Ideal Lives is an uneven record, at times frustratingly so, but it is also the sound of a band finding out just what they are capable of, and falling in love with it.

Toning down his oddball style and ramping up his storytelling, he drops a pusher’s odyssey as developed and cinematic as any Scorsese joint.

[He] still knows how to make palpitating street anthems. [May 2006, p.91]

More corny than convincing. [May 2006, p.91]

A stark, erratic, and perversely back-loaded collection. [Mar 2006, p.96]

Kraut-rock drones run together into one long, thudding hum. [Mar 2006, p.95]

He tries hepcat jazz-piano bop and balladry with pitiful results. [May 2006, p.91]

[They] spruce up their cutesy indie pop with grander melodies, gigglier choruses, and a wider variety of sounds. [Apr 2006, p.91]

It's like being trapped in the dressing room at Express for an hour. [Apr 2006, p.91]

His grinding blues buitar/aggro piano and her Bonham-bashing coalesce in a sound as heavy as his soul. [Apr 2006, p.91]

Prince’s main weakness is the urge to display his own mind-boggling talent.

His most accessible [album] yet, crammed with melodic Brit punk played at maximum speed. [Nov 2006, p.97]

The beats are so simplistic that their minimalist repetition occasionally teeters over into redundancy.

They vacillate between flotational devices and skull-crushers. [Apr 2006, p.91]

The skeletal guitars, stylized strings, and rhythmic clatter are enough of a flashlight under the chin to spook up these campfire tales. [Mar 2006, p.95]

[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]

[They] up the theater-major quotient. [Apr 2006, p.91]

The racing tempos and Christian Hjelm's paranoid-sounding yelp push the songs to occasionally exhilarating heights, but beware the inevitable comedown. [Aug 2006, p.78]

Hawthorne Heights shun nuance altogether. Quiet equals depth; loud equals catharsis. And never the twain shall meet. [Mar 2006, p.94]

While Vitalic may add little to electronic music or its various subgenres, he interweaves effortlessly their prevailing styles into complex arrangements that are neither kinked-up innovation nor neutered homage.

Rife with acid-burn guitars, levee-breaking drums, and vocals that recall Peter Gabriel at his wooziest. [Feb 2006, p.87]

Blunt and bratty, emotionally pubescent. [Mar 2006, p.93]

Romance is zippier and tighter than previous beer cries. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Hooky, spare, and lush all at once. [Mar 2006, p.95]

DJ Babu's soulful, pyrotechnic turntablism straddles the indie-mainstream divide. [Apr 2006, p.91]

Here they fe-fi-fo-fum with the exacting crankiness of carny punks who've seen it all. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Until they ditch folksy archaisms... maybe it's best for 'em young indie-blues fellers... [to] work on the good ol'-fashioned songwriting. [Mar 2006, p.95]

Producer Mick Jones does his best to juice up these almost-songs. [Jan 2006, p.91]