Broken Bells' initial salvos may have set their parameters, but After The Disco expands, transcends and redefines them. [No. 106, p.52]

That Different Days is so listenable despite its flawed nature is testament to Costa and Anderson's wonderful songwriting and shrewd decisions. [Jan/Feb 2005]

Weezer, the 10th album by Weezer, is about as good (or bad, your call) as Weezer, several measures worse than Weezer, and a once-you-hear-it, you'll-never-unhear-it skid mark on the shorts of Weezer. [No. 130, p.51]

A sensational album by a band willing to take risks, Both Lights offers an exhilarating glimpse at pop music's future. [#86, p.52]

This is a soul singer's album all the way.... And it's a happy throwback in other ways, too. [No. 122, p.57]

His voice sometimes veers into brief, impressionistic Lou Reed talking or Mary Gautier twang, but mostly it's seductive. [No.85, p.61]

Hearing these songs all in a row, most sharing the same basic beat and harmonic structure, can make the title feel uncomfortably prophetic. [No. 95, p.60]

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]

This disc is pure Stewart - urgent, visceral electro-protest for the 21st century. [No. 85, p.59]

A comeback triumph that exchanges the desiccated roboticism of its predecessor for the vital, maniac, seductively imperfect epic exuberance. [No. 109, p.55]

As it's continued to grow, Ida has begun to sound almost ordinary. [#67, p.98]

Not only does Bankrupt! propose a big, stadium-ready sound, it offers one that nearly suffocates its creators. [No. 98, p.59]

The album’s sound is a more intricate remix of Fauna’s futurama, another hyperbaric disco chamber filled with technoodling beats backing pop operettas, while the lyrics sometimes do that magnum opus one better.

Three cheers aren't enough. [No.99, p.59]

Seekers And Finders is the straight cannonball the world's premier Gypsy punks haven't quite offered since 2005's Gypsy Punks: Underdog Wold Strike itself. [No. 145, p.55]

Black Pudding is like any other Lanegan record, just with better chops. [No. 98, p.56]

Meatier than the handful of singles and EPs that have boosted the Tanlines name to date. [No. 86, p.58]

Sadistically fun. [#60, p.97]

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

The hooks don't let up, the instrumentation provides the kind of sly surprise a pop listener wants from a three-minute gem, and the vocals have just enough grit to convey a darker lyrical tone. [No.87 p.59]

Stygian Stride may officially be divided into six differently titled pieces, but it actually exists best as a start-to-finish totality. [No. 97, p.59]

Despite faithfulness to the originals, this is unsurprisingly polished compared to the source material. [No. 112, p.61]

Kindred is fun, but best in small, sugary doses. [No. 120, p.59]

It's bold, colorful palette is wider and more enveloping than in the past. [No. 107, p.53]

Pond manages to use just about every trick in the psych-rock playbook to create energetic, borderline-unstable earworms that bury themselves deep in your brain for days. [No. 101, p.59]

Though Deer Tick has moonlighted as a Nirvana tribute band, it's the group's love for the Replacements that shines on Divine Providence. [#82, p. 55]

There's no real depth allowed in the themes, of course, and it bears no small resemblance to most other post-LCD Soundsystem fare. But it's beyond pointless to fault another person's idea of goodtime music. [No. 98, p.52]

This is a singer's album, one that luxuriates in the pure, lovely tones of Nadler's warmly intimate, darkly insistent voice. [No.87 p.57]

Tales From Terra Firma takes them to a more generic realm of sing-along indie rock, which is too bad. [No. 97, p.59]

There are seeds of talent in Phox, but this album doesn't let the band flourish. [No. 111, p.59]

Black Eyes gives barely a hint as to what this band achieves onstage. [#59, p.84]

Easy listening has never been this painful. [#57, p.106]

Boo Human is far from cohesive, but the playing is sharp, sympathetic and strong enough to create poetry out of everyday desperation.

Offering finds the band retooling its sound, and a few songs meander. But at its best--on the vibrant. assertive title track, on the buzzy, fizzy "Recovery," on the swaying, bittersweet "Good Religion"--it rivals Cults' revivalist previous offerings. [No. 147, p.51]

The Pack A.D. hews closer to the grunge side of the equation, playing with the slow-boiling fury of the geographical touchstones of the Pacific Northwest while never forgetting the history its forged. [No. 106, p.57]

The songs [on The Bloom and the Blight] have a folk/blues foundation, but they're delivered with a grungy punk energy. [No.91 p.60]

Imelda May's fourth album works best when she drops the bad-bad-girl stereotypes, but takes a few songs for her to hit her stride. [No. 112, p.59]

Mansion Songs isn't a great LP, but there's a damn good EP buried in here. [No. 117, p.55]

[Filled with] fine, subtle moments. [No. 85, p.54]

With its disjointed turns, it plays like a score to a David Lynch film: sinister, with moments of beautiful and icy-cool respite... Highly recommended.[No. 90, p.52]

Sunshine Lies contains some of Sweet’s best moments in years, with the classic push/pull of gloriously sunny melodies and lyrical darkness underneath.

Gab's good-natured hustle is commendable. [#85, p.55]

The arresting gorgeous title tune here destroys everything else, of course. But the rest have a loose, jammy feel that wouldn't have been tolerable in any phase of the DP's career other than the pop one. [No. 94, p.53]

The tight, buzzing guitars and chugging rhythm section have been deconstructed--subdued, even. [#54, p.78]

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

Their most sustained work... It's sometimes ethereal, sometimes sedate, sometimes dissonant--but it's always artufl, quoting tiny fragments of Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and Miles Davis to steer the music toward a smart new seriousness. [#47, p.122]

The result is classic Blondie, the band's best album since it reunited--maybe its best ever. [No.142, p.53]

With BRMC, the curtains match the drapes in terms of words and music. [No. 150, p.51]

Crow's sense of humor still peeks through an otherwise melancholy baker's dozen of tracks. [#82, p. 54]

Not many bands release their best work six albums in, yet this could very well be the story here. [No. 142, p.61]

While BPM ultimately feels disjointed, it does get you thinking deep thoughts, pondering the similarities between brain activity and seismic activity. [No. 85, p.53]

Their grandiose mini-operas and stadium-size choruses can thrill. But to hear the relentless string of outsized anthems in a row is exhausting. [No. 105, p.55]

All four of these tracks succeed in holding the listener's attention throughout. [No. 122, p.57]

Holdin' The Bag pleases the punks and suppresses the alt-country garage rockers alike. [No. 125, p.61]

Cosmonaut is a mostly understated genre-jumper that serves as the platform for frontman Bid to exercise his dry wit. [No. 136, p.59]

Plaid's sweet spot is halfway between cross-eared sonic doodling and IDM convention, the midpoint where you can hear both ends. [No. 133, p.59]

It certainly stands among his best. [No. 105, p.60]

Sure, the stories are worn and the whiskey is cut-rate, but the feeling is real. [#71, p.113]

The result is another set that perfectly captures the scruffy energy of its live shows. [No. 133, p.55]

Hatfield, drummer Todd Phillips and bassist Dean Fisher still mash up the agony and ecstasy in the same idiosyncratic, gorgeous way we knew and loved. [No. 117, p.55]

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

Much of Smoke Fairies is the sound of a band embracing fatter orchestration and fuller arrangements on virtually every cut. [No. 110, p.61]

I don't know which Stereolab album is more nauseating: Sound-Dust or the last one. [#51, p.118]

It's as if Steve Miller and the Beach Boys got together, sacked the session players and sang over breakbeats and a thicket of digital clicks and clacks. [#56, p.105]

They've tempered the cheerleader quality of their vocals, and the breakneck pace has slowed down just enough for you to discover that, somewhere along the line, they learned to play and sing. [#48, p.85]

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

The synths are crisp and warm, and the beats are motivational in that '80's coming-of-age soundtrack way. [No. 85, p.57]

A spotlessly produced, classic alt-rock album that recalls Garbage's golden age. [No.88 p.58]

Even when Black Lips operate more on the obnoxious side of the coin--"We Know" grinds to intolerable, screeching halts in an attempt to prove themselves both edgy and improved--the fuzzy, surf swing of tracks such as "Occidental Front" prove the band can be powerfully charming. [No. 143, p.55]

This fourth outing puts to bed both Tonight's frantic lonerism as well as any notion of a second night out with Alex Kapranos' equal-opportunity, Jacqueline-and-Michael seducer. [No. 102, p.56]

You have to admire the survivalist nature at hand here and the ability to craft an album that doesn't smack of inorganic hashtag laziness like those of many contemporaries. [No. 145, p.59]

From a fan's point of view, this [playing the same songs for years] rarely works. And it rarely works here. [No.99, p.55]

R. Cole Furlow reliably packs every Dead Gaze song with pathos, effects, blurred motion and voices, man, voices. [No.99, p.54]

Overall, though, Mr. Love & Justice is a collection of broken promises and lyrics that don’t live up to their potential.

By stripping away the symphonic, avant edge... [Gomez] loses much of what made it unique in the first place. [#64, p.96]

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

It makes music that tips its hat to the past without sounding derivative. [No. 144, p.53]

With Rented World, the Menzingers aren't doing anything new; they're simply coasting from where Impossible Past left them. [No. 109, p.57]

The most impressive thing about the band's second record is how relentless it is. [No. 126, p.59]

Junto is a jolt, a juggernaut, an absolute joyride. [No. 112, p.53]

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

Thankfully Santigold has focused on quality, not quantity, as her third LP makes evident from the very start. [No. 128, p.61]

Building considerably on the subtle expansion of 2006's "Bring It Back," the powerhouse Re-Arrange Us is both natural progression and quantum leap. [Summer 2008, p.107]

It's pretty weird. Not necessarily any weirder than your average Lambchop record, although it is, for the most part, considerably less gorgeous. [No. 124, p.57]

Even if some listeners might ding Lo Tom for playing it a little safe, there's really not a wrong note on the record. [No. 145, p.57]

Jimmy Eat World has become a purveyor of modern rock that just so happens to have a noisier background that jerks like me won't let it live down. This permits recognition of well-penned, upbeat numbers like Appreciation" and "How'd You Have Me." [No. 100, p.55]

The finest moments here are all Feist-like. [#70, p.102]

The melancholia lacks distinguishing marks. [#64, p.80]

This secret society's sonic output is nothing short of sheer musical buggery, a hip-hop twilight realm where Dr. Octagon performs transplant surgery on Mellow Gold with the cast of Scooby Doo in the gallery. [#50, p.89]

It's hardly revolutionary, but Episodic is an immediate, righteously enjoyable half-hour. [No. 134, p.57]

If New Facts Emerge reminds the listener of any post-millennial Fall album, I'd have to go with 2003's The Real New Fall LP. [No. 145, p.55]

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]

It undermines its poppy ideas with unorthodox chord changes, meandering melodies and a jarring minor/major push-pull. [No. 117, p.61]

Lady gets high marks for nostalgic soul--with all the trappings of horns and strings--but ultimately the album recalls everything that was great about '60s soul, past-tense. [No. 96, p.56]

Decidedly pleasant. [No.87 p.60]

Their dizzy, easygoing drone-pop has been replaced with faceless consistency, a sonic chutzpah that cries out "modern rock." This in itself doesn't mean Take Back... is a flop -- far from it. [#49, p.71]

Sonically, visually and thematically, this double disc is grandiloquent, like the great progressive music statements of rock history. [No. 145, p.61]

Gradually succumbs to torpor, with track after track given over to midtempos and pretty-yet-languid riffing. [#64, p.104]