It's Great manages to create a cohesive set that engages the listener at each turn. [No. 126, p.55]

A brave, provocative and thoughtful addition to the Tuckers' canon. [No. 136, p.51]

A 65-track, six-CD boxed set featuring several mixes of 1969's studio album, live recordings from San Francisco's Matrix and a disc of VU's never-released fourth album.... This disc is worth the price of admission. [No. 116, p.51]

Gentlemen could be the best album of the alternative era, and the new deluxe double-disc reissue loaded with demos, b-sides and rarities just confirms out opinion. [No. 116, p.53]

Takes The Strangest Things' dark, occasionally scattershot pop and refines it with sharper songwriting and a slicker approach. [#69, p.100]

They've consistently upped tempos while delivering saccharine-infused riffs with all the sunshine-y aplomb of a Prozac salesman's first and last day on the job. [No.87 p.59]

Partygoing is arguably as good as Memories Of Love. [No.99, p.54]

On his own throughout this compilation, he sounds like a ghost haunting the dream house of his youth. Simply gorgeous. [No. 105, p.61]

Some of the lyrics are so biting they practically melt through the speakers... [#50, p.90]

A fascinating, headbanging and improbably accessible listen. [No. 136, p.55]

Leadoff track "Six Feet Under"- with its whispery falsetto chorus skewered by the ominous plea, "Call me when you're six feet underground" - is among the catchiest and most emotionally exposed songs Auer has ever recorded. [Jul/Aug 2006, p.86]

Essentially, it's the super-cool but super-classy Christmas record all hipsters hope they'll find under their tree this year. [No. 94, p.61]

What's miraculous about Promise Of Love is the way the band instills the music with such incredible warmth. [#59, p.85]

Drummer Jerry Fuchs (now deceased) displaces air molecules the way advanced, AI-driven pulverizing machines in distant galaxies only wish they could throughout space banger "Yeah, C'mon," leaving guitarist Justin Chearno no choice but to vaporize his fretboard. [No.87 p.59]

A ground-breaking debut, an original game-changer, a true, flawless, 24-carat triumph. [No. 94, p.60]

This is Radiohead's deepest, darkest pool of devotion and doubt in a career marked by almost nothing but. [No. 133, p.51]

Standouts are so effortlessly and relentlessly infectious that it's impossible to think that Pujol didn't spend long nights spinning and internalizing Fleetwood Mac and Kinks LPs. [#88, p.59]

Just like one's real family, Arthur's Family will lift you up, tear you down, make you face your despair and allow you a glimmer of hope. [No. 133, p.52]

It's all here - all seven studio albums, which, despite the hype, remain truly fantastic. [No.91, p.54]

Twenty years later, the Shellac so many swore by is back, and swinging. [No. 116, p.61]

All the elements anyone would want from the band are adroitly balanced. [No. 136, p.59]

the "new" Neubauten is a stronger unit than it has been in the entire latter half of its existence.... Silence Is Sexy is brilliant, and Einsturzende Neubauten remains without peer. [#46, p.75]

Blame current remastering techniques or the prescience of its makers, each of these collections sound future-forward (then) and very now (wow). [No. 133, p.53]

This is an album of mostly beatless soul whose heart nevertheless pumps vividly and loudly throughout its 17 tracks. [No. 136, p.61]

It's like somebody took all the great elements of FM anthems--the indelible choruses, the melodic tenacity and the rush of invincibility--and cut out the fat. [#64, p.110]

There's a candor here that hasn't always touched the Icelandic singer/composer's electro-dreamscape output. [No. 118, p.52]

Like Bazan's best work, Blanco is simultaneously uplifting and melancholic, hopelessly hopeful and beautifully dented. [No. 133, p.55]

Recommended for those who long to hear Radiohead make a post-aughts indie-pop record, A Different Ship is without a doubt one of the most impressive and enjoyable efforts of 2012. [No.87, p.60]

For all its listenability, Centres is still wildly inventive. [No. 133, p.55]

The best punk record you'll hear all year, articulate and amped all the same. [#58, p.86]

The music remains solidly Southern, using all three chords, but the lyrics reach for new levels of cussedness and vulnerability. [No.99, p.57]

This time out, he brings all his influences together into an LP that may be his most musically diverse offering yet. [No.96, p.56]

These quiet, stripped-down songs are so narcotically enticing that when an occasional burst of moderate-volume guitar noise pops up unexpectedly, the effect is excruciating, like wires burning in the brain. [#52, p.102]

The result is a modern dream-pop classic, a victory more major than minor. [No. 133, p.59]

Shooting through the proceedings is a relentless, apocalyptic jitteriness that leaves you teetering on the edge of your chaise. [#58, p.84]

There isn't a moment when Arthur Lee is anything less than Arthur Lee: brilliant, unpredictable and relentless in his drive to reinvent himself. [No. 116, p.59]

This is a record that fans of Juliana Hatfield, Lightning Bolt or King Crimson could fall in love without compromise. [No. 96, p.60]

[A] momentous sixth LP. [No. 96, p.60]

As he continues to spin funny, poignant, depressing and eminently melodic tales of woe, it's clear McCaughey is a staggering genius aging as superbly as a fine bottle of hooch. [#71, p.106]

This collection wraps its three decades' worth of maudlin magic in one neat black bow. [No.142, p.51]

The trilogy's scarred, scary travelogue defines '70s Berlin as much as it does Bowie in uncompromising recovery mode. ... Brilliant. [No. 147, p.52]

On the band's latest, they continue the move toward the tighter concision found on 2009's King Of Jeans, but unlike Pissed Jeans' previous efforts, there isn't a seven-minute dirge on Honeys. [No. 95, p.51]

Colder achieves a startling freshness on its second full-length that few post-punk bands can even hope to approach. [#70, p.89]

A soundtrack that hits with the force of a well-timed punch and soothes like the ministrations of a doomed romantic poet. [No. 142, p.56]

The Sword continually updates ridiculously classic rock tropes in the most wonderful ways. [No. 123, p.60]

On this enthralling sophomore effort, Spaltro continues to refine her skill set and approach without sacrificing any of her signature adventurousness or decidedly un-lamb-like power. [No. 118, p.59]

They take genre conventions and flip them inside out. [No. 96, p.57]

The set is exhaustive, but it's not an overdose. [No. 144, p.60]

Monday is the greatest in a line of albums from a band that hopefuly has a few more years of screwing up and falling down on its itinerary. [#59, p.87]

The Antibalas crew is in peak form, plating circles around any other second-wave Afrobeat outfit in town. [#90, p.53]

Bid's disaffected-yet-engaging vocals and slice-of-life lyrics remain compelling as ever. [No. 118, p.59]

A rousing, energetic exploration of the Roy Orbison-influenced rock 'n' roll, classic country and Latin influences--that blows all the damn mall-folk clogging up our inbox out of the goddamn water. [No. 96, p.57]

These are the quiet, beautiful songs that made Belle & Sebastian seem so monumental for a short time. [#68, p.88]

There remain very few great "lost" albums. Make no mistake. This is one. [No. 147, p.59]

Low is the heaviest band in rock. [#48, p.100]

It continues to add up to something special. [No. 139, p.51]

The richest, smartest, warmest work they've ever done. [No. 117, p.61]

Orphans plays less like a career capstone than Waits' one-man Library of Congress field-recording project. [#74, p.93]

Finds both beatmaker and rapper at the peak of their powers. [#70, p.89]

A potent set of tunes. [No. 130, p.53]

Further proof that Fidlar's headliner-destroying stint as the Pixies' opening act was no fluke. [No. 124, p.55]

No One Deserves Happiness is even better [than One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache]. [No. 130, p.53]

She once again raises the bar for her personal best... [#50, p.85]

For anyone who would like to experience all of Hansard's estimable gifts in a single listening session, he has thoughtfully provided a compendium of his patented brilliance on Didn't He Ramble. [No. 124, p.56]

The Hope Six Demolition Project is yet another remarkable PJ Harvey effort. [No. 130, p.54]

A better record than the Shins' first--a sonically bolder production with fewer effects and more hooks per square inch than a flyrod factory. [#61, p.109]

The group's 17th album sounds as fresh and over the top as anything it's ever done. [No. 130, p.55]

Post Pop Depression comes across like a third Pop partnership with Bowie, only more brutal and more elegiacally touched by the shadows of the smiles in Pop's memory. [No. 130, p.56]

It's what the British Invasion might've sounded like had it come after punk rock. [#58, p.109]

American Dream is, in purely sonic terms, their richest, most viscerally pleasurable record yet, rife with layered, polyrhythmic percussion and an encyclopedic array of synth textures. [No. 147, p.56]

Their [Doherty and Barat's] boyish charms are punctuated by sneers and jeers, leaving the listener clueless as to who ends where the other begins. That sort of daft mystery makes Anthems--and the Libertines in general--worth its weight in dope and gold. [No. 124, p.58]

Evocative bursts of noise and youth abound everywhere, and there's absolutely no reason not to succumb to them. [No.89, p.59]

It's beautiful. [No. 139, p.55]

The Convincer gives Lowe yet another gold star with which to pad that resume. [#51, p.99]

The eight songs are all beautifully crafted, integrating elements of folk, blues and country/rock.... A new American classic. [No. 115, p.55]

Even a listener deeply familiar with these records--no, especially that listener--will enjoy a high reward for the outlay. [No. 124, p.60]

This is the first time since 2003 that Elverum fully succeeds in casting a meditative spell strong enough to suck everyone listing into its singular IRL riptide. [No. 117, p.57]

Some of these songs are potent, for-real rock songs. [No. 124, p.61]

Martsch and Co. have dipped their bucket deep into the well of pop's past to create a recombinant, joyous sound that has few modern equals. [#51, p.87]

There's a lot to love about 'Sno Angel... Like You. [#71, p.98]

The guitars are gorgeously recorded, the vocals are gently understated and the occasional keyboards are carefully mixed into the background with a simple, earnest warmth. [#49, p.79]

A near-perfect record to hold onto with all the might you can muster. [#58, p.103]

His artistic sophistication and derring-do has reached a new (and, frankly, unexpected) level of maturity. [No. 115, p.56]

The music, co-created with producer Patrick Leonard, is sparse but energetically diverse, with dips into Memphis soul, country, cabaret and jazzy funk. [No. 115, p.58]

A treasure trove of unheralded, largely unheard, completely unselfconscious pop music that bravely led post-punk out of the gloom and into its rose-colored romantic future. [No. 117, p.51]

An embarrassment of riches. [#58, p.91]

Smashing. [No. 159, p.57]

No, we haven't heard this Cave before, and though magnetic, emotive and tenderly merciful, one prays for his sake that we never hear it again. [No. 137, p.51]

What makes the album exceptional is its thematic unity and storybook approach. [#67, p.85]

The first great album of '99. [March 1999]

After the actors have their poignantly emotional say, it's Bowie's own tremolo-rich, baritone voice and the noir-art-industrial-jazz band he employed on Blackstar that top off Lazarus stage-songs. [No. 137, p.53]

Defend Yourself is virtually filler-less. [No. 102, p.52]

On release, a collection of singles over the band's career, its stability takes these years-spanning pieces and forms them into coherence, it's also one of the year's best listens. [No. 115, p.55]

Monomania is stacked with track-to-track unshakable, albeit twisted, pop melodies and an atmosphere of unrest that will stick with you between repeated listens. [No.99, p.52]

A phenomenal recording of sonic and lyrical depth. [#53, p.69]

You get something that's very lovely and poetic and melancholy and vulnerable and unspeakably beautiful. [No. 100, p.54]

Capacious, intimate and brimming with both whimsy and tension, Recording A Tape is what classical music might sound like from some advanced alien civilization. [#70, p.86]

All at-once nauseating, delectable and habit-forming. [No.90, p.55]