It's all clever and overstuffed with ideas, guaranteed to bug dance-music purists just as much as it annoys their parents. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Sometimes the sumptuousness feels a little excessive, like an ice-cream headache. But most of these love songs are uncommon, illuminating and elevating, just like the real thing at its best.

This is a transitional album: Mould sprinting away from his past. [Apr/May 2002, p.116]

A slice of British street life with strut, and guitars. [Apr 2006, p.112]

Works both as satire and actual make-out fare. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.113]

It's not as good as 1988's South of Heaven, but there's enough speaker-shredding guitar noise to make up for any vocal deficiencies. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.128]

Essentially Californication 2, a reprise of their last album. [#9, p.142]

Showcases the melodramatic but never overstated croon of a showman who, in another era, might've been a Las Vegas legend. [#14, p.135]

They’re crotch-pumping arena pimps and introverted minimalists.

A record that encourages global consciousness shouldn't sound so isolated and chilly. [Aug 2005, p.110]

At times you wish Branch and Harp would dig deeper. [Jun 2006, p.149]

Finding new targets for their thrashing contempt, Slipknot make ugliness sound just a little bit pretty.

The samey, smothering beats make it inaccessible to anyone without a pacifier in their mouth. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.111]

Farrar revives Neil Young's habit of presenting the same songs in different styles. [#17, p.134]

Odditorium buries its subtle hooks deep with endless, shape-shifting jams. [Oct 2005, p.136]

will.i.am... does push [Big] beyond her Sly Stone safety zone. [Apr 2007, p.111]

The basic Slipknot sound has improved. [#27, p.147]

Not for all--or even most--tastes, the result is abrasive and weirdly haunting. [Nov 2005, p.135]

A whip-smart, 13-song satire on FM-radio machismo and lyrical cliches. [Nov 2006, p.140]

One of Vega's best. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.114]

As self-indulgent side projects go, this could be a whole lot worse. [Apr 2004, p.139]

What makes this more than just efficient dance-floor fodder are the guest vocalists. [#9, p.158]

Unlike the rousing punk-, Kinks- and new-wave-colored mosaic of Parklife, this one sticks to sepia-toned, dub-nodding abstractions. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.86]

Not surprisingly, their debut tends toward brooding, bluesy rock—a worthy soundtrack for those dark, whiskey-soaked nights of the soul and the regret-filled mornings after.

There’s a happy messiness throughout: At heart more jazz improviser than control freak, Hebden sounds happiest when things are just about to slip through his fingers.

14 Shades is nominally heavier than the group's two previous albums, though the band tempers its harsher instincts to let Lewis ruminate unmolested. [Aug 2003, p.132]

Many songs start out as radio-friendly rockets before shooting off into a disorienting psychedelic haze. [May 2007, p.106]

A band of arty studio veterans give him a new set of choppers, and he knows what to do with them. [Jun 2005, p.116]