Youngblood's tunes are so clever it's easy to overlook the commitment to new wave it took for him to avoid wasting his love of wordplay on folk music. [Aug 2008, p.84]

Most of the time he makes the profound sadness seem like the best party in either Nashville or Dublin. [Apr 2006, p.116]

Joyous and limber. [Mar 2007, p.136]

Tuneful, kinky and deeply rooted in groove--a combination that evokes the best of both Prince and Macy Gray. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.112]

Ego War doesn't disappoint, offering an instant hit of raucous energy via choppy rave-house dynamics, high-density Daft Punk-style production and a refreshingly anti-epic approach to songwriting. [#16, p.114]

Treading his father’s path, he’s never sounded so comfortably himself.

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]

Torrini captures a few joyful infatuations followed by a lot of lingering wounds; she’s vulnerable but never conquered.

Taking sound collage to seamless, organic perfection, Tobin arranges his samples like he's conducting a living orchestra. [#11, p.144]

Diamonds is pointed, pulled-back and juicily considered instead of massively jammed-out. [#15, p.120]

McNew adds his own hybrid theory, wittily merging classic and iconoclastic by exploring his influences. [May 2003, p.116]

So Sum 41 have grown up... a little.... It's all relative, and, crucially, it still rocks. [#12, p.153]

With steel guitars, fiddles, banjos and newspaper-scrap reports of floods and desolation, The Mountain is as fierce as any past Bastards recording, just more honed and hellbound.

Deconstructed sonics phase between absent-minded professor and glitch-craft. [#23, p.101]

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

A more crunchingly bare-bones record all around. [#8, p.123]

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

The quartet has the virtues of youth... and some of the drawbacks. [May 2007, p.106]

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]

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

The kind of laconic, deceptively laid-back statement that cult heroes Alex Chilton or Doug Sahm might have dashed off in their prime. [#18, p.123]

If she lacks [Fiona] Apple's emotional complexity, her lovely and original debut finds the romance in despair. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.149]

Whether he’s lamenting immigration hassles or imagining himself a depressed American kid fighting in Iraq, this Muslim fan of Biggie and Bruce Lee has a common touch. He’s a universal soldier, not an exotic novelty.

There's nothing here that sticks to the ribs very long. [#17, p.136]

Perkins freewheels through American music traditions—Haight-Ashbury folk ('Hey'), New Orleans brass ('Doomsday'), junkyard blues ('I’ll Be Arriving')--with arrangements as rich as a pawn-shop display.

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

The mood of Jones's second album is more or less the same, if slightly friskier. [Mar 2004, p.118]

Ikara Colt have clambered up the food chain by choosing the short, sharp shock of mid-'80s Sonic Youth as the template for their entire being. [#12, p.143]

Where melodies once surged with hand-clapping giddiness, they're now august and restrained, balladic, not bubbly--fitting songs strung between hope, resignation and regret.

Lost in Space... pushes her in a new direction. [#9, p.152]

Unlke many underground MCs, [Levine] doesn't use a $10 word if it'll compromise the beat. [May 2004, p.118]

The real hero is Sean Eden, whose lyrical lead guitar--a bit Harrison, a bit Morricone--makes even the silliest songs sound majestic. [Nov 2004, p.138]

The tunes are basically chants and the drumming is more straight-ahead than "tribal" and when the vibraphone trips in after 40 seconds of 'The Ballad of Butter Bean,' you may not bust a gut laughing, but you'll probably grin. [June 2008, p.75]

The bleakness is stirring as often as it is enervating. [#23, p.100]

Pop has made more nuanced albums than this in recent years, but Skull Ring is about reclaiming the franchise as unselfconsciously as is possible. [Oct 2003, p.125]

Her genius is not to let herself be trapped in yesterday. [#9, p.144]

T.I. boats one of gangsta rap's most mellifluous voices and more polysyllabic lexicons, and when he combines the two, he's dazzling, hypnotic, virtuosic. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.82]

With his buddy Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age, Hughes gets the details right all over Heart On.

The Dears’ breakthrough was 2004’s "No Cities Left," a post-apocalyptic expedition through emotional and political wreckage, and they’re still mining that barren landscape, trying to rebuild.

For years, Smith has excelled in her profession as rock's great heroine; at its best, Trampin' sounds more like leisure time, but it still pays off. [May 2004, p.132]

For all their wriggly noise details and fragmented language, their center of gravity is in their hips. [#23, p.101]

Most of these concise, super-catchy tunes are as unself-consciously traditional, and fun, as an undiscovered cache of British Invasion rock. [#14, p.143]

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]

Superproducer Butch Vig is around to help transform Gabel’s strident leftism and occasionally clumsy choruses (e.g., "Protest Songs! In response to military aggression!") into swing-state-ready stadium rock.

Putnam lays fragile vocals and haunting piano melodies over tightly wound postpunk rhythms that add immediacy to lyrics about missed opportunities and broken relationships. [Dec 2005, p.151]

The music makes her giddiness contagious. [#16, p.114]

The acoustic Spooked surveys post-millennial life. [Nov 2004, p.135]

They're like the best party band at the best party you can imagine. [#11, p.130]

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

This album is a model of aging, raging indie idealism. [Apr 2006, p.118]

Kweller's skeletal songs rely mostly on his acoustic guitar, garage-y riffs and swinging, Beatlesque piano. [Apr 2004, p.130]

He's more vehement than ever before, and the music feels rag-and-bone honest. [Sep 2004, p.136]

Everything here, from the restrained pedal steel and drifty organ to the lyrics, reflects a gentle informality that has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with following the flow.

Lucid, enjoyable and occasionally full-on rockin'. [Oct 2003, p.115]

Through it all, the machines sound as juicily alive as the human beings. [Apr 2009, p.63]

Dear Heather is top Cohen. [Nov 2004, p.131]

The Pretenders’ ninth studio album is a pleasant roots record.

If their debut was a night of chasing skirts and drinking Jim Beam from the bottle, Heartbreak is the bitter, worn-out morning after. [Mar 2005, p.138]

These songs create a series of vivid but minimal soundscapes. [Sep 2004, p.140]

Brings Pierce's preoccupation with panoramic emotional and chemical excess to startling, transcendent climax. [Oct/Nov 2001, p.112]

The Bush-Blair era has damaged these guys, and the results rule. [Jun 2007, p.105]

This is 21st-century lounge with a Manson heart — music for unwinding, or maybe plotting crazed revenge.

The sound quality is appropriately assy, and guitarist Ira Kaplan has fun playing a pissed-off leather-jacket pimplehead. But Yo La’s gentle side naturally peeks out.

The music is cheery even when the feelings are miserable; it's like rainy-day Smiths driven by pianos instead of guitars. [Mar 2005, p.140]

15 thrilling highlights. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.93]

Finally: bedroom music from a guy who seems to know his way around the bedroom. [Nov 2005, p.141]

[His] loquacious, dizzying delivery and disjointed imagery paired with the abstract soundscapes of [El-P and Blockhead] make for occasionally uneasy listening. [Nov 2003, p.108]

A debut on par with the music of Massive Attack, Underworld or Kruder & Dorfmeister.

While none of these spare summer jams of knotty beats match his Marvin Gaye-sampling 2001 hit "Music," almost any would freshen radio. [Aug 2004, p.139]

Stone’s voice is remarkably authentic, and the atmosphere she conjures is smoky and sleazy, pure mid-’60s Detroit.

Amid the fidgety guitars and twitchy rhythms are enough hair-raising hooks to reach far beyond the counters of independent record stores. [Sep 2003, p.128]

One long, shameless come-on. [Jun 2007, p.107]

Eagles of Death Metal aren't air-quote ironic like the Darkness; they're a passionately played goof for Homme. [May 2004, p.120]

Shimmers with a newfound sophistication. [Apr 2004, p.136]

Clones feels at points like a candy store that carries only one brand--it's a damn good one, though. [#18, p.130]

Way too much fun. [Oct 2006, p.130]

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

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

His rage is mostly disguised within the most anthemic music he's made since the '80s. [Nov 2007, p.143]

A gorgeous, streamlined piece of acoustic Americana, beautiful and fully realized. [May 2003, p.120]

Dawson tunefully balances girlish zeal with womanly maturity. [Nov 2004, p.132]

DiFranco seems less the compulsive confessor here, more the storyteller. [Mar 2005, p.139]

The songs are weirder and darker than their gentle melodies indicate. [Nov 2005, p.141]

[Beans] makes music for MCs to scratch their heads to. [#15, p.120]

Even at their most nihilistic, these 16 songs resonate melodically, like Eminem's most haunting material. [#15, p.118]

When it comes to creating nuanced and irreverent, yet oddly touching, pop and rock simulacra, no one really touches pseudonymous Pennsylvania duo Gene and Dean Ween, still together after 23 years.

A set of abrasively melodic pop songs. [May 2004, p.124]

This is the brightest, breeziest, giddiest record Fall Out Boy have ever made.

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

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

This music is better hazy, its messages garbled and out of reach. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.82]

Literate and heartfelt, the album's also a sonic riot, with gutsy electro, dream-pop and feminist rap jostling for attention beneath Sarah Cracknell's creamy vocals. [#11, p.142]

Smarter, bouncier and more full of insidious electronic hooks than its predecessors. [Aug 2003, p.124]

Trice puts a playful swing into his unlikely rhymes. [Nov 2003, p.122]

Kweli’s rigid delivery and obsession with self-empowerment remain liabilities.

There’s an exhilarating and ruthless intensity here, mingling the grimness of country murder ballads with the simplicity of girl-group pop.

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]

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