What's keeping the band from achieving a unique identity are Havok's generic whine and medoicre lyrics. [#15, p.120]

The result is something of a songcraft master class.... A career best. [Dec 2005, p.150]

Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts.

Auerbach's fat, rocketing riffs are rivaled only by his Delta-dipped drawl. [Oct 2004, p.114]

Nas, it seems, wants his crown back. [#13, p.95]

Too bad most of his songs come to an end just as they're heating up. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Quiet pleasures, but worth seeking out. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Too often, songs drift off into a fog of vague guitar atmospherics. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

[Annie] masterfully fus[es] synth-pop rhythms with her own feline coos. [Jun 2005, p.108]

The first and less snarky half of Tanglewood Numbers... is some of the liveliest music Berman has recorded. [Nov 2005, p.140]

It's always peculiar, and often a mess; it's also occasionally brilliant. [Jun 2006, p.142]

Thanks to a sneaky sense of emo self-awareness and shambling, expansive instrumentation, they avoid cute overload. [Apr 2008, p.80]

His perkiest album yet. [Sep 2003, p.132]

The sonic and theatrical muscle it takes to project to 50,000 people who've paid to see another band adds a sense iof purpose that can't transfigure the superb material but does give the music its own charater. [Nov 2008, p.81]

On his solo debut, Bradford Cox sinks, phantomlike, into lush, highly processed arrangements of organ, drum machine and (evidently) whatever instrument is laying around. The disappearing act really can be magical.

Handled with less love, this could feel like a smug wander through an ironic record collection. Here, it becomes sexy, life-affirming pop. [Aug 2004, p.141]

Scary. And at times, scary good. [Nov 2008, p.73]

On initial listen, the album is rather monotonous, a bunch of moderately singable tunes with some noise piled up around the edges.... After the fifth or twentieth listen, however, A Ghost Is Born starts to insinuate meaning. [#27, p.132]

The result is unkempt and challenging, but it works. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.109]

Conjuring doubts and tenderness, Forster's writing has never been surer. [May 2008, p.76]

With innovative, funk-influenced beats and engaging rhymes, Lif brilliantly avoids the pitfalls of vacuous bling-drones and 'real hip-hop" whiners alike. [#10, p.124]

Of the nearly 59 minutes of music here, about 40 induce deep pleasure. [#16, p.125]

There are enough moments to suggest that, should they ever concentrate on, say, just 10 of their favorite styles, they could be fab. [#14, p.133]

[An] excellent, star-studded farewell. [Sep 2006]

Not as revelatory as Deserter's Songs, but a worthy (and lovely) companion piece. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.125]

It's the sound of a band not stretching out so much as digging in: burrowing deeper into loamy soil they know well. [Jul 2007, p.109]

Campbell and Millan use boy-girl harmonies to make a mockery of romance. [Jan 2004, p.109]

This wistful, road-trip nostalgia-pop is the sound of alt-rock after the gold rush. [#14, p.141]