Sharply written and softly played, the perfectly bittersweet End Of Love balances the books. [#67, p.87]

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

Aside from a few fleeting moments of watery prog and lumpen rock, the album's 15 songs have a slow-growing charm and understated grace, something that gradually becomes powerful in its own right. [#60, p.102]

The Broken String easily takes its place alongside those classics [Wilco’s Being There and Ben Folds Five’s self-titled debut].

While Parts & Labor’s grinding wall of noise seems to invite this kind of egalitarianism, the experiment never seems gimmicky or extraneous. Instead, it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish what sounds do or do not belong. It all comes together in one glorious racket.

As she meanders through disappointment and hope, with pedal steel, accordion and strings focusing emotion, Mandell channels Nilsson and Newman to make a lasting impression. [No.89, p.56]

Criminal Heaven is an infectious, off-kilter, damn near perfect indie-pop album that manages to effortlessly cover a bizarrely large plot of musical territory. [#86]

Tracks like "Fading Dawn" hew closer to Barn Owl's sound, with the instrumentation a little less cloaked, but meditative forays like "Absteigend" are the biggest successes here. [No. 90, p.54]

On One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache, Full Of Hell pushes The Body to tempos that the doom-metal twosome rarely attempts. [No. 130, p.53]

Pere Ubu was changing rapidly, but this is shrewd stuff on which the band built its legend. [No. 130, p.61]

Pollard's songcraft remains intact regardless of presentation. [No. 130, p.61]

On "Kingfisher," the album's centerpiece, they prove when it's perfectly balanced with a subtle instrumental approach. [No. 138, p.61]

It all comes out pure, 100-proof Godfathers, as hard-rockin', contemporary and fresh-sounding as ever. [No. 139, p.55]

While there's plenty to like here, and more to admire, he's never made a record quite so challenging to love. [No. 146, p.54]

20 Years sounds like it was a blast to make. The playful side of the band, which often gets scant notice, is on full display. [No. 147, p.55]

He's most successful when stripping down his lyrical ideas and melodic underpinnings to their simplest expressions, in a live-in-the-studio trio format. [No. 150, p.55]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra's sophomore effort is marked by a certain familiar mystique that does well to recall the charisma and dazzling psychedelia of its predecessor. [No. 95, p.59]

It's his best work to date. [No. 109, p.61]

The Western Lands offers more bang for your buck. [Fall 2007, p.96]

It's an overstuffed, uneven album, one that's not disappointing as much as it is disorienting. [#67, p.111]

Matangi ends up being worth the wait, which in this case is high praise indeed. [No. 105, p.58]

It's a canny hybrid. [No. 95, p.53]

Major comes across as the next logical chapter for one of music's most-unique and positive forces. [No.90 p.56]

Five years past, you'd figure Prekop has found something beyond tenderness and cool timbres. He hasn't, and that's OK. [#67, p.110]

Organically crafts sounds that are reminiscent and yet uniquely its own. [No. 141, p.57]

Its busy arrangements, brimming with the atomic energy of colliding guitars, synths, bass lines and drums, largely belong to no version of the band we know, instead a succession of growth markings scrawled in graphite. [No. 134, p.61]

The relationship songs are distressingly generic; she backpedals on her "edgy" (for country) envelope-pushing; and she sings about what's she's not. [No. 122, p.57]

Even as he points out life's injustices and unpleasantries, there's an ease and comfort with which he accesses his long list of Americana influences. [No. 143, p.57]