On Traffic and Weather, their lyrical touch slips. [Apr 2007, p.114]

Despite all the players, these lush songs are transitory, not bombastic or cluttered. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.78]

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

It's the group's continued synchronicity that makes puns like "Kissing Asphalt" both chat-room hip and roller-rink authentic. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

Lavigne splices the angst of Alanis Morissette and the snarl of Courtney Love into a debut full of sunny guitar pop. [#8, p.115]

While Eyeball is essentially a breezy gloss on the blend of idiosyncratic pop chops and exotica that characterizes much of the Luaka roster, it's buoyantly lightweight nonetheless. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.106]

The formula gets a bit stale. [May 2004, p.133]

For computer music, it's all astoundingly warm. [Apr 2004, p.139]

Moves seamlessly from ironic cock-rock and steel guitar-kissed hymns to crisply melodic pop and full-on hippie freakouts. [Oct 2004, p.116]

An utterly competent album that's devoid of politics, not to mention any genuinely exciting studio ideas. [#11, p.136]

Gummere’s voice is no one’s idea of pretty, and his lyrics are sometimes hard to decipher over the squall. But they’re both secondary to the nose-bloodying sonic punch.

The sound matches lyrics about isolation and despair, achieving a freeze-dried catchiness in the opening songs. But by the end of the album, cleverness gives way to the bleak and the drab.

Punch line for punch line, Luda is still the best in the business (e.g., promising to get ladies “wetter than Michael Phelps”), but these sex jams and hater disses feel too flat and perfunctory for his thousand-watt personality.

Making good on the promise of two nervously explosive EPs, Tokyo Police Club indulge in plenty of echoey atmospherics but also add Foo Fighters-esque blasts of guitar, as if leaping into action and kicking over their chairs. [May 2008, p.79]

What could have been an awful mess is instead a glorious mess. [#12, p.151]

Sadly, while some will still be humming the hypnotic "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" come judgment day, the rest of Fever is more forgettable. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.114]

If you're this good, it's not hype. [#8, p.126]

Classicism yields all the right stuff: alert sound with a lived-in feel, finely detailed tunes that shoot straight. [Aug 2004, p.140]

Unlike some other singers, Timberlake never seems a puppet of his hot producers. [#12, p.154]

The music is dominated by the same pounding pop-disco beats and thick textures that have defined all her record. But now Lennox sounds like she's been rubbed raw by life. [Oct 2007, p.111]

Their sixth album enlists Michael Bay levels of volume and grandeur in the service of alarmingly generic, hookless power ballads and plodding prog etudes.

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

This time around, both Air's jokes and their grooves have lost their grace... [Jun/Jul 2001, p.104]

Slower into its stride, with tune-free twittering and dull homages to FX-pedal rock making up the first half. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.123]

Green manages to charm even as he annoys. [Aug 2006, p.108]

It's better written than her previous CDs... But this new old style is far less suited to her talents. [Jun 2007, p.110]

The beat-programming is crystalline, the feeling is frozen, the soul is northern if it's there at all. [Sep 2005, p.136]

McGrath sounds both sexier and more gentle, sensitive and more irresponsible. [#17, p.143]