Torrini's much more engaging, though, when cooing Me and Armini's less flamboyant folk pop. [Nov 2008, p.102]

The songs often end up miles away from where they started, but the characters and melodies persist.

She's smart to dress her aching, powerful voice in something other than rhinestones. [Nov 2008, p.90]

Sweetly and unmistakably, That Lucky Old Sun limns the sunset of Wilson's career, while still showing how California is at its most beautiful through his eyes.

Despite the album’s cornpone reflex and occasional meandering, guitar-diddling foray (“Muck Machine” should have been dragged to the trash folder), provisions has its Southern-fried charms.

Not all moods suit Andersson--the sultry, overdramatic 'Locusts Are Gossiping' falls flat--but she builds enough goodwill elsewhere that you’ll want to hear her try everything.

Tokumaru counters the tweeness of his Japanese-language croon (plus the unrelenting innocence of his twinkly, trebly melodies) with arrangements that densely interweave oddly organic twittering to suggest psychedelia without ever stooping to its cliches.

He cuts through Slime & reason's rudeboy grime with poker-faced nerve. [Nov 2008, p.100]

Are the Verve back? Maybe. Definitely.

All Hope Is Gone, reportedly the first thing they've recorded in years without wanting to kill each other, proves that there's still musical unity in disharmony.

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."

Despite passing echoes of Spoon and Violent Femmes, Delta Spirit's rough barroom pop is its own creature, with jangly pianos, rattling drums, and scruffy acoustic guitars making a thrilling ruckus.

The endlessly quotable single 'Little Bit'--"For you I keep my legs apart / And forget about my tainted heart," the singer coos over spare electro clatter--is already a viral smash, but much of Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson's debut is nearly as riveting.

Anchored by four tracks from a previous EP that were re-recorded with the hooks highlighted, this nimble full-length wrings catharsis from pop with no lapses into pretension.

Johnny Whitney has made an art of singing like a deliriously deaf 12-year-old, but the debut of his new trio with Blood Brothers bandmate/guitarist Cody Votolato and ex–Pretty Girls Make Graves guitarist Jay Clark (now on drums) plays like a preteen daydream.

The hooks are hidden in dense atmospherics, but after a few late-night sessions, these grand, moody songs will reveal secrets worth waiting up for. [Oct 2008, p.122]

Singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor has an undeniable way with a sticky-sweet hook -- too bad most of them are buried in self-indulgent sludge.

Three albums in, the Stills still sound ambitiously confused.

Adeptly recorded both through the board and from the audience, Remember is a microcosm of the band's career--an ambitious mess.

On his debut album, he shoots for the stratosphere and lavishly scores.

The 23-year-old Malibu rapper's debut is as shallow as a spray-on tan; it's stocked with bro'd-out, giggly rhymes about 420-filled nights and T&A aplenty over lazy, midtempo beats from producer/reality-show rocker Cisco Adler.

Surprisingly vital.

His first Music Tapes album in nine years suggests an unhealthy obsession with Brian Wilson's "SMiLE," the wobbly-voiced outsider makes his own quaint magic.

The title track gusts in more forcefully, but on the duo's best songs, they harmonize like Simon & Garfunkel shutting their eyes against approaching shades of winter.

Percolating tracks such as 'Pum Pum' and 'Chooga Cane' are more like undercooked, meandering jams than songs, mixing loose grooves and breezy synths as the profane Perry portrays a muttering old codger.

These C-grade tracks ape RZA's trademark sound, but lack any sense of melody; and the album seems randomly cut-and-pasted. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The Swedish quartet--best known for "Jerk It Out," featured in an iPod ad a few years ago--also churns out concise, addictive tunes that wrap fierce emotions in soaring old-fashioned '60s garage pop.

Though he inexplicably apes Slayer once again ('I'm Alright'), the tempered ingenuity is an encouraging turn.