What lends Bee its buzz--beyond the purring keyboards, the plump wah-wahs and sexy whistles--is its subtle edits: dreary snowdrifts in synthetic time that cautiously subvert the electro-charge like a savage nipple twist on the pale body of the vestal virgin that is Llama pop. [#48, p.93]

The results [of the combination of DJ culture and blues] sound less contrived on this outing [than on 1998's Come On In]. [#48, p.81]

[David] Gedge's fragile, understated vocals and keyboardist Sally Murrell's soaring, wordless harmonies only add to the sense of desolation.... [#48, p.79]

This twisted, sublime, and otherwise genious U.K. pop outfit's toss-offs, b-sides and radio sessions border on surpassing the group's albums. [#48, p.92]

At its best, Bewilderbeast promises pastoral beauty.... At its worst, the album's faux-jazz workouts, painful disco homage, sappy ballads and pointless instrumentals stretch a decent EP into a bloated, hour-plus opus. [#47, p.84]

Warning may not only be the most beautiful Green Day LP but also the bravest. [#48, p.93]

Liquid guitar licks, bobbing bass lines, slow-tumbling vibes and lush strings float in and out of the mix, wrapping snugly around Sam Prekop's mellow croon. There's nothing life-changing here, but it's nice; and sometimes nice is enough. [#47, p.116]

As a group, they're missing the sheer fuck-it-all unpredictability of the original band.... For the first half of Golden Lies, everything clicks with long-remembered power; but after half an hour, Curt and Co. start groping for new ideas and wind up repeating themselves, falling into formula instead of rewriting it. [#47, p.106]

Despite the disparate source material, each Suitcase disc feels organic, like a "real" Guided By Voices album.... Even a casual fan will find enough gems spread among the hundred songs here to justify spending the $50 to purchase Suitcase. [#47, p.107]

It's exquisitely constructed sound with a sharp punk edge and an anarchist's ear for chaos. [#48, p.92]

Space-rock created in an energy vacuum. [#47, p.104]

The potential is here for Bettie Serveert to be marvelous.... But [singer Carol] Van Dijk's always-ominous lyricism, her need to play variations on the fallen and fallow, leaver her warm, tentative voice too vulnerable, too nervously open, too much like a desperate character among the bones of Lou Reed's once-famous dead. [#47, p.86]

For the most part, Excuses plays like a companion piece to 1998's Out Of Tune--chock full of the lethargic pedal steel and Topanga Canyon-rock cornerstones that make [Neil] Halstead's songs so powerful. However... Excuses leaves room for more delicate moments and patient ballads... [#47, p.108]

Through the first three songs, Confessions sounds for all the world like the masterpiece John Wesley Harding has seemed unwilling to make throughout the detours and bypasses his career has taken since his magnificent 1990 debut.... Unfortunately, he has a difficult time reaching those heights again. [#47, p.97]

Cosmopolitan, but often dull, easy listening.... Basically, Thievery Corporation skims the surfaces of more substantial styles and reconfigures them to create pleasant dinner-and-drinks music. [#47, p.124]

Sounds like lovelorn, half-baked philosophy for the Mariah Carey set.... Lucky for Justine Frischmann and her reconstituted Elastica, rock 'n' roll doesn't require lyrical profundity, just great beats, riffs, and attitude. All are here in spades... [#47, p.90]

Their most sustained work... It's sometimes ethereal, sometimes sedate, sometimes dissonant--but it's always artufl, quoting tiny fragments of Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and Miles Davis to steer the music toward a smart new seriousness. [#47, p.122]

One of 2000's most consistently compelling listens. [#48, p.95]

Though not without the psychedelics that informed the Verve's early records, Ashcroft spends most of Alone elaborating on the same elegance he initially allowed to die with the Verve's 1998 disbanding. [#46, p.67]

It's as if SDRE was trying to make every album it thought Rush should have cut after Moving Pictures - simultaneously dark, textural, riff-based and cliche-free, yet filled with the sort of sweeping gestures and lofty arrangements you usually find in vintage prog.

Unfortunately, [Markus] Popp has recently become more fascinated with theory than result.... This is what causes the downfall of Ovalprocess as a work of pure music.... a disappointing misstep. [#47, p.112]

A dark album that shines very brightly. [#46, p.85]

There's some buzzing and belling on "Puzzle," some crimped cracking that doubles as new wave, but for the most part, it's California dreaming at its dumbest.

Saint Etienne's latest album is masterful: fanatically detailed, intelligent and swimming in lovely melodies and delicious electronic bleeps... easily one of the year's standout albums. [#46, p.90]

Somber early works by the Cure and Joy Division read like knock-knock jokes by comparison. [#46, p.66]

It glides along with the same humid grace that made 1997's If You're Feeling Sinister a bedsit classic.... wonderful, sweeping songs. [#46, p.68]

the "new" Neubauten is a stronger unit than it has been in the entire latter half of its existence.... Silence Is Sexy is brilliant, and Einsturzende Neubauten remains without peer. [#46, p.75]

The balance of the album is crammed to capacity with placeholders for more fully developed ideas.