This record recasts her unnerving spell--brooding country-pop riffs that conceal devastating lyrics. [May 2003, p.116]

Heartfelt guitar rock capable of punching you in the gut and patting you on the back. [Aug 2003, p.114]

This is not garage rock; this is art rock. And that's a compliment. [May 2003, p.107]

The lyrics explore suburban everyguyism, but the choruses explode like fireworks over a church picnic. [Jul 2003, p.109]

This is a record that creates tension from the cryptic and release from the inexplicable. [Jul 2003, p.105]

A warm and deeply engaging snapshot of fractured relationships and existential dread. [Aug 2003, p.116]

They channel experimental noise, acid-drenched riffs, and live-show spontaneity into a record of brilliantly crafted nuggets of lysergic rock that is easily their most consistent effort to date.

Is it essential? Absolutely. With only a guitar or piano, and a voice that is developing into one of the most expressive in rock, Marshall crafts deeply textured explorations of heartache, terror, longing, dismay, and emotions I'm pretty sure I've not found yet.... Rock will see few finer releases this year.

Simultaneously joyous and joyless, all downloaded beats, downhearted lyrics and down-the-hatch daring. [Aug 2003, p.113]

He cross-fades scratch solos and oddball sound bites like he's trying to win a DJ battle and top the Down Beat poll at the same time. [Jan 2004, p.100]

A bruisingly great collection of demented 1988-style boom-bap. [May 2004, p.107]

While Essence was lyrically spare, World marks Williams' return to the painful sensuality of the specific. [May 2003, p.109]

Mix[es] xylophones, spaghetti-Western trumpets, and quirky trick guitars to sweeping effect. [Jun 2003, p.109]

Even more dense and brutal than Burma's early records. [Jun 2004, p.103]

The Von Bondies' calling card is the urgency of [Jason] Stollsteimer's voice as it sands down the shop-worn chord progressions. [Mar 2004, p.92]

While the novelty factor alone makes it worth the download time, it works as a cohesive album long after the initial shock wears off. [Apr 2004, p.91]

It feels more like a band playingto a multitude of strengths than the formal wrestling of Kid A. [Jul 2003, p.103]

A raging, ragged Behind The Music--15 coal-black odes to the casualties that art leaves behind and that life can't avoid. [Aug 2003, p.111]

Beam has given us his second straight masterwork: self-assured, spellbinding, and richly, refreshingly adult. [Apr 2004, p.89]

The album shuffles and grooves like Fela Kuti sloshed on gin and tonics. [June 2003, p.100]

The toughest record ever made by a former mainstream country artist.... If all the songs don't rival her finest work, the arrangements pull them up. [May 2004, p.105]

Instead of the pleasing pop potpourri of their last album... the 13 songs on And Then Nothing . . . flow together subtly, all texture, mood and shade.... Yo La Tengo's tenth collection of warm, tiny songs is by far the finest in their careers...

Half expansive, burnished radio-rock, half swampy Delta hoodoo-hollerin' that reeks of Brock's Southern sojourn. [May 2004, p.103]

This is music to play in dark, velvety, womblike bars; this is music to play while buying cigarettes; this is music for well-dressed poor people. [May 2003, p.109]

Mostly great. [Jan 2005, p.96]

Will likely be the best political album this year. [Mar 2005, p.88]

There is no more transportive band working in music. [Oct 2005, p.140]

Not since Grateful Dead's Europe '72 has there been a live double album in which intimacy and expansiveness, guitar mess and piano reflection commingle this sweetly. [Dec 2005, p.107]