This is a classic 1970s-style headphones record that is both arty and unusually undisciplined. [Nov 2003, p.108]

Where melodies once surged with hand-clapping giddiness, they're now august and restrained, balladic, not bubbly--fitting songs strung between hope, resignation and regret.

Lost in Space... pushes her in a new direction. [#9, p.152]

Unlke many underground MCs, [Levine] doesn't use a $10 word if it'll compromise the beat. [May 2004, p.118]

Tighter and more energized than anything the band has done since Vitalogy. [Jun 2006, p.142]

Song after song is undermined by too-precious gestures, and the occasional bursts of speed and volume can't mask Grandaddy's exhaustion. [Jun 2006, p.137]

The real hero is Sean Eden, whose lyrical lead guitar--a bit Harrison, a bit Morricone--makes even the silliest songs sound majestic. [Nov 2004, p.138]

The tunes are basically chants and the drumming is more straight-ahead than "tribal" and when the vibraphone trips in after 40 seconds of 'The Ballad of Butter Bean,' you may not bust a gut laughing, but you'll probably grin. [June 2008, p.75]

Despite Gabriel's performances, there are no hits here. [#10, p.117]

The bleakness is stirring as often as it is enervating. [#23, p.100]

Pop has made more nuanced albums than this in recent years, but Skull Ring is about reclaiming the franchise as unselfconsciously as is possible. [Oct 2003, p.125]

All the post-punk components are here, but they don't jell into anything more than a mannered take on the punk that punk forgot. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.112]

Her genius is not to let herself be trapped in yesterday. [#9, p.144]

When he tries to get serious... Drew comes across as nothing more than a self-important shock artist, way out of his element.

T.I. boats one of gangsta rap's most mellifluous voices and more polysyllabic lexicons, and when he combines the two, he's dazzling, hypnotic, virtuosic. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.82]

With his buddy Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Hughes gets the details right all over Heart On.

The Dears’ breakthrough was 2004’s "No Cities Left," a post-apocalyptic expedition through emotional and political wreckage, and they’re still mining that barren landscape, trying to rebuild.

The dark spaciousness that boosted BRMC's uneven 2001 debut is replaced with garage-rock fist pumpers, which are all catchy but cramped. [Sep 2003, p.119]

The closest his polite bum comes to tearing loose is when he gives his music-hall skiffle a Dixieland bounce. [Apr 2009, p.80]

For years, Smith has excelled in her profession as rock's great heroine; at its best, Trampin' sounds more like leisure time, but it still pays off. [May 2004, p.132]

For all their wriggly noise details and fragmented language, their center of gravity is in their hips. [#23, p.101]

Most of these concise, super-catchy tunes are as unself-consciously traditional, and fun, as an undiscovered cache of British Invasion rock. [#14, p.143]

An amped-up grotesque of torchy vaudeville and European parlor songs that starts as high-concept camp and winds up strangely illuminating. [May 2006, p.105]

Superproducer Butch Vig is around to help transform Gabel’s strident leftism and occasionally clumsy choruses (e.g., "Protest Songs! In response to military aggression!") into swing-state-ready stadium rock.

Putnam lays fragile vocals and haunting piano melodies over tightly wound postpunk rhythms that add immediacy to lyrics about missed opportunities and broken relationships. [Dec 2005, p.151]

For every killer raise-your-hands hook there is a snoozer of an SWV-esque torch ballad, and she can't seem to tell the difference. [Jul 2005, p.116]

A vibrant, classy debut. [#10, p.126]

The music makes her giddiness contagious. [#16, p.114]