It's a drag that so many of Mirage Rock's most transcendent moments--the stuff suggesting real maturity--are so quickly undone by such nonsensical toss-offs.

Unlike... Worlds Apart, So Divided is built less on brute force and more on hyperdetailed songwriting. [Dec 2006, p.101]

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

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

Motion City have deftly filled that space between emotional adolescence and responsible adulthood with this set of near-perfect pop. [Oct 2007, p.112]

A cleverly plotted head trip disguised as a ramshackle mess, the debut full-length from this psychedelic Oakland quartet turns brain-scrambling confusion into a fine art.

We Are Born accentuates Sia's goofy party-girl side: Produced by Lily Allen's mate Greg Kurstin, it's full of up-tempo electro-pop jams that sound like Amy Winehouse covering Toni Basil's Mickey.

Amazing Grace is at peak moments an amazingly graceful representation of MC5/Stooges skid marks on a psychedelic superhighway. [Oct 2003, p.112]

How I Knew Her glides by in 40 minutes without making any kind of impression at all, other than giving you a vague desire to hit up Starbucks.

Vermont residents Matt Valentine and Erika Elder exhibit signs of creeping dementia on Drone Trailer. With his piercing whine and wheezy harmonica, Valentine suggests a damaged, decomposing clone of acoustic Neil Young.

Styles plays all his roles gamely but unthreateningly.

Its smug, unexplored sense of intellectual superiority is pretty much all it has to offer. Musically, it’s an hourlong misallocation of the considerable resources that made a nu-metal minor classic out of 2000’s Mer de Noms.

Blue Songs' prevailing mood is deep indigo, not ultraviolet, yet that darkness heightens and complicates.

Peace Queer includes an acoustic antiwar rant and a ghostly reading of Creedence’s 'Fortunate Son' (with Patty Griffin on backup vocals). But the high point is a ragged bar-band jam about the dissolution of the middle-class dream ('Stuck on the Corner [Prelude to a Heart Attack]').

Libertad does improve slightly on the mostly hookless choogling of the band's 2004 debut, "Contraband," with songs that are punchier and a bit more memorable.

Rap's most hotly anticipated debut works best if you don't think of it as a rap album at all.

He shows the consistency to scatter those songs throughout Fetty Wap’s 17 tracks and to mostly stick to the limited formula that made them hit as hard as they did on the rest of the record.

Many of the tunes emerged after the duo’s chance meeting in Todos Santos, the Mexican town Buck calls his second home. This sense of discovery shines through the record’s layers of polish. Its immediacy makes Arthur Buck a rarity in 2018: a record that wears its messy heart, as pleased with its flaws as it is with its power.

Roan coaxes with an almost deliriously euphoric art-rock swagger, while O'Connor infuses every track with hedonistic energy. Amazing Baby are desperate to dazzle--and they often do.

Even the raw stuff has the humanizing detail that keeps Ghost interesting years after we've grown accustomed to his imagesplaying Joycean flow.

Audio, Video, Disco teeters on the edge of self-mockery, not an unfamiliar position for Justice.

Much of the rest recalls '90s rave and jungle at its most shamelessly glossy.

He still operates un the shadow of his semi-seminal indie rocjk outfit, due to an inconsistency that also plagues Forfeit/Fortune. [Nov 2008, p.89]

Its excellence and momentum vastly outweigh one’s ability to describe it.

Wayward Fire swoons and grooves deliciously, but the lyrics have a distinctly processed flavor.

The result is the trio's startlingly impressive debut: astute, melodic evocations of plinky new wave and the Cocteau Twins' smeary dreams that achieve a timeless emotional response. [Nov 2008, p.89]

His debut solo album sports lyrics of the sort Loudon Wainwright III has been writing for decades, set to harp, oboe, strings, and horns. Lacerating sentiments clash with pretty sounds as Kasher holds forth on his "death wish," detailing the foibles of prodigal husbands.

Effectively reinventing their sound with these glooomy anthems, Booka Shade should still rock the superclubs with ease. But some may miss the clever duo known for the carefree pulse of singles. [July 2008, p.94]

Business Casual's libidinous wit can't quite match 2007's Fancy Footwork, but this day at the office still features booty calls, romantic squabbles, and digitally syrupy declarations of devotion.

Their second B-sides compilation is a clear reflection of that indeliable good cheer. {May 2008, p.94]

Offers modest formal thrills without much depth beneath its glimmering surfaces. [Apr 2005, p.107]

[A] more toned-down, at times strikingly sincere, follow-up. [Dec 2005, p.104]

In their eagerness to show off the range of their toolbox, they stumble. [May 2004, p.101]

All Hope Is Gone, reportedly the first thing they've recorded in years without wanting to kill each other, proves that there's still musical unity in disharmony.

By staying on his uniquely off-kilter game, he's become an unlikely career artist. [Mar 2006, p.95]

The Georgia quintet's debut may appeal to My Morning Jacket fans, but songs like 'Heavy Petting' and 'Start Me Laughing' (which recalls Kurt Cobain at his nastiest) possess more growl than that comparison implies.

Four albums on, Mike Stroud and Evan Mast have barely altered their instrumental electro/indie/hip-hop hybrid, except to expand and refine its tasteful details.

Eventually it hits you just how godlike catchy these banalities are. [Aug 2005, p.103]

Despite its title, The Formula has its charms. [May 2008, p.96]

The album’s others [songs]--all of them, except for the title track and album opener, remarkably stick to five minutes--like the skittering, piston-punctuated “Pacer,” rise to the occasion of possibly even bigger stages.

At a relatively spry 62, Maal’s voice retains both upper register strength and youthful clarity.

The resolutely midtempo album peaks with the ghostly "Ace of Hz" (recycled from a 
recent greatest-hits record), which polishes chillwave's hazy psychedelia into glossy yet dense ice sculptures.

His quietly unsettling aura perfectly suits these childlike love songs.

Zac Pennington sounds a bit pubescent himself as he sputters the record's bizarre, hard-to-follow story, but the impeccable arrangements, wormy melodies, and jarring carnal imagery get the point across.

Tankian may be taking a break from System of a Down, but his solo debut hardly favors wimpy love songs over political jeremiads. [Nov 2007, p.125]

Shotter's Nation is still clotted with half-realized melodies and gutter-poet grime. [Nov 2007, p.117]

The best mood music transfixes; merely excellent, Jetlag is sometimes too easily relegated to the background.

Mixing the lawlessness of Hank Williams with the Gypsy fervor of Gogol Bordello, the band's second album is a scrappy, vaguely deranged, country-punk mélange that goes down like an impeccably mixed mint julep: sweet until it burns.

Sky eschews the occasional decade-hopscotching of 2007's Traffic and Weather, reaching a new, raw sincerity and cohesiveness.

It is an acceptable listen--on par with the Kills’ previous record, 2011’s Blood Pressures--but your best hope for enjoying it is to manage your expectations.

It's uniformly catchy. [Sep 2006, p.102]

After one truly cool tune, their feeble musicianship becomes a problem. [Oct 2003, p.113]

The Best tracks sweep ringing, acoustic-guitar verses into anthemic power-chord choruses. [Sep 2002, p.134]

Beans' avalanche of verbiage can obscure his nuances, but a cast of collaborators--disco evangelist In Flagranti, electro-hop eccentric Tobacco, psychedelic beat guru Four Tet, even Interpol's Sam Fogarino--burnish his rhyme schemes into high-tech funk.

Thanks to a volatile mix of the uplifting and gloomy--there's a bitter murder tale ("Dust Bowl Dance") and lingering visions of death ("Timshel")--Sigh No More transfixes.

Essentially a synthesis of the various phases of the band's career. [Jul 2006, p.85]

After 2006's acclaimed debut, Hello Master, this Montreal metal foursome had to cut through a mass of red tape before Fire, their long-gestating follow-up, could get a U.S. release date. Someone should be fired for the delay, because this baby burns.

Though not blessed with the strength of his father's voice, he makes the most of Dad's knack for pretty melody. [Nov 2006, p.102]

All of these lyrical open wounds could be hard to stomach if not for the salve that Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy’s head-spinning instrumentals provide.

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

If you've ever fantasized about Vedder singing you, or your kids, to sleep, consider your wish fulfilled.

All We Are can be a somewhat tough album to get a grip on, because it invites musical styles that seem to be set in opposition to one another to find chemistry, resulting in a genre that can really only be described in apparently oxymoronic hybrid terms like "discogaze" or "slowfunk."

Ghost drowns in Spacemen 3-like drone, feedback, and reverb until the tunes congeal into a deliberately muddy, impenetrable trance. [June 2008, p.104]

The eclecticism is refreshing on the jammy, Built to Spill-like 'Hi-Fi Goon,' but enjoying the sum of Creaturesque’s shifting parts can be a taxing proposition.

Pluto wears that influence loosely, without ever feeling formally indebted to it.

His murmuring voice brings a believable everydude quality to witty tales of landlord troubles and great evenings out, but above all he's a love junkie.

For about 17 minutes, the duo's third album comes terrifyingly close to brilliance. [Aug 2003, p.114]

He’s turned in 12 tracks of heavily orchestrated and unbearably sincere acoustic pop, territory that he hasn’t touched since the late ’90s.

Sure, there's hurt everywhere, but Carrabba sticks with the pain he knows. [Nov 2007, p.121]

Recorded at Jamaica's Tuff Gong studios, the record's strongest asset is making things that shouldn't work together sound natural.

It's never sonically engaging enough to stand out amid a rack of backpacks. [Dec 2007, p.112]

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.

Disc two works better in theory than fact, compiling disparate song fragments into a single 33-minute mixtape-inspired track, but the group's radiant delight in pure sound is undimmed.

Aside from "Lovealot," she proudly proclaims her intentions as a first-world pop star, de-emphasizing found collage and "third-world democracy" for melodic sway and punky bluster.

She represents a highly commercial compromise between Amy Winehouse's genuine soul danger and James Blunt's sclocky pop safety. [July 2008, p.92]

Though it lacks the electrifying newness of the Sung Tongs era, Eucalyptus is nonetheless a success. It is a patient, reflective, and decidedly low-key work, one that seems content to thrum along in its own corner of the universe without much regard for whether anyone’s there to receive its generous gifts.

A quick dip into glitch seems like a novice move, but all that slide guitar and glockenspiel give Sea of Bees a seasoned sorrow.

The [album] is exuberant and enthusiastic, and its architect bops along with an unapologetically clean-cut strut.

Between the groovier tracks, the album rarely keeps its feet or focus for long, getting lost in mazes of mangy Stones riffs or acoustic roundabouts with little purpose or pulse.

On Head First, the singer's bandmate-producer Will Gregory creates a pitch-perfect neon-lit '80s wonderland with Hi-NRG bass lines and plenty of that fat synth sound made famous by Van Halen's "Jump."

The result: an album exuding wall-punching energy, ugly noise, and raging nostalgia for stale bong water and sunburn.

None of this will make Devin a star anytime soon, but that's less his fault than it is everyone else's. [Nov 2008, p.90]

Face Control's programmed electronics, in fact, ring deeply human, and Boeckner's tortured vocals express shared experience rather than alienation.

Cryptacize's latest squanders the band's natural resource: singer Nedelle Torrisi.

Hip-hop-style braggadocio doesn't quite jibe with the band's relentlessly earnest outlook, which comes packaged here in songs no less hooky or propulsive than usual. It might have provided a jolt of excitement, though; even the amped-up standouts (like "Coffee and Cigarettes") are beginning to feel a bit by the numbers.

While the production's scope doesn't quite fit Chikita Violenta's knack for scrappy Superchunk-style guitar pop, the busy shimmer usually complements the songs' energy instead of burying it.

Watson gives Nero's robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice.

Ideal for anyone who finds Cypress Hill too sober.

So no, this is not a cohesive crew album, but has there really been one since Marley Marl's In Control, Vol. 1 came out 24 years ago?

The Dead of the World holds firm to the orthodox occult black metal machinations we’ve come to expect.

As defiant as this gang of four wants to be, they can't help but humbly return to their strengths.

[Sinatra's] is a light, ductile weirdness, and nearly all the contributing acolytes here play to it well. [Jan 2005, p.96]

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

He takes Lambs Anger's used parts and models them compressing keyboard sounds and looped samples into a sci-fi party mix. [Feb 2009, p.82]

It's like an alt-rock adaptation of a John Cheever anthology. [Apr 2007, p.87]

After honing their Cure impression on 2007's breakout "Our Ill Wills," these heart-on-sleeve Swedes team up with indie crossover producer Phil Ek (the Shins, Modest Mouse, Fleet Foxes) for a third album of ably crafted sincerity.

The third album (and first for a major) from this Boston-born, Mississippi- and Chicago-bred singer-guitarist is bound to inspire Sam Cooke comparisons, but Get It just as frequently stirs up Jackson 5 dance fever.