Laced with bariny raps, cooing backing vocals, and a keen attention to meloncholy melodic detail, Why? almost one-ups those heady precursors [Fountains of Wayne, Rentals]. [Apr 2008, p.106]

Write About Love also feels monumentally comfortable in its own skin. For a band that made its bones meticulously documenting awkwardness, that's a particularly impressive change.

This young band’s musical growth supersedes the album’s imperfections, and hopefully Down in Heaven will eventually be regarded as a transition to something more career-defining. Untapped potential is an energy too.

The best album of Dave Matthews' career--the most coherent and graceful, the least wanky and aw-shucks messianic. [Aug 2002, p.107]

A series of six-minute tracks that set some sort of richly (or ripely?) spastic texture-beats against ethereal drone-shimmers. [Aug 2001, p.136]

Yusuf's supple folk tunes predictably take a more spiritual route, yet largely avoid cosmic corn. [Dec 2006, p.104]

Stevens sated his jam-band jones in a borderline amusing way on August's All Delighted People EP, but here all the engine-revving too often feels lazy, especially considering how vibrantly he embraces the album's fresh musical direction elsewhere.

Toward the Low Sun is what the Dirty Three do best: enigmatic instrumentals that redefine the notions of power in a power trio, a three-headed beast that trades off thoughts with nuance and grace, like a Cerebus dancing a waltz, then knocking back a beer at the bar.

Little Dragon's third full-length deepens the group's down-tempo mix of icy techno and smoldering R&B.

The arrangements simply aren't as sharp as before, even as the ensemble uses ingenious tricks, like shifting rhythm mid-number on "Q.U.E.E.N." and girding each song with string melodies that circle back to those suite overtures.

Weirdly calm yet supremely uneasy, On the Ones and Threes fluctuates constantly from folk to psychedelia to grunge, often in a single song.

Idealism shows off plenty of blaring synth riffs. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Last year's Merriweather Post Pavilion, SPIN's 2009 Album of the Year, forwent such formlessness, but the haze returns on this five-track EP. Fortunately, Merriweather's hummable, techno-indebted delirium also returns.

Verbal sound bites once provided subtext for Godspeed's cinematic symphonies. But on Yanqui, those voices have fallen silent, and there's too much barren drift. [March 2003, p.120]

Though restlessness is the dominant lyrical theme here, Nothing Is Wrong sounds familiar and comforting (see the airy, aching "Fire Away," featuring Jackson Browne)

For its all its pleasures, Hard II Love isn’t strong enough to convince you he’s decided to stick to a lane.

The record’s biggest flaw might be that it stacks the stunning “Sun” and “Lights” as its first two tracks, setting a challenge to which the nine remaining ones can’t quite rise.

An easy album to enjoy. [Jun 2007, p.93]

His debut solo album sports lyrics of the sort Loudon Wainwright III has been writing for decades, set to harp, oboe, strings, and horns. Lacerating sentiments clash with pretty sounds as Kasher holds forth on his "death wish," detailing the foibles of prodigal husbands.

If the band could bring themselves to record with anything resembling subtlety, they might win over some skeptics. But they also might end up hanging with Lightspeed Champion. I suspect they'll take the trade-off.

It’s a commendable effort, with Cole putting himself in a creative territory to respond to critics, peers and progeny. His messages are timely despite the fact that they continue, rather than conclude, a larger conversation.

The tropes in YG’s songs are West Coast traditional (women, realness, threats, repeat) but there’s a combination of veteran savvy and lane mastering that refreshes the more expected moments.

No, Virginia compiles a clutch of new tunes, old demos, B-sides, and cast-offs from the previous album, but it scores biggest with an obsessed fan's accordion-powered rendition of the Psychedelic Furs' 'Pretty in Pink.'

Bassist Jared Warren and second drummer Coady Willis (a.k.a. Big Business) return as the perfect-fit rhythm section for lifers Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, who are still communicating in their own avant-boogie metal language like twins separated at birth.

Leo has now produced more Pharmacists records while we've been at war than not, and in a world that still needs Fugazi's oppositional fire, The Brutalist Bricks' Dischordant burn is welcome.

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.

That combination of bottled passion and efficiency spreads itself evenly through the 11-track set.

Johnny Whitney has made an art of singing like a deliriously deaf 12-year-old, but the debut of his new trio with Blood Brothers bandmate/guitarist Cody Votolato and ex–Pretty Girls Make Graves guitarist Jay Clark (now on drums) plays like a preteen daydream.