Add the pipes of Nancy Whang on most tracks--giving Future a boy-girl dynamic--and there's a distinct suggestion that the Juan MacLean might just become the Human League after all.

Closer in spirit to Rancid's bighearted radio punk than to anything Pink has put her name on before--all scrappy power chords and wounded warmth. [Jan 2004, p.97]

Only later do you realize the cotton candy you've been enjoying is wrapped around a dildo. [Nov 2004, p.118]

A poor man's Aimee Mann. [Jan 2003, p.99]

The Id, like On How Life Is before it, never seems too polished because Gray adamantly pursues her complicated pleasures, belying her image as a stoned soul picnic... [Oct 2001, p.123]

When it all cooks properly, as on the sultry, sweaty "Number One," Jackson's retro pastiches generate steam heat. [May 2002, p.125]

There's plenty of that spacey/dirty sound on Loud, even when the tracks don't fit the trance template. [Apr 2002, p.122]

The added dissonant improvisation replaces the Blade Runner futurism of his hip-hop beats with a chilling Taxi Driver dread. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Dilated Peoples continue to hold down hip-hop's middle ground with inoffensive mic purism and sophisticated production a la mid-'90s DJ Premier. [Dec 2001, p.158]

Thanks to frontman Tim Kinsell's pleasantly dispassionate delivery, an ambient coherence permeates the tunes, a quality that's both comforting and numbing. [July 2008, p.98]

They've ditched velocity but neglected to replace it with anything worthwhile. [Jul 2006, p.88]

Though sometimes courting sleepiness, the debut's barbershop harmonies, Hawaiian strumming, and lovesick melodies transform rock-club jadedness into an aesthetic fit for honeymoons, holidays, and other occasions where you savor small pleasures, even if they're quaintly recycled.

Tracks like "VHS Sex," the complex yet laid-back "Glawio," and the robotic apotheosis of "Futureworld" send you hurtling back toward electronica's past perfection.

The result is a thrilling, hyperpercussive collection of laptop ditties mixed so cleverly that they'll sound great ticking through earbuds or booming out of dad's trusty Cerwin-Vegas.

This odds-and-ends comp is unusually straightforward.

Imperial Teen still sound as fresh and vital as ever.

If you're not already aware that this prog quartet's fifth album serves as both a prequel and a finale to something called "The Amory Wars," bemusement is probably the best you can hope for while enduring their overwrought, topsy-turvy blend of spiky metal riffs, Gollumesque vocals, and ambient melodrama.

For all of the tension in the music, Barrow and his cohorts couldn't sound more relaxed, natural, and at home weird home.

Wiley only occassionally departs from the script. [Oct 2007, p.112]

Get past glitchy irritants like 'SonDEremawe' and an artful payoff of cerebral, booty-shaking decadence awaits on their ninth album.

These impressionistic songs shudder to life under the weight of passive-agressive feedback, anchored by Bouzulich's melodramatic howl and Tara Barnes' menancing bass. [Apr 2008, p.96]

Yoking fuzz-stoked guitars (credit Television vet Richard Lloyd) to gorgeous melodies derived from the Beatles and Big Star, Sweet serves up his best tunes since "Altered Beast."

The strength of this follow-up is not the defiant antiestablishment fist-pumping (though there's plenty), but the tunes.

Moments of transcendence occasionally emerge from the murk, but not often enough.

This polite Americana mistakes solemnity for seriousness.

There’s hardly an original thought here, but with arrangements so expertly composed, who’s complaining?

Imagine Joni Mitchell if she'd made Miles after Mingus. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Blade isn't quite that esoteric or ambitious, just an adept, hour-long reminder of how 14 years ago these guys turned your average boom bap into elaborate fantasies of iron galaxies and screamed phoenixes.