For good and ill, this jumble couldn't come from anyone but Malkmus. [Jun 2005, p.104]

Crimson... still has its share of macabre wordplay... but the real attraction here is the music, which sounds just as dramatic as the imagery. [Jun 2005, p.105]

Even when the music flags, Common's remarkably hungry raps push it along. [Jun 2005, p.102]

Rev's overbaked symphonics and space-case triumphalism have become completely indistinguishable from the Flaming Lips. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Tankian remains the sort of agitprop trickster whom partisans on both side so fthe aisle are wise to distrust. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Fiction is less nervous than its predecessors but emotionally knottier. [May 2005, p.103]

There's an air of formal exercise here.... But if you can ride with the cliches, you won't fault the execution. [Jul 2005, p.102]

Though it's more of a mash-up of two solo EPs than an album, we're just lucky these guys still bump into each other. [May 2005, p.105]

Uneven, overly reverential. [May 2005, p.110]

What it sounds like to be sucked into doomed romanticism rather than aspire to it. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Amid the hasty scribbles and marooned, half-finished concepts, there are lots of seeds and stems. [Jul 2005, p.101]

Wedged into Tigers' delicate array of Byrdsian pop, "Jerk It Out" will either feel like the album's solitary moment of ecstasy (couch potatoes, we're talking about you!) or an annoying distraction in the midst of a solidly assembled set.

Darnielle's written some of the toughest and most open-souled music of his lo-fi outlet's oft-brilliant history. [May 2005, p.110]

His third album mostly shelves the wit and sui generis style-clash. [Jun 2005, p.108]

The ballads are still as pretty as her fan base of shy piano students and unicorns. [May 2005, p.110]

Spastically twee, painfully saccharine. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Finds these mysterious lads already advancing into their suave Roxy Music phase. [May 2005, p.102]

Infusing their music with real personality and humor, sexiness and humility, they've neatly transcended the air-quote graveyard. [Apr 2005, p.105]

Basically the same thing--improved. [May 2005, p.101]

It's his most varied record, but it also sounds for the first time like he's tryinig to make a "Beck album." [Apr 2005, p.97]

Will likely be the best political album this year. [Mar 2005, p.88]

He's great with the hook-meoldy algebra, not so hot on figuring out what to say beyond "Love, blah, blah, blah, la, la, la." [Apr 2005, p.108]

Though [Meloy] rarely cracks a smile, he finds creativity in defeat. [Apr 2005, p.101]

They're better at evoking turbulence than talking about it--efforts to cop '80s-pop vocals are overshadowed by the cascade and rumble of the instrumental long-players. [Apr 2005, p.102]

Herren has the good collaborative instincts of Handsome Boy Modeling School, but none of their seedy, crowd-pleasing shtick. [Apr 2005, p.108]

An eclectic, rippin' record whose only shortcoming is its commitment to artistic quality. [Apr 2005, p.99]

Packed with sparse, whirring, and danceable noise-rock refinements. [Apr 2005, p.108]

His mildewy folk rock is dourly impenetrable. [Apr 2005, p.108]