Despite the signs of sonic evolution, All Hands is mostly cut from the same cloth as its predecessors, with the record's heat generated from the braiding of lead singer Tucker's histrionic vocals and Brownstein's deadpan backup and everywhere-at-once guitar.

It's not gallows humor, just the most natural thing in the world. [Oct 2003, p.113]

It's a testament to both Cee-Lo's vision and the producers' artistic sympathy that the collaborations maintain a coherent, vintage R&B vibe. [Mar 2004, p.91]

His new mixtape's best moments gain their power from such good-idea/bad-idea indulgences and batty risk-taking.

It's one 
of the most overly complicated hard-rock records 
of the past ten years. It's also one of the best.

If you’re not feeling Surf right away, stick with it long enough and it just might bring you to its wavelength.

If Slave Ambient represented a breakthrough, this one is an out-and-out star-maker that should rank among the year's best albums.

Across 14 tracks, there is no obvious hit to match the enduring success of 2014’s “Archie, Marry Me” or 2017’s “Dreams Tonite,” each touting a cool 70 million listens on Spotify — massive numbers for a band that began in the outlands of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. But each song has its place and raison d’etre amid this fully realized batch of tunes detailing heartache, lonesome fury and wistful wonderment.

Perhaps the most ambitious moment on the album is its warped title track which goes from a whisper to a scream when Eilish’s crystalline vocals burst from power ballad to an explosive Metallica-esque electric guitar anthem. Still, it’s the unwavering vulnerability of Eilish’s songwriting that makes Happier Than Ever most impressive.

With her deft band, the New York-raised, New Orleans-based musician (on cello, banjo, and guitar) pairs music from her Haitian-American roots with threads of its Caribbean, Latin-American, and African family tree. .... It’s the most engaging, dynamic and, crucially, personal of her five solo albums.

Tems’ silky delivery reaches a deeper level of connectivity on Born in the Wild. .... Her biggest, boldest, and most earnest project to date.

An eight-song, 34-minute miniature more substantial than just a handful of outtakes, but also in execution not as complete or united as his album-ass albums (starting with 2011’s Section.80).

Though crunching at their heaviest, the band still shines brightest when they edge toward indie-rock approachability.

One of the best albums from a restless artist who understands the ridiculousness of being a Restless Artist, but trusts that a consistent voice will make sense of his cross-genre meanderings.

They've never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world.

You certainly won’t find a clunker among Hitchhiker’s more familiar cuts, though few of them surpass the official versions. ... Young’s talent is vast and his art contains plenty of contradictions. Hitchhiker stands as proof that no matter how strange his creations might sometimes seem, he always draws them from the same well.

The first single's called 'Pretty Wings,' but the whole thing flies.

The 78-minute Spiral Shadow supersizes everything, from song lengths to layers of deep-focus space-rock effects, but the sprawling songs are still built around riffs as sweaty as a south Georgia summer.

Few of the album’s 11 ensuing tracks are quite as barnstorming as “Devil,” but the album remains gigantic throughout.

The result is an eclectic mix of tempos and moods that maintain Kozalla’s sense of whimsy without sacrificing earnestness.

Aside from a new perspective on Myrkur’s music, Mausoleum provides a welcome diversion from the general praxis of live albums as we know them.

While Jonathan Meiburg’s uneasy high quaver has always generated the kind of simmering intensity that made Jeff Buckley so gripping and unnerving, canny tonal shifts give his introspective songs a bristling, heightened urgency.

It’s more of a mixed bag.

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]

The overall dark, diaphanous sound here almost oversells the title, but it's impossible not to get lost in 
the drift.

[Fox Confessor] shows that for all her versatility, she has a singular vision when it comes to her own music. And Lordy, it is dark. [Mar 2006, p.92]

An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]

The tonal palette is warm and lush, with a transporting quality that’s twofold, sending the listener both to the artist’s western locale and back in time.