Muscially adventurous and fun. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Will Gregory’s sparkling webs of acoustic guitar, synth and strings allow the more slender melodies to slide into vaporous prettiness, but Goldfrapp’s voice remains extraordinary, as witchily sensual as Kate Bush’s, as otherworldly as a theremin.

These B-boys are as forward-thinking as they get. [Oct 2004, p.122]

From the way gently twanging guitar builds to toxic fuzz on 'Man Made Lake' to the whistling in 'El Gatillo' that nails the stranger-in-town vibe, the band’s best stories are in their music.

Even the loudest moments reverberate with warmth. Bridwell sounds determined to build a new world for himself, one gorgeous ballad at a time.

GGD’s career has been a gradual climb out of primordial noise muck and toward beats, and album four is their most propulsive.

Musically, his furiously gear-shifting punk-pop, full of horn blasts and arty production tricks... never fails to rock the sermon. [Aug 2006, p.107]

[Their] constant shifts in perspective aren't distracting, they're divine. [Oct 2004, p.126]

At once intimate and far-off... like a beautiful broadcast from a room down the hall. [Apr 2005, p.125]

The result is music that is excitingly in and out of time. [Aug 2008, p.88]

There are few high or low moments--which might put some listeners off--but texture and content, rather than pulse-raising histrionics, have always been Q-Tip specialties.

Where once he growled his rhymes through gritted teeth or abortively gulped them down altogether, now the beats let him breathe. [Jul 2007, p.113]

There are long, gloriously messy instrumental passages, and Coomes pulls off a bunch of swaggering guitar solos. [Oct 2003, p.126]

Brand New took a huge step forward in 2003 with Deja Entendu, tossing away everything predictable about emo. But the leap on their third studio album is even bigger, and gutsier too: using rock’s earthly forces to amplify the heart’s greatest loves and fears, and in the process summoning the kind of grandeur that blows minds in bedrooms and raises fists in stadiums.

Even as they cherry-pick from seemingly incongruous sources (deep house, hard rock, smooth R&B), there’s a newfound decisiveness, a move toward heavier beats, meatier grooves and warmer sentiments.

Not since the Clash has a band evoked so precisely the grime and thrill of young London. [#15, p.124]

It's all top-shelf alt-country: road-hardened, literate and dark as ever. [August 2007, p.114]

The perfect introduction to Tindersticks' queasy, cinematic elegance. [Aug 2003, p.133]

If you buried Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks in a graveyard for 200 years and then dug it up, it would sound like this corroded, bottom-heavy music. [#11, p.134]

The songs transform emo's search for truth and its vivid angst into great drama. [#15, p.122]

His wisest and warmest record yet. [#27, p.136]

The Wolf sets up Andrew W.K.'s post-partying career as motivational speaker for the bloody-nose set. [Sep 2003, p.132]

Credit four supportive guys rolling out unkempt riffs at tempos so punky they reveal the guitar line of Joy Division’s 'She Lost Control' for the pop hook it is (with saxophone icing).

The record has the relationship to "genuine" roots music that its titular ratty heirloom implies--it's a perfect fake, dyed to match the sensibility of a skeptic who won't give up. [Mar 2006, p.108]

Sheff straddles the line between precious and brilliant, warbling twisty, appositive-packed tales about life on the road and crumbled relationships over cranked-up, vaguely folkish rock riffs.

Blend[s] limpid Velvet Underground textures, strolling country-rock and wry, cryptically plaintive Malkmus poetry well enough to sound like neo-classics destined for a Wes Anderson film. [Jun 2005, p.111]

Bubbles with kooky sounds and melodic invention. [Apr 2005, p.112]