This is Wareham doing what he does best: making music he loves with people he holds dear. [No. 107, p.60]

They turn out to be pretty good influences on one another. Jay sounds generally reinvigorated: good-humored, full of nimble, intricate wit and atypically emotionally revealing, and if Kanye's rhymes occasionally remain as clumsy and crass as his personal life choices, he drops far fewer boners than usual. [#81, p. 56]

To Survive is both sparser and more polished than last year's "Real Life." [Summer 2008, p.107]

The band clicks perfectly, as if it had been playing these songs forever, and the album brings out another side of Auerbach, with different guitar textures and a different falsetto channeling his blues-rock instincts in a different direction. [No. 124, p.53]

Song after song hurts in that oh-so-right way. [#54, p.89]

The unintentionally hilarious Mount Eerie misfires so dramatically, it makes you want to reconsider not the Second Amendment but the First. [#57, p.98]

Instrumentally, Torino strays little from previous Cinerama releases.... But lyrically, Gedge... [has] developed a gritter, nastier edge. [#55, p.72]

His songwriting keeps growing hookier and more ingratiating. [#81, p. 59]

It's hard to recall an album so invitingly unfamiliar, so beguilingly hard to parse, so full of "wait, what was that?" moments... since the first Books album. [No.86, p.61]

Untethered Moon is almost undeniably a classic slice of BTS. [No. 119, p.51]

Their combined voices are just so unfathomably, incorrigibly all-devouring. [No. 120, p.61]

The obtuse nature of the song structures, content and riffing are exactly what one expects ... just dressed up as a "surprise." [No. 145, p.55]

The Moon And The Village is another subtle charmer. [No. 149, p.57]

[The album is] really fun. You don't have to know about 12-tone serialism to appreciate the wonderfully goody innards of this appropriately titled compilation. [No.90, p.59]

Vol. 2's Springsteen-tinged "Don't Hurt," Tom Petty-flavored "Look How Clean I Am" and punk-soaked "It's A Whale" stomp and romp with unrepentant rage and joy. [No. 146, p.51]

Ruminations doesn't set out to be a grand statement, but it's all the more rewarding for keeping the focus on Oberst's word-rich language and emotionally direct observations. [No. 136, p.59]

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 band seems aware that it's on well-trod ground throughout Honky Tonk, though that doesn't seem to affect Son Volt one bit. [No. 97, p.59]

There are moments that could've been excised, but BJM demonstrates a most robust path when its psychedelia lasers fix onto a starting point and add to the established theme. [No. 141, p.55]

It refracts light in multiple, appealing ways. [No. 121, p.61]

Luluc has indie credentials to spare, but all that really matters is that this music is impossibly delicate and deeply beautiful. [No. 112, p.59]

Bed... opts to crank the volume knobs a little, with wildly divergent results. [#73, p.100]

Among the lot lie some stone-cold Pollard classics. [#55, p.76]

A genre-defying, glorious mess of an album. [#54, p.109]

The songs are mostly concise, ranging from less than two minutes to more than seven, but their motorik propulsion and detailed, gradual builds add more subtle rewards beneath synth-pop immediacy. [No. 101, p.55]

Buffalo Tom provides a warm blanket on a cold, dark night of the soul. [No. 150, p.51]

The emotional tenor on Lambchop’s 10th LP is hard to miss. Not that there’s anything wrong with being touchy and tender, but the calm, spare arrangements on OH (ohio) can only be described as pretty.

For those inclined toward the indie end of things, there's plenty to like here, but there's also plenty that will inspire head-scratching or, worse yet, yawns. [#71, p.89]