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

These songs are both sturdier and more complex. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Flat... only a few songs flirt with her previous brilliance. [Apr 2005, p.102]

His tunes and/or jokes plop out like forced turds. [Mar 2005, p.92]

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

His loosest, most inspired set yet. [Mar 2005, p.86]

The rapper's inborn goofiness just gives his words more bite. [Mar 2005, p.85]

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

He's got an excellent ear, a savvy way with hooks, and an untrained voice that knows its limitations. [Mar 2005, p.88]

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

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

Scarily intimate and irresistibly beautiful. [Mar 2005, p.92]

The grimy, blues-black nuggets [PJ Harvey] pounds into armor for Faithfull are song-for-song stronger than Harvey's own 2004 album, Uh Huh Her.... But Cave's songs are a little too pitch-perfect. [Jan 2005, p.96]

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

On these subtly lovelorn songs, his voice quavers with a grounded, lived-in authority. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Most of Digital's songs seem somewhat suffocated. [Feb 2005, p.85]

An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]

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

She's become masterful at painting in the blues and grays of everyday emotion. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Years of gradually opening up their minimalism have imbued Low with the wisdom to make every new layer count. [Feb 2005, p.91]

Welcome to the Dirty North, y'all. [Feb 2005, p.88]

Stuff this simple can turn into art that's fantastic or a fantastic disaster. Coachwhips walk the line masterfully. [Feb 2005, p.91]

The Young-ian guitar stutter remains intact. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Almost lives up to the hype. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Mostly great. [Jan 2005, p.96]

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

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]

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

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

Daniel's bump-and-grind synth lines are all campy humor. [Mar 2005, p.92]

A Perfect Circle prove that they've got not only good taste, but real bite, too. [Dec 2004, p.117]

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

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

The Malibu-dreamin' sound evokes a band settling into their twilight years--relaxed, carefree, and ready for a sunset cocktail. [Nov 2004, p.118]

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

They add enough kinks to the old herky-jerk formulae to make their half-hour in the sun blaze by like nobody's business. [Dec 2004, p.124]

[Simple Plan is] a band as spiritually distant from Dookie as John Mayaer is from Blind Willie McTell. [Dec 2004, p.124]

Jimmy Eat World might still be stuck in "The Middle" a year from now, but this album's more thoughtful homestretch at least suggests the possibility of alternate futures. [Nov 2004, p.115]

The bleaty rhythms and abrasive guitars start to pile up willy-nilly, and some of the more techno sections sound like kids going bazonkers in a toy store. [Oct 2004, p.109]

He's more grounded... and his evasive, abstract beats underpin his vocals less randomly. [Dec 2004, p.124]

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]

Smith's intentions cry out from the album's every discordant corner--he clearly wanted to test himself, to unhinge parts of his sound. [Nov 2004, p.105]

They find a woolly warmth and loopy generosity few English art-rockers have stumbled upon since the first Beta Band record. [Dec 2004, p.124]

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

Savage punk rock that shifts and shakes like the bleachers during a homecoming orgy. [Jan 2005, p.98]

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

These reimaginings... unlock some interesting textures suggested by [Black's] still-scratchy vocals. [Dec 2004, p.118]

[Eitzel's] best album of closing-time kvetch since 1993's Mercury. [Dec 2004, p.124]

In a world where 50 Cent name-drops [Talib] Kweli, Mos Def wants to keep the line between indie hip-hop and major-label rap nice and blurry. [Oct 2004, p.112]

A sweetly embittered geopolitical epic. [Dec 2004, p.124]

There isn't a tune on No Cities Left, the Dears' gorgeous second album, that's not pitched at a minor state of emergency. [Jan 2005, p.99]

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

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

Totally grimy. [Nov 2004, p.118]

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

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]

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

Goes for basic sun-dappled guitar pop. [Nov 2004, p.118]

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

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

Antics is so much more fun than Turn On The Bright Lights. [Oct 2004, p.107]

While [Quality] cautiously courted the mainstream, he's made mass appeal Job No. 1 of late. [Oct 2004, p.112]

They do it better [than the Postal Service]--catchier songs, chillier production and more sophisticated beats. [Nov 2004, p.118]

She finally showcases a flow as strong as her vitriol. [Sep 2004, p.114]

[The Datsuns] now sound unfit to carry the Donnas' jockstraps. [Oct 2004, p.120]

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

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

At its core, Showtime is a classic sophomore album in the hip-hop sense: puffy with bluster, brimming with indignation. [Nov 2004, p.107]

They've de-funned rebellion and turned it into a task. [Oct 2004, p.109]

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

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

A dark, tense record, but one still crackling with life. [Sep 2004, p.114]

It's no mere gimmick. [Oct 2004, p.111]

Scarily single-minded in its depiction of a violent man coming of age. [Oct 2004, p.117]

The sweetest, cleanest grunge ambrosia since Urge Overkill's 1993 major-label bid, Saturation. [Aug 2004, p.105]

Music as spooky--and ultimately as sterile--as the hospital scrubs and surgical masks they wear onstage. [Sep 2004, p.120]

His interpretations seem both timid and presumptuous. [Oct 2004, p.120]

His characters feel like individuals, not archetypes. [Sep 2004, p.114]

Both sucks the air out of Dixie legend and revives it. [Sep 2004, p.122]

She can sound brand-new and busted-down in the same verse, and she sings like a guitar player. [Oct 2004, p.120]

This album would be better without Scott screaming about absolute nonsense. [Sep 2004, p.119]

They sound like they can't be bothered. [Oct 2004, p.120]

They're Old Schooled enough to ace history, but the science they drop is strictly C+. [Sep 2004, p.120]

Most of Fortune's tunes revolve around love and politics, which McArdle nails with a combination of wit, cynicism and sorrow. [Nov 2004, p.117]

Big-name cameos... can't disguise the fact that this is one more rote chapter in the infamous Queensbridge duo's twilight. [Oct 2004, p.120]

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

Gruff stuff... A few rockers lighten the load, but not by much. [Sep 2004, p.120]

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

One of the best psych-rock records of our young century. [Sep 2004, p.117]

Shift[s] between singer/songwriter Rhett Miller's heartrending country and mojo-fueled power pop. [Sep 2004, p.120]

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

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

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

Gleefully impurist and highly addictive. [Sep 2004, p.122]

A joyless slog through mossy folk tedium. [Aug 2004, p.108]

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

If The Cure feels like a recapitulation of the band's career, it's because they've recorded songs very much like these before. [Aug 2004, p.103]

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