Singing en español, clear-voiced Andrea Echeverri ponders subjects like immigration ('Bandera') and pregnancy ('28'), projecting unflappable confidence.

Riveting porch noir. [Feb 2007, p.86]

Live instruments have replaced the samples that fueled their debut, resulting in a more fluid, if still absurdly amateurish, sound. [Oct 2007, p.104]

The trio’s official debut further expands their musical palette to include triumphant synth rock (“Chalo”) and woozy G-funk (“Julia”).

Summer Sun sometimes sounds like a band treading water at low tide, but obsessively exploring the contours of a moment is what Yo La have been about from day one. [Jul 2003, p.109]

Gough sounds like a guy celebrating his birthday in an airport cocktail bar. [Jan 2003, p.99]

You’ve got to give it to perennial over-achievers: sometimes they even know how to make extra-credit assignments sound like A+ work.

Though firmly planted on the dancefloor, Record is for sunshine and joy the way 2008 masterpiece Out of the Woods was for moody rain and 2010 chamber-pop charmer Love and Its Opposite for snug wood paneling. But for all its color and vim, it’s also a brave, grave survey--emotionally if not always factually autobiographical--of Thorn’s relationship to London, her family, and her own heart.

From the moment that crystalline keyboard riff and sparse drum machine open the first track, “And That, Too,” it’s clear the band has raised the stakes to match the talent they’ve been hanging out with.

McGee may not know where he's going on his murky head trip, but he's a compelling enough guide that you want to follow him.

At his most relaxed, however, Fite still sounds like his head could explode. [July 2008, p.96]

Their fourth full-length has certain recurring quirks: skittery hi-hats, guitar lines to whistle along to, junk poetry sneered as if into a wind chamber. Blame a new emphasis on songwriting, never their strength, over sound-making.

Despite all this defiantly cosmopolitan music, Wheelhouse finds Paisley in bittersweet reverie.

She's made a fine, loud career out of channeling childlike abandon, and the rumbling acoustic guitars and schoolyard choruses (featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guys, Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, and the Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin, among others) are both joyful and foreboding.

Fortunately, his muse digs punk and trash--these 16 basement screams are the B-sides of rock history.

A little swing moves these songs along in otherwise unobscured directions. [Nov 2005, p.101]

Calling Headlights "nice" sounds like a backhanded compkliment, but Some racing wears the tag proudly: it's charming, but never boring [Mar 2008, p.102]

At times, it seems like mid-level fame yields too many tour-based gripes for Slug. [Nov 2005, p.103]

Morning/Evening is beautiful in its own right, if you’re patient.

For those who can keep up, some exultant and righteous highs await.

"Turn the dial on my words," she suggests, and the band's glorious noise obliges time and again.

Despite the occasional mosh-pit flare-up, though, Taking Back Sunday emphasizes the band's crafty songwriting rather than the psychological intensity that defined Tell All Your Friends.

Muttering Jon Langford, golden-toned Sally Timms, and the rest of this sweaty eight-strong mob are at their red-eyed best here. [Sep 2007, p.134]

Shorn of its usual grime trappings, Manuva's deep, gruff lyricism sounds playfully inspired on catalog highlights like "Proper Tings Juggled."

It's an album of scorching, scene-defining hits.

We have You Surrounded is a terrific accessible hard-rock album deserving more than cult attention. [Apr 2008, p.94]

Total Loss is a beautiful album, all ambient longing and sadness and spectral pop, rising and falling without warning - no other artist gets more emotional effect out of leaving things not quite finished. But it still feels not quite finished.

Craft can be a cage, and come the eleventeenth pleasant chord progression and workmanlike melody, the album's title may portend the listener's immediate future.