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.