Feels curiously behind-the-curve. [Oct 2005, p.142]

What was once joyful, now sounds careworn and overly precious.

Too much of Strays settles for the pedestrian. [Aug 2003, p.126]

Reveals little beyond the surface, and generally rehashes past formulas. [#13, p.96]

The group's lite grooves, awful raps and wide-screen choruses are beginning to sound desperate. [#17, p.144]

No More suffers from a relentless sense of goth gloom that's as claustrophobic as a church confessional. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

J. Lo's music has been upgraded from quite bad to merely bad. [Dec 2007, p.148]

Full of standard-issue street rhymes and treacly R&B hooks, Back Again makes you want to shout "Cut!" halfway through. [#15, p.125]

They still can't overcome their addiction to sugar. [#9, p.152]

Etheridge backs up her verbal cliches with musical ones. [Mar 2004, p.117]

There's nothing here that you couldn't hear blaring out of a thousand suburban garages on any Saturday night. [#4, p.118]

Marjorie Fair's plinky strums, orchestral swells and hummable lyrics are hard to dislike and impossible to love. [Aug 2005, p.111]

More of the same, except less. [#17, p.145]

The parade of midtempo soul-pop snoozers and funk-lite fluff is no more memorable than Soul Asylum's last record. Which is to say, not very. [#9, p.153]

Even Monsoon’s best moments are marred by barely audible vocals and dull lyrical abstractions.

A long-winded, soulless soul album of the kind Levert might have once turned in. [#4, p.117]

Barely breaks a sweat as it revisits the lukewarm metal riffs, barely passable rapping and sunny Caribbean choruses of [their] previous seven studio albums. [Oct 2005, p.145]

Begging can be sexy, too, but for SWR it’s just another joyless act by a hateful species.

There’s only so much even a metal fan can swallow.

The hipster thrills are fading. [Oct 2004, p.116]

Despite their surface similarities, Knapp's wide-eyed songs lack the unnerving distinction and eccentricity that are [Conor] Oberst's stock-in-trade. [Nov 2004, p.142]

The disconnect between their always gnarly syntax and the suede-buffed production drains the album's energy. [#4, p.116]

There’s nothing like a concept album for faking musical maturity.

The best songs here are the least ambitious: love laments that coleader Glenn Frey and bassist Timothy B. Schmit both sing the hell out of.

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]

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

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

The new songs are excessively polished and precisely drawn, and relentlessly deliver an uplifting message. [Jun 2006, p.145]