More prosaic and profane than many of his labelmates. [May 2004, p.108]

In their eagerness to show off the range of their toolbox, they stumble. [May 2004, p.101]

Morbid.... The beats are never as heavy as the subject matter. [May 2004, p.108]

Beam has given us his second straight masterwork: self-assured, spellbinding, and richly, refreshingly adult. [Apr 2004, p.89]

Suggests a gullier Cocteau Twins. [May 2004, p.108]

Like Elliott Smith after ten years of Sunday school. [May 2004, p.108]

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

The only friction here is between Lord's kewpie chirp and Nick Saloman's guardedly bitter lyrics. [Apr 2004, p.94]

A perfect album, except perfect is the wrong word for a band so dedicated to kitchen-sink oddness. [Mar 2004, p.96]

80 minutes of dank, chopped-up percussion and blitzed hard-drive scree. [Apr 2004, p.94]

A Death Cab For Cutie album you can listen to while ironing your cape. [Apr 2004, p.94]

The Von Bondies' calling card is the urgency of [Jason] Stollsteimer's voice as it sands down the shop-worn chord progressions. [Mar 2004, p.92]

As dark and sweet as baking chocolate and as ambitious as the Mars rover. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Lerche gets his Burt Bacharach on, flavoring coffee-shop ballads with minor-key chicory. [Apr 2004, p.94]

[They] continue to play it sweet and low: hot-cocoa keyboards, heart-monitor beats, glossy high-end string arrangements--and actual songs, as it happens. [Apr 2004, p.94]

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]

Ultimately, Guilt Show feels about as transitional as its predecessor; Pryor has stripped the cuteness from his songwriting but hasn't figured out how to make his dispatches from adulthood resonate the way his teenland stuff used to. [Apr 2004, p.91]

An over-the-top homage to sex whose emotional age equals its bloated number of tracks: 15. [Mar 2004, p.93]

Unlistenable. [Mar 2004, p.96]

Jammed with cheesy effects, weak orchestration, and paper-thin vocals, this is a mix that nobody would dream of Californicating to. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Over the course of 24 tracks, we get taut grooves set on Al Green cruise control, lots of havin'-fun-in-the-studio byplay, and the occasional spritz of rude fuzz-box gutiar to give all the gold-leaf detailing some shape. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2004, p.97]

Over the course of 24 tracks, we get taut grooves set on Al Green cruise control, lots of havin'-fun-in-the-studio byplay, and the occasional spritz of rude fuzz-box gutiar to give all the gold-leaf detailing some shape. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2004, p.97]

A better record than Come Away--less piano bar, more honkey-tonk. [Apr 2004, p.93]

The record could use more songs like "David," where her bratty valedictorian wit is balanced with a sense of real emotional stakes. [Apr 2004, p.93]

Grohl wrote the riffs, and he hammers like a god, letting his hero singers write the lyrics and man the bellows. [Mar 2004, p.91]

A jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994's Live Through This. [Mar 2004, p.89]

Suddenly, these longtime collaborators seem like a mismatch worthy of Blind Date. [Mar 2004, p.95]

Like a Postal Service for hippies living off the grid. [May 2004, p.108]