A collaboration that alternates from alienation and sadness to melodic tenderness, punkish rap bravado, and triumph in 23 minutes. It’s both embarrassing and gripping: never boring and often euphoric. ... It makes for a perfect version of a Kid Cudi album, with Cudi taking center stage under the guiding hand of Kanye’s stellar production.

American Dream is good enough to dispel all of those concerns. The passing of their imperial phase has left them like any formerly Teflon hipster: honest, and ready to move on from whatever they found at the heart of the party. Admitting for real that they’d lost their edge is one of the most interesting things they could’ve done, and hopefully they keep making more records after this one.

One of [the year's] most heartfelt albums. [Jun 2006, p.80]

At its best, Fleet Foxes is warm and cathartic, with all the hopefulness of a balmy summer night.

Though Moz's vocal range has narrowed with age, he still delivers brilliantly titled odes to depression and hanging out on his own.

Whether he’s teasing out the darkest parts of America’s history with an acoustic guitar, or allowing a genteel tremolo to ring as a meditation on modernization, it’s easy to get caught up in the disorienting, psychedelic drift of past becoming present. It’s even easier to just relax and float downstream.

Where the strong Horehound and Cowards sounded interchangeably enough like other White projects, Dodge mostly does not.... Dodge and Burn is one of their greatest.

Divers sets itself apart by expanding into new genres and replacing the whimsy of her earlier material with maturity and solemnity.

The music is propulsive and upbeat, but executed with the almost blasé confidence of people who sound like they have nothing to prove.

Even haters will have to acknowledge Opus as being undeniable for what it is, an iconic collection of 21st-century house music that’s so expansive and far-reaching it outgrows its very genre, unable to be contained within any four-walled enclosure.

The album's best cut, 'I Hate People,' is an unexpectedly bubbly May-December duet with Iggy Pop, but all of Break It Up ripples with raw power.

When Fish Ride Bicycles may pay homage to Chicago summers, but this duo rarely break a sweat, rhyming in dulcet tones about designer sneaks and tricked-out GMCs.

The band's interplay has grown both more varied and intuitive.

From beginning to end, Caspian use their structural savoir faire to keep things moving, rarely giving in to passing fancies or individual showmanship.

Their sound is still thrilling, but it’s an album made by men who have watched lives crumble despite willful rebellion and are picking up the pieces to continue fighting, even as the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.

A stylishly sweaty summer party. [Jul 2007, p.102]

The record works best at its most focused and extroverted.

Vroom Vroom is scintillating new ground for Charli, totally unlike anything she’s ever done before, and still quintessentially her in its streamlined, indomitable turbo-pop.

Music this hard-partying can make for a tough morning after. [Oct 2006, p.105]

From ambient juke to haunting, slo-mo house, their debut album kicks and caresses in equal measure.

Though energetic, their danceable chassis and sprawling melodies nevertheless feel weary, as if constantly grinding against some looming, countervailing force. It’s true that wearied, furtive anthems have always been Wolf Parade’s thing, but they feel especially right for these enervating times.

There's a hypnotic purity to Innocents.

Tago Mago is the messy one, where ten-minute stretches of nightmare sound effects are followed by 20 minutes of caveman groove with Damo Suzuki's caveman babble to match.

The CD is like spending a cloudy afternoon on Jupiter with the old man, his quizzical sonic tricks at arms reach, his singing as ageless and haunting as the ammonia rain. [Dec 2007, p.128]

Grim Reaper is an unedited adventure of blossoming soundscapes, vision-blurring, dissonant melodies, and cheerful robot dance numbers like "Principe Real." It hardly hits the same note twice.

Imperial Teen still sound as fresh and vital as ever.

The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums--a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop. They’ve retained their love of six-string grandeur even while continuing to plumb the depths of victories that aren’t so much hollow as qualified.

Eat Pray Thug is 11 songs in 40 minutes with the most emotional moment, "Flag Shopping," up soon at track five, paving the way for the intense trilogy that closes: "Al Q8a," "Suicide by Cop," and "Patriot Act."