[The] sense of playful adventure ensures that smooth needn't mean snoozy. [Jun 2007, p.108]

An album this pretty can make you believe in romantic spells lasting beyond first semester.

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

They've created the Sgt. Pepper of screamo.

[A] near-flawless suite of deep, dark and powerfully sexy tracks. [Apr 2006, p.112]

It nearly always feels fresh, the way a new flame does. [Dec 2004, p.132]

Ceaselessly enthusiastic European dance-pop that's deliriously colorful, vividly inane and usually about themselves. [Aug 2003, p.126]

Her coy delivery suggests a seething everywoman concealing her rage under an ominously bright surface.

Quality is full of witticisms, but it draws equal strength from sonic diversity. [#12, p.145]

What Led Zeppelin did for bombast, Lambchop try to do for delicacy. [Apr/May 2002, p.114]

THe British balladeers have returned after a long layoff as elegantly miserable as ever. [Oct 2008, p.83]

The result is a mess but--thanks to Bemis’s passion, humor and knack for inserting multiple hooks into a single song--an exhilarating one.

Destroyer's slickest synthesis yet of ornate hooks and cryptic poetics. [Apr 2004, p.127]

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

With its stories of faithless lovers, broken relationships and speed-dealing suburban doctors, @#%&*! Smilers almost seems to feed off the stagnation. [Aug 2008, p.88]

A fizzling delight, jettisoning previous jazzy inclinations in favor of a gorgeous electronic pitter-patter that sets off Prekop's velvety, mourning vocals. [#14, p.143]

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

Political without preaching, sexy in a bookish way, this record will keep you up talking with someone you'd like to kiss. [Dec 2005, p.149]

The blend of organization--even the oddest, most precarious combinations of instruments sync up--and derangement is Animal Collective's version 2.0 of hippie whimsy, and it's quite a buzz [Oct 2007, p.105]

Murdoch's gift for loopy, tender, unshakeable hymns, stomps and meditations is untouchable. [Nov 2003, p.109]

More diabolical and daring than the band’s shaggy 2005 debut, Future peaks with the primordial 'Bright Lights.'

At times, i turns dangerously slow and arty.... But for the first time, [Merritt's] lethargic croak also emits a few degrees of human warmth. [May 2004, p.124]

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

An accessible art-punk collection. [Apr/May 2002, p.112]

The Kings sound huger, less moonshine-slurry, even more romantic.

Their 14th studio album is a fierce nostalgia­fest full of cascading jangle, candied power chords, lonesome harmonies, Southern-gothic protest poetry and roundhouse drum bash.

Since avant-punk often has more “limits” than its creators recognize, respect and then some to No Age for keeping theirs interesting.

The Darkness play old-fashioned metal with such elan that at times they ascend to pop music's Olympian heights. [Nov 2003, p.110]