GRRR! is a total cash grab. [No. 94, p.59]

Marshall’s second album of covers, mostly continues the cleaned-up, virtually lobotomized aesthetic of 2006’s unfortunately heralded "The Greatest."

With a few exceptions, the rest of Goodbye remains little more than background music destined for life in service to candle boutiques and Saturn commercials. [Summer 2007, p.106]

An eight-song album that flounders too much in mid-tempo purgatory. [No. 107, p.55]

The arrangements here never add anything to the songs that you haven't heard a thousand other bands do just as well, if not better. [No. 118, p.55]

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]

Cosmopolitan, but often dull, easy listening.... Basically, Thievery Corporation skims the surfaces of more substantial styles and reconfigures them to create pleasant dinner-and-drinks music. [#47, p.124]

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

Where the smart rap of Antipop Consortium came off as quick and cutting, Maverick just seems remote. [#66, p.86]

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

Once a means to subvert pop/rock formula, the band's abruptly shifting dynamics have themselves become formulaic. [#67, p.97]

If you're not fanatical about the racket created by unfathomable guitar noise, you'll find songs on Motion Set overly long and veering frequently toward incomprehensible. [No. 138, p.57]

All Rise flitters about like an overly melodramatic actor: it might be pretty, but it offers little more than monotony. [#67, p.97]

Shook Me offers little that doesn't sound like any one of those bands [Vampire Weekend, the Kooks, and fun.] sanded down to their blandest core. [No. 97, p.58]

It's hard to keep this album from simply asking why over and over again. [No.99, p.59]

The duo is only revisiting what made Death From Above faves 13 years ago without realizing how poorly it has aged. [No. 146, p.55]

These tunes would work better if the influences weren't so obvious. [No. 117, p.55]

Four becomes truly trying during its tangent-prone second half. [#70, p.93]

Savor Luke Lalonde's chirpy blurts on "Needle" and "Ocean's Deep;" they're soon replaced by increasingly ironed-out dance pop that goes through unfortunate puberty over 12 tracks, from good to bad to worse. [No. 97, p.53]

A record that plays like just the sort of effort we've come to expect from the Dandy Warhols: an uninspired, over-referential half-nod to the group's heroes. [No.87, p.54]

Two albums in, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros sound just as phony as Ima Robot did. [No.88 p.59]

The Baltimore four-piece has the fuzzy guitar, the screamo vocals, the charging bass lines and an overwhelming sense of doom for stomping, post-Seattle noise punk. But the parts don't fit together. [No.87, p.54]

Krug's non-stop croaking yells get old quickly, and the few highlights are hardly worth sitiing through an hour of Renaissance Faire-y meandering. [Fall 2007, p.108]

The balance of the album is crammed to capacity with placeholders for more fully developed ideas.

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

Sounds like classic overcompensation, a racket on wheels trying to live up to its hype by merely playing over it. [#59, p.98]

What's missing ... is a sense of perspective, or humor, or anything to leaven Buckingham's monochromatic intensity. [No. 81, p.54]

Lucky for Conditions of My Parole, Puscifer has graduated from embarrassingly stupid to simply boring. [#81, p. 59]