There are more than enough licks to compensate when that tendency [to sound whiny or emo-ish] gets a little overwhelming. [No.91, p.57]

The variety of The Weather definitely offers some spice to lives. [No. 142, p.59]

What an odd, creakily compelling record this is. [No. 142, p.59]

It isn't always pleasant, but it's always surprisingly pretty. [#54, p.88]

The band digs deep to produce 11 sharp tracks, marked by its inventive stylistic hybrid. [No. 147, p.61]

The production is crisper, the songs seem less abrupt, and the vocals are less murky. [No. 100, p.53]

It's not an easy listen--"Greener Stretch" is one of the rare songs that has an immediate hook--but it commands, and rewards, attention. [No. 147, p.61]

This tune ["Calling Planet Earth--We'll Wait For You"] captures Ra's formidable Arkestra bursting at the seams. ... The two other tracks included here are less essential, consisting of droning tones and percussion interludes. [No. 142, p.61]

Loud and big--stadium big, major-label big--and although it has soft patches, much of it hurtles forward with welcomed urgency. [No.89, p.58]

The way-cute, we're-just-messing-around-with-our-computer feel of Out Of The loop is missed, but The Tight Connection gives a crisper picture of the duo at work. [#55, p.80]

For those [who have cottoned to Mascis' nasal falsetto and six-string wizardly], this is another lovely acoustic outing from a beloved artists. For the rest, move along, there's nothing to see here. [No. 112, p.59]

For My Parents de-emphasizes stylistic juxtapositions for a more holistic approach to epic soundscaping. [No.91 p.57]

The music is a 10; the curating, something rather less. [No. 115, p.51]

Without seeming pretentious or curated, Out Hud is making dance music that feels "important." [#67, p.110]

Do It! is accessible enough to appeal to both curious indie-pop fans and avant musos without an obscurantist chip in their shoulders. [Summer 2008, p.98]

Their winding leads, ghostly shimmers and stacked luminous sound clouds wheel around each other like elegant skywriting maneuvers. [#88, p.54]

Though there's plenty of wit... to go along with copious amounts of jangle, twang and... Brian Wilson-esque sweep, there's often an overriding, wistful sadness mixed in with the Left Coast hedonism. [#73, p.106]

Part prog, part punk and part reefer haze. [#60, p.106]

It takes a sure-footed venture into morose country territory on the album's back half before Wot feels like a departure. [No. 104, p.55]

No matter your tastes, there's something to put you on edge. [No. 117, p.61]

Their scope isn't quite as broad as 2011's Apocalypse or as emotionally complex as 2009's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, but they are full of sharp observations and wit. [No. 102, p.54]

The songs' infectiousness outweighs their questionable stylizations. [#81, p. 53]

Fans will love her subtlety and clean new sound, but someone just coming on board might not find this an essential listen. [No. 85, p.59]

As subtle as, and harder than, a flying mallet. [#58, p.84]

It sounds industrial on paper but comes off more like a hybrid of post-punk and noise pop. [#64, p.100]

Best experienced in depressed darkness while contemplating your existence. [No. 117., p.59]

This could have been Costello's urban album, or his funk album, or his black album--but instead, it's simply his new album. [No. 102, p.54]

While there's no lack of drama on Locket, it's a missing the bombast of yore--which is to say that if you hated Frog Eyes before, you might dig this one. [No. 124, p.57]

The Whigs occassionally hit on moments of poignancy, but most of their time is spent reinventing the classic-rock wheel in a rather self-aware fashion. [Winter 2008, p.114]

Though at times exquisite, the slow-burn even instrumental keel is, ironically, the most jarring aspect of Push The Sky Away. [No. 96, p.52]

The 10 tunes evoke nothing but a good, unusually brisk-feeling and '70s-like Luna record. [No. 147, p.58]

The results are everything you'd expect from the guys responsible for Pulp's This Is Hardcore, Air's Moon Safari and Beck's Sea Change. [#75, p.98]

While his gloriously grizzled voice remains probably the most majestic instrument in the entire 21st-century retro-soul arsenal, and the Daptone mob mete out many more-than-serviceable grooves for him to rap atop, Changes offers no real shake-ups. [No. 130, p.55]

Not nearly as tear-stained as his 2000 mini-album Gerroa Songs, Three zeroes in on the uptempo, if not the upbeat. [#55, p.84]

This latest offering carries an overwhelming feeling of desperation. [No. 139, p.53]

"Praise Ye The Lord" opens the album on a dramatic note, with Previte's cymbal work adding power to the ardent lyric. [No. 142, p.53]

Contrary to the urgency of the title, Silencio! is more intermission than showstopper. [No.89, p.59]

Smith keeps his garage-rock grounding--and his distinctiveness--intact. [No. 100, p.58]

Not everything kills, but when the band's "psychedelic rock and blue-eyed soul" finds its groove, it's still a breathless wonder to behold. [No. 124, p.61]

Its best moments stand among its members' better experiments, though the rest will likely be replaced after another decade-long ice age. [Summer 2008, p.106]

There's something about the sixth full-length from this Icelandic experimental electronic outfit that feels like exciting new territory--and something about it that feels like home. [No. 102, p.58]

He pushes himself into unfamiliar, often sonically jarring new terrain. [#73, p.112]

Howl works best when Feck and Co. marry their frustrated empathy with hopeful jubilation, letting the kids know that although they're lonely, they're certainly not alone. [#82, p. 53]

Aside from the awkwardly grungy 'The Score,' these are good songs well-played, with Walla handling everything except for drums.

Love Streams is a more amiably cluttered affair: bolder, stranger and, at times, considerably more bewildering, but with an ultimately playful, exploratory guiding spirit. [No. 130, p.57]

Seems a transitional work connecting As Above to the future. [#56, p.78]

Sounds like somebody has exited the coffeehouse with a strong jolt of caffeine. [#74, p.101]

Paradise still sounds like the work sf an artist turning her face back, if somewhat slowly, toward the sunlight. [No. 142, p.55]

The potential is here for Bettie Serveert to be marvelous.... But [singer Carol] Van Dijk's always-ominous lyricism, her need to play variations on the fallen and fallow, leaver her warm, tentative voice too vulnerable, too nervously open, too much like a desperate character among the bones of Lou Reed's once-famous dead. [#47, p.86]

Gimmie Trouble: cyber funk or cyborg punk? [#70, p.86]

Ultimately, it's a delightful indulgence--you're never quite convinced that Turner's about to quit his day job--but a hugely enjoyable one, and Arctic Monkeys fans, in particular, will devour this. [No. 130, p.59]

He calls this collection of tunes "California noir," and the album delivers on that promise with songs that explore the deteriorating American dream in all its faded glory. [No. 139, p.59]

Secrets Are Sinister’s unflagging energy keeps it from sounding tragic, as if with a few more tries, its narrators and subjects might be able to bridge the gap between them.

The reanimated sludgefest is no mere quaint time capsule; music this brutally elemental is as eternal as the stars and as fresh as the debuts of Black Sabbath and the Beastie Boys. [No. 130, p.59]

Let There Be Morning may not cure your insomnia, but it should be a soothing antidote to that fourth double cappuccino of the day. [#67, p.96]

At times reminiscent of the Lilys' Better Can't Make Your Life Better, Snowdonia works within formula, but it does so with aplomb. [No. 139, p.61]

Campily butch. [#69, p.110]

There's a lot of worthwhile material for her to perform here. [No. 100, p.59]

It's all very romantic and swoon-worthy. [#67, p.93]

The previously skimpy instrumental backing has been beefed up at times with synthetic horn parts: a good idea. [#61, p.102]

Overdrive showcases barer instrumentations and peeled-back song structures. [#110, p.59]

For all the inventive whimsy of the arrangements, however, there’s no mistaking the slight lyrical content.

Great production flourishes dominate, with horns and steady percussion rising out of the mix to provide the listener with an enveloping atmosphere. [No.87, p.53]

It's far, far better than anyone ever had a right to expect. [No. 117, p.53]

It's a dark, repetitive, uncompromising record, full of challenges and threats. [No. 97, p.51]

Life On A String also reveals the tedious aspects of Anderson's muse. [#51, p.82]

As a 33-track double album, With Love has space for a small village's worth of memory lanes. [No. 100, p.61]

On a very small and exclusive CD rack, you'd file I snugly between the recent albums by Air and Cornelius. [#53, p.72]

Cydonia is a welcome return to the sensual, dubby, progressive trance that marked its best early work... [#50, p.102]

Full of ideas as well as joyful energy. [#68, p.86]

As If To Nothing occasionally lapses into moments that more closely resemble a compilation tape than a cohesive body of music. [#54, p.76]

The inanely literalistic Looping State of Mind magnifies that trend [toward expansionism], offering seven mutations of his trademark sound, in a newly expansive array of tempos. [#82, p. 55]

Love If Possible is a delightful confection, and Sakamoto keeps it just the right amount of sweet. [No. 159, p.59]

Completists will be sated - as they invariably are - by this fun, beat-happy collection. As for the less fanatical fans, caveat emptor: This is a return to the primitive.[No. 85, p.60]

A pleasant if vaguely unsatisfying collection of songs. [#61, p.106]

Naked and nearly innocent, the raw talent of Buckley is finally revealed. [No. 137, p.53]

The sound is more polished than the old bedroom-pop days, but four albums in, it is getting a little same-y. [No.87, p.52]

Sounds like lovelorn, half-baked philosophy for the Mariah Carey set.... Lucky for Justine Frischmann and her reconstituted Elastica, rock 'n' roll doesn't require lyrical profundity, just great beats, riffs, and attitude. All are here in spades... [#47, p.90]

Like the most effective camp, the line between what's intentionally and accidentally embarrassing is utterly ambiguous. [#58, p.82]

Angergard vivid production is the perfect foil for Komstedt's warmly detached vocals, and fans of Saint Etienne, Beach House and Blondie's "Heart Of Class" should take notice. [No.99, p.53]

Perhaps both the best and worst you can say about Revolution Radio is that it sounds exactly like Green Day. [No. 137, p.55]

Enjoying Furr, then, depends entirely on your ability (or willingness) to ignore the heavy footprints of familiar musicians.

White Hills [cuts to the chase;] the tempos are quicker, hooks more insistent. [No. 85, p.60]

A surprisingly deep album that fleshes out the vaguely krautish electronica the band only touched on in previous efforts. [No.88 p.59]

Hefner is new at this, so things get clumsy. But it's endearing, because [Darren] Hayman's melodies and the idiosyncratic worldview he espouses are still irresistible. [#53, p.79]

The results [of the combination of DJ culture and blues] sound less contrived on this outing [than on 1998's Come On In]. [#48, p.81]

A degree of delicacy colors album number eight. [No. 125, p.55]

A skilled lyricist and a great, emotive voice. [No.86, p.55]

Marling is the gutsiest of chamber folkies. [No.99, p.57]

It's all very impressive (and pretty), but that doesn't necessarily mean it leaves much of an impression. [No. 992, p.52]

Heaven? or Las Vegas? or, more probably (circa late '90's), Chicago? Hard to predict quite where Twin Sisters will end up, but it's a lovely, leisurely, labile journey all the same. [#81, p. 58]

FLOTUS is unexpected, occasionally inscrutable and fascinating. [No. 137, p.57]

The album includes a perky Cure pastiche, a taste of synth-pop and some very Spoon-ish back-and-forth between fuzzed-out, noisy guitars, but the succinct, kinetic rockers are its high points, and leaves you wanting more of them. [No. 97, p.59]

Riff-worthy, down and dirty and occasionally idling down Americana's lost highway. [#60, p.92]

There is still pullback, and delicate, melodic music seeps in, sounding like (synthetic) waves crashing on a (glass) beach. [No. 92, p.52]

[The] only complaint is that the rest of the LP doesn't quite sustain the power of these two tracks ["Petrichor" and "Sharp Stones"]. [No. 107, p.55]

Every Open Eye takes an "if it ain't broke" approach, following in the same sonic vein as Bones--sometimes outright repeating Bones--but not really building on it. [No. 125, p.58]

Consider the jarring Highway Songs a retrenchment in the wake of its creator's publicly nightmarish 2015: the album as spirit quest, as bridge. [No. 137, p.59]