The wall of sound this band generates with distorted guitars, samples, industrial noise and live drums is overwhelming at times, but the message it conveys about race and class in America is an important one. [No. 143, p.53]

A rare second album that matches a brilliant debut. [#54, p.76]

Put them all together and you've got a drink that goes down hard, with a potent bittersweetness distilled by a master. [No. 122, p.60]

One of the band's best.... While 1999's Ric Ocasek-produced Do The Collapse was criticized by some for its thick, pop-radio gloss, Isolation Drills shows more restraint, reconciling Pollard's idiosyncrasies with the track-to-track consistency great rock albums demand. [#49, p.75]

Cement[s] the Truckers' status as one of the best rock 'n' roll bands going. [#71, p.93]

In plain but very powerful terms, it's one of the smartest albums ever released. [No. 111, p.61]

It's a Wonderful Life raises the bar already set high by fellow post-modern woodsmen types like Grandaddy and Mercury Rev. [#51, p.116]

White's aesthetic, as always, is grounded in the immediate and the visceral, and Lazaretto rocks. [No. 111, p.60]

Kinsella's mastery of pop melodicism in the service of heartbreakingly beautiful and unvarnished sentiment is again on full and perfect display. [No. 134, p.59]

Set Free is no rehash, simply an album whose parameters are clearly defined in order that its interiors can be brought to life. [#69, p.86]

The success of the Amazing in general--and Ambulance by proxy--is the band's uncanny ability to touch on a wealth of styles without flying any specific philosophical flag, thereby remaining unique in tone and execution. [No. 134, p.53]

The album, fun though it is, also burns with anger and tension. It's another way Spoon throws into sharp relief what there--and what's not. [No. 141, p.51]

Blood Orange moves swiftly, wipes clean his chill-pop slate and goes for stark, ham-handed topicality hop and loss as applied to menacingly atmospheric tones. That Hynes does this without losing his sense of pop and tunefulness is a sweet accomplishment. [No. 134, p.52]

The Avalanches bag production, they roller-coaster; got to be jokers, they just do what they please. [No. 134, p.51]

Wait For Love is a beautiful consideration of what comes next. [No. 150, p.55]

It's a soul-stirring collection of Real Ramona/University-grade musical mini-masterpieces accompanied by lyrical prose vignettes exuding the same nimble friskiness and wry, subversive brilliance that characterized Hersh's fantastic 2010 memoir Rat Girl. [No. 104, p.58]

Even in the more sedate moments, there's an underlying insistence that ties the 11-track set together in a typically neat package that sits comfortably and appropriately in one of rock's greatest band catalogs. [No. 141, p.58]

A layered-yet-vintage, warm, highly analog sound ensued. [No. 150, p.57]

The best moments are soft and strange. "The Corner" is a fabulous piece of folk understatement and emotional ambiguity, while the brilliant "Freefall" showcases Branan's willingness to stretch his voice to odd, ugly places in the service of transcendence. [No.88 p.53]

This is prime indie rock with all the frills excised, but all the feels intact. [No. 112, p.58]

A surprisingly mature effort. [#71, p.112]

It's all drunkenly cinematic, as prickly as a cactus and smart as hell. [#58, p.85]

Goofy and awkward, yet mature and sincere, this album showcases a band making magic from the mudpies of millennial angst. [No. 143, p.55]

The group maintains the signature controlled-chaos staples of its sound--big, dirty riffs underpinned by John Dwyer's trademark ghoulish vocal melodies--while broadening its already hyper-musical palate. [No. 109, p.55]

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

It's best record. [No. 141, p.61]

The whole thing is ghoulishly gorgeous in the most comfortably comfortable way. [No. 121, p.60]

Supermodified is a culmination, for its operatic/cinematic soundscapes... are utterly unique. [#46, p.93]