Though we may never fully understand BUB’s highly advanced Space Speak comprised of rumbling mix of squeaks, chirps, and squrggles, listening to the ebullient Science & Magic would indicate BUB’s newfound ability to sneak out from under the proverbial bed and bask in a ray of sun.

The result is her finest record since "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," the decade-old masterpiece by which her career will always be judged.

The best songs bear the mark of an auteur weirding out, by himself.

Costas coos anachronistically whimsical and hallucinatory lyrics as if she were the ghost of an ill-fated fairy-tale heroine, and the haunted results suggest the greatest psych-folk obscurity you'll never afford on eBay.

He can't really pull off Dylan-ish literariness, but when he's loose, he more than earns his corduroy vest and Kris Kristofferson beard.

Devonté Hynes pens an indie-rock passion play that picks up the tempo and spotlights his thespian skills

His songwriting is sharper than you might expect. [Dec 2002, p.141]

Loney Dear's gauzy pop can be entrancing, but it's also incredibly easy to tune out: Let your mind wander, and the Swedish act's latest goes full blur.

The secret weapon on their second album is an unironic embrace of the elegant, harmony-rich hooks and wide-eyed lyrics of rock forebears the Righteous Brothers, which gives the Orralls' blistering tunes their own earnest, romantic edge.

The layered results are mesmeric, giving their introverted noise a new, laserlike intensity. [Nov 2007, p.114[

Hooks are typically meant to stick, and after the infectious opening tracks, very little of Barter 6 does.

It is a bit Sabbath-by-numbers, but given the weight of history (it's their first studio album together in 35 years), you can see why they would kind of back into the thing.

As a lyricist, Fallon has moved beyond bald cliché to bland commonplace.

It's fevered outbursts like 'Lookout' and 'Grey Skies,' where Dex unleashes his slightly sloshed voice and surfabilly guitar, that have real soul-saving potential

The quartet's stubborn refusal to evolve yields genuine thrills on their typically irascible 13th album.

While Purple Reign is not a masterpiece, it is a thoughtful, if slight adjustment on the lens of where Future stands, at a crucial moment in his career.

Campaign--a mixtape in name that feels not quite like a mixtape but not exactly like an album, either--is at its best when it carries on that tradition of richness of sound as a virtue in and of itself.

Maintaining Rhye’s style while enlivening it with non-synthesized instruments is the only real statement the album chooses to deliver--Blood is too gentle to telegraph much of anything concrete. Milosh’s lyrics are vague mattresses of assonance on which he lays down impressions of emotion.

After the Disco is the rare, superior sequel--think Toy Story 2--to Mercer and Burton's seemingly one-off self-titled 2010 debut as Broken Bells.

However much she slurs her lines on this fine fourth album, the shabby rockers and frayed ballads cut deep. [Nov 2008, p.93]

The new Fishing Blues feels so rote you’ll have to play the old records to remember that it’s not the Atmosphere norm.

The White Album not only matches the sounds and feelings of Buzz Bin-era Weezer, but also the craft.

This Montreal band's second full-length expands the abrasive post-hardcore and tender, tuneful poles of 2007's Some Are Lakes with help from members of Arcade Fire, Stars, and Besnard Lakes.

The record works best at its most focused and extroverted.

These new songs gleam with nouveau riche sparkle. [Oct 2006, p.96]

The resulting album blurs the lines between simple and sophisticated more effectively than Phoenix ever have before.

When he sticks to cheeky storytelling, the album gains grimy traction, but empty dirges like 'Pacemaker' send it drifting into novelty territory. [Oct 2007, p.112]

It's a lovely place that Soft Will fashions here, but it sounds hesitant about pulling you in, perhaps because its creators are secretly concerned that you'll realize you aren't really going anywhere.

Beneath the stray bits and hiss, Splazsh's stoned dance grooves and stumbling, slo-mo electro--an odd mixture of Moodymann, Burial, and Boards of Canada--pull you into a world as immersive as the title promises.

Collapse mostly sounds like a familiar friend -- reliable in all the best ways, but still capable of quietly insinuating surprises.

Twisted, quirky pop gems. [Feb 2006, p.86]

Miraculously, this is instead the man's best since Multiply, and his first since Jim to recreate a specific sound in his own image.

Aguilera lets her talent fly as high as her freak flag, solving pop’s current obsession with box-ticking by nudging their lines into shapes more her liking.

All three of these projects emanate a tasteful, bloodless efficiency. The songs appear to take chances--sweeping chord changes, symphonic progressions, darts into electronic sound--but there's little at stake.

Mixed Emotions falls right into place, then, indulging both musical and emotional nostalgia without falling victim to any particular trend.

Bassist Jared Warren and second drummer Coady Willis (a.k.a. Big Business) return as the perfect-fit rhythm section for lifers Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, who are still communicating in their own avant-boogie metal language like twins separated at birth.

The final result is an agreeable enough listen.

While there's nothing quite as hugely hooky as Alright singles "Smile" and "lDN," the album feels more confidently complete.

Kicky enough for late-night drives, sultry enough for backseat prospecting, and versatile enough to sell anything, it may be the most user-friendly record of Underworld's career and a better follow-up to Play than Moby's own. [Oct 2002, p.120]

Alternately goofy, sweet, and weird. [Aug 2005, p.97]

On this foursome's fourth collection of infectious indie pop, they downplay the sly smirking of the past. [Sep 2007, p.132]

Thankfully, their debut album does little to clarify the group's intriguingly eclectic sound.

Black twists prog and BBC radio samples into hissing, even "hypnagogic" hip-hop, then hands the results over to Brown, who shouts suicidal thoughts and sex boasts with wild abandon.

Ultimately, Wild Water never hits as hard as its predecessor, and can't match it in terms of either focus or breadth.

Cole should be fired up to make his own Illmatic, his own Reasonable Doubt, or his own College Dropout. But here he seems stuck somewhere between starstruck and envious, fawning over his idols instead of trying to take their crowns.

He’s both looking back and moving forward, attempting, successfully, to capture the nervous optimism of youth.

It’s disorienting, upsetting, and edges toward unlistenable in its brutalist structures. But it’s a reminder that even if claustrophobia’s an unpleasant feeling, it’s always a powerful one.

Sometimes they get stuck in gilded lyrical vagaries, but simpler subject matter serves them best.

Remarkably, Bates captures outsized bombast while infusing the music with a genuine energy that verges on punk. Manson’s music hasn’t sounded this alive in years, which makes it so disappointing that he squanders a golden opportunity. ... Manson sounds increasingly out of touch and desperate to preserve a persona that he and his audience should have outgrown a long time ago.

It's the album on which the Chems relax into a comfortable maturity, secure in their status as elder statesmen. [Feb 2005, p.87]

these increasingly experimental Girls remain an appealingly peculiar party band. [Sept 2008, p.112]

That Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would score Tron: Legacy seems destined.

[A] cosmos-goosing masterwork. [Jul 2005, p.104]

With dance-rock standouts like "Julius" and "Bury Us Alive," the Portland quartet's third album is its best yet.

Gibbard mostly dispenses with his trademark jitters, leaning into Death Cab's tuneful guitar-band thrum with a confidence that eventually sells Codes and Keys' moments of 
eager-beaver optimism.

His music is also a hodgepodge: square sax-rock, Motown, bongo-heavy folk ballads, and sunshine pop, all tinted by Shin's guitar, which is alternately savage and buttoned-up.

[The tracks are] thoughtful enough to help make this one of the year's best rap albums. [June 2008, p.104]

The Horrors are too shackled by kitsch to scare life into such creaky punk posturing. [Jun 2007, p.94]

Turn to Gold will undoubtedly translate better blasting out of stage speakers, the medium most ideal for unfettered solos and melting six-strings--their riotous late-night debut could barely be contained behind a screen. On record thus far, though, Diarrhea Planet’s instrumental split-personality excess could use a dose of Imodium.

In the way the tunes crash and throb, much of the album could be the "Milkshake" follow-up Kelis never got around to recording. [Jun 2006, p.84]

Add the pipes of Nancy Whang on most tracks--giving Future a boy-girl dynamic--and there's a distinct suggestion that the Juan MacLean might just become the Human League after all.

Closer in spirit to Rancid's bighearted radio punk than to anything Pink has put her name on before--all scrappy power chords and wounded warmth. [Jan 2004, p.97]

Only later do you realize the cotton candy you've been enjoying is wrapped around a dildo. [Nov 2004, p.118]

A poor man's Aimee Mann. [Jan 2003, p.99]

The Id, like On How Life Is before it, never seems too polished because Gray adamantly pursues her complicated pleasures, belying her image as a stoned soul picnic... [Oct 2001, p.123]

When it all cooks properly, as on the sultry, sweaty "Number One," Jackson's retro pastiches generate steam heat. [May 2002, p.125]

There's plenty of that spacey/dirty sound on Loud, even when the tracks don't fit the trance template. [Apr 2002, p.122]

The added dissonant improvisation replaces the Blade Runner futurism of his hip-hop beats with a chilling Taxi Driver dread. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Dilated Peoples continue to hold down hip-hop's middle ground with inoffensive mic purism and sophisticated production a la mid-'90s DJ Premier. [Dec 2001, p.158]

Thanks to frontman Tim Kinsell's pleasantly dispassionate delivery, an ambient coherence permeates the tunes, a quality that's both comforting and numbing. [July 2008, p.98]

They've ditched velocity but neglected to replace it with anything worthwhile. [Jul 2006, p.88]

Though sometimes courting sleepiness, the debut's barbershop harmonies, Hawaiian strumming, and lovesick melodies transform rock-club jadedness into an aesthetic fit for honeymoons, holidays, and other occasions where you savor small pleasures, even if they're quaintly recycled.

Tracks like "VHS Sex," the complex yet laid-back "Glawio," and the robotic apotheosis of "Futureworld" send you hurtling back toward electronica's past perfection.

The result is a thrilling, hyperpercussive collection of laptop ditties mixed so cleverly that they'll sound great ticking through earbuds or booming out of dad's trusty Cerwin-Vegas.

This odds-and-ends comp is unusually straightforward.

Imperial Teen still sound as fresh and vital as ever.

If you're not already aware that this prog quartet's fifth album serves as both a prequel and a finale to something called "The Amory Wars," bemusement is probably the best you can hope for while enduring their overwrought, topsy-turvy blend of spiky metal riffs, Gollumesque vocals, and ambient melodrama.

For all of the tension in the music, Barrow and his cohorts couldn't sound more relaxed, natural, and at home weird home.

Wiley only occassionally departs from the script. [Oct 2007, p.112]

Get past glitchy irritants like 'SonDEremawe' and an artful payoff of cerebral, booty-shaking decadence awaits on their ninth album.

These impressionistic songs shudder to life under the weight of passive-agressive feedback, anchored by Bouzulich's melodramatic howl and Tara Barnes' menancing bass. [Apr 2008, p.96]

Yoking fuzz-stoked guitars (credit Television vet Richard Lloyd) to gorgeous melodies derived from the Beatles and Big Star, Sweet serves up his best tunes since "Altered Beast."

The strength of this follow-up is not the defiant antiestablishment fist-pumping (though there's plenty), but the tunes.

Moments of transcendence occasionally emerge from the murk, but not often enough.

This polite Americana mistakes solemnity for seriousness.

There’s hardly an original thought here, but with arrangements so expertly composed, who’s complaining?

Imagine Joni Mitchell if she'd made Miles after Mingus. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Blade isn't quite that esoteric or ambitious, just an adept, hour-long reminder of how 14 years ago these guys turned your average boom bap into elaborate fantasies of iron galaxies and screamed phoenixes.

Until they ditch folksy archaisms... maybe it's best for 'em young indie-blues fellers... [to] work on the good ol'-fashioned songwriting. [Mar 2006, p.95]

On Angles, the Strokes' trick isn't fooling us into thinking these tunes fell to Stanton Street fully formed (though that occasionally happens, as with the goofy fake-reggae lark "Machu Picchu"). It's that a group of reunited rock stars somehow come on like wide-eyed kids.

Both thrilling and baffling, the nine tracks prove that Vernon's appeal lies in his otherworldly sound, not in his broken heart.

This lo-fi duo... continue to make charming albums while simply shrugging at their own limitations. [Jan 2007, p.88]

These airy confections of analog-synth purrs and Chicago brass and Laetitia Sadier's obliquely humanist lyrics are distinguishable from one another by tone palette more than by hooks or style. [Oct 2001, p.126]

The sound misses the arenarific pump of 1999's Redd Kross-produced Get Skintight, and with that album's move from junk-punk to semi-pro metal now complete, the talent gap in the group has started to glare. [2/2001, p.108]

Wonderful Wonderful is the Killers’ strongest statement since 2005, a more than okay affirmation of their power to keep a global audience.

At its best, Home is a sumptuous, thrilling experience on a purely sonic level. There are absolutely zero boring moments here, and the details are often transcendent.

Musical achievements that once came easily (if not accidentally) to Sebadoh must now be persistently willed; processes that once pointed toward self-discovery now only offer a familiar balm.

Sniper's voice still sags and drags, but Land and Fixed is remarkably feel-good, even when channeling the Cure via the Breakfast Club bounce of "Blurred Tonight" or Joy Division on cold-wave throbber "Collides."