Andersson’s lyrics are often tricky to make out--can she really be singing, “We talk about love/We talk about dishwasher tablets”?—but almost every song incorporates shrewd production details, like the clog-dance percussion that kicks 'I’m Not Done' forward.

The proceedings get a little bit samey, but the band's fearless optimism and knack for a bookish groove are hard to deny. [Dec 2004, p.140]

The idea is to build a monorail between Aphex Twin and Stax Records; the songwriting eventually slacks off, but Lidell's performances don't. [Aug 2005, p.111]

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

For the first time in El-P's career, he's realized you don't need to be loud to get your point across. [Apr 2007, p.110]

The quintet’s debut LP often plays like a low-budget male companion piece to Amy Winehouse’s throwback hit 'Back to Black.'

An excellent debut.... Derivative, but irresistibly infectious. [Sep 2003, p.129]

The record's initial thrill comes from the confidence with which the Distillers and producer Gil Norton revive rock as a demolishing force. [Nov 2003, p.116]

They're intensely twee indie rockers, prone to brisk, even jittery, grooves, and with his pinched voice, Reyes sounds as though he's grasping at something just out of his reach. [Nov 2008, p.75]

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

He is clearly invigorated by the tensions between pretty and ugly, simplicity and chaos. [Nov 2004, p.130]

Many bands sound like this, but few do it so well, or with such dorky haircuts. [June 2008, p.77]

This is their sunniest, most likeable record, leavened by hints of light-footed dance music.

Jet frequently manage to turn in the kind of bulgy-veined, streamlined gonzo rock that [Oasis] haven't managed since the mid-90s. [Nov 2003, p.114]

He took three years to produce this follow-up, and the labor shows, for good and ill. [August 2007, p.117]

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.

If David Lynch were to direct a remake of the Victorian romance Wuthering Heights, he wouldn’t need to commission a soundtrack; Secret Machines have recorded it.

The diversity isn't as effortless, but the pushier, poppier beats dislodge A&M from their polite safety zone. [Apr 2009, p.58]

Striking [and] confident. [Apr 2006, p.116]

It’s a fantastically difficult record, but almost every passage of knotty head-game weirdness quickly dovetails into something dramatic and physical, and it all sparkles with crushed particles of the blues.

Strangely compelling. [Nov 2004, p.129]

While none of the new album’s hooks match the taurine-mainlining rush of “Sugar, We’re Goin Down,” there’s still lots to love.

As lively as contemporary folk gets. [#14, p.144]

Lost in an eerie, graceful torpor, he opens his mouth and lets words seep out and linger, like so much intoxicating smoke.

Quirks and all, it's a consistently absorbing tale from a songwriter who's still pushing himself. [Sep 2003, p.132]

The album is crisper than the band’s early-’08 EP, thanks to Spoon producer Mike McCarthy, who let the fury bounce around every inch of a cinder-block space in Austin--where, appropriately, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" sound effects were recorded.

With this foulmouthed, backsliding rock, Hull and his flock do Dixie real proud.

Even if nobody's made a record that sounds much like this before, she's given her performance here too many times already. [Jun 2007, p.106]