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

For all their sonic salad-tossing, Tortoise can't fade guitarist Jeff Parker, the band's secret weapon and the one dude whose instrument connects them explicitly to their college-radio roots. [May 2004, p.107]

[They] continue to play it sweet and low: hot-cocoa keyboards, heart-monitor beats, glossy high-end string arrangements--and actual songs, as it happens. [Apr 2004, p.94]

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

Diplo and Co. threw everything at the wall and turned around, pretending it stuck when all that’s really left is the splatter from undercooked leftovers.

John Agnello's knob-twiddling is spot-on. [Mar 2007, p.98]

Living Thing won't double as anyone's dance-party playlist. But it's an uneasy, bracingly honest soundtrack to life after fame.

A mature but still totally floor-ready return.

Sonic strategist Eno is clearly in "oblique" mode here.

Elson leans toward both bluegrass and chamber pop--the fiddle-laced "Cruel Summer" is worlds away from the twee, jewelry-box twinkle of "100 Years From Now." Her twangy, echoing soprano recalls Jenny Lewis and Loretta Lynn, aided craftily by husband/producer Jack White.

Even Klaxons' most ominously rambunctious tracks grind out plenty of bug-eyed dream-pop chants.

The moody effects and oblique lyrical affectations quickly wear thin. [May 2007, p.88]

Unbound by a verse-chorus-verse format, the songs meander unpredictably, like a milder Of Montreal, with polymorphous sex replaced by God and health problems.

This is Jonas’ complication: talking his way into, and then through, sexual minefields. The theme suits his peculiar pipes--the jutted-jaw pout, the texture he scratches into his more insistent notes--which, in turn, take the burden from the compositions.

Isolating his experimental tendencies to specific tracks leads to some uneven pacing on the album's second half. Otherwise, Green Language fully delivers, serving as a fascinating turn for an artist who earned his reputation by essentially bashing fans into submission with bass.

A tastefully matured Bauhaus produce enough fractured guitar and howling melodrama to wake the undead.

Dark, electroshocked eighth album from Brit rock's premier party people. [Jan 2003, p.99]

Hyacinths and Thistles is not even a 6th as good as Wasps' Nests.... these vocalists have two things in common: a cold demeanor and a predilection for high drama.

Compared to the band's clever early hits, the songwriting too often lapses into clunkiness.

The record's nuances are divulged in layers and folds, through a latticework of instrumentation and, shockingly, some uncommonly good songwriting by band members other than Stuart Murdoch.

Gossip lack the kind of anthems that demand a live document. [May 2008, p.100]

While 2005's Fear of a Black Tangent was a hilarious, merciless evisceration of rap hypocrisy from the bottom up, he's now trying to address the wider world. [Feb 2007, p.82]

After the proggy overindulgence of their previous two albums, these Texans gracefully balance the dynamic alt rock of 2002's Source Tags & Codes with their more recent multimovement epics.

The best parts of this boy-girl duo's second album sound like some obscure '50s act, the kind that ought to list "reverb" as a band member.

The band's aims are more modest now: have fun, get people to sing along, share a common feeling or two. Hurley achieves those goals with something approaching dignity.

The Fragile Army trades the cluttered arrangements... of their first two albums for tightly focused orchestral pop with big Technicolor hooks. [Jul 2007, p.102]

Ravishing yet famished for attention, this overachiever would be bloody irritating if she didn't demonstrate a savvy command of pop hooks.

EVOL, along with the Purple Reign mixtape, doesn’t provide that instant hit that Future’s world-class 2015 was so full of. Instead it crawls into your brain and makes itself at home; you’ll find yourself going back to it over and over without even realizing.