The anti-sentimentality gets a bit relentless over 18 songs. [Aug 2006, p.118]

Isaacs’s indistinct, flannel-waving wail doesn’t add anything to these titanic anthems of soul and struggle, which don’t say much beyond: Dave Navarro, still breathing, still taking meetings.

Barat lacks Doherty's flash of unhinged genius, but his grasp of rock's basics is far firmer. [Sep 2006, p.139]

If their ultraviolet jams can sometimes get lost in the gaze, here they're balanced with more crisp songcraft. [Aug 2006, p.107]

Matt's solo joints continue to advance his kooky, obscurantist aesthetic, though they miss the distracted smolder of his comely foil. [Sep 2006, p.140]

Because he clearly aced his Beatles/Beach Boys classes, Noir's elaborately multitracked recordings... make his gentle bitching irresistible. [Aug 2006, p.113]

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

Hit-and-miss. [Jul 2006, p.104]

[He] falls back on stagnant street tropes and the tinny synth-and-sneer antics of old standby Swizz Beatz. [Sep 2006, p.139]

Their nostalgia is occasionally endearing but usually curdles into crotchetiness. [Aug 2006, p.110]

Even the best of these tracks lack the grimy menace of the most thrilling Neptunes beats. [Sep 2006, p.147]

Petty, never good at deep thinking, tries to introduce some grand gestures and literary flourishes, but they're forced compared with his amiably corny odes to driving and boozing. [Sep 2006, p.147]

From the orgiastic "We're All In Love" to the painfully mortal "Take a Good Look at My Good Looks," they're all clearly Dolls for life. [Aug 2006, p.113]

Over girl-group incantations, reggae lilt and courageously dinky old-school hip-hop allusions, Gartside searches for his emotional car keys, each comely coo abstracting him further from the truth he seeks. [Aug 2006, p.117]

He specializes in layered harmonies, not deep lyrics. [Aug 2006, p.117]

The two Louris/Tweedy writing collaborations stand with the best work of both. [Aug 2006, p.108]

They're not the kind of band that ages well... [but] one hot summer is all they need. [Aug 2006, p.107]

Like a question 1970s double disc compacted into 45 brutally efficient minutes, it has the momentum of a meteor. [Aug 2006, p.108]

It's like School House Rock for hip kids. [Aug 2006, p.117]

Unfortunately, most of The Eraser is half-finished sketches, dressed up with a few of Nigel Godrich's subtle production tricks. [Aug 2006, p.105]

This is beautiful, baffling late-night music for shy boys and robots. [Aug 2006, p.108]

Some selections are heartwrenching... But others bear the stain of sentimentality, denial, even exploitation. [Jul 2006, p.98]

The album's final third is useless... Fortunately, the rest is bracing permutations of the lopsided, much-sampled post-disco rhythms that helped define NYC art-funk 25 years ago. [Oct 2006, p.135]

Her lyrics drown in anti-gangsta correctives... but her best tracks transcend daily affirmations. [Jul 2006, p.96]

It's at once a distillation of all that drew tweeners to Dashboard... and a messy, multidimensional celebration of romance and regret. [Jul 2006, p.99]

Fundamental ingeniously explores political chicanery through imaginative set pieces about private relationships. [Aug 2006, p.113]

When he tries to get serious... Drew comes across as nothing more than a self-important shock artist, way out of his element.

It has at least seven killer tracks. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Beautiful but strangely unhinged. [Jul 2006, p.100]

Rae's music sticks in your mind like a pleasant scent you wish would linger. [Jun 2006, p.143]

Thankfully, Brightblack's mellow mysticism never comes at the expense of a frisky groove. [Jul 2006, p.97]

This is music for the well-read rock fan and the would-be scoundrel. [Mar 2007, p.134]

They've grown noticeably more centered and serious-minded--and maturity was the last thing that needed to happen to them. [Jul 2006, p.99]

The Sparks' performances are so understated, their arrangements so mechanically soothing, that it's easy to miss Rennie's brutal, elegant twists on folk cliches. [Jul 2006, p.99]

Hot Chip's relentless stylistic hopscotch... ends up in an intricate muddle that fully engages neither hips nor heart. [Jun 2006, p.138]

A dazzlingly rhythmic junkyard. [Jun 2006, p.142]

A much more conventional Busta. [Aug 2006, p.111]

Their songiest record in more than a decade. [Jun 2006, p.145]

Tighter and freakier than her debut. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Pleasant at a distance, the stealthy Son is downright mindblowing at close range. [Jun 2006, p.142]

Sung in his almost icy, stentorian cry--and outfitted with mega-choruses--the tracks feel as epic as Havok's themes. [Jul 2006, p.97]

Sweaty, sloppy and desperately quick. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Our suggestion for a more honest band name: Used Cars. [Jul 2006, p.100]

The Drift is like a nightmare you look forward to repeating. [Jun 2006, p.148]

The resulting batch of songs... just pad out the duller bits of blink, then add walls of mid-'80s-era U2 guitar chimes. [Jun 2006, p.136]

This album has some of what was missing from Home: fire, ugliness, resentment. [Jun 2006, p.135]

A fierce, arty mix of melody and brute clatter. [Jun 2006, p.141]

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

The results are either stiffly egalitarian... or stripped of personality altogether. [Jun 2006, p.143]

Artfully arranged songs about planets and beasts and bittersweet harmonies recall British folk-rock combos like Fairport Convention and Pentangle without coming off as retro or twee. [Jun 2006, p.137]

There's something undeniably irritating but strangely satisfying about lyrics so baldly declarative, especially over riffs this explosive. [Jun 2006, p.144]

Pink is their fastest, most instantly gratifying album.

At their most thrilling, they fuse the spiky cool of Elastica with the witty self-consciousness of LCD Soundsystem. [Sep 2005, p.131]

It's always peculiar, and often a mess; it's also occasionally brilliant. [Jun 2006, p.142]

It's brave, and it's needed. [Jul 2006, p.95]

Song after song is undermined by too-precious gestures, and the occasional bursts of speed and volume can't mask Grandaddy's exhaustion. [Jun 2006, p.137]

This is virile, excited music. [Jun 2006, p.146]

Simon wasn't born to sing over drum & bass. [Jun 2006, p.148]

Over 45 minutes, it feels monotonous and preposterously self-pitying, but in controlled doses, it bests all the rest of the U.K.'s current wave of post-Coldplay bedwetters. [Jun 2006, p.145]

Dawson's as self-assured as she is sensitive. [Jun 2006, p.137]

The new songs are excessively polished and precisely drawn, and relentlessly deliver an uplifting message. [Jun 2006, p.145]

Their new boss's hooks are often slicke rand less arresting than the minor-key grit they thrive on. [Jun 2006, p.142]

Tighter and more energized than anything the band has done since Vitalogy. [Jun 2006, p.142]

It presumably adds up to Something Important, but good luck deciphering what. [Jul 2006, p.103]

The riffs blast as if it's 1971 all over again. [Jun 2006, p.148]

A widescreen goth-punk stunner. [Jun 2006, p.144]

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

The results can sometimes get bland; unlike its predecessor, which was moody and aimless, Drops is so polished that there are no ragged edges left to hang on to. [May 2006, p.109]

While it can tend toward the tuneless, the upside is language that differs plenty from a Jay-Z or Eminem but stands beside them in terms of power--a flow that, once you get used to it, becomes its own form. [May 2006, p.110]

Most of the album is more fun than a folkie could stand. [Jun 2006, p.147]

The group's unreconstructed P-funk would sound tired were it not so irresistibly spry. [May 2006, p.105]

Only one song exhibits any nuance or creativity--a cover of Supertramp's 1977 lark "Give a Little Bit." [May 2006, p.106]

Playing Coke to Knopfler's bourbon on some decent songs, [Harris] challenges his guitar to a beauty contest; it's a draw. [Jun 2006, p.140]

Without a target for their ire, TBS opt for sheer emo relentlessness. [May 2006, p.111]

An amped-up grotesque of torchy vaudeville and European parlor songs that starts as high-concept camp and winds up strangely illuminating. [May 2006, p.105]

The barn-burners are still grimy with brawling guitar, but more than ever shot through with delicate light... and the pithy ballads are crisp as cold beer. [May 2006, p.108]

What's the point of a cheesy goth-pop record that isn't any fun? [May 2006, p.105]

The album's an impossible mess, but so lively that it's worth sifting through the shrapnel for the tasty bits. [May 2006, p.106]

Luckily, all the ironic distance doesn't blunt the band's attack. [May 2006, p.109]

It plods before revealing its considerable sonic luxuries and melodic charms. [May 2006, p.105]

The music is as sexy as it is horny. [May 2006, p.105]

It's an "important" record... But, more crucially, it's an enduringly entrancing listen. [Apr 2006, p.123]

He's self-mocking enough to earn his laddish hell-raising. [May 2006, p.107]

It's hard to find LL in the crowd. [Jun 2006, p.141]

Like [David Gray and Damien Rice], Powter writes faceless tunes landmined with unsubtle hooks that can devour your brain in less time than it takes for an expert barista to whip up a cappuccino. [Jun 2006, p.143]

Folding in lean funk, tender arias and as many catchy tunes as West Side Story, Ze makes his cryptic polemic perfectly enticing. [Jul 2006, p.105]

Green manages to charm even as he annoys. [Aug 2006, p.108]

While their protest cries tilt feebly into goofball psychedelic funk, a lush poignancy bubbles up on the more ruminative tracks. [May 2006, p.110]

Longtime devotees may miss Morrissey's Smiths-era vocal histrionics, but his supple croon has matured into a thing of beauty. [May 2006, p.103]

Striking [and] confident. [Apr 2006, p.116]

A new, liberating vulnerability marks the more reflective songs. [May 2006, p.110]

Has too many antiseptic beats and not nearly enough Timbaland. [May 2006, p.109]

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]

The sugar is matched by splashes of vinegar thanks to untuned guitars and off-pitch vocals that toy with self-sabotage. [Jun 2006, p.137]

Tapes 'n Tapes take not just their frazzled vocals but also their low-fi mixes, fuzzed-out guitars, semi-sequitur lyrics, falsetto refrains and general air of nearly falling apart from campus kings Pavement. [Aug 2006, p.114]

A set of tuneful, atmospheric doom-pop gems that appealingly swirls stiletto-heel beauty and black-leather brawn. [May 2006, p.108]

They're after something different here--it's just not as good as what they've left behind. [Apr 2006, p.110]

Strange, spooky and brilliant. [Apr 2006, p.114]