flavor Flav know that uplifting kids corroded by gangsta rap means offering something emotionally fierce and reasonably current.

His most intimate recording yet. [#17, p.138]

The quartet has the virtues of youth... and some of the drawbacks. [May 2007, p.106]