The guest cast's presence never infringes on the album's overcast beauty. [March 2003, p.120]

100th Window is a masterpiece of haunted sonics. But the spirit of community that once warmed this band's angsty soul is missing. [March 2003, p.117]

Unfortunately, Coombes seems to have the glam era's fuzzy-brained approach to pop songwriting nailed a bit too well. [Apr 2003, p.106]

The songs are flat-out rollicking, like what Fugazi might come up with if their tour-van radio got stuck on the classic-rock station. [Feb 2003, p.98]

O'Rourke mostly contributes electro-folk noodling for a laptop-friendly coffeehouse, but Tweedy's tunes are glum gold. [Jan 2003, p.98]

[Corgan's] the closest thing our generation has to John Fogerty--a control freak who actually knows what the fuck he's doing. [March 2003, p.118]

Emo kids, hold your heads: An Eminem you can call your own is on line one. [Apr 2003, p.107]

Rougher than Belle and Sebastian and lovelier than Mogwai, the Delgados craft orchestral maneuvers in the dark that leave bruises. [Feb 2003, p.98]

Nas' heart is in the right place but his mind is somewhere else entirely. [March 2003, p.119]

The storytelling here isn't as sharp as on Common's previous albums. [Feb 2003, p.100]

Dark, electroshocked eighth album from Brit rock's premier party people. [Jan 2003, p.99]

Snoop unleashed. [Feb 2003, p.100]

The Roots have never sounded this raw on record, this much like an actual band playing in an actual room. [Jan 2003, p.95]

System's repeated willingness to make so much noise in the service of getting nowhere reveals an enduring idealism. [Feb 2003, p.96]

While most of the music on Whip It On is somewhere in the vicinity of cool, the vocals sound like two people trying out for a Jesus and Mary Chain tribute band. [Jan 2003, p.101]

What could have been an assless art-groove experiment turns out to be a synth-pop idyll. [Feb 2003, p.99]

Expends a lot of energy hating the haters and growling at the gold diggers. [Jan 2003, p.99]

Kweli wins by spitting knotty verbiage over high-test beats. [Feb 2003, p.99]

They just want to rock you into peaceful submission, and they are successful about 70 percent of the time. [Dec 2002, p.135]

The best Pretenders record since 1994's Last of the Independents. [Dec 2002, p.141]

Like their last three records... [Riot Act] balances emotive bombast with a taut, sweaty hard-rock attack. [Dec 2002, p.137]

Tightening the screws of his delivery, he's found a bruising poetry in a flow that once seemed clumsily conversational. [Jan 2003, p.93]

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

Size's fuzzy, string-laden bass bombs seem a tad sober. [Dec 2002, p.141]

Gough sounds like a guy celebrating his birthday in an airport cocktail bar. [Jan 2003, p.99]

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]

On (), the band steer their ghost ship into darker waters, erecting a vast, austere cathedral of sound, then sticking around to score a funeral mass inside. [Dec 2002, p.140]

As usual, her melodies stubbornly refuse to turn into hooks, preferring to twirl into new territory. But her approach suits the material, which flows like the colors on a weather map, from Los Angeles to Nevada, from New York to Virginia, gathering thunder along the way. [Nov 2002]