Coldplay barely scratch these levels of exultation and agony. [Apr 2007, p.111]

The album is often duller than its predecessors, with bummed-out banalities repeated from previous records; at times, she seems to be dragging herself through her own songs.

Pretty, weird and tricky to get a handle on. [Mar 2007, p.136]

At Bloc Party’s best, music and message collide with astounding force.

While none of the new album’s hooks match the taurine-mainlining rush of “Sugar, We’re Goin Down,” there’s still lots to love.

[She] displays the true grit of a younger Bonnie Raitt.

If the students sound like masters, then Yoko’s generous legacy is secure.

When these Swedes get whacked by romance, they cushion the blow with a reed-kneed bedroom boogie that shimmies while evoking decades of great escapist groove music. [Mar 2007, p.141]

What's amazing about Alright, Still is how similar the girl with the blog is to the girl with the hit record. [Mar 2007, p.129]

Some Loud Thunder is certainly uncompromising--which isn't the same thing as "good," although it's got a handful of very good moments. [Mar 2007, p.131]

Again, the results are a mutant virus of gorgeous and bland, grainy and slick. [Mar 2007, p.135]

At worst, Matsuzaki's delviery can make this manic style-juggling sound irritating where it might otherwise be captivating. [Mar 2007, p.134]

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]

All that carefulness turns out to be bloodless. [Mar 2007, p.139]

They're fascinated with rhythm, repetition and duplication, like early-'70s German experimental bands Neu! and Can. [Mar 2007, p.136]

There are two vastly different Mellencamps. One is a flag-waver, singing simplistic anthems like "Our Country." The other, overshadowed Mellencamp is quieter and wiser. [Mar 2007, p.136]

Joyous and limber. [Mar 2007, p.136]

This is 21st-century lounge with a Manson heart — music for unwinding, or maybe plotting crazed revenge.

Nas can still dazzle on the mic. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.87]

[A] patchy, protege-heavy collection that has little in common with its near-classic predecessor. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.85]

Because of his no-frills persona, the smallest suggestions of personality make a charismatic impact. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.89]

Stefani gets her groove back when she sticks to two essentials: sex and the Neptunes. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.88]

Despite a new set of producers... this vivacious, club-friendly sophomore set merely tinkers with her old recipe. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.83]

It's ghetto viciousness as literary exercise--an episode of The Wire with a better soundtrack. [Nov 2006, p.142]

The tearjerkers flow free on their sixth studio album. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.88]

He never quite rises to this lofty occasion, and without anything to prove other than that he can come back whenever he pleases, he reverts to gloating. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.81]

This is Love’s ultimate achievement. A band long broken up, and so majestic they’ve been relegated to history books, has been refashioned in a way that makes a fresh and startling presentation of songs as familiar as the Ten Commandments.

The jumble of stuff that spills out -- from Delta blues to nineteenth-century ballads to spoken-word rambles -- is surprisingly consistent, at times transcendent, and not just for people intimately acquainted with Waits’s honeyed craziness.

Brand New took a huge step forward in 2003 with Deja Entendu, tossing away everything predictable about emo. But the leap on their third studio album is even bigger, and gutsier too: using rock’s earthly forces to amplify the heart’s greatest loves and fears, and in the process summoning the kind of grandeur that blows minds in bedrooms and raises fists in stadiums.

A throwback to his trunk-rattling G-funk heyday.

The emotional peaks are so sharp, the wordplay so juicy, that all excesses are redeemed.

Satisfyingly sloppy.

The bullying production threatens to obliterate what’s good here: A half-dozen gentle seeker’s songs with meditative acoustic textures and lyrics advocating reasonableness among humankind, which was always Cat Stevens’s domain.

Even when he tips the sensitivity scales too much... Rice’s innate, anti-lite-FM intensity saves him.

There’s only so much even a metal fan can swallow.

blink-182 without the humor.

Her subject matter is goofier, her flow is dumbed down and her beats are staler.

The Deftones' fifth album turns the dial to "statesmen." [Dec 2006, p.172]

Though she seems to be done with rapping, her hip-hop loops and restless genre-mixing still save her from vintage-dress purgatory. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.94]

What remains is a concept that's been stewing too long and a singer who's one scream away from a hernia. [Dec 2006, p.180]

Producer Desmond Child trips up the Meatman by valuing metal flash over the altruism of want-you-need-you humanity.

Even if the high-minded concepts prove elusive, no worries. [Nov 2006, p.138]

Once Again sets out to rebuild the dramatic storytelling and redemptive power of soul music on a hip-hop foundation.

They've created the Sgt. Pepper of screamo.

This orderly collection of messy leftovers suits his disheveled talents. [Nov 2006, p.137]

Midway through, this becomes the record it should have been all along: a gentle, autumnal meditation on the problems of becoming a badly drawn grown-up. [Nov 2006, p.136]

An album that begins as a me-against-the-world celebration of self ends as a somber plea for emotional wholeness. [Dec 2006, p.173]

Scabrous, overdriven spallter-punk. [Nov 2006, p.136]

Trademark G-Unit, pakced with a few thunderous club jams and too little else. [Oct 2006, p.128]

The scholarship is too obvious at times... But at their streamlined best... it's like Britpop's glory years never waned. [Oct 2006, p.137]

Assured but tame. [Nov 2006, p.139]

It is very good.

[Finn] tells better stories than anyone else in music these days. [Oct 2006, p.131]

Though less indebted to the Smiths... these tidally anthemic doom-ditties still manage to sound more dire. [Oct 2006, p.135]

The most tightly hook-larded, colorfully produced, listenable Decemberists record to date. [Nov 2006, p.138]

No distinct personality emerges. [Oct 2006, p.132]

Denser and more scuzzed-up than Fallen, the album amps everything up to gloriously epic, over-the-top proportions. [Oct 2006, p.129]

A retread of a retread. [Nov 2006, p.148]

The melodies are well-shaped and the lyrics twist their knives elegantly. [Dec 2006, p.174]

Gorgeously understated. [Nov 2006, p.138]

The only emotion here is the hothouse loneliness of an overintellectualized mind. [Nov 2006, p.154]

It's hard to catch much buzz off fun that sounds so much like work. [Dec 2006, p.170]

The music follows in the ruby-slippered footsteps of the first album. [Oct 2006, p.134]

His desire for gravitas, though, is dragged down by his lack of imagination. [Nov 2006, p.153]

Proves they can do just fine without the foggy-hollow reverb they've always used to make their meandering sound mysterious. [Oct 2006, p.139]

McCabe is bearable, even fun. But he oversings like a guy who's mistaken a North Dakota rock club for Madison Square Garden. [Oct 2006, p.142]

Distraught longtime fans can take comfort in the gothic ire of the Banner-fronted, Hurricane Katrina–lamenting “Seein’ Thangs” and the ambling blues-hop storytelling of Phonte Coleman on “Backstage Girl,” but little else can be salvaged from the wreckage of Shadow’s abruptly imploding talent.

A rare case of one step back, two steps forward. [Nov 2006, p.144]

She keeps the tone light and playful, but her shopaholic-hottie raps seem written for someone with less emotional baggage. [Nov 2006, p.145]

Mostly he just sounds bored, a pretty boy tired of being denied his inner turmoil.

On their lush major-label debut, the haunting Peter Gabriel-esque yawlps of singer Tunde Adebimpbe are punctuated by singer-guitarist Kyp Malone, whose raspy falsetto provides a sense of deadpan panic. [Jul 2006, p.103]

It’s epic, mercurial, high-impact progressive rock that moves like a whirlwind.

Way too much fun. [Oct 2006, p.130]

Where his earlier music was a parade of bright primary colors, these plaintive melodies come in delicious shades of gray. [Oct 2006, p.138]

The best moments are [Jenner's] least intelligible. [Oct 2006, p.141]

The vibe is all infectious, feverish build-up. [Nov 2006, p.155]

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

Only the relatively sprightly "Just Got to Be" and the haunted-house voodoo of "Strange Desire" cut through the mire. [Oct 2006, p.130]

He's done it before, and better. [Oct 2006, p.135]

Problem is, Blood Mountain's hail of convoluted riffs and abrupt time-signature changes never settles into one of Leviathan's mammoth grooves. [Oct 2006, p.137]

Blame Seger for aiming no higher than to be the soundtrack for the next Larry the Cable Guy feature. [Oct 2006, p.142]

They sounded great in the lounge; the garage suits them even better. [Oct 2006, p.130]

Their first protest record. [Oct 2006, p.137]

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

In place of the band's distinctive head-banging limberness, there's a strange hybrid: a new sort of hard-rock soul, slightly lumbering in spite of its virtuosity. [Sep 2006, p.136]

B'Day never cools down, and swaety up-tempo numbers prove the best platform for Beyonce's rapperly phrasing and pipe-flaunting fireballs. [Sep 2006, p.138]

It radiates the observant calm of old masters who have seen enough life to be ready for anything--Yeats, Matisse, Sonny Rollins. [Sep 2006, p.139]

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.

Pete Yorn’s songs sound so damn good, it’s easy to assume they’re not smart.

Still recovering from 2004’s tepid Tical 0: The Prequel, Meth hints at the bluster and wit that made him an instant star nearly 15 years ago.

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 two halves of OutKast seem less collaborative than ever.

It sounds half-heard no matter how many times you hear it. [Sep 2006, p.142]

Tempering his usually piqued voice and strumming with uncharacteristic restraint, Darnielle marinates in shadowy aloneness.

Introducing some very welcome rock rhythms to his blend of folk and fingerpicked Delta blues, Ward’s disarmingly sweet fourth album squeezes big themes into modest but bewitching tunes.

She's a surprisingly convincing country singer. [Sep 2006, p.143]

[An] excellent, star-studded farewell. [Sep 2006]

A few fast, punky songs suit her pout, but more than anything, Hilton makes celebrity sound boring.