As familiar as alt-country has become, Ward makes it worthwhile again. [#16, p.125]

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]

Occasional flashes of brilliance transcend the deja-vu pastiche. [Apr 2005, p.113]

Eitzel sounds like he's finally emerging from the murk. [Nov 2004, p.128]

Roars like Led Zeppelin, churns like King Crimson and throbs like early Santana. [#17, p.138]

New Porn songs gush eagerness and surge like the front car of a roller coaster. [May 2003, p.122]

Point is the sound of a post-everything pop auteur rediscovering his attention span. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.111]

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

His second solo album (which he dedicates to Pimp C, his partner in the pioneering Houston rap duo UGK who died of a codeine overdose last December) features blunts, ho's and Caddy-shaking beats galore--but also elegantly constructed takedowns of corrupt politicians, covetous ministers and crooked police.

They've got more sweet-and-bitter guitar muscle than ever. [#8, p.122]

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

It’s Blitz! is the sound of a band reborn with new momentum, and on an album that requires dancing, the message is clear: It doesn’t matter where you came from. Just keep moving.

Never anything less than enthralling. [Sep 2003, p.121]

Listening to these tales of failing relationships feels like eavesdropping, but it's irresistible. [Sep 2004, p.136]

One of Vega's best. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.114]

If the White Stripes gave up blues-rock for steroids, acid and death metal, they might sound something like this. [Apr 2003, p.124]

Tempering futurism with retro-rap here, [Timbaland and Missy] feed the old through the new and refresh both. [#12, p.142]

Beyond Green’s wriggly, giggly, purring-to-screaming magnificence (as well as two smoking support vocals by young acolyte Anthony Hamilton), this is an album of intricate groove.

She balances her freakiness by matching her sublime chirp with grounded glories. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.93]

Andersson’s lyrics are often tricky to make out--can she really be singing, “We talk about love/We talk about dishwasher tablets”?—but almost every song incorporates shrewd production details, like the clog-dance percussion that kicks 'I’m Not Done' forward.

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]

Surprisingly pedestrian. [Nov 2005, p.134]

Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé employ everything from ominous Christian iconography to slick future sounds to prop up their aura of overarching coolness.

Gleams with emotion. [Apr 2005, p.113]

Some of her material still has an emotional earnestness that would make Bono blush. [#16, p.121]

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

Anyone who's enjoyed its predecessor may not find the follow-up effort entirely essential. [#12, p.145]

Two long, draggy pieces near the end of The Private Press are its only intimations of mortality. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.102]

Bright Lights isn't a trudging soundtrack to depression; it's laced with upbeat, albeit bittersweet, songwriting. [#9, p.148]

The music's intellectualism obscures as many truths as it unveils. [Mar 2007, p.130]

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

These 12 songs... cleave to the theme of hope-is-all-we-have, while stopping short of an unnecessary, pat moral. [Jun 2005, p.116]

They're not just churning out electro-scuz-soaked romps, they're reclaiming music's right to drop the verse-chorus form, set out on weird five-minute electronic benders and end up somewhere strange and exciting. [Oct 2008, p.80]

The songs are sincere without sappiness and orchestral without bombast. [Apr 2005, p.125]

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

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

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.

[It] sounds fantastic--partly because the production nails sample-ready '60s soul right down to the drum sound' and partly because Winehouse is one hell of an impressive singer. [Apr 2007, p.121]

[They] channel post-adolescent despair into 10 groove-centric tracks that will gladden anyone who misses Play-era Moby. [#11, p.141]

An acoustic jazz trio for the future: funny, imaginative and completely unbeholden to the traditions of the music. [#14, p.130]

What's keeping the band from achieving a unique identity are Havok's generic whine and medoicre lyrics. [#15, p.120]

The result is something of a songcraft master class.... A career best. [Dec 2005, p.150]

Her second album is rowdier and less well-behaved, and thus better, although the template is the same: breathy coos and lush strings intermittently blown apart by distorted guitar blasts.

Auerbach's fat, rocketing riffs are rivaled only by his Delta-dipped drawl. [Oct 2004, p.114]

Nas, it seems, wants his crown back. [#13, p.95]

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

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

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

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

The first and less snarky half of Tanglewood Numbers... is some of the liveliest music Berman has recorded. [Nov 2005, p.140]

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

Thanks to a sneaky sense of emo self-awareness and shambling, expansive instrumentation, they avoid cute overload. [Apr 2008, p.80]

His perkiest album yet. [Sep 2003, p.132]

The sonic and theatrical muscle it takes to project to 50,000 people who've paid to see another band adds a sense iof purpose that can't transfigure the superb material but does give the music its own charater. [Nov 2008, p.81]

On his solo debut, Bradford Cox sinks, phantomlike, into lush, highly processed arrangements of organ, drum machine and (evidently) whatever instrument is laying around. The disappearing act really can be magical.

Handled with less love, this could feel like a smug wander through an ironic record collection. Here, it becomes sexy, life-affirming pop. [Aug 2004, p.141]

Scary. And at times, scary good. [Nov 2008, p.73]

On initial listen, the album is rather monotonous, a bunch of moderately singable tunes with some noise piled up around the edges.... After the fifth or twentieth listen, however, A Ghost Is Born starts to insinuate meaning. [#27, p.132]

The result is unkempt and challenging, but it works. [Jan/Feb 2005, p.109]

Conjuring doubts and tenderness, Forster's writing has never been surer. [May 2008, p.76]

With innovative, funk-influenced beats and engaging rhymes, Lif brilliantly avoids the pitfalls of vacuous bling-drones and 'real hip-hop" whiners alike. [#10, p.124]

Of the nearly 59 minutes of music here, about 40 induce deep pleasure. [#16, p.125]

There are enough moments to suggest that, should they ever concentrate on, say, just 10 of their favorite styles, they could be fab. [#14, p.133]

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

Not as revelatory as Deserter's Songs, but a worthy (and lovely) companion piece. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.125]

It's the sound of a band not stretching out so much as digging in: burrowing deeper into loamy soil they know well. [Jul 2007, p.109]

Campbell and Millan use boy-girl harmonies to make a mockery of romance. [Jan 2004, p.109]

This wistful, road-trip nostalgia-pop is the sound of alt-rock after the gold rush. [#14, p.141]

Keeps the orchestral Americana on an ambient, after-hours simmer. [Mar 2004, p.123]

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

[Case] settles into a relaxed dive-bar groove. [Nov 2004, p.130]

For her to pull off something as ambitious, gritty and accomplished as this at age 21 is flat-out amazing. [#15, p.127]

A hip-hop Blood On The Tracks. [#27, p.143]

It's a declaration of independence, and she pulls it off stunningly. [Jan 2004, p.105]

When it works, his songs are intoxicating pop nuggets... But meandering instrumental interludes and clunky song titles are low on wink, high on wank. [May 2005, p.122]

The songs have as much personality as ever, reviving bygone styles, from falsetto lite-funk to electro proto-rap, with goofball energy and a music geek’s careful ear.

They've... picked up the tempo, sweetened the tunes and upgraded the rhythm section. [Mar 2006, p.109]

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

Unlike other current heart-on-sleeve troubadours, Lekman uses his tender touch to brilliantly tease out the bumbling awkwardness that defines modern love.

Dangerous Magical Noise is a great Friday night, and your ears will ring through Sunday. [Nov 2003, p.112]

A casual, mostly charming sketchbook of diffident alt-country laments. [Mar 2004, p.116]

It's not as good as 1988's South of Heaven, but there's enough speaker-shredding guitar noise to make up for any vocal deficiencies. [Aug/Sep 2001, p.128]

Could be the best album he's ever made. [Dec 2004, p.146]

The dramatic arc of these songs is built around the way instruments lurch into place and dance drunkenly around one another before staggering off once again.

Pink is their fastest, most instantly gratifying album.

She's just as acute as [Rufus] is, as centered on the poetry within the profane, as able to write songs whose meanings stay kept behind doors within doors. [May 2005, p.125]

They've made a great record of choogling and--surprisingly for the wonky Malkmus--tender tunes. [Apr 2003, p.125]

Sentimental post-country tunes knock against acute lyrics about rent, overbearing parents and other aspects of the pre-midlife crisis, as rock-out moments keep grimness at bay. [#11, p.140]

The beats throughout are deliriously varied. [Dec 2004, p.138]

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

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

When the singer’s overfamiliarity with certain material risks turning him nonchalant, Dan Nimmer’s barrelhouse piano picks up the slack; just when you’re ready to give up on an uninspired Hank Williams cover, some New Orleans parade funk kicks in.

It partly works. [Mar 2006, p.110]

Refining the spare sound of her last studio album "Uh Huh Her," she herein presents an 11-part song cycle about loss, longing and wandering bereft through the moors. [Oct 2007, p.108]

Not surprisingly, their debut tends toward brooding, bluesy rock—a worthy soundtrack for those dark, whiskey-soaked nights of the soul and the regret-filled mornings after.

Keep It Hid is guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach’s affirmation of ragged principles, self-recorded with blunt, squawky ax-picking and loving lo-fi grit. The sentiments can be snoozily familiar.

The sound is simultaneously terse and expansive--moody and powerful, shot through with singer Chris Martin's grainy delivery. [#9, p.145]

Yanqui U.X.O.'s five long tracks unfold in distinct movements, like symphonic '70s prog, but with rawer, emotional atmospherics. [#13, p.93]