All the surfaces are exquisitely tasteful, all the string arrangements achingly melancholic. But there are no tunes. [#14, p.138]

The fine distinction between cool and blase, aloof and distant, seems to have eluded them. [Nov 2003, p.106]

In all, Eve achieves enough balance to continue reigning as hip-hop's most popular femme-fatale M.C. {#11, p.130]

She’s more geeky than queenly anyway, ­jazzily singing and breezily rapping over buoyant reggae and soul throwback beats sculpted by a guy named Adam who previously worked with American Idol finalist Elliott Yamin.

The sitar flourishes ini "Splitting Atoms" are muted by Learning's adult sheen, which lands this unusual record in an awkward middle ground between Bjork and, say, Oleta Adams. [#9, p.150]

The scholarship is too obvious at times... But at their streamlined best... it's like Britpop's glory years never waned. [Oct 2006, p.137]

With drums, strings, pianos, amps and backup singers, this is the biggest sounding record ever for a band that used to consist of one guy on acoustic guitar. [Apr 2008, p.81]

Has too many antiseptic beats and not nearly enough Timbaland. [May 2006, p.109]

Hot Chip's relentless stylistic hopscotch... ends up in an intricate muddle that fully engages neither hips nor heart. [Jun 2006, p.138]

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

It's nicely done, but the relentless cheerfulness grates. [Nov 2003, p.122]

[Has] a relaxed good humor and a genuine feel for the pulse of Western swing. [Apr 2006, p.114]

Midway through, this becomes the record it should have been all along: a gentle, autumnal meditation on the problems of becoming a badly drawn grown-up. [Nov 2006, p.136]

The album splits the difference between smart and smarty-pants: The articulate arrangements occasionally overdo the left-field instrumentation, and Richard Edwards’s empathetic short-story tales flirt with fussiness.

Sounds routine, obscure without much mystery. [Apr 2005, p.124]

It's hard to listen to the rest of Britney without imagining what the album would have sounded like had [the Neptunes] produced the whole thing. [#4, p.121]

The band turns [Kris Roe's] melodic remembrances into energized, youthful pop anthems, like a less-frivolous Blink-182. [#15, p.120]

This is a band reborn and ready to soar. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.103]

Mostly, though, this psychodrama feels both overplayed and underwritten. [August 2007 p.110]

It's not quite as thrillingly risky as the Deftones' White Pony, but it deserves the collegiate adulation it will likely receive. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.107]

These gothed-out Chicago yeomen relish a catoonishly dark lyric and if they eke new inspiration out of anything on their sixth studio album--which bounds along, as though bunny-powered, on a pop-punk beat--it's war. [July 2008, p.70]

For the tunnel-visioned Zeppelin fan, there's enough vintage Plant here to hold interest. [#8, p.121]

Rejected Unknown proves why those fans are so devoted. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.106]

Mascis sticks to his bombastic Dino formula on this record, but he still impresses with anthemic rockers, mellower jams and bluesy numbers that allow his Neil Young-inspired ax to shine. [#11, p.136]

30STM manage a high-minded space opera of epic scope befitting prog-rock prototypes Rush. [#9, p.142]

Where they once spun enveloping hood verite, here they just list gangsta signifiers without building a world from them. [Aug 2004, p.136]

The songs themselves don't amount to much... but they're basically an excuse for Ejstes's gloriously lysergic arrangements anyway. [Sep 2005, p.133]

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.