On the surface, it's big, dumb, and fun; just beneath, there's an improbably complicated band at work, showing its hand only on repeated listens.

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

Because every Eels disc feels like a breakup album, this overt and actual one may at first seem redundant, or worse....But this also may be his most universal work, and it's heartfelt and true

Ravishing yet famished for attention, this overachiever would be bloody irritating if she didn't demonstrate a savvy command of pop hooks.

What could have been hipster reach is multiculti grasp of the sweetest kind. [Jun 2001, p.148]

The blunt-tipped guitar chop on the title tune, glassy music boxes and slurping synths of “Give Peace a Damn,” and the more-Stones-than-country “Honky Tonk Rules” are all genuine surprises that no other legacy act is giving up.

Viva la Vida Familiar.

Everyone from Lady Gaga to Muse chips in here with perhaps the strongest, most flavorful batch of tunes to reach an AI vet, and Lambert's polymorphous vocal skills unite dancefloor strut and hard-rock pomp in a convincing glam package.

Milky Ways is a clear upgrade, with better songwriting lending structure to his adventurous genre-hopping.

Clearly, it’s also a druggy album, and the highs are high--noticeably on “L$D,” whose stunning production turns from submerged to soaring, the jiggy “Excuse Me,” and the sexy, aforementioned “Westside Highway,” which has A.L.L.A.’s only hummable hook. Despite those peaks, the overall tone is more despondent.

Their most eccentric, diverse sounding record to date.

Kiss Land plays like a more considered, better-mastered continuation of Echoes of Silence, not anything dramatically different.

Myth Takes juxtaposes tribal post-punk with crooked attempts at actual pop, giving their epic groove-riders a booty-stimulating boost. [Mar 2007, p.86]

Lykke Li’s songwriting is strong here, but the excess of electronic manipulation sometimes resembles a bedroom experiment.

Like their last three records... [Riot Act] balances emotive bombast with a taut, sweaty hard-rock attack. [Dec 2002, p.137]

While that obsession with the "big sleep" gives Own Your Ghost a gloomy power, these cross-cultural pals might consider a less depressing repertoire next time.

Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.

As intellectual and introverted as Krell often is, he’s at his best when he and the music simply let go. What Is This Heart? delivers in the second half when nearly every song peaks with exuberant finales.

She cements her place as the pop figurehead for the overlooked and underappreciated teenage girl in all of us. [Jul 2007, p.94]

The record is crisply produced, with jittery, epic songs that just happen to be about getting older and maybe a little more cynical. [Nov 2007, p.125]

Snip a few of the duds and maybe Future Brown would be one of the most consistently interesting and understandably weird debuts of the year.

Boilerplate MOR.... But what Liz Phair delivers is authenticity. [Jul 2003, p.107]

Beautifully arranged and produced yet feels like something on display behind milky glass. [Jul 2004, p.112]

[A] pensive disc. [Oct 2005, p.137]

Imagine if N.E.R.D... were from France and used to make house music before going soft rock. [Aug 2004, p.108]

His single, "Cannonball," will be there for you after your next breakup. [Nov 2003, p.117]

Tight, upbeat pop-punk songs reminiscent of early Elastica and late Donnas. [Jul 2004, p.110]

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, feels more like a collage of sounds and styles than a coherent, considered statement.

The album feels unfocused, and this time, Alien Ant Farm don't have a novelty hit up their sleeve. [Sep 2003, p.111]

A strangely enervated Sonic Youth record, one that exchanges Murray Street's golden-years vigor for a sad sense of duty. [Jul 2004, p.108]

Drift[s] off into heavily EQ'ed cymbals and pastel-gray synth-string washes. [Jun 2005, p.108]

This album is closer to 1998's whitechocolatespaceegg: mature and complicated. [Oct 2005, p.136]

Another Day isn’t quite as good as the best Fucked Up records; that bar is just a little too high. But it’s still a Fucked Up record.

Flails along the same path as 2001's casually brutal return to formlessness, Beat Em Up. [Dec 2003, p.123]

Too often, Blige's voice doesn't get the space it needs to cut loose with emotion. [Feb 2006, p.85]

They're still pretty fly for old guys. [Jan 2004, p.97]

These pop dirges are comforting until they get preachy about sins and healing. [Jan 2005, p.91]

Without French accents or anime babes, this kind of thing just feels incomplete. [Jul 2004, p.110]

It’s like a vacation slide show in which vivid memories turn hazy.

First Impressions may not be the best Strokes album, but damn if it doesn't feel like the last. [Jan 2006, p.88]

A snappier comeback than 1998's Foundation. [Sep 2004, p.120]

This is a low-spark affair. [Nov 2004, p.112]

A little rockier, a little slower, and a little less transporting. [Jul 2003, p.110]

But if the rote button-pushing gets bleak, the beats and battle rhymes are state-of-the-art. [Jun 2004, p.103]

If this album had been released five years ago, it would've been a blast. Today, it's the same new same old. [Nov 2003, p.117]

Kings dial their usual bellow and wallow routine way down, while mustering just enough passion for the album’s occasional rock setpieces: “Hesitation Gen” and “Seen” are their most effective rippers in several albums.

It's hard to know if Madden's complaints seem so tame because the band's music is less zippy, or whether he's just taking the easiest path to the teen masses. [Nov 2004, p.109]

Their gutsy spirit, while not "soul" exactly, does allow the band to dodge flippant dismissals of poseurhood. [Jan 2005, p.90]

[Lee is a] maturing craftsman. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Finds these mysterious lads already advancing into their suave Roxy Music phase. [May 2005, p.102]

Kraut-rock drones run together into one long, thudding hum. [Mar 2006, p.95]

The frail bodyslams on the band's debut album throb and stagger as if throbbing and staggering were against the grain. [Feb 2006, p.88]

Makes like the spawn of Hole and Hatebreed. [Sep 2004, p.120]

Unfortunately, many of the underdeveloped rockers and plaintive ballads here are dance-floor-clearing duds. [Nov 2003, p.111]

The Heat pay homage to punky Midwest weirdos from Devo to Brainiac over grimy fuzz bass. [May 2003, p.116]

This time around he's tryin' too hard to be everything to everybody. [Apr 2005, p.97]

When the hooks fall off, his lone-gunman purging becomes more tiring than cathartic. [Dec 2003, p.128]

There's more muscle in their moping this time around. [Apr 2003, p.107]

Fiction is less nervous than its predecessors but emotionally knottier. [May 2005, p.103]

At times, it's as if he's looking over Rivers Cuomo's shoulder during a chem exam. [Jul 2003, p.110]

[He] veers awkwardly into slickly arranged, radio-friendly verse-chorus-verse. [Sep 2005, p.109]

Idlewild are compelling when they put Woomble's sad-sack lyrics front and center, but on aggressively average rockers like "You Held The World In Your Arms" and "Century After Century," the band's turgid squall swamps his words. [Jun 2003, p.103]

Like your favorite dive bar, it feels uncomfortably familiar. [Feb 2006, p.87]

Everything is underwritten or overwrought. [Feb 2004, p.104]

A suite of faux-folkie electro that fuses the introspection of Ray of Light with Music's fast-food dance licks. [Jun 2003, p.99]

Amid the so-so modern rock is one of his most sublimely sincere songs, "(Shine Your) Light Love Hope." [Aug 2005, p.103]

80 minutes of dank, chopped-up percussion and blitzed hard-drive scree. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Sounds like the morning after, confused and calm all at once. [Jan 2005, p.100]

While nothing here feels as urgent or frenetic as his 2002 debut, Memoryhouse, selections such as “And Some Will Fall” and “Late and Soon” rank among the most beautiful in Richter’s catalog. However, In a Landscape doesn’t always work. Richter staggers a series of nine “Life Studies” throughout the 19 tracks—comprised in part of tape delays, reverb, and vocoder, these short ambient sections break the natural flow of beauty.

A hectic sonic pileup. [Dec 2003, p.130]

A relaxed, even graceful affair. [Dec 2003, p.123]

On the more stripped-down songs, though, Conley's keen intuition pokes through. [Jan 2004, p.102]

Funky like Fred Schneider and Barney Fife killin' it at karaoke. [Sep 2003, p.115]

With its surges and dips, Confessions mimics the rising/falling action of, say, a DJ set, a hit of Ecstasy, or Madonna's own career. [Dec 2005, p.106]

There are a few lulls in which the band seems to be capably but perfunctorily going through the motions. (Raspy cheerleader vocals; cheeky rhythms; chunky, anthemic guitars—we get it!) But they’re outnumbered by the more inspired stuff.

For all its sonic sizzle, Prodigy's fourth album feels frustrated. [Oct 2004, p.113]

Without much dissonance or funk in the mix, this falls just short of butter. [Mar 2004, p.96]

If only this Baltimore art-rap exhibitionist were as consistently funny as his album titles. [Jan 2004, p.100]

It's like being trapped in the dressing room at Express for an hour. [Apr 2006, p.91]

Producer Mick Jones does his best to juice up these almost-songs. [Jan 2006, p.91]

Behind all the ridonkulous disses and boasts, Missy sounds a bit unsure of herself. [Jul 2005, p.97]

He's great with the hook-meoldy algebra, not so hot on figuring out what to say beyond "Love, blah, blah, blah, la, la, la." [Apr 2005, p.108]

What's so brilliant about ['Taiga'] is how Yoshimi finds spiritual connections between unlikely genres. [Oct 2006, p.102]

The result is a bigger, slicker record laced with potent "American Idiot"-style Bush-bashing, a handful of emo-heavy relationship ballads, and very few surprises. [Sep 2007, p.138]

Qui's huffing skree just doesn't have the immediacy of the Lizard's Zep thud. But Yow's ragged bellow has aged nicely into a wheezing croon. [Oct 2007, p.108]

Even when he's bumming, though, Walker still finds comfort in a good groove or a tart horn chart.

Some halfhearted rhymes linger, but contagiously energetic political jams such as 'Cold War' make it easy to forget that it's been three years since anyone heard of Le Tigre. [Sep 2007, p.136]

Lush, slo-mo, and mildly psychedelic. [Jul 2007, p.102]

Trash has its moments. [Mar 2008, p.106]

He may have kept his lyrical gift hidden, but he didn't lose it.

Cool people probably think this sort of utilitarian grab bag dumbs down Beck-like eclecticism. But maybe it didn't take such a genius to come up with it in the first place. [Jan 2001, p.109]

Kurt Wagner's conversational croak is, charitably put, an acquired taste. [Sep 2006, p.106]

Back from the brink of a long-promised implosion, the Vines sound like a band renewed on their first album since being booted from Capitol following dismal sales of 2006's muddled "Vision Valley."

Poptimist Michael Angelakos tried to hold onto his girlfriend with Passion Pit's first EP. That didn't work (blame the self-obsessed lyrics), but on his band's debut full-length, their squeaky indie-pop theatrics are more convincing.

Even with the occasional middling moments, it's hard to deny the band's clever, boisterous spirit. [May 2007, p.86]

The sonics find themselves not proving enough either. They’re free, to do what they want, any old time. And it costs them.

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.

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]