Start the 18-song album in the middle, and embarrassments like Nicks's "Illume (9-11)" reced behind love songs that exorcise pain with an accusatory chorus and a skein of guitars. [May 2003, p.116]

This album sends her style to rehab, cleaning up messy edges and emotional extremes. [May 2005, p.124]

The result is slight but often gorgeous. [Apr 2008, p.77]

They’re closer to turning monstrous dexterity into gut-wrenching metal, but for now, the oblatory goats and virgins are safe.

Despite Gabriel's performances, there are no hits here. [#10, p.117]

Austere in its beauty and a little wearying. [Mar 2005, p.143]

The album’s dense, electronically seasoned pop includes her catchiest tune in two decades.

It’s obvious, obnoxious and effective.

The raw, first-take sound of most of these songs is impressive--Suicide remain the most genuinely punk of electronic bands. [#11, p.144]

There's nothing remotely original about any of it. [Apr 2007, p.111]

On record five, their lovely, surging melodies suggest a minor-league Coldplay, while singer-guitarist Matthew Caws recalls a lost golden age “when I could fix anything with sound.”

While Costa is almost too glamorous for her own good, she flaunts that old-school splendor that generates apt comparisons to early Lenny Kravitz. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.107]

When they're not straining to be anthemic, Turin Brakes still weave a seductive spell. [#14, p.143]

This set bogs down when the band flaunts its slow-chug technique at the expense of hooks and jokes. [#27, p.139]

[Several songs] sound way too much like Strokes castoffs, a situation little helped by... Fridmann's unusually heavy-handed production. [Mar 2004, p.125]

Despite its epic ambitions, this is a more streamlined, less colorful statement than TSOOL's 2001 Behind The Music, and only occasionally attains earth-moving power. [Apr 2005, p.125]

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

Underneath his architecturally impressive hair, front guy Justin Pierre is a savvy melodic songwriter and, refreshingly, he’s completely incapable of taking himself seriously.

Bursts with neat production touches. [#4, p.116]

Full of clever wordplay one moment, kind of pretentious the next. [Oct 2005, p.134]

Aguilera cowrote most of the songs, and she sounds surer of her themes than [Britney] Spears did in a similar I'm-coming-out role last year. [#12, p.138]

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

The music tends to drift along unobtrusively.

For most of Charmbracelet, she sticks to a gauzy, breathy, phone-sex coo, muzzling her inner diva until the final verse or a few ultrasonic high notes in the fade-out. [#13, p.92]

The material sinks or swims on the quality of [Duritz's] brooding. [#8, p.116]

There's a complancency about this record. [June 2008, p.73]

Fist delivers a gut punch of awesomely distorted synths and raw, kicks-and-snares percussion....But maintaining a fist-pumping pace can be exhausting.

He has a dusky, intimate voice and a weakness for overwrought lyrics. [May 2004, p.126]