This trip is an easy, late-summer cruise. [Oct 2006, p.142]

The sound is simultaneously terse and expansive--moody and powerful, shot through with singer Chris Martin's grainy delivery. [#9, p.145]

A thoughtfully constructed delight. [#8, p.126]

The Darkness play old-fashioned metal with such elan that at times they ascend to pop music's Olympian heights. [Nov 2003, p.110]

Political without preaching, sexy in a bookish way, this record will keep you up talking with someone you'd like to kiss. [Dec 2005, p.149]

A more crunchingly bare-bones record all around. [#8, p.123]

Is it uneven? Yes. Self-indulgent? Unbearably, at times. But that's what makes West one of hip-hop's most exciting, funny, and human stars. He's unafraid to make a big, fat mess. [Sep 2005, p.130]

Her genius is not to let herself be trapped in yesterday. [#9, p.144]

It's a declaration of independence, and she pulls it off stunningly. [Jan 2004, p.105]

The resulting monster is alternately charming and schizo. [July 2008, p.71]

A conceptual bacchanal of sweat-drenched lust. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.104]

Eitzel sounds like he's finally emerging from the murk. [Nov 2004, p.128]

This excellent collaboration plays to both halves' strengths. [Nov 2005, p.137]

They've toughened up considerably. [#12, p.154]

[Adebimpe's] singing is consistently riveting, and the oddball mix gives it room to flourish. [Apr 2004, p.138]

Whether cranked up high or turned down low, this music has a scrappy majesty. [Jun 2006, p.136]

Conjuring doubts and tenderness, Forster's writing has never been surer. [May 2008, p.76]

Strange and compelling. [Sep 2005, p.132]

Exceptional, exemplary grown-up rock. [#4, p.120]

Swells with grace and intrigue. [May 2005, p.116]

A mesmerizing history lesson. [Aug 2005, p.114]

The album works as an ambient whole, its fog-bank synths, yearning vocal slivers and stoic basslines filling the room with melancholy.

Sentimental post-country tunes knock against acute lyrics about rent, overbearing parents and other aspects of the pre-midlife crisis, as rock-out moments keep grimness at bay. [#11, p.140]

Whatever style the Roots take on their eighth album, whether it’s 21st century Sly Stone ("Baby"), flute-inflected freak-folk ("Living in a New World") or epic black rock ("Game Theory"), they do better than anyone else in pop.

At times, i turns dangerously slow and arty.... But for the first time, [Merritt's] lethargic croak also emits a few degrees of human warmth. [May 2004, p.124]

The music is cheery even when the feelings are miserable; it's like rainy-day Smiths driven by pianos instead of guitars. [Mar 2005, p.140]

Oberst always projects a spiritual generosity unknown to most footloose troubadours who can’t commit.

[Kaiser Chiefs] are smug, preening and shallow, and so eager to entertain that they nearly piss themselves with pizzazz and energy. [Apr 2005, p.119]

A DJ is only as good as his taste, and Girl Talk is immaculate. [Sept 2008, p.78]

GGD’s career has been a gradual climb out of primordial noise muck and toward beats, and album four is their most propulsive.

With the groundbreaking stab at emo self-analysis, Cursive deserve at least a boost out of the emo ghetto. [Apr 2003, p.122]

Unlke many underground MCs, [Levine] doesn't use a $10 word if it'll compromise the beat. [May 2004, p.118]

Glorious, distorted drill-press guitar riffs. [#13, p.103]

On this produced-in-Paris gem, they beef up chilly synth-pop tunes with elegantly distorted guitar, German-industrial drum loops and plenty of goth gloom.

If you're this good, it's not hype. [#8, p.126]

Happily, this structure is as mercifully loose as Penn's melodies are tight. [Aug 2005, p.113]

The handclaps will make you happy, but it's DFA's prog moves and knowing, if self-deprecating, nods that make this music for the head as well as the hips. [Jun 2006, p.147]

Ambulance Ltd have good ears and an even better imagination: They run their influences through a filter of solid gold. [Apr 2004, p.126]

His hard-edged, dance-inflected debut makes East London sound like the new Dirty South. [Jan 2004, p.108]

While Ten New Songs is not an attempt to break new ground, its sophistication and unassuming depth are almost worth the decade-long wait. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.103]

The boldest album of their career. [Mar 2005, p.141]

The hooks come off-kilter and all killer.

Micachu has made one of the strongest debuts of the year.

Heartbreakingly beautiful. [#17, p.140]

Anyone expecting Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons to torch their formula--multiple vocalists drop by and trip the light fantastic--will be disappointed; but their best record since the '90s proves they don’t have to.

Sparxxx is no producer's creation. His lexicon is deep, his diction clear and his words resolute. [Sep 2003, p.130]

Maas translates this superclub-oriented sound -- all tectonic bass and whooshing stero-panned effects -- into home-friendly music. [Apr/May 2002, p.115]

Amerie's heat is irresistible, in large part because it's subtle. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Beans's themes may be everyday, but thankfully his wit isn't. [Nov 2004, p.129]

Roars like Led Zeppelin, churns like King Crimson and throbs like early Santana. [#17, p.138]

An unexpected delight. [Apr 2004, p.132]

The genius of Sexsmith’s seventh and best work is the way he surrounds (or, depending on your perspective, atones for) the empathy overload with deftly assimilated, gloriously ascendant pop hookcraft.

[Annie] masterfully fus[es] synth-pop rhythms with her own feline coos. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Baker... somehow makes them sound more outrageous--and more convincing. [Dec 2005, p.148]

The lighthearted genre-hopping suggests nothing so much as a Broadway smash about a restless country star, borrowing from many styles, beholden to none.

Another assault of angular, Sonic Youth-style guitar and earnest anger that's more leftfield than most punk, and more engaging than many of their post-rock peers. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.110]

Blink-182 have found a new, angrier way to never leave junior high. [Dec 2003, p.135]

These rough, bitter, ruminative songs are slower, longer and wordier than those on Decoration Day. [Sep 2004, p.139]

With innovative, funk-influenced beats and engaging rhymes, Lif brilliantly avoids the pitfalls of vacuous bling-drones and 'real hip-hop" whiners alike. [#10, p.124]

With On and On, Johnson pushes past those folk- and root-distressed interiors and glides into cool new musical areas. [#16, p.122]

Transcends their last album with lean hooks that trade urban melancholy for a surprisingly pastoral warmth. [#11, p.136]

The demo versions... sound like an incompetent Clash cover band rehearsing in a sock.... If you're considering buying this glorious record for the first time, save 20 bucks and go for the basic version. [Oct 2004, p.136]

His rage is mostly disguised within the most anthemic music he's made since the '80s. [Nov 2007, p.143]

Musically, his furiously gear-shifting punk-pop, full of horn blasts and arty production tricks... never fails to rock the sermon. [Aug 2006, p.107]

The music is dizzying, even mesmerizing.

Saadiq is a romantic who stays true to the deliberate simplicity of such titles as 'Sure Hope You Mean It' and 'Just One Kiss.' But his adaptable baritone is always crisp and cocky--he never threatens to assume the fetal position if he doesn’t get the extreme cuddling he craves.

A great record to play at 3 A.M. [#10, p.112]

The big-screen sweep and high-definition melodies (suggesting Weezer’s sluggish pep buoyed by the Flaming Lips’ hallucinatory orchestrations) make this “malfunctioning android”’s anthems of depression extra vivid.

Dangerous Magical Noise is a great Friday night, and your ears will ring through Sunday. [Nov 2003, p.112]

The band's debut struts and flirts like the best-looking guy at the bar. [Apr 2004, p.126]

This is really a missing Greatest Hits in disguise. [Jul 2005, p.118]

It's fun to hear here negotiate the contours of Top 40 pop for the first time since "Like A Prayer," without any European house music hose-head gumming up the pleasure and catharsis with mediative schmaltz. [May 2008, p.73]

Pacific Ocean Blue [is] a moody, groovy and deeply congenial solo album. The earthier Banbu. regularly rises to the Malibu heights of the first album. [July 2008, p.79]

Even at their most nihilistic, these 16 songs resonate melodically, like Eminem's most haunting material. [#15, p.118]

It's fed-up and proud at the same time, a kind of Desperate Housewives meets Trailer Fabulous. [Oct 2005, p.144]

Beneath their steel-wool guitar tone, the songs swing like a slammed door. [Nov 2005, p.137]

As usual, Franz Ferdinand pack a greatest-hits album’s worth of melodic tricks into each tune, while Kapranos purrs the sort of pick-up lines that would earn a lesser man a gimlet in the face.

[The] sense of playful adventure ensures that smooth needn't mean snoozy. [Jun 2007, p.108]

Two long, draggy pieces near the end of The Private Press are its only intimations of mortality. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.102]

[Slug is] suddenly one of the best alt-rappers around. [#9, p.143]

Her understated grooves... ooze natural-woman sex appeal. [Oct 2003, p.122]

He represents gangsta rap's evolution into pure entertainment. [May 2005, p.116]

This is Newman’s most unwound album.

A giddy funhouse of a record. [Oct 2005, p.136]

Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts.

The arrangements are so flush with guitar hooks and buoyant harmonies that these tunes are entertaining even when they're not catchy. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.108]

What's titillating about Damita Jo isn't some easy flash of sexuality, but the varied soundbeds that Jackson and her producers create to house her love games, and the confidence with which she plays. [May 2004, p.116]

Here, they combine hardcore punk’s combat-boot side with its tortured-noise side, layering what sounds like scores of tsunami-distortion guitars over an atomic-speed drum blitz to attain rarely witnessed levels of obliteration (think Black Flag reincarnated as psychotic yetis).

The songs are richly and surprisingly textured, having more in common with experimental jazz than folk. [#15, p.122]

Sometimes the tone is self-congratulatory, but a house band this glorious deserves some kind of standing ovation. [May 2004, p.127]

Be picks up where West's The College Dropout left off. [Jun 2005, p.113]

Disparate dance genres mesh with impressive (and infectious) ease. [Oct 2004, p.113]

The Hives aren't mere jokers, because they mix their novelty-band brio with the genuine anger and disgust of punk rock. [Aug 2004, p.126]

[A] snarly caffeine jolt of a debut. [May 2006, p.109]

This odd cast creates strangely beautiful moods. [May 2007, p.104]

Unlike similar records... this has a unity of aesthetic purpose, a competitive wallop, even (kind of) a seriousness. [Mar 2004, p.127]

This is Jay-Z's suicide note and his glowing eulogy rolled into one. [Jan 2004, p.106]

Guitarist Kerry King physicalizes Araya’s emotional investment; his mad, crunched-up playing is anxiety rendered in sound.