They play out as fascinating (and funny) monologues in themselves. [Nov 2012, p.62]

The whole thing seems to aim for slightness (of the disc’s 20 tracks, only seven are over two minutes long), but many of these sketches have the gorgeous, pastoral-futurist texture of Boards Of Canada or The Focus Group. [Oct 2017, p.53]

Most of the songs here work in pairs, or groups of three, as if Elfman couldn’t decide where to finish an idea and instead offers a few variations on a theme, diluting the punch of each individual track. ... The best tracks here are the ones where Elfman acknowledges his own limits and fears, without hedging or flippancy. [Jul 2021, p.59]

As inspired as it is, The Return Of Dr Octagon is no sequel. [#269, p.44]

Because of the time lapses involved in recording the material, the album sounds uneven and sometimes stale, sadly lacking the Misfits punk rock kick that he managed to reboot into early Danzig offerings with producer Rick Rubin. Of note, however, is the closing “Pull The Sun”, a majestic hovering ballad where Danzig drops the Jimbo stance to elevate his group and his more subdued vocal to a higher rock pinnacle. [Jul 2017, p.60]

The result is an improbably appealing melange of hyperslick R&B and musoid avant-Metal, where mid-1080s Radio Top Shop melodies nestle in the artful embrace of surgically enhanced riffola and soaring, pitchwheel punishing minimoog solos. [Nov 2010, p.65]

Tricky's problem is that the future has caught up with him. [#233, p.71]

For the majority of the tracks featured here, Hawkwind and Batt have jumped the shark with enough velocity to achieve geostationary orbit. [Sep 2018, p.59]

You can practically hear Lindstrom reaching for his wizard hat and robes at times, but equally Six Hats is right on time, digging into similar disposable digitalisms to James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, all without bursting that disco bubble. [Feb 2012, p.61]

Still sounds like the work of someone desperate to gain the approval of the Drag City clique. [#215, p.69]

A clear triumph, a dense work destined to grow thicker with each listen. [#266, p.65]

Best not to think too deeply about it. [Sep 2022, p.57]

The tracks sung by Cafritz are more wired and garage punk, but these brief flashes provide contrast to Gordon's murkier shades. [July 2008, p.49]

A Better Tomorrow feels trapped by history, an impotent reflection versus a proposed resurrection. [Jan 2015, p.65]

There's Me And There's You, it turns out, a perfectly logical oddity. [Nov 2008, p.62]

Hayward sounds bored, Coxon throws out Clapton-ish licks, and Taylor's milk-and-water vocals make him sound like the younger brother of The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton. Only Thomas seems willing to inject any imagination into the songs. [Apr 2011, p.52]

Rick Ross is pretty much incapable of going more than 30 seconds with out using the word boss--too bad, because Justice League turn out three monsterous cruisetime tracks toward the end. [June 2008, p.63]

Uncomfortable deliery and thin lyrical content suggest that utilising vocals isn't their strong suit. [#223, p.69]

Each turns in a fine performance, yielding some decent tracks, but they fail to generate the kind of frisson that would make this more than a historical curio. [Dec 2025, p.55]

This pairing actually works almost as well as the one that produced that incredible LP [1964's Folk Roots, New Routes]. [Nov 2011, p.67]

It lacks something crucial at its centre: definition, precisely. [#221, p.66]

[Forster] leans perilously close to airbrushed AOR when left too much to his own devices, but mostly the intoxicating richness and unashamed opulence of their epic space rock wins through. [#247, p.70]

Finding Iggy as confused as ever, Beat 'Em up ranks alongside New Values and Blah, Blah, Blah as yet another missed opportunity. (#209, p.60)

It should still be appreciated for its sonic density, its sustained mood of dread and the universality of its themes, at least one of which--the condemnation of usurers--is painfully relevant today. [Sep 2012, p.63]

Nasir comes closest to being an unqualified success. Those still hoping for the return of ruthless adolescent Nasty Nas will be disappointed--although recent allegations of spousal abuse from ex-wife Kelis cast a troubling shadow--but his voice is thick with middle-aged grit and gravitas. [Aug 2018, p.63]

Sadly it feels like the gestation period has robbed Joker's music of some of its immediacy. [Nov 2011, p.72]

Hovering somewhere between offbeat anti-folk and laptop noise terrorism, Kptmichigan falls short of achieving a genuine hybrid but trails some interesting sonic debris in the process. [#249, p.64]

Much of the album's faults are down to Smith. Rather than steering the collective ship, his voice, slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, barely connects with the others. [Dec 2014, p.48]

This trio are rarely an ecstatic proposition, preferring the slow burn to the white flame, but in truth there's little heat here at all. [Aug 2015, p.54]

The sound has a new depth. [#249, p.65]

It's one of the most personal recordings from any of the three collaborators. [Sep 2012, p.63]

He telegraphs all too simplistic rhymes schemes and rarely offers subject matter beyond deeply cliched braggadocio. He's rapping like he doesn't want to be there. [Oct 2010, p.67]

It's a shame that such moments [lyrics that objectify and highlight abuse toward women] can so completely mar an album, as Banner is on sparklingly articulate lyrical form elsewhere. [Sep 2008, p.66]

The Munster release makes for occasionally uncomfortable listening. [Sep 2017, p.66]

Keith's industry gripes are implicit from his two decade career as the Absurd Outside Rapper--so it's a shame he feels the need to come so blunt. [Dec 2008, p.74]

It pains me to think they’d record something so vacant and unneeded. Maybe 30 years ago this would have been a different album. But here and now, Two To One is a case of too little, too late. [Jan 21, p.82]

It is an utterly twisted delight. [Feb 2012, p.68]

There is a resounding thinness to Purple Naked Ladies and its finest moments sound like a collection of scratch tracks from a lost Erykah Badu/Neptunes session circa 1998. [Mar 2012, p.54]

The second half of the album is centred on aqueous loverman grooves, albeit funnelled through his hard yet tender persona. “Plan B” is a decent R&B track. .... Too bad, then, that Ghost prefaces his lusty adventures with too many knuckleheaded cuts. [Jul 2024, p.54]

There is aimlessness on occasion--the mainly instrumental "OVNI" frankly just sounds like messing around--but for the most part the sense of glee in vigorous sound making for cranky and rebellious ends is infectious. [Aug 2010, p.86]

A sense of cluelessness pervades these songs, as though constructed without considering why or for whom they were intended. [Jun 2014, p.51]

What might have been an interesting exploration of Industrial Lite Pop gets spoiled time and again by badly rewired breakbeats and fussy electronic background chatter. [#201, p.66]

Prophets Of Rage can’t help sounding a little male-menopausal even if lyrically the targets remain crucial and the trajectory remains ferocious thanks to the sheer undimmed timbre of Chuck’s meshrattling voice. [Sep 2017, p.55]

A rewarding and self-consciously motley fest. [#227, p.60]

He’s hung up on Jesus rather than pneumatic women. It’s hard to tell if that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t seem like a regression either. ... An album with zero fat, dense in at least three senses, two of them positive. [Dec 2019, p.60]

Phase One impresses more on first listen [than Phase Two].... But it wears thin quickly. [Feb 2016, p.54]

There is no shortage of bad ideas on the second installment.... But this ugliness is anchored by a series of largely curatorial successes. [May 2013, p.68]

Intermittently pretty, massively inconsequential. [#215, p.69]

It takes a while to get on Friedberger's wavelength.... But his sheer love of a good tune is seductive. [Dec 2012, p.63]

Chosen topics prove less crucial than his relentlessly tedious delivery. [Feb 2018, p.51]

A deliriously infantile playhouse of sound. [May 2016, p.51]

Metallica's unrelenting sledgehammer style works as the perfect complement to Reed's vision of compassionless love, with monolithic chords deployed with almost surgical precision wile he dissects relationships w of masochism and power. [Dec 2011, p.63]