Within the milieu of creative, atmospheric, tradition-defying music termed alternative jazz by default, this is important work.

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

Frontman Ricky Wilson is an average singer but an extraordinary melodist. [May 2005, p.102]

Cryptic and cutting. [Aug 2004, p.108]

Like a Postal Service for hippies living off the grid. [May 2004, p.108]

All texture and no text. [May 2004, p.108]

Optimistic, ambient indie rock that floats between the bubble bath and the deep blue sea. [Sep 2003, p.115]

Tankian remains the sort of agitprop trickster whom partisans on both side so fthe aisle are wise to distrust. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Each track follows the Rage Against The Machine model: Make music for the masses without diluting it for the bosses. [Nov 2005, p.101]

Tonally challenged singing, spastic electro beats, and boldly nonlinear, ideologically sharp rhyming. [May 2003, p.116]

Grohl wrote the riffs, and he hammers like a god, letting his hero singers write the lyrics and man the bellows. [Mar 2004, p.91]

The record maintains their signatures, with breaks and samples undergirding or woven through indie rock guitar figures and extremely regular-person vocals. Barlow has a bit more control over his vibe now, but he still sounds like the ultimate ‘90s indie guy, detached and overly intense at the same time; Davis like the eccentric bedroom genius who wandered in from the Shire.

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

By ratcheting up their guitars and still singing about everyday themes, Coldplay are recasting their nerdy-student Britpop as Important Rock Music without sacrificing the homespun vibe that allowed Martin's fans to believe that he wrote a song for each one of them and called it "Yellow." [Jun 2005, p.99]

[They] up the theater-major quotient. [Apr 2006, p.91]

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

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

Quasi sound feistier than they have in years. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Rocks with a woozy pothead-punk swagger. [May 2006, p.91]

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

The Kings are probably sick of the "redneck Stones" tag already, but the signs are all there. [Aug 2003, p.111]

While his desire to evoke the druggy euphoria of early U.K. club music has sometimes jostled against his ear for atmosphere (as on his contributions to the Shock Power of Love split with Blackdown), those two extremes are more fully integrated than ever on these two 13-minute tracks.

There's an air of formal exercise here.... But if you can ride with the cliches, you won't fault the execution. [Jul 2005, p.102]

This time they come dangerously close to conventional rock. [Nov 2005, p.101]

High grade West Coast guitar pop. [Dec 2003, p.131]

On Amelia, Anderson resurrects this courageous woman and gives her breath, heart, and soul. It is impossible to hear this aerial ballet and walk away unaffected.

Some tracks accordingly veer toward the solipsistic—”Exodus” pushes the newfound Arthur Russell-meets-Tim Buckley vibe a little past the point of viability. But even at his most bleakly compressed, McMahon can still produce a striking melody.

Frank folk-rock songs that are too sketchy to be great but too good to write off. [May 2003, p.116]

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

The Trickster's best record in years. [Aug 2003, p.119]

This is the work of noise nerds bent on finding beauty where others see nothing but a tangled mess. [Jul 2004, p.110]

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

A multifaceted, densely layered sound. [Oct 2005, p.138]

Perceive is ethereal, sure, but it’s also multilayered and compelling, staving off New Age-ness with pensive beauty and trenchant spoken-word (Saul Williams, Elucid, Anum Iyapo).

Atmosphere's least frantic, most playful album. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Everywhere the guitars are cranked, the sneakers set on stun. [Dec 2003, p.124]

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

Infusing their music with real personality and humor, sexiness and humility, they've neatly transcended the air-quote graveyard. [Apr 2005, p.105]

Showcases vocals more boldly than Melody A.M. [Aug 2005, p.98]

Rich in minor-key melancholia, twangy reverb, and retro keyboards. [Apr 2003, p.108]

Plays like a poppy salvo against [Broken Social Scene's] cerebral forays. [Oct 2005, p.138]

It's Dynamite's choice of subject matter that distinguishes her from other R&B divas-in-waiting. [May 2003, p.110]

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]

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

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

Evokes Bjork as a Latina wallflower, sketching gossamer balladry with acoustic guitar and oddball synths. [Jun 2004, p.108]

When Sheer Mag is on, they’re turned up to 11. Playing Favorites proves that joy can show up defiantly, wearing a sleeveless denim vest, and sometimes, a rollicking good time is the glue holding our hearts together.

Traffics full-time in the kind of raw, godless punk rock that's relegated to a handful of cuts on Queens' albums. [Sep 2003, p.112]

Grandaddy's Moogy, moody music still sounds like ELO as HAL-9000. [Oct 2005, p.137]

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

Sounds exactly like what you'd expect. [Oct 2005, p.132]

Pratt’s music remains gentle and beguiling, carefully crafted with graceful melodies, gauzy vibes, unshakeable patience, and the kind of intimate room-sound that makes you feel like the voice is coming from inside your head.

Though it's more of a mash-up of two solo EPs than an album, we're just lucky these guys still bump into each other. [May 2005, p.105]

Rev's overbaked symphonics and space-case triumphalism have become completely indistinguishable from the Flaming Lips. [Jun 2005, p.108]

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

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

Basically the same thing--improved. [May 2005, p.101]

[BEP] pick up where the Fugees left off. [Aug 2003, p.119]

[They] spruce up their cutesy indie pop with grander melodies, gigglier choruses, and a wider variety of sounds. [Apr 2006, p.91]

If you're going to crossbreed Built To Spill and the Flaming Lips, then you might as well have fun doing it. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Sure to rule clubs and fashion runways from Milan to Monterrey. [Jan 2004, p.100]

Blunt and bratty, emotionally pubescent. [Mar 2006, p.93]

At 57, Smith can still find the ecstatic in the everyday, and she's no longer adrift in the mandolin wind. [May 2004, p.109]

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

Their swirl of guitars and organ is even more densely alluring, but the arrangements let in some welcome light. [Oct 2005, p.137]

Like Grandaddy, they know the future isn't glitch-free, but they're gonna throw a good party anyway. [Oct 2003, p.113]

As big and slick a rock record as you're likely to hear all year. [Apr 2003, p.101]

Taking his cue from predecessors like Clinton, Wonder, and Prince—consummate artists who defied genre and charted their own musical course—Clark relishes in his boundless freedom. His virtuosity throughout is commendable and often quite impressive.

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

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

The Majesticons highlight commercial hip-hop's yawning credibility gap by amping up the bourgeois posturing to the point of absurdity. [Jun 2003, p.105]

Northern State's skills and we-can-do-this exuberance transcend what otherwise might be shtick. [Aug 2003, p.116]

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

They blaze with scene-satiric brilliance. [Sep 2005, p.109]

For a 28-year-old, Carrabba remains remarkably fluent in the language of teen heartbreak. [Sep 2003, p.107]

It's a set of torch songs to do Nico proud--some folkie, some neo-soul, all darker than your closet at midnight. [Oct 2003, p.113]

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

This is a deceptively pretty album in which all of the experiments succeed.

The 10 tracks on Love Is Not Enough are more than just a physical workout: they’re cardio for the brain.

Dance Fever is a worthy addition to the band’s catalog, with enough moments to be plucked for what will surely be an invigorating series of live shows beginning in September. It’s a sly and polished effort, sustained by Welch’s fearlessness both in vocal technique and lyrical vulnerability. No modern artist commands such power in both moments of ethereal humanity and mountainous throttle.

The pace and tenor occasionally resemble the Bataan Death March, but Bondy’s gorgeous melodies, vivid imagery, and haunting voice keep you pressing on.

If there's an ounce of you that's ever been keen on Pearl Jam, or even if you've never bothered, grab a pair of headphones and let Binaural pummel and soak into you, and relax about it.

It’s largely a plainspoken, cohesive work, closer in spirit to single-minded efforts like Morning Phases, Modern Guilt, or even Sea Change. And really, that’s fine.

The new album’s particular saving grace is its self-loathing streak, the sense that scales have fallen from eyes and that Stay Gold’s nebulous disaffection has soured to regret.

Bronsonland is a place you enjoy spending time in or you don't, and that does not seem likely to change anytime soon.

It just might be a masterpiece all over again. [Nov 2007, p.118]

Never has she sounded freer than she does here, a self-styled villain biting the forbidden fruit of gossip and letting its juices run down her neck.

It’s no wonder the process felt redemptive for Smith; to exorcise years of mounting bleakness is no doubt a relief, but the resulting record is one that’s compelling for the exact opposite reasons. It’s not a light at the end of a tunnel, but luminescence creeping through the crack of a doorway--illuminating just enough to let you realize just how dark everything still is.

In the grand, elegiac 'Legacy,' singer Neil Tennant delivers what's either a farewell kiss or simply a cheeky end to the most thoroughly heartfelt chapter in the pair's 25-year story.

Contra is more fully formed, a '70s-style record-type record. It's their version of the Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food," the disc on which they see how well their gold-star ideas move.

Vernon re-accesses that potent sense of self on Bon Iver, a stunning sophomore set whose landscape-painting cover art underscores the idea that his songs inhabit their own psychological space.

While not as conceptually taut as its forebear, the new record plays like a jolt back to reality — and a sprint toward the dance floor. It is, by many leagues, the most objectively fun Mitski album to date, anchored by the pairing of ‘80s-tastic “The Only Heartbreaker” and “Love Me More.”

New Moon offers pleasures aplenty.

These Englishmen have learned impulse control. Frontman Eamon Hamilton's playful yelp has given way to a sturdier sound.

Whether directly inspired by backpack rap or just embodying the raw energy of that era, the group has none of the preachy divisiveness that made that movement a half-joke.

Dirty Sprite 2 is a tremendous compendium of everything you want from a Future album in 2015.

The strength of and the Anonymous Nobody... remains how it holds together as a complete, cohesive listen.

This is the first stateside CD reissue of the stylistically peerless album.