A spirited, gutsy evolution from the formalist new wave of Metric's first album. [Nov 2005, p.138]

The record's initial thrill comes from the confidence with which the Distillers and producer Gil Norton revive rock as a demolishing force. [Nov 2003, p.116]

Blink-182 have found a new, angrier way to never leave junior high. [Dec 2003, p.135]

3D's sheer creative vibrancy is itself a testament to Lopes's live-wire charisma. [#12, p.155]

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

Since his 2005 debut, T-Pain has seen his Auto-Tuned swagger jacked by everyone from Kanye to Lil Wayne, but he has kept his sound fresh with a bottomless bag of hooks and a grainy rasp that the computers can’t buff away.

The gruff, authoritative Chuck and irrepressible second-banana-turned-VH1-ladykilla Flavor Flav know that uplifting kids corroded by gangsta rap means offering something emotionally fierce and reasonably current.

Creamy and precise, every coo and arpeggio blows through your ear buds like the ruffle of crisp bills.

The pie-in-the-sky ambitions may be a little much, but credit Franti for dreaming up a kinder, gentler new world order. [Sep 2003, p.122]

These oddballs have chops aplenty, and the balancing act they pull off on Quebec is no joke. [Sep 2003, p.132]

Scored with ramshackle grandeur by scribbly guitars, fat horns, poignant keyboards and ragtag sing-alongs, Benaim’s lyrics narrate the anxieties and optimisms of New York City’s young, educated and underemployed.

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

Proves that [You Forgot It In People] wasn’t a fluke.

May be the best CD of his career. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.112]

Sure, it's commercial, but Rosey's expert melding of dance beats and hippie dippiness adds up to a debut slick with beatnik cool. [#8, p.122]

Benefits from a fatter recording budget, with swooping symphonic arrangements and dazzling melodies. [Aug 2004, p.138]

Even if the high-minded concepts prove elusive, no worries. [Nov 2006, p.138]

Here, their frustration with scheming girlfriends and negligent boyfriends boils over into a cathartic froth. [Nov 2004, p.132]

Delays have found a way to combine the sparkling harmonies of the Byrds with the glorious noise of My Bloody Valentine, and still sound as fresh and surprising as a London heat wave. [#27, p.134]

Many of the songs here could be Peppers tracks, except for the absence of Anthony Kiedis's vocals. [Apr 2004, p.128]

Because of his no-frills persona, the smallest suggestions of personality make a charismatic impact. [Jan/Feb 2007, p.89]

With this foulmouthed, backsliding rock, Hull and his flock do Dixie real proud.

The familiar-sounding song structures are an artfully crafted misdirection.

Their fourth album toughens things up immeasurably. [Oct 2007, p.114]

As usual, Franz Ferdinand pack a greatest-hits album’s worth of melodic tricks into each tune, while Kapranos purrs the sort of pick-up lines that would earn a lesser man a gimlet in the face.

Striking [and] confident. [Apr 2006, p.116]

Angrier than ever, Bad Religion aim punk's adolescent fury at grownup targets. [Jun/Jul 2004, p.134]

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]

Filled with ambitious production and winsome nostalgia, Saturdays is an otherworldly chronicle of adolescence only a starry-eyed 20-something could make.

It’s a fantastically difficult record, but almost every passage of knotty head-game weirdness quickly dovetails into something dramatic and physical, and it all sparkles with crushed particles of the blues.

The music is dramatic with a glammy Britpop insouciance, and Garcia is a refreshingly earnest romantic. [#16, p.117]

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

Two things save Electric Six from becoming the alt-rock Weird Al: Their jokes hit home and their music is convincingly ferocious. [#17, p.134]

Seachange wrap their songs in the glorious dissonance of Sonic Youth and the mighty alt-rock-meets-R&B rhythms of the Afghan Wigs, but underneath it all, they just want to creep you out. [May 2004, p.131]

Every track is stellar. [Aug 2004, p.133]

The vibe is all infectious, feverish build-up. [Nov 2006, p.155]

The lighthearted genre-hopping suggests nothing so much as a Broadway smash about a restless country star, borrowing from many styles, beholden to none.

Sultry suits her fine, but when she reaches for the sadness in these self-written songs, she can’t summon the sense of conflict that was embedded in ’50s pop.

B'Day never cools down, and swaety up-tempo numbers prove the best platform for Beyonce's rapperly phrasing and pipe-flaunting fireballs. [Sep 2006, p.138]

The music, coproduced by M.I.A. confederate Switch, warps and wanders too, from rock-rap to dancehall to new wave to folk.

Amerie's heat is irresistible, in large part because it's subtle. [Jun 2005, p.108]

It's fed-up and proud at the same time, a kind of Desperate Housewives meets Trailer Fabulous. [Oct 2005, p.144]

A throwback to his trunk-rattling G-funk heyday.

Jet frequently manage to turn in the kind of bulgy-veined, streamlined gonzo rock that [Oasis] haven't managed since the mid-90s. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Panic's cherry-picking yields several good songs, and a few brush up against greatness. [Apr 2008, p.76]

On her third album, Clarkson finds a Third Way: She makes nice with the pop machine and takes back the mall while keeping her integrity and personality intact.

An utterly original if slightly queasiness-inducing album. [Nov 2003, p.109]

Miller ups the melodic ante, staking his claim to becoming his generation's answer to Nick Lowe or Marshall Crenshaw. [#10, p.123]

Some of the brightest three-part harmony singing since Crosby, Stills & Nash first gathered around a mic 30-plus years ago. [#17, p.144]

She shows the breadth of her talent and the depth of her sentiment. [Nov 2003, p.118]

You could roll your eyes and complain that these guys are still pimping teen angst in middle age, but really it sounds more like it’s matured into the longest-running mid-life crisis ever--30 years and counting.

A rare case of one step back, two steps forward. [Nov 2006, p.144]

The minimalist tracks rate among his best. [May 2006, p.109]

Earth is the sound of a band coming to that inevitable realization: five patrician perfectionists who've resolved to sound sloppy, even (or especially) at the risk of fucking up. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.98]

The result is severely mellow, but too sensuous--the basslines thick with libidinal tug, the vocals steeped in contented, coital afterglow--to ever get boring.

Lauper hasn’t sounded this relevant since her 1983 debut, when she celebrated female masturbation.

Amid the frenzied melancholy, there’s filler and a histrionic misstep or two, but for those willfully lost in the perpetual adolescence Smith has always documented, here’s the new soundtrack to Saturday night.

Rae's music sticks in your mind like a pleasant scent you wish would linger. [Jun 2006, p.143]

The Clan's lyricists remain as aggressively word-drunk as ever, balancing the music's pop conciseness with oblique rhymes that compel repeated listening. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.116]

Even the most hardcore riddims here percolate with moments of silky soul, pop and gospel. [Aug 2004, p.128]

Her woodwind-like voice and lucid sensiblity are hardly weird, but Andrews pushes her toward a dreamy and daring edge. [Apr 2005, p.117]

Enough human warmth sneaks through to make this second album exciting and affecting. [Nov 2005, p.133]

There's no unnecessary reverence, so the roots move that could have tagged Aerosmith as geezers proves instead that they're still wild boys. [May 2004, p.118]

The subtle, heartfelt results may not help them shed the "emo" tag, but should propel them beyond cult status. [Apr/May 2002, p.116]

Coheed have found their sweet spot.

He can go from dazzling to deadeningly dense over LP lengths, so this smaller dose is appealing. [Apr 2005, p.112]

This compendium of pop standards is as good an introduction to the great American songbook as any.

Texturally, it's a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun-dappled 2005 The Beekeeper. [Jun 2007, p.105]

The emotional terrain is much more treacherous here, and more rewarding for it. [Oct 2003, p.114]

Cute but not too sugary, smart but not too brainy, [Stacy] Jones's songs practically define pop-punk. [#14, p.130]

Satisfyingly sloppy.

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]

On this eight-song EP--available for free on his Web site--the amiable 42-year-old lends his peach-cobbler drawl to songs about maimed soldiers and power-drunk bullies, a doleful cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 'Fortunate Son' and 'Mission Accomplished (Because You Gotta Have Faith),' which deploys a Bo Diddley beat to excoriate a leader who “drove us off a cliff and told us we were flyin’.”

[A] tightly coiled second album. [Jul 2007, p.119]

Us[es] Nevermind as a trusty road map. [Apr 2006, p.116]

Throughout, atmospheric ennui tugs against upbeat synth-pop--this band is best wehn it's got a beat. [Nov 2008, p.73]

Baker... somehow makes them sound more outrageous--and more convincing. [Dec 2005, p.148]

It's art music first and pop second. [Oct 2003, p.115]

The album is crisper than the band’s early-’08 EP, thanks to Spoon producer Mike McCarthy, who let the fury bounce around every inch of a cinder-block space in Austin--where, appropriately, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" sound effects were recorded.

He's screaming louder than ever on his solo CD, but what's notable is how all the titanium riffs and loud-soft-loud dynamics now feel personalized, a little cozier and multihued than on SOAD record. [Nov 2007, p.157]

Pete Doherty remains the British tabloids' pinata of choice--but at least his music is looking up.

An excellent debut.... Derivative, but irresistibly infectious. [Sep 2003, p.129]

They follow measured guitar burn with bone-rattling explosions, and roll mesmerizing tension into colossal release. [#14, p.138]

With music that evokes cheesy early-’70s MOR and the modern Hollywood-hipster songbook invented by Beck, this is pop that gets out and moves, and has you rooting for the wallflower with the yawny voice to do the same.

The sonics beneath Buck's deadpan rhymes are too often more subdued than the dense collages he started out in the late 90s, but jazz keyboards and conga poly-rhythms keep the backing from sinking into mere soundtrack. [Nov 2007, p.146]

His most intimate recording yet. [#17, p.138]

Let It Be... Naked offers an experience its predecessor never could. [Dec 2003, p.154]

Face Control is a small triumph of intoxicating claustrophobia, full of crumbling, poignant melodies spurred along by thecold, unfeeling whip-crack of a cheap drum machine.

She's a poised pop queen, ready to be worshiped once again. [Nov 2004, p.141]

On Traffic and Weather, their lyrical touch slips. [Apr 2007, p.114]

Despite all the players, these lush songs are transitory, not bombastic or cluttered. [Dec 08/Jan 09, p.78]

As lively as contemporary folk gets. [#14, p.144]

It's the group's continued synchronicity that makes puns like "Kissing Asphalt" both chat-room hip and roller-rink authentic. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.110]

Lavigne splices the angst of Alanis Morissette and the snarl of Courtney Love into a debut full of sunny guitar pop. [#8, p.115]

For computer music, it's all astoundingly warm. [Apr 2004, p.139]

Moves seamlessly from ironic cock-rock and steel guitar-kissed hymns to crisply melodic pop and full-on hippie freakouts. [Oct 2004, p.116]

The sound matches lyrics about isolation and despair, achieving a freeze-dried catchiness in the opening songs. But by the end of the album, cleverness gives way to the bleak and the drab.

Making good on the promise of two nervously explosive EPs, Tokyo Police Club indulge in plenty of echoey atmospherics but also add Foo Fighters-esque blasts of guitar, as if leaping into action and kicking over their chairs. [May 2008, p.79]