He represents gangsta rap's evolution into pure entertainment. [May 2005, p.116]

Over the course of an entire album Twista's gift proves his curse: Uniterrupted, it can get taxing. [Mar 2004, p.129]

While Banks's wicked wordplay is impressive, his one-liners get him only so far. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.134]

His bandmates... elevate Boyd's self-indulgent nonsense with rich noodling and searing flashes of metal. [Mar 2004, p.120]

Blame Seger for aiming no higher than to be the soundtrack for the next Larry the Cable Guy feature. [Oct 2006, p.142]

There's little unity of sound, but more than enough passion and unity of purpose. [Oct 2004, p.125]

On the album’s best moments, he pours his hopeless longing into sweaty, inebriated celebrations of love’s boundless optimism.

With Rock N Roll, Ryan Adams has thrown off the trappings of underachievement and grabbed for the crown. [Dec 2003, p.132]

Wheat adopt a new, far breezier musical style for their first release since 1999. [#23, p.112]

These records are too dramatic, too personal and, well, too much. [Oct 2004, p.110]

All very beguilling as long as you really, really like the sound of a melodica. [Sep 2004, p.134]

This is dramatic, radio-loving rock primed to outlive the current I Love The '80s infatuation. [Apr 2005, p.113]

Overall, Dig Out Your Soul is a dark, heavy, chart-snubbing record that acts Oasis’s age (main songwriter Noel Gallagher is 42) and is their first in eons that doesn’t seem desperate to please. Oasis have their devil back.

The music is dizzying, even mesmerizing.

Their sixth album sticks close to what they know best. [Nov 2007, p.153]

A nicely loose-limbed collection. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.143]

Easily Kim's strongest work since her pheromone-thick 1996 debut. [Nov 2005, p.136]

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

A hedonistic debut that's thick with the stench of leatherette and fake fur. [Aug 2004, p.131]

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.

Never before have these kings of experimental metal sustained such pulse-quickening energy, honing their tricks--cryptic lyrics, cliffhanging cries, spine-twisting rhythms--into a screaming arrow of sound.

Yes, the Jonases are squishy, vanilla and too sweet. But so is an ice-cream cone. And ice-cream cones are freakin’ delicious. Especially when they come with a cherry on top.

The gimmick runs out of novelty long before this third album is done. Even 31 minutes of show-off kiddie theater is too much.

Occasionally overblown... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.132]

[Several songs] sound way too much like Strokes castoffs, a situation little helped by... Fridmann's unusually heavy-handed production. [Mar 2004, p.125]

Odd, ambitious, confounding, and occasionally brilliant -- which is to say it's much like the five Aphex albums that preceded it. [#4, p.114]

There's a surefootedness and subtlety here to shame many elders. [Mar 2005, p.139]

The cocky songs mask a lot of misery. [Jun 2007, p.107]