Rhett Miller’s lovelorn lyrics remain respectably literary, while his pretty singing and his pals’ pretty playing turn increasingly wan and half-cooked.

Pondering his parents divorce or describing intricate and delicate sex acts, Mraz's tasty tenor remains a modestly classy pleasure. But he's lost crucial cool. [June 2008, p.75]

The concept is basic and brilliant: a song for every bitter month of a year of off-again/on-again romance, from splitting the record collection in January to “A token e-mail/ A drunken text/A sorry go-round of cell-phone sex” in October.

Feuled by a ninth-grader's nausea they refuse to grow out of, they take their skateboards and chase down the horizon. [Mar 2009, p.64]

The moody disco on Couples is both sleeker and spookier than the sexed-up indie rock of th Blondes' promising 2006 debut, "Someone to Drive You Home."

The duo fight back with song after song full of cutting takedowns and brotherly wisdom--they get petty, they get mean, but aided by Arcade Fire orchestrator Owen Pallett, they turn their bitchfests into grandiose melodrama.

Since avant-punk often has more “limits” than its creators recognize, respect and then some to No Age for keeping theirs interesting.

There’s a happy messiness throughout: At heart more jazz improviser than control freak, Hebden sounds happiest when things are just about to slip through his fingers.

It's groove-deprived and difficult, and not in a particularly inventive way. [May 2008, p.78]

Here, he seems more comfortable in his pasty skin. [May 2008, p.76]

The hooks come off-kilter and all killer.

It's fun to hear here negotiate the contours of Top 40 pop for the first time since "Like A Prayer," without any European house music hose-head gumming up the pleasure and catharsis with mediative schmaltz. [May 2008, p.73]

Santogold bursts with the arrogance of a world-beating hip-hop debut while thriving on vulnerability.

Rising Down is tightly focused and appealingly modest in its ambitions.

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

Though there’s slick, occasionally dynamite production from the likes of the Runners and Scott Storch, the lyrics rarely rise above defensive boasting (“One Hit Wonder”), frigid sex raps (“What It Is [Strike a Pose]”) and rote autobiography (“College”).

Making good on the promise of two nervously explosive EPs, Tokyo Police Club indulge in plenty of echoey atmospherics but also add Foo Fighters-esque blasts of guitar, as if leaping into action and kicking over their chairs. [May 2008, p.79]

In the quest to make overly bronzed twentysomethings sweat, this endearing pseudo–rebel loses much of the little–sister angst that made her so appealing in the first place.

Fans of the TV show will have heard versions of almost all these songs before. The problem is, they've also seen these songs before.

E=MC2 is Carey's most-fun album, and her best.

Filled with ambitious production and winsome nostalgia, Saturdays is an otherworldly chronicle of adolescence only a starry-eyed 20-something could make.

The guitar rock here is loud, taut, buoyant--but stands little chance of getting inside your head.

It’s obvious, obnoxious and effective.

Muscularly arranged with bongolated beats, psychedelic swamp guitars, boogie-woogie pine top and snowballing chorus hooks, Just Us Kids approximates a certain literate strain of early-'80s album rock.

Exactly zero songs on Spirit come close to matching 'Bleeding Love.' On the album, she fares best when not allowed to overindulge in her sterling voice as on the haunting electro kiss-off 'Take a Bow' and the svelte power ballad 'I Will Be,' co-written by Avril Lavigne.

The album could easily have come from Boards of Canada or any number of downcast groups--if it were shorter. [May 2008, p.78]

The result is slight but often gorgeous. [Apr 2008, p.77]

T’nT use gnarled-up keyboard sounds and mix tricks the way third-tier punk bands use screaming and feedback--to disguise the lack of something to say.