Beginning with "Further On (Up The Road)," Springsteen finds his footing and rides out the album on a stirring high note. [#9, p.140]

It's an "important" record... But, more crucially, it's an enduringly entrancing listen. [Apr 2006, p.123]

When the Teens youthfully chime in behind sheepish disclosures, it's like they’re arguing that a baby seat in the tour van doesn’t have to slow down the ride. And quite often, they prove it too.

Production by Bjork’s longtime collaborator Valgeir Sigurosson paradoxically plays up the transparency of Brun’s music, floating ghostly string arrangements and vocal harmonies nearby without ever making her sound less alone, or less mournfully serene.

As Zwan create a louder and less obviously pop eclat than the Pumpkins, they also turn more minimal. Their first record has one theme: the electric guitar. [#14, p.140]

Their propulsive intensity busts down garage doors, stumbling only with the wrongheaded ersatz cocktail ballad. [#8, p.117]

The Thermals are the rarest of punk bands: a three-chord, three-member outfit whose clamorous drive actually resolves into a riveting, accessible worldview. [#27, p.146]

Vespertine is her most intensely private and intimate-sounding work, a journey through an interior world that is quietly ecstatic, erotic and playful.

Grand in scope, majestic in sweep and only 57 percent pretentious. [#27, p.143]

Lanegan has finally produced his long-threatened masterpiece. [Oct 2004, p.125]

Chao’s jovial, chatty, Spanish-English-French crooning helps the ADD sensibility flow into something that feels like a happy incantation rather than a protester’s harangue against George Bush.

An album that continues their mission of yanking bluegrass into the modern era. [#9, p.149]

Crow's subtle, stirring vocal style exhibits the same resilient innocence that makes Meg Ryan a sympathetic screen star. [Apr/May 2002, p.115]

Retains electronica's futuristic rhythm-science and weird textures while still kicking out the jams. [May 2005, p.121]

Introducing some very welcome rock rhythms to his blend of folk and fingerpicked Delta blues, Ward’s disarmingly sweet fourth album squeezes big themes into modest but bewitching tunes.

It is very good.

Sounds like a band back on track. [#8, p.120]

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

Equal parts wit, heartbreak, cool... and potential commercial suicide. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.112]

The Wolf sets up Andrew W.K.'s post-partying career as motivational speaker for the bloody-nose set. [Sep 2003, p.132]

This trip is an easy, late-summer cruise. [Oct 2006, p.142]

The sound is simultaneously terse and expansive--moody and powerful, shot through with singer Chris Martin's grainy delivery. [#9, p.145]

A thoughtfully constructed delight. [#8, p.126]

The Darkness play old-fashioned metal with such elan that at times they ascend to pop music's Olympian heights. [Nov 2003, p.110]

Political without preaching, sexy in a bookish way, this record will keep you up talking with someone you'd like to kiss. [Dec 2005, p.149]

A more crunchingly bare-bones record all around. [#8, p.123]

Is it uneven? Yes. Self-indulgent? Unbearably, at times. But that's what makes West one of hip-hop's most exciting, funny, and human stars. He's unafraid to make a big, fat mess. [Sep 2005, p.130]

Her genius is not to let herself be trapped in yesterday. [#9, p.144]