Even with a few missteps, Tanton's put together a collection showing that he's capable of memorable work, and likely to produce more of it.

Mended With Gold works, pleases and doesn’t tire of itself in time. It is also painfully unaware of its faults, which is a shame when greatness stands so close and the songwriter can’t, or won’t, simply grab it.

Like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Quit +/or Fight flirts with perfection, a cohesive collection of all-too-fleeting pleasures.

When taken alongside recent successes like Chaos and Creation and his stunning orchestral piece Ece Cor Meum, Electric Arguments hints that a late period renaissance could be underway.

Learn to Sing Like a Star threads together Hersh's myriad musical guises while striving for some of the immediacy and distinctive yelp of her Throwing Muses heyday. It mostly works. [Mar 2007, p.69]

It's more than a little precious and fluffy for those without kaleidoscope eyes for the stuff, but if this is your bag, you'll know it (and love it). [Apr 2007, p.60]

The album won't blindside you or beat you over the head with anything - but it'll sure leave a mark.

Consistently brilliant. [Dec 2005, p.121]

Why Me? Why Not. largely succeeds when Gallagher allows himself to dig deep into his past and get a bit personal.

His latest is his first true departure, and the unfamiliarity is at once a challenge to absorb and also a fascinating turnabout from an artist who is demonstrating that he is more willing--and able--than most to subvert the expectations he’s created for himself.

In a genre so saccharine, overwrought and predictable, Jones and the Dap-Kings reinvigorate the very notion of Christmas and holiday music, recording warm and witty originals while using sharp, soulful arrangements to transform classics like “White Christmas.”

It’s an occasionally comical throwback to when they were at their biggest, with a few good-not-great moments. One can only hope they chill out and come up with something better in a few years.

Hitchcock deals with present-day anxiety whimsically rather than specifically, while Rawlings and Welch provide an uncharacteristic but fitting mise en scene with their solemn plucking and barely suggested grooves, which function much like the shadowy cross-hatching you see in Edward Gorey’s drawings.

Whether you’d rather stimulate your brain or your heart, it’s all available on Upright Behavior, it’s an impressive effort from an act that feels like it’s just finding its footing.

A few songs on Together At Last don’t have much to offer if you’re familiar with the album versions, including “Muzzle of Bees” and “In A Future Age.” The former, in particular, misses the noisy burst Tweedy’s band mates provided. But even they are effortlessly listenable, because Tweedy makes them so.

The way it toggles between the dreamy, the rave-y, the interstellar and the mathematical is what makes it uniquely transcendent. It’s not the kind of raw live album that gives you goosebumps from the roar of a stadium crowd or one where you can feel the sweat dripping off the musicians. It’s much more smooth and meticulously crafted, but it still retains an electricity that makes live albums so enticing.

Peanut Butter is an accomplished, confident and mature approach to a type of music indebted to teenage energy, a record that veers between styles of music that are often at odds with one another without ever feeling indecisive or confused.

Archipelago is an argument against verse-chorus-verse structure, and a good one—a rewarding, slow-melting album for patient listeners.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album is just plain forgettable—a flat stale gray of staid sentiments and middle-of-the-road rock.

Hollywood's fractured tale is underwritten by melancholy music that splits the difference between Mann's Bachelor #2 and Penn's MP4. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.138]

Gone by the Dawn deftly blends a joyful escape musically with the weighty emotional journey of the lyrics, and Shannon and the Clams have more than topped themselves on the record, pushing to a whole new level.

For those who have never heard Amadou & Mariam's music, Folila may be a perfect place to start exploring.

Watson and Taylor still communicate better than most bands or friends could hope to achieve. But they’ve finally let the listener into Slow Club’s emotional core, making the kind of songs that aren’t just meant to score feelings, but actually make the listener feel.

The Rapture cannily sidesteps the perils of trying to live up to its own loaded legacy by excising punk from its sound and focusing on what it arguably does best: outsized, blindingly-polished pop that shakes hips like a vibrating belt. [Dec 2006, p.96]

Korkejian has proven her ability to forge closeness and sincerity in past works, but her third album feels like her own secret, not only because the songs haven’t been shared before, but also because her development as an artist and person is now a bit more overt.

Though it’s his third album, Miami Memory feels like we’re meeting Alex Cameron for the first time. This is the real him, not a perpetuated version masked by character. While unexpected, it’s not jarring in the least bit. It’s a warm introduction, one filled with familiarity with help from Cameron-world mainstays Roy Malloy, Kirin J. Callinan, Holiday Sidewinder and more.

It's hard to imagine a less tortured singer/songwriter than this guy. [Oct 2006, p.75]

[Their] strangest album. [Apr/May 2006, p.119]