Healy's wounded sneer makes you long for his misty croon. [Dec 2003, p.128]

[Has a] swirling spy-movie ambience. [Jun 2004, p.108]

The monster-chomp guitars and semiauto percussion are still in effect, but somebody spilled a little Pantene in the Pantera. [Jul 2004, p.108]

They all sound like pop songs... yet they all feel like country songs. [Aug 2004, p.107]

Time and practice have made them a far more straightforward rock band. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Pursues a darker strain of irony. [Dec 2004, p.124]

Prince’s main weakness is the urge to display his own mind-boggling talent.

At times, it seems like mid-level fame yields too many tour-based gripes for Slug. [Nov 2005, p.103]

The self-deprecation still rings hollow, but the hooks never do. [Jul 2003, p.110]

Guru is as bluntly eloquent as ever. [Sep 2003, p.115]

Sure, emo bands cry over their myriad problems all the time, many of which are delivered either as mopey confessionals or with Gerard Way-ian gothenticity, but rarely are they so post-apocalyptic.

Viewfinder might not have any hard answers, but it does find a kind of ambiguous truth that lies beyond the perceptible.

Though they fit snugly inside their vintage genes, the Kings manage to make room for a surprising amount of heart. [Mar 2005, p.85]

Pretty Girls believe in anthems, which would be irritating if they didn't make you believe, too. [Oct 2003, p.107]

Amid the hasty scribbles and marooned, half-finished concepts, there are lots of seeds and stems. [Jul 2005, p.101]

[A] potentially polarizing mash note.

Blueprint reminds us that retro hip-hop is always better when it remembers laughter. [Dec 2003, p.128]

For what it's worth, Hypnotize is the project's better half. [Dec 2005, p.102]

As with Watermelon, Chicken, the album drags; still, it's a compelling ride. [Oct 2003, p.110]

Definitely not as funny or crazy as they think they are, but problably more than they need to be. [Apr 2005, p.108]

The Wolf works best as a concept album about never surrendering the night when you got your first real six-string at the five-and-dime and were tryin' to break free. [Oct 2003, p.108]

It includes some of the most thoughtful music of Eminem's career, and some of the butt-stupidest, and while there's a lot to like about both, the album feels transitional and muddled. [Jan 2005, p.95]

The skeletal guitars, stylized strings, and rhythmic clatter are enough of a flashlight under the chin to spook up these campfire tales. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Sound[s] like Prince cutting the ass out of Squarepusher's pants. [Aug 2005, p.103]

This is grade-A grade-B pop metal. [Oct 2004, p.120]

It's a little creepy hearing such adolescent voices hooked to Miami booty bass. [Aug 2003, p.116]

The best bummer-country band of this sucky century. [Dec 2005, p.107]

Suggests a gullier Cocteau Twins. [May 2004, p.108]

Mount Kimbie are letting their songs smolder into life’s discontent. That uncomfortable tension is The Sunset Violent’s beauty.

For all their sonic salad-tossing, Tortoise can't fade guitarist Jeff Parker, the band's secret weapon and the one dude whose instrument connects them explicitly to their college-radio roots. [May 2004, p.107]

Sonically, Morissette has hit a peak. [Jun 2004, p.109]

A little swing moves these songs along in otherwise unobscured directions. [Nov 2005, p.101]

In the end, like her hero Loretta Lynn, she's the good girl who done got complex. [Dec 2004, p.123]

With Black Thought carrying the weight, the record buckles. [Aug 2004, p.101]

Mellow rhymes and chunky beats. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Instead of the poppy makeover many anticipated, the Mobb's seventh album is a curious blend of gunz-money anthems, G-Unit-ized sex romps, and visions of the great beyond.

A moving listen, despite patches of redundancy. [Oct 2004, p.111]

Ideal Lives is an uneven record, at times frustratingly so, but it is also the sound of a band finding out just what they are capable of, and falling in love with it.

Their bread and butter is still exuberantly juvenile pessimism. [Aug 2004, p.107]

Payable on Death's heaviest tracks... easily outcrunch the competition. [Dec 2003, p.124]

Doom's playing it safe. [Oct 2005, p.133]

These songs never reach catharsis or resolution to their grand queries, but nonetheless find moments of joy in the process of seeking answers.

Tical 0... takes that voice and plugs it into more than a dozen tried-and-true rap templates. [Jun 2004, p.104]

Their jabs cut and the beats burn. [Nov 2004, p.118]

Ambitious, uneven. [Feb 2004, p.96]

The only friction here is between Lord's kewpie chirp and Nick Saloman's guardedly bitter lyrics. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Rutili still crafts a tuneful funeral dirge with the best of them. [Feb 2004, p.104]

Boasts road-toughened guitars and a welcome accusatory edge. [Aug 2003, p.116]

Lerche gets his Burt Bacharach on, flavoring coffee-shop ballads with minor-key chicory. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Conjure[s] the glum glamour of prime Coldplay. [Apr 2003, p.107]

Romance is zippier and tighter than previous beer cries. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Mercer staggers from self-doubt to self-righteousness with each song, concealing razor blades inside his caramel-apple anthems. [Dec 2003, p.133]

Songs like "Fast Cars"... are gregarious, just like the beats, which are playful where Bazooka was ponderous. [Mar 2005, p.85]

Herren has the good collaborative instincts of Handsome Boy Modeling School, but none of their seedy, crowd-pleasing shtick. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Unsurprisingly buoyant. [Oct 2005, p.137]

Wedged into Tigers' delicate array of Byrdsian pop, "Jerk It Out" will either feel like the album's solitary moment of ecstasy (couch potatoes, we're talking about you!) or an annoying distraction in the midst of a solidly assembled set.

Elizondo's zippy production effectively pushes Apple's tendency to plod. [Nov 2005, p.96]

If the idea of an indie-rock Captain & Tennille appeals, there's a berth for you on their love boat. [Nov 2003, p.114]

With help from Squid producer Dan Carey, the band’s core trio (Donald Johnson, Jez Kerr, and Martin Moscrop) have generated a wealth of modern beats and future-shocked textures, all while remaining in touch with their trademark spongy grooves and sharp rhythmic corners.

While the vocals and arrangements are more ambitious and arguably better, there's less free play, less of the goofiness and kewpie-dancehall scatting that defined her. [Jan 2004, p.98]

All over the map. [Feb 2004, p.104]

“Mother and Son” plants its feet and doesn’t move. Much better is “Meek AF,” in which the electro-groove matches Grant’s growl.

The Donnas... have zeroed in on their true obsession: obsession. [Dec 2004, p.117]

Hipster-mocking songs like "Turn Your Back" aren't as funny as the scene they want to outsmart. [May 2003, p.116]

Between these boy-noise roils you can see how much the band want to be their generation's Yes. [Feb 2005, p.87]

It's so London-specific that it almost requires an England-to-English translation for us Yanks. [Feb 2006, p.92]

Goldfrapp downplay the "cinematic" strings in favor of buzzing live-wire synths. [May 2003, p.116]

An eclectic, rippin' record whose only shortcoming is its commitment to artistic quality. [Apr 2005, p.99]

P.O.D. too often fall back on vanilla "bang boogie." [Feb 2006, p.85]

Shadow's bold beat-scaping is missed, but guests galore lace the esoterica with plenty of angsty personality. [Dec 2004, p.124]

You in Reverse... rejects the pithy pop of their 1999 breakthrough, Keep It Like a Secret, for spacey, stretchy tracks that emphasize their unique, virtuosic musicianship.

Danger Mouse sets a consistent tone that wryly chafes against Albarn's paranoia. [Jun 2005, p.105]

The Lyre Of Orpheus is effectively Abattoir spillover: more mellow, less grand in conception, but--somehow--more pretentious in execution. [Dec 2004, p.118]

Nix the emo sea-chantey stuff and these two CDs... would be pretty excellent. [Mar 2006, p.95]

There are flashes of Yankee's shimmer on Ghost, but the album is more elusive, more disjointed. [Jul 2004, p.103]

If there's a method to this madness, you definitely won't find it here. [Nov 2005, p.101]

As usual, his willingness to please gives the disc its fast-food kick. [Oct 2004, p.113]

The record could use more songs like "David," where her bratty valedictorian wit is balanced with a sense of real emotional stakes. [Apr 2004, p.93]

A collection of enigmatic indie-rock tunes. [Nov 2004, p.119]

A pretty accurate representation of the New York rock renaissance. [Jul 2003, p.110]

All that stands between this young English foursome and Perry Farrell-ian Valhalla is a lack of a truly rippin' axman. [Dec 2004, p.124]

His agile attack still lacks Jigga's precision, 50's swagger, or Kanye's cocky confessionalism. [Jan 2006, p.92]

Here, he just wrecks shit... occasionally stopping for moments of necessary reflection. [Sep 2005, p.109]

This stuff may be lo-fi, but in Anderson's case, the hissy fits. [Jul 2004, p.112]

This is less an 11-song album than a single long-form mope. [Jul 2003, p.105]

If this reunion... isn't a revelation, it still has its thrills. [Aug 2005, p.103]

Over the course of 24 tracks, we get taut grooves set on Al Green cruise control, lots of havin'-fun-in-the-studio byplay, and the occasional spritz of rude fuzz-box gutiar to give all the gold-leaf detailing some shape. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2004, p.97]

It's his most varied record, but it also sounds for the first time like he's tryinig to make a "Beck album." [Apr 2005, p.97]

An album sanded with sad humor and a return to old loves. [Mar 2004, p.96]

Doesn't sound as raw as they probably wanted it to. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Calexico have abandoned much of the jazzy, mariachi-infused Americana pulses that characterized their former sound.

Like an art film that ignores narrative, there are moments on Get Behind Me Satan when the motion seems stationary. [Jun 2005, p.101]

For fans expecting Dirty Three to pick up safely where they left off in 2012, Love Changes Everything will likely shock. Rather than slide back into comfortable routine, the trio have distilled their past 12 years of sonic travels into something exciting and new.

The record plays with sonic extremes throughout, but VW stay comfortably in the preppy yet philosophical space they dominate—with the usual voice of God omnipresent in the chaos that is this record’s alpha and omega.

Inches compiles them all, from the high-voltage shriekathon "Blackouts on Thursday" to "Hold on to Your Genre," where a churning bass line meets shimmery guitar worthy of a new-wave Edge. [Jun 2004, p.108]

The songs remain the same: clear-eyed musings on breakups-as-existential-crises. [Dec 2004, p.124]

The tunes are sub-Weez, but the vibe is right. [Mar 2004, p.96]

A deliriously twerked, end-of-days house party. [Jul 2005, p.104]