Feels curiously behind-the-curve. [Oct 2005, p.142]

It's refreshing to hear a band approach the form's familiar imagery from a place of romance, not cynicism. [Oct 2005, p.138]

Easily Kim's strongest work since her pheromone-thick 1996 debut. [Nov 2005, p.136]

The nu-metal and new wave sendups are too conventional to work as either comedy or music--and the nonstop woman-bashing becomes repugnant fast. [Nov 2005, p.131]

Certified would be pretty great if it weren't for one huge mistake: his suite of god-awful sex jams. [Nov 2005, p.131]

[A] dense, inventive disc. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Shaggy has one of the most grating voices in pop. [Oct 2005, p.143]

[The songs'] unrelenting wallop, growling guitars and mock-operatic choruses tend to blur together even as they're kicking your ass. [Oct 2005, p.137]

Though long, it's strong. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Stupid-brilliant punk rock. [Dec 2005, p.147]

The arrangements are lean but wonderfully evocative... while Chapman's lyrics remain memorable and affecting. [Oct 2005, p.136]

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

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

It's rather straight where [his 1970 debut] was eccentric and charming. [Oct 2005, p.139]

On [Takk...], the band opens up emotionally, warming up their lengthy jams to a slow burn to create intoxicating, meditative rock. [Oct 2005, p.143]

Often, it's too much of a good thing. [Sep 2005, p.137]

Nada Surf settle comfortably into adulthood. [Nov 2005, p.138]

There are magical, creepy moments here. [Nov 2005, p.131]

Gracefully balances dirty-South revelry with gorgeous graveyard reveries. [Oct 2005, p.141]

Without playing "best since" games, just say it ranks near the top of the eight [albums] they've manufactured since 1980. [Oct 2005, p.142]

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

At times, the writing feels almost too weightless. But repeat listening makes these songs reliably addictive. [Oct 2005, p.133]

[OK Go's] sophomore album rocks most amiably when wordy frontman Damian Kulash loosens up. [Sep 2005, p.135]

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]

Sound[s] like bad Southern swamp songs covered by the world's most miserable bar band. [Sep 2005, p.131]

Fink's pretty, dusky voice moves like time-lapse clouds over earthy beats that build to cymbal-crash storms. [Sep 2005, p.133]

It's Twin Cinema's relative melancholy that makes it the band's best album yet. [Sep 2005, p.134]

[Lopez's] wry lyrics and melodic flights lend the disc unexpectedly sharp, stirring edges. [Nov 2005, p.141]

What keeps the songs interesting isn't his understated singing but his delectable arrangements. [Sep 2005, p.138]

Over the top and steadfastly retro, but in a good way. [Dec 2005, p.155]

It shows the old ska formula to be an unimprovable invention. [Sep 2005, p.135]

Barely breaks a sweat as it revisits the lukewarm metal riffs, barely passable rapping and sunny Caribbean choruses of [their] previous seven studio albums. [Oct 2005, p.145]

Somehow, amid all of this assault, the band builds some excellent tunes. [Sep 2005, p.136]

The real problem is sounding like Alice In Chains; afloat without a genre, the gang too often turn their emotional intelligence to making kinda dark, vaguely artistic middle metal. [Sep 2005, p.138]

Takes Cursive back to their chickenscratch days. [Sep 2005, p.144]

Fireflies' best songs are varied-tempo singalongs--this isn't hardcore but anthemic country. [Oct 2005, p.138]

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

Despite scattered flashes of uncharacteristic lightness, she rarely tempers the fury that drove the originals with the more accepting perspective that's guided her subsequent efforts. [Jul 2005, p.119]

No new fans need apply here, but those who know and love his sound will find that this self-styled career summation, a nod back to late Husker Du with computerized updates, sprouts horns with repeat listens. [Aug 2005, p.112]

Impressive at times... The problem isn't style--it's substance. Mraz's songwriting chops leave plenty to be desired. [Aug 2005, p.114]

Compared with the Pixies, this is conservative and gentlemanly. [Aug 2005, p.109]

Marjorie Fair's plinky strums, orchestral swells and hummable lyrics are hard to dislike and impossible to love. [Aug 2005, p.111]

The beat-programming is crystalline, the feeling is frozen, the soul is northern if it's there at all. [Sep 2005, p.136]

He's never tried so actively to fuse prescriptive politics into [the] mix, and the move feels suspect. [Aug 2005, p.115]

For every killer raise-your-hands hook there is a snoozer of an SWV-esque torch ballad, and she can't seem to tell the difference. [Jul 2005, p.116]

Kelly sounds exhilaratingly unhinged by passion. It drives him into territory no one else is able--or willing--to navigate. [Aug 2005]

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

Only a central, three-track lull--where grooves are preferred over songs--sours this eclectic, irresistible stew. [Jul 2005, p.114]

The idea is to build a monorail between Aphex Twin and Stax Records; the songwriting eventually slacks off, but Lidell's performances don't. [Aug 2005, p.111]

Shock gets dull, though, and Bizarre's bloated debut is profoundly unfunny. [Jul 2005, p.115]

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

The songs change, but the sensibility remains the same, more or less: plaintive to mopey, clever to smartass, and back again. [Jul 2005, p.118]

Song after song in praise of ass, thongs and female compliance. [Aug 2005, p.116]

While they once sounded behind the times, they now sound outside time, with songs evoking about 30 years of guitar pop, in the vein of R.E.M. and Fountains of Wayne, though nowhere near as original. [Aug 2005, p.113]

It's not until the seventh song that voice and material converge satisfyingly. [Jul 2005, p.115]

We're left with the immutable Corgan sans ambition: his narrow whine, melodies not quite predictable but dull anyway and a misty worldview with collegiate airs. [Jul 2005, p.116]

Dry and straightforward disco-soul. [Jul 2005, p.116]

More tuneful and less experimental than their debut. [Aug 2005, p.113]

Happily, [their] dogged consistency works in their favor. [Jul 2005, p.117]

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

Let's face it: Foo Fighters are dull. [Jul 2005, p.117]

Pernice's neuroses sound as compelling as ever. [Jul 2005, p.121]

Never Gone's rock ballads are painfully and sometimes powerfully earnest demands for meaning and redemption. [Aug 2005, p.108]

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

[Coldplay] have made their masterpiece. [Jun 2005, p.112]

What initially feels jubilant soon turns grating. [Jul 2005, p.115]

When a guitar hero abandons guitar, it can be because he's bored or because he's a provocateur, or, in the case of Jack White, likely both. But he pulls it off. [Jul 2005, p.113]

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

It's more consistent than Laundry Service, and maybe even more irresistible. [Jul 2005, p.120]

This time, he's playing with a minimalist, barely electric trio that wouldn't dare overshadow his sleepy-voiced utterances, painstakingly plucking one note at a time, and writing songs mostly about horses or mortality or both. [Jun 2005, p.115]

Noel Gallagher has even less to say than he used to. [Jun 2005, p.112]

This dense noise assault may not sustain the feeling of ecstasy from beginning to end, but its percolating trance rhythms... and captivating space experiments... connect on a visceral level that's rare in the cerebral world of electronic music. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Darker and colder than its predecessor but, surprisingly, more fun. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Valhalla, they are coming! [Jun 2005, p.114]

Even the fiercest moments never fully detonate. [Jul 2005, p.114]

The best thing she's done since winning the Grammy. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Blend[s] limpid Velvet Underground textures, strolling country-rock and wry, cryptically plaintive Malkmus poetry well enough to sound like neo-classics destined for a Wes Anderson film. [Jun 2005, p.111]

Crimson features enough syrupy string swells, maudlin piano filigrees and layers of production sparkle... to choke an army of purists. But these credibility-destroying effects only enhance the pure pop kick. [Jul 2005, p.114]

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

The Secret Migration comes dangerously close to being just another Mercury Rev album, and they're too inspired for such a mundane fate. [Jun 2005, p.112]

Keith and co-writer Scotty Emerick can't resist country cliches, but at least they use them brilliantly. [Jul 2005, p.118]

DMB's five nimble instrumentalists... take Putumayo globalism to a Sigma Chi frat party. [Jun 2005, p.107]

The band sometimes flails ineffectually, but more often it stays streamlined and urgent. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Effortlessly surges into the stratosphere of his better work--when not slipping into new age-y monotony. [Jun 2005, p.113]

This return to murky obscurantism, thankfully, comes with a return to guitar noise. [Jun 2005, p.115]

In striving for Zen-like purity, the songs often end up eerily blank. [Jul 2005, p.122]

Despite a short-circuited sequence of electroclash songs, the girls are winning throughout. [Apr 2005, p.116]

Instead of sunshine-pop sugar, there's the cloying tang of saccharine. [Jun 2005, p.109]

There isn't a bad song or performance on it. Unfortunately, there isn't a new song or performance on it either. [Jun 2005, p.117]

Too bad most of his songs come to an end just as they're heating up. [Jun 2005, p.108]

The album is wonderfully cohesive. [May 2005, p.119]

Sounds like the best bar band in the world. [May 2005, p.122]

If she doesn't follow commercial formulas, she's following creative ones, and selling herself short in the process. [Jun 2005, p.111]

An hour's worth of the good stuff: churning, yearning synth-rock. [Jun 2005, p.114]

Finally, an album that bridges the gaping chasm between hipsters and Rennaisance Faires. [Jun 2005, p.112]

A surprisingly heartfelt collection, heavy on lullaby-like ballads yet still oozing with sexy noir ambiance. [Jun 2005, p.113]

What raises them above the hordes of young revivalists is their way with a cranky bon mot. [Jul 2005, p.121]