Feedback is the duct tape that holds it all together. There might be a little dirt on it, but it's still good. [No. 124, p.55]

This is dense and metallic and gorgeous. [#82, p.57]

For all its guest appearances (Neko Case, Silver Jews’ Brian Kotzur and Devotchka’s Tom Hagerman), the album’s overall sound is tight and consistent.

On their fifth album, the ’Hangers burrow deep into the world of post-garage pop that feels not too far afield from Georgia indie-rock kin Pylon covering Suzi Quatro. [No. 131, p.55]

This sounds like grim stuff, but Gordon and Co. come off less dour than agitated, and even on its slower tracks, Beauty Already Beautiful has a lot of current running through it. [No. 131, p.61]

As a fan-pitched compilation of b-sides and one-offs, it's a winner. [Summer 2008, p.100]

Sure, Pocket Radio is quirky... but that's what pop is about in the 21st century. [#50, p.94]

There's nothing here that radically reinvents the delicate beauty of Drake's timeless compositions. [No. 98, p.61]

An uneven record, though one that may ultimately prove a warm-up for a more interesting one. [No. 111, p.61]

Even on the weaker songs, when the chord changes come secondhand and the influences arrive undigested, Wrecking Ball remains an ugly slab of guitar sludge that’s well worth the pain.

Consider this follow-up one step back. [#69, p.98]

On Makers, Votolato rarely digs deep enough to scar, and he tends to wander where he thinks inspiration might live instead of letting it find him. [#70, p.110]

[Town and Country] have the compositional savvy and play with the precision to make such passages hypnotic rather than pretentious. [#54, p.110]

Dracula gurgles with slower, more experimental moments at times, but the brief drags are balanced out by funky hip-swingers and modern nuggets. [#82, p.59]

Krug's mushy, mixed-down vocals and the lack of dynamic range often sucks all the life out of the music. [No. 132, p.57]

It's an established formula: Regression to the mean is inevitable. That said, there are plenty of familiar pleasures for those who investigate. [No. 131, p.56]

There's a lingering, forced feel and more than a few questionable stylistic decisions. [No. 128, p.55]

Musically, all the touchstones that made "Passover" so riveting are in place. [Summer 2008, p.96]

Though the quieter moments are choice tests in eerie tension, the Melvins work best in straight rock 'n'roll, especially on the album's highlight: an utterly badass cover of Wings' "Let Me Roll It." [No.88 p.57]

The tunes sound lustrous but Amos, the singer and writer, sounds richer. [No. 93, p.53]

Sounds like musicians so thoroughly bereft of ideas and energy that they've resorted to lifting melodies from their record collections wholesale while crossing their fingers for luck, hoping no one will notice the difference between inspiration and theft. [#59, p.88]

Everybody's A Good Dog is crisp, shimmering and bombastic. [No. 125, p.55]

It's hard to imagine the album's latent pacing and fragmented lyrical content piquing the interest of many outside of AnCo's hardcore fanbase, but it stands as a compelling step forward. [No. 145, p.61]

The result is a finely crafted collection of music that speaks volumes beyond its instrumental presentation. [No. 95, p.53]

Cliched lyrics and predictable musicality make every song here sound the same. [No. 125, p.53]

Smith is least persuasive on the latter [unexpectedly aggressive, blues-based power ballads] - her delicate voices sounds strident when fronting heavy electric guitars, and those scattered tracks break the spell that her more restrained songs cast easily. [No.89, p.59]

Their fourth full-length has the band members grabbing snippets of musical influence from all over the Pitchfork-approved map. [No. 96, p.54]

[Four has] the density that made Bloc's angular edge so full, rich and round in the first place. [No.90, p.54]

As usual, it's mostly successful as a mood piece. [No. 132, p.57]

There's always a surplus of good humor to carry us past the rough patches. [#75, p.98]

The album's many ragged parts [are wrapped] into a rocking and rollicking package. [No.86, p.52]

The Style Council-style blue-eyed soul and precise power pop of the debut now have some company that doesn't work, like the '70s Nashville countrypolitan exercise of the title track. [No. 100, p.51]

Some new ideas are welcome more than a decade into the Jersey outfit's career, but they could've been used to more exciting ends. [No. 150, p.59]

Golden Age mines that elusive ground between the way things were and the way they're remembered, set to hypnotic acoustic and electronic instrumentation. [No.99, p.55]

His conspicuous over-reliance on the same, tired lyrical themes does the record in, highlighting just how short on variety the LP is. [No. 92, p.55]

The best cuts here happen to be those hewing closer to Major Lazer's wake-and-bake dancehall origins. [No. 121, p.57]

[Her high-pitched vocals] restricts her melodies a bit too much for their own good, and some more dynamic performances near the album's end can't save it from fading in a poof of uneasy effervescence. [No. 95, p.55]

Not every track soars, but you have to admire the band's starry-eyed commitment to exploring the outer reaches of inner space. [No. 120, p.61]

Young makes these old, old songs vital. [No.88 p. 51]

Midnight might confuse (and lose) fans who have somehow missed the memo that Potter is creatively restless, but it's a boldly rhythmic step in a wild new direction. [No. 123, p.56]

The sound is more lush than usual and has clearly matured, but it does come across a lot like indie new age music. [No. 92, p.55]

The production has kept the focus exactly where it should be: on the longing of his voice... it's given him a deeper, haunting sense of quiet that strips these melodies to their essential, fragile beauty, delivered with joy, grace, and a wounded wisdom. [No.89 p.60]

For all its attempts at hipster currency, Evil Heat reveals the needle-shaped creative hole where the drugs used to be. [#57, p.102]

It glides along with the same humid grace that made 1997's If You're Feeling Sinister a bedsit classic.... wonderful, sweeping songs. [#46, p.68]

Suggests some arcane Canuck payment scheme in which lyricists are compensated by the syllable. [#70, p.106]

There's some filler in the form of ambient doodling, but JT's pop sensibilities peek through frequently enough that it's a fair trade. [No.88, p.55]

[On Spirits] Manhood yokes cosmic yearning to sublime tunecraft. [No.87, p.58]

Like everything these two touch, the results are hardly astonishing, but they're just as pleasant as you please. [No. 104, p.56]

Doesn't offer much in the way of anything appealing. [#67, p.90]

Standout moments exist but the apparent slap across the face of preparedness results in meandering transitions, misplaced sax bleating that's part downtown jazz, part "Careless Whisper," and the feeling that there was a fair amount of sleepwalking through the process. [No. 119, p.55]

It's a bit mad, but what else would you expect from the Melvins, which in-and-of -itself is a shame. [No. 132, p.55]

It's never going to set the charts alight, but Weller obsessives should take it to heart. [No. 141, p.61]

The magic is still there. [#53, p.73]

[It] sounds like the album Whiteman has been waiting to make his whole life. [#75, p.99]

There’s True Sadness, whose songs touch lyrically upon all things sad but with various shades of unsubtle sound to guide them. [No. 133, p.54]

The record sounds big, but not too fussed-over. [No. 110, p.56]

Bon Iver seems to be taking great joy in simply playing with musicians he admires. There's something really beautiful in that, and it shines throughout the whole album. [No. 103, p.52]

It's Canning's guitar work that makes Chill hum, and the embellishments are enough to separate it from the growing crop of Fahey followers. [No. 104, p.53]

[A] very rewarding LP. [No. 103, p.61]

There's an easy likeability to Great Lake Swimmer's latest release. [Yet] many songs don't hold up on repeated listens. [#86, p.54]

Comedown Machine may not quite hit the heights of the band's masterpiece-to-date, but it continues the band's healthy trend of finding curious new ways to twist and complicate its by-now instinctively recognizable sound. [No. 98, p.60]

Royksopp's shift to the fun side is exactly what its music needed. [#68, p.110]

Flute and saxophone abound on this record, employed with a degree of schmaltz that works against the songs more often then not. [No. 95, p.57]

This may be the bleak and heavy masterpiece that BIH has been hovering around for the past decade. [No. 112, p.53]

It merits a mild sigh, but no great surprise, that ... [here is] the Magnetic Fields' first out-and-out novelty record. Fortunately, there are some decent jokes. [No. 85, p.54]

Things start strong, with some of Barnes' tightest tunes in ages. [No. 134, p.58]

Guitars meander before slicing, the rhythm section is taut, and Gedge hits all of his favorite topics-love, lust and spite-often in the same three or four minutes. Gedge may never get this relationship stuff figured out, but at least the rest of us benefit. [No.85, p.60]

On Dark Light Daybreak... Now It's Overhead cuts back on its former haze to graze in cleaner pastures. [#73, p.103]

Since it's art, the more you listen, the more you'll find here. [No. 112, p.55]

It's pretty much instantly likable if you're not otherwise predisposed. [No. 98, p.58]

A few more tracks like ["Chicks, Man"] would have made Elvis Club great, rather than good. [No.99, p.54]

Among the filler that drags down the LP's second half, fulfills contractual obligations and pushes the Gwar story forward. [No. 149, p.57]

Forget Evil Urges entirely; call this one Zzz.

Adviatic Songs shows the band musically reaching for extremely mystical heights. [No.89, p.57]

A half-hearted attempt to outshine 2001's A Better Version Of Me, but lacks all the "Spit And Fire" that made that album so human. [#58, p.105]

She's a ghost in the machine; unfortunately, the machine is an Atari 2600. [#57, p.80]

Too much of Everybody's Coming Down limps along on wounded extremities, with quirky cleverness displaced in favor of sloppy indie-rock tropes that answer the eternal question about what Ween would sound like minus a sense of adventure. [No. 123, p.59]

Hold/Still tries so hard to be ominous that it almost always forgets to be interesting. [No. 130, p.61]

Williams pits his angst-y tendencies against grunge's proven, angst-coddling backdrop. [#82, p. 62]

Predictable pleasures abound. [#74, p.95]

What had been a fascinating display of aural minimalism has morphed into a haphazard, ill-advised mess. [#75, p.96]

An emphasis on instrumentals is intriguing, but they're the pleasantries you'd fear. All are pretty in a disconnected, band-that-hasn't-released-new-music-in-13-years way. [No. 147, p.58]

This batch of 11 half-baked songs is whiny, lifeless and not even close to stimulating. [#60, p.106]

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

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

The tunes wear thin before the bluesman gimmick does. [#61, p.110]

It's a record best described as 13ghosts' illegitimate lovechild with Captain beefheart. [No. 133, p.57]

Hi Beams has style to burn, colorful as a candy store and shiny as new-molded plastic. [No. 97, p.56]

The flouncing, bouncy "Winner" is just the most hateful of the bunch, with insipid lyrics, overly bright production and a vocal line so pale it's opaque. "Hold On" and "Give It A Go" come damn near close to that level of dread. Luckily, though, those are the album's sole missteps. [No.91 p.58]

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]

There's a load of fuzzy power chords ruling these tunes, but they're smoothed out and nudged into the background, allowing a very capable Cosentino to take her rightful place at the front of the mix. [No. 104, p.52]

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

The album preserves--even perfects--the spirit of its delirious debut, while fashioning something even bigger: brighter, tighter, better, more. [No. 95, p.55]

Many of these tracks are simply products of their time. [#71, p.91]

The music is as icy and snow-covered as from whence it came. [No. 95, p.53]

La Maison offers a glimpse into the Casadys' strange, spooky world; Noah's Ark shows them taking tentative, often intriguing steps outside of it. [#69, p.91]

Their latest is another reliably pleasant, if inconsequential offering. [No. 106, p.52]

Much of this album comes surprisingly close to the woozy heights scaled by Barat's old gang--but not quite close enough because, if there are criticisms here, it's that there's too little light and shade. [No. 117, p.52]