It's a thoroughly satisfying album, but surprises are in short supply. [May 2002, p.120]

They've gone one step beyond the underrated Surrender by integrating their two sides: high-octane thrust and airy psychedelic dreaminess. [Feb 2002, p.105]

Point is at once less sprawling and less insular than Cornelius' earlier work. [Feb 2002, p.110]

Not many of the expansive, leisurely songs on Asleep In The Back stick in the memory once they've ended, but they swoon nicely. [Mar 2002, p.127]

No. [Jan 2003, p.99]

Beneath all that veneer, the band sticks to its guns. [Jan 2002, p.105]

Fortunately, the old pros gel well often enough to keep things rolling -- with some help. [Jan 2002, p.107]

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]

These tunes dig deeper than the musings of, say, Michelle Branch, but none are groundbreaking or revealing enough to suggest that Pink has learned to navigate the space between fluffy and toughie. [Jan 2002, p.108]

These beats and bass lines make for the hardest body music he's ever produced. [Feb 2002, p.111]

If the studio stuff lacks punch, her live material pulls fresh meaning from her music's subtlety. [Feb 2002, p.110]

The music, such as it is, is a river of fat-free, dirt-free, melody-free jazz Olestra. [Feb 2002, p.112]

Proof that simple pleasures always beat academic detachment. [March 2002, p.137]

Just as you've got Cold House pegged as a way-underground cousin to Kid A and Vespertine, another element comes in from far left-field: hip-hop. [Dec 2001, p.163]

It's sad to see the rocker side that Lynne has unveiled in her live sets turned into histrionic failures like "Trust Me," "Star Broker," and "Jesus On A Greyhound." [Dec 2001, p.154]

They've also inflected the mix with OutKast's quick complexity; and, like 'Kast, the Coup have progressed from story rapping to more mercurial rhymes. [Oct 2001, p.125]

Tough guitar scrimmages, soaring supergroup moments that last a lifetime, boner-like intensity, roto-toms--Astronauts has it all. [March 2002, p.130]

Lovage's schtick wears pretty thin by album's end--but if it works like it's supposed to, you won't need to play it that long. [Feb 2002, p.108]

Amazingly enough, she does sound almost human. [Jan 2002, p.108]

Since I Left You is so madly glad, it's demented. [Oct 2001, p.126]

No matter how much Lenny plays it hard, there isn't that much difference between his ballads and his rock moves. [Dec 2001, p.151]

Kittie still spew the alternately golden-throated and throat-shredding thrash of their 2000 debut, Spit. [Dec 2001, p.154]

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]

The thrills come when he jumps off the cross and gets on the dance floor. [Nov 2001, p.129]

The song structures are Mazzy-like acoustic webs that gingerly frame her longings. [Dec 2001, p.162]

The resulting cavalcade of "decent bits" seldom leaves an imprint in your memory, let alone your heart. [Nov 2001, p.130]

Golden State merely sounds like Bush--not as buffed as 1999's The Science of Things, but slicker than 1996's Razorblade Suitcase. [Dec 2001, p.152]

Aneurysm drumming and Offsprung power chords mimic the tiffs of teenage L-U-V. [Nov 2001, p.129]

It's still the best mix of fury and fluency since phony Beatlemania bit the dust. [Jan 2002, p.107]

There are fewer miracle strokes like Le Tigre's "What's Yr. Take on Cassavetes," but these "roller skating jams" have so much certainty, its irrelevant. [Nov 2001, p.132]

More coherent, conceptual, and organic than their eponymous British Invasion-influenced debut. [Dec 2001, p.154]

Ten tracks of heart-baring guitar-doodles by and for people who'd rather talk about feelings than have them. [Nov 2001, p.138]

These grooves shimmer brighter than anything he's done since 1999's disco-house monolith, 2Future4U. [Nov 2001, p.132]

Pierce's flimsy voice and material buckle under the weight of the Technicolor bombast on Let It Come Down. [Oct 2001, p.127]

Gorky's make the leap from ramshackle prog pop to meticulously crafted folk-symphonics. [Nov 2001, p.130]

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]

There is a sense on V that Live will stay around long enough to ride into the state-fair sunset. [Oct 2001, p.137]

So rewind to indie-rock the way Mark E. Smith started it: reduced, smart, and dirty-sweet as used bubble gum. [Oct 2001, p.130]

Less an electronica CD than a dub album without any original sources--and it's all the freer for it. [Oct 2001, p.128]

Where [Time Out Of Mind] stared down heartbreak and mortality with somber melancholy, Love and Theft finds Dylan taking on those same themes loaded up with piss and vinegar. [Nov 2001, p.127]

They almost reach the orbit of their sister band, the Flaming Lips... [Oct 2001, p.127]

In many ways, this is his 'Nylon Curtain.' [Sep 2001, p.160]

Don't worry--eight albums into their reign, Slayer still sound like Slayer. [Sep 2001, p.158]

[Frontman Miles] Kurosky finally has the audio toys to jazz up his Technicolor sandbox... [Oct 2001, p.134]

At its best, Weird Revolution is danceable and degenerate... It's a tight package, but the holes start to show on the title track... [Oct 2001, p.132]

It's a Wonderful Life comes off like a Magical Soft Mystery Bulletin. Yet, those iridescent orchestrations seem to be covering for the underdeveloped dirges that dominate the album. [Oct 2001, p.127]

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 two have widened and lightened their sound a bit from '99's Field Studies, with more, merrier guitars and varied selection of keys. [Oct 2001, p.134]

Strangely enough, Utah Saints have never sounded better... [Sep 2001, p.163]

Guest shots from rock stars like Tom Morello and Scott Weiland can't make up for a sorry lack of head-banging hooks... [Sep 2001, p.163]

Unlike her major-label LPs, this is a stringently stripped-down, dark-side-of-the-mountain album that's near impossible to cozy up with. [Oct 2001, p.131]

The fusion is sweet yet corny... and occasionally it's just baffling. [Aug 2001, p.132]

The only drawback is that in his expansiveness, Bilal forgot to give himself that killer tune or two that would bring it all home. [Sep 2001, p.158]

Deeper than anything she's delivered before, Aaliyah's a hard record; almost never does a song roll over and beg to be loved. This makes the yielding moments all the sweeter. [Aug 2001, p.130]

It's hard to find a heart beneath the haze.... [Aug 2001, p.129]

Built to Spill used to grab for structure, dividing albums between compact songs and epic gushers; now the songs themselves throb like big guitar solos. [Aug 2001, p.137]

Lacking the bluster and/or baritone to pull off the stumbly, ESL lyrics, Migala's drowsy fables wander aimlessly. [Sep 2001, p.164]

Slow burners like "Dying Slowly" and "Sweet Release" smolder like Chesterfields in the rain. [Sep 2001, p.164]

A blatant stab for radio... [Aug 2001, p.134]

Despite Rooty's many delights, it feels like Basement Jaxx didn't really know how to top Remedy. [Aug 2001, p.127]

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

They're all pretty good, actually, especially "When It's Over"... [Aug 2001, p.129]

An L.A. album in all senses of the term -- pretty, temperate, and incredibly surface. [Aug 2001, p.138]

Wainwright never runs short on clever conceit. [Jul 2001, p.130]

The loose arrangements nod to the American roots icons Sexsmith idealizes; there's tons of feel. [Aug 2001, p.139]

As halting, spare, and downbeat as its predecessor was giddy, verbose, and, okay, downbeat. [Jul 2001, p.125]

And this is how Amnesiac goes, or doesn't: Resonant, dusty somethings, not much on their own, line up and aggregate into something fluid and sweetly steady. [Jul 2001, p.124]

10,000 Hz Legend offers heavier arrangements, starker contrasts between soft folky orchestrations and hard prog-rock noise, more guest stars, fewer pretty tunes, and several gigabytes of robo-speak. [Jul 2001, p.126]

This is an album of magnificent segues and, no surprise given the source, beautiful female vocals. [Sep 2001, p.155]

One jaded plod after another. [June 2001, p.155]

His finest album since American Music Club split. [June 2001, p.145]

All that pep blots out the undercurrent of longing that made their best '80s songs complicated and bittersweet. [June 2001, p.155]

A kind, weird club crunker, Ecstasy references included. [Jul 2001, p.128]

Exciter is basically a vehicle for Martin Gore's increasingly formulaic songs... [June 2001, p.155]

From the beginning, Franti has favored a retro, flow-through groove, and here hsi funk adds a decidedly disco flavor. [Jul 2001, p.135]

A series of six-minute tracks that set some sort of richly (or ripely?) spastic texture-beats against ethereal drone-shimmers. [Aug 2001, p.136]

Unlike U2, whose left turns have felt like oblique strategies in the band's pompous struggle to redeem rock, R.E.M.'s stylistic shifts tend to feel like survival skills. Vaguely psychedelic, filled with hazy shades of woo or whatever, much of Reveal moves with the graceful drag of 1985's Fables of the Reconstruction, yet with more ebb and flux. [June 2001, p.143]

Their most mature record to date.

Survivor is relentlessly inventive in its recombinations. [Jul 2001, p.126]

An immaculate 38-minute lullaby for the not-working class, replete with tape hiss and timpani, sweetly brooding vocals, and otherworldly Hobbit-core. [5/2001, p.147]

This record isn't as masterful as the last, partially because they're trying out new things, many of which -- horns, vocals, ska(!) -- are old things. [Jul 2001, p.134]

Rounding off the edges of its tried and true punk-rock grind with the melodic and rhythmic tropes of '60s psychedelia, Unwound has perfectly re-imagined a sound that most art-students wouldn't even spit on the first time around.

The ideal major-label debut for the age of modern-rock insecurity -- think Everclear minus the arrogance. [5/2001, p.141]

This inspired, two-disc, 29-track set is one part musical grandstand like Prince's Sign O' the Times, one part marital saga like Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love. [5/2001, p.139]

Old Ramon is sinuous and unhurried, a beautiful downer of a folk rock record that has the lithe and shadowy promise of the ocean.

A gentle, finely-wrought memory of an album, The Negatives won't change lives, but it will charm and occasionally haunt them.

Isolation Drills' anthems are shamelessly charming, even bashfully moving. [June 2001, p.153]

They elaborate on the love/disappointment/death themes of Peggy Lee's "Is That All There Is?" while merging the sensibilities of the Velvet Underground and Vitamin C. [June 2001, p.153]

Matmos have captured with discomforting vividness the sheer surrealism of the modern vanity industry, the medieval tortures people gladly endure in pursuit of physical perfection.

It feels like a concept album -- in this case, the story of how wine-flow disco circumnavigated intellectual pretensions on all sides en route to a temporary utopia that may finally believe in nothing but the boogie but still has the infinite on its mind every minute. [June 2001, p.145]

...melds Billy Joel and James Taylor... [Apr 2001, p.161]

Eve has moved her Ruff Ryders to the back half, scored some marquee-value collaborators, and found two guys who can mimic Swizz Beatz well enough to fill the spaces around Mr. Beatz's four tracks without too many seams showing. [5/2001, p.141]

The songs remain wonderfully the same - simple guitar lines seething like itchy scabs, scathing lyrics scribbled with trembling, coffee stained hands, memories of kissing with nicotine lips.

And if you've ever wondered what might happen if Jean Michel Jarre polluted the folk tradition of a Blue Ridge town, or you want to hear references to British pantomime, Bruce Haack, and Karen Finley within ten minutes-or if you're Japanese-this is probably your album of the year.

And while 'Sleepwalking' can't help but sink into the somnambulism its title promises, R&C also get ambitious, abandoning lathery fantasia for something a little earthier. [Apr 2001, p.163]

They're still tilling the same murky patch, but they're pulling up prettier weeds each time out. [5/2001, p.147]

A mod-rock mix that's somewhere--no, everywhere--between Matchbox Twenty and 'So.' [Apr 2001, p.154]

It's somewhere between the album we've been waiting for Eno to release since 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' and the album we wish Phish would stop releasing altogether. [Apr 2001, p.154]