This is a record that fans of Juliana Hatfield, Lightning Bolt or King Crimson could fall in love without compromise. [No. 96, p.60]

[Mike Polizze's] an understated master of the rock 'n' roll hook.... With big and booming Superfuzz Bigmuff-style production cleaning up the band's Drag City debut, that distinction becoming clearer. [No. 96, p.58]

The superficial snarl and by-the-numbers rawk in the middle on tracks like "Haste The Taste" and "Teenage Disease" never find equal footing with the album's inspired bookends. [No. 96, p.53]

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

This long-forgotten collection is a fine, representative memento of California country rock in its heyday. [No.95, p.53]

Blood Oaths Of The New Blues has us realizing, possibly for the first time, what an amazing, enrapturing voice the dude has. [No. 95, p.61]

Sure, it's a mess. But it's a brilliant, manically theatrical mess, true to Welles' self-destructive spirit. [No. 95, p.57]

The new one is faster, hookier, cleaner. [No. 95, p.52]

Fade is a gripping down-tempo treatise on the finer and coarser points of hunkering down. [No. 95, p.61]

Bassist Dunn and drummer Stanier lay down weird sprightly grooves, while guitarist Denison arranges their melodies into something hard and densely poppy with arch-but-upbeat harmonics pulled from Pet Sounds. [No. 95, p.61]

It's bright and shiny and perky.... But it also risks being faceless--it's Tegan and Sara's least personable, most superficial record. [No. 95, p.60]

For now, an engaging debut. [No. 95, p.60]

Hearing these songs all in a row, most sharing the same basic beat and harmonic structure, can make the title feel uncomfortably prophetic. [No. 95, p.60]

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]

Anything In Return us ultimately a chill listen, but not a necessarily memorable one. [No. 95, p.59]

Overall, Electric is another consistent yet unsurprising recent Thompson album. [No. 95, p.59]

This is a lovely, bittersweet and nuanced album. [No. 95, p.59]

Unwilling or unable to ascend the vertiginous heights of 2009 debut Gorilla Manor, Hummingbird instead buries its beak in the sand. [No. 95, p.58]

He mostly sounds like a fish out of water. [No. 95, p.57]

Eight is the sound of a band in flux, and that churn makes for some of Radar Brothers' most intriguing, compelling work yet. [No. 95, p.57]

This music has been cunningly hand-crafted, despite the album's larger ensemble sound, and at times the songs come off like incantations. [No. 95, p.57]

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]

He seeks to boldly chase his pop-music idols, which hits the mark only about half the time. But when he doesn't, at least it's a glorious miss. [No. 95, p.56]

The duo constantly varies each elements of its sound in ways most rock bands could learn plenty from. [No. 95, p.56]

[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]

While some songs drag, others are absolutely enchanting. [No. 95, p.55]

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

As with all impressive novelty albums, it's hard to imagine getting to a sixth play of these nonetheless flawless interpretations, and even those would mostly be for friends and neighbors. [No. 95, p.54]