The wan, wimpy Weird Revolution relies on tired drum loops and flat rap vocals. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.121]

Too often, songs drift off into a fog of vague guitar atmospherics. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

This collection seems less pointlessly abstract than 1999's similarly staffed Cobra and Phases. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Vespertine is her most intensely private and intimate-sounding work, a journey through an interior world that is quietly ecstatic, erotic and playful.

Though the drones drift into Enya-like ambience on "Slip Away" more often, as on "Pieces and Parts" and the keening "Broken," Anderson dresses up her hard-won koans of personal wisdom just enough to make them alluring. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.120]

Occasionally overblown... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.132]

On the whole, it's an inventively played, not-quite-straight bluegrass album... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.124]

All in all, time well spent. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

It does what it's supposed to, giving Usher a grown-up R&B sound without reducing his boyish charm. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.131]

Tweekend lacks the immediacy of Vegas, but it works better the further it strays from Ecstasy-fueled breakbeats and squawking electro-hooks. Unfortunately, it doesn't stray too far. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.122]

The music is by turns atmospheric, quirky and joyous. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.126]

Celebrity shines brightest when the group matures enough to forget about its image and focus on the tunes. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.126]

McCrea is still spinning wry, keenly observed stories, though the band has broadened its stylistic base some... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.121]

Meanders aimlessly, stumbling into bits of tune but never taking them anywhere. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.123]

And if he occasionally errs on the side of self-indulgence... so be it; for every moment of youthful overreach, there's another that shows a promising new talent in first bloom. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.121]

Though its sound is still cloudy and distant, the group takes tentative steps toward Everything But The Girl territory. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.123]

The weirdest hip-hop album since OutKast's Stankonia. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.112]

Faith in the Future is built with recycled beats and borrowed sounds, relying on castoff samples and guest contributions... [Aug/Sep 2001, p.132]

Quiet pleasures, but worth seeking out. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.130]

Rooty boasts a raw, bustling edge and compulsive experimentalism closer in spirit to the hypersyncopated, R&B-flavored two-step garage currently ruling London clubland. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.104]

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]

And just as 1992's Connected served as an antidote to grunge in its day, Dirty hopes to deliver more nuanced dance music to its fans. Too little, too late, though. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.116]

His ornate, piano-driven arrangements cite a wide variety of musical sources, from indie pop to Gershwin to trip-hop and back again. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.116]

Subduing the bright tinge of her country-flavored roots rock, Essence's acoustic musings mix Delta blues with Nick Drake-style nocturnal intimacy, while Williams's voice limits itself to a hushed drawl. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.102]

Amnesiac isn't a difficult album -- or, rather, it's not a mere experiment but a successful one... Nobody has ever made a record that sounds like this before. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.109]

This time around, both Air's jokes and their grooves have lost their grace... [Jun/Jul 2001, p.104]

EBTG still have some way to go before they can mix such disparate elements together successfully. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

While Costa is almost too glamorous for her own good, she flaunts that old-school splendor that generates apt comparisons to early Lenny Kravitz. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

Nowadays, his voice has mellowed into a fearless croon that seems to suggest a down-home Boy George. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

It's the group's continued synchronicity that makes puns like "Kissing Asphalt" both chat-room hip and roller-rink authentic. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

"Get Ur Freak On," the frenetic lead single, relies on boilerplate hip-hop braggadocio, but the beats are something else: head-snapping electro-funk spiced with tablas that herald Missy and [Timbaland's] return as the rulers of the hip-hop avant-garde. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.106]

Unfortunately, the ticked-off one breaks up the most consistently grooving album of his career with too many well-meaning but intrusive conspiracy-minded skits. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

They've all but abandoned 4/4 grooves, discarded bass as an inefficient distraction and fractured their beats into splintery beatlets that detonate in flurries. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]

'Up' sounded like the work of a band getting its bearings. On 'Reveal,' they're still finding their way. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

Lateralus sounds like Black Sabbath jamming with Genesis at the bottom of a coal shaft. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.115]

In attempting to be energetic, the band merely sounds busy. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]

Unfortunately, the production smoothes down the band's sharp edges to an overly polished finish. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.116]

While Eyeball is essentially a breezy gloss on the blend of idiosyncratic pop chops and exotica that characterizes much of the Luaka roster, it's buoyantly lightweight nonetheless. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.106]

The line between this credible Faces-cum-Skynyrd jam band's best and worst material remains slimmer than even their most ardent fanatic might hope. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]

Aside from disposable ballads and the sappy "Perfect Man," Survivor blasts haters, child molesters, and "been-around-the-block-females," keeping the blood up as they whup ass. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

The rich studio gloss and unmistakable vocal mannerisms she's cultivated over 30 years cover nicely for the weakness of her new material. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.114]

A 38-minute meditation on how not to build on a hook. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.114]

Instead of the rumbling epics of their later records... we get patient but ultraconcise miniatures. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.113]

The jam-band influence that now pervades the group's sound is as pernicious an additive as that strychnine somebody slipped into Robert Johnson's whiskey. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

Sets records for twee-ness. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.111]

Sadly, Sneak Attack also reflects the influence of Professor One's recent ubiquity on the college-lecture circuit; windy speechifying interludes take up a third of the record. Too bad -- when he does rap, he shows twice the gusto of many rappers half his age. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.112]

Creeper retain their melodic ingenuity and slowly ascending anthems, but their vision is scattered -- the band can't decide on a single melody per song, so they ramble from one promising yet half-formed tune to the next. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

Would have benefited from more stringent editing... [Jun/Jul 2001, p.108]

No More suffers from a relentless sense of goth gloom that's as claustrophobic as a church confessional. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

Always dark, sometimes lovely. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]

His Who-tastic riffs remain belligerent and plentiful, but Pollard sounds grimmer, as if the former grade-school teacher suddenly realizes that touring in a van past age 40 isn't as much fun as he expected. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.111]

Live In New York City may be the first example of Springsteen allowing himself to be reduced to what he has carefully avoided becoming up to now: pure product. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.112]