Best enjoyed in the privacy of home. [Apr 2008, p.76]

Less scary but more melodic, Korn guns for hits, not street cred. [Mar 2006, p.113]

If she's trying to skewer empty luxuries, her delivery is too disengaged to register as ironic or feisty. [Apr 2009, p.63]

There's a little too much goop here. [Mar 2006, p.113]

Their tightest, bounciest album. [#11, p.125]

They've given up on ugliness for its own sake, trading it in for prettiness, which allows McCracken to rest his throat. [Oct 2004, p.128]

Ultimately, the anthems are as generic as they are hooky. [May 2003, p.123]

It is very good.

Williams' rapping is thankfully peripheral and the music is a fantastic, distracting mess. [Aug 2008, p.90]

Noel Gallagher has even less to say than he used to. [Jun 2005, p.112]

Despite its boldness, Perfect Symmetry is as swollen with corny grandeur as a political convention, guided by the delusion that a pompous speech somehow becomes fun if it’s accompanied by a balloon drop.

Weezer dwells on his well-documented obsessions with bad girlfriends and geek nostalgia, but without the usual giddy, mathematically precise songcraft.

These ringers are lively, and complement one another surprisingly well. So why is the record so underwhelming? That’d be the men at the helm.

A much more conventional Busta. [Aug 2006, p.111]

With Encore, Eminem rediscovers his sense of play and lets it run naked and screaming across the stage. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.100]

Though lighter on star power than its predecessor, this compilation... still packs weird extraterrestrial punch. [Apr 2006, p.118]

Aubert’s dude-sings-like-a-lady tenor conjures false hope for a relationship he knows is doomed. SSPU salute misery as a kind of ideal, the opposite of love but just as beautiful.

Despite the endurance test inherent in any double-disc, his Olympian performances are worth the weight of his pretensions. [#12, p.156]

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

Luckily, Bon Jovi's country-music move yields just... one irritant. [Jul 2007, p.113]

A party band to the core, the Ting Tings can't leave the dance floor without stumbling. [July 2008, p.76]

It's one big, horny wink--halfway between charming and totally sleazy. [Apr 2008, p.78]

While perfectly accomplished, this is big-budget background noise, purpose-built for any one of the plush cocktail bars it's soon to be endlessly played in, but lacking anything as distinct as, say, a personality of its own. [#10, p.130]

EBTG still have some way to go before they can mix such disparate elements together successfully. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

Sets the gold standard for diva records in 2005. [May 2005, p.118]

Clarkson has never sounded this depressive or spiteful. [Jul 2007, p.112]

There's nothing remotely original about any of it. [Apr 2007, p.111]

What remains is a concept that's been stewing too long and a singer who's one scream away from a hernia. [Dec 2006, p.180]