Leanness and vitality have replaced the cokey bloat of their last few studio trips. [Jun 2005, p.103]

Good records from the Descendents and Bad Religion in one year? Joe Strummer's ghost must be keeping close watch. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Playfully sleazy, creatively reckless, and ridiculously, abstrusely, hyper-generously funky. [Jan 2004, p.95]

An often-great set of songs about loneliness. [Feb 2005, p.85]

Miguel has impeccable songwriting chops and a deceptively supple voice, not to mention total command of both.

Throughout Dear Science, TV on the Radio--which includes the rhythm section of bassist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton--flesh out Adebimpe's and Malone's ruminations with relentlessly inventive arrangements that make even familiar sentiments seem fresh.

By facing down the exhausting nature of depression and loneliness (seriously, Coyne sounds so depleted that he can barely muster the dejection to sing, and yes, that's a compliment), the Lips have retroactively strengthened their entire artistic credo.

This is the most important artistic statement from NIN leader Trent Reznor since the late '90s.

Where [Time Out Of Mind] stared down heartbreak and mortality with somber melancholy, Love and Theft finds Dylan taking on those same themes loaded up with piss and vinegar. [Nov 2001, p.127]

They've never sounded more in tune with the materiality of sound or the sonorousness of the physical world.

Puberty 2 isn’t shaped like an opus; it’s jagged and slight and the auteur has already expressed second thoughts about the liberties taken with its addiction-themed coda. But it’s a high-watermark of post-irony indie, a cracked safe of perspectives previously unheard in lump-throated punk.

Grohl (back on drums for the first time on a Foos record since 2005’s In Your Honor), bassist Nate Mendel, guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, and keyboardist Rami Jaffee have imbued But Here We Are with new levels of depth, maturity, songcraft, and storytelling, ensuring it is far more than just an album about grief.

She may sing about her belief in herself faltering, but her sincerity is actually stronger than ever. The victory here isn't just that Nikki Nack betters Whokill by beefing up its feral ferocity with more sophisticated chops, or that she triumphed over her detractors by proving she hadn't already peaked. Garbus found power in a hopeless place.

If it’s not Giant Steps, the album that type of casual Coltrane fan knows is A Love Supreme. Both Directions at Once isn’t definitely isn’t Supreme, but it enhances our understanding of how that group of musicians came to make it.

The result is the alternative pop album of the decade--one that imbues the Killers' "Hot Fuss" and MGMT's "Oracular Spectacular" with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse.

On Halsey’s 13-track oeuvre, they present a masterclass in songwriting and production overflowing with a seductive industrial canvas as well as noise-rock, punk choruses, and fuzzed-out guitars.

This unpredictability -the 25-year-old band's trademark attraction--is what keeps them at the forefront of metal's vanguard, and what makes Koloss, for all its "normalcy" (joke quotes intended), the first real contender for the genre's album of the year.

This is not the sound of settling.

Radiohead have completely immersed themselves in the studio-as-instrument--signal processing, radical stereo separation, and other antinaturalistic techniques. Even the precious Guitars--saturated with effects and gaseous with sustain--resemble natural phenomena rather than power chords or lead lines. Essentially, this is a post-rock record.... Kid A is not only Radiohead's bravest album but its best one as well. [Oct 2000, p.172]

Like the sugar in hot sauce, all the additional soulful and jazzy flavors - pale blue chords, sax-y loops, mellow piano comping - just bring out the stinging attack of the beats more fiercely.

So rewind to indie-rock the way Mark E. Smith started it: reduced, smart, and dirty-sweet as used bubble gum. [Oct 2001, p.130]

Channel ORANGE feels like one long, moonlit, air-conditioned ride.

It's practically the entire history of the band crammed into a mock boombox. Designed by bassist Paul Simonon, the set incorporates retrospective essays, reprinted fanzines, a poster, dog tags, stickers, badges, and so forth; die-hard fans have probably sold off their existing Clash collections just to afford it.

Trading obscure metaphors for assertive personae, Amos sings with a remarkably forceful focus. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Godspeed is all about wide-open spaces here. And it's easier to find transcendence in the desolation, to get hypnotized by a single note, or get lost in rearranging the four vinyl sides into your own personal manifesto.

There is no note out of place or sample used without careful thought. The album asks the listener to unpack each second, find thrills in its surprises and layers, or simply get lost in the rhythms that will make one’s body jerk and jut out in ways not yet defined. It is the work of an exacting mind, one that should challenge other producers and musicians in the future.

On Yellow & Green, he [John Baizley] finds the confines of metal itself too limiting; so Baroness dive, dive, dive, dive into '90s commercial alternative harder than a sackful of Yucks and come out smarter and weirder and better than any metal band this year.

Somehow they've upped their jubilation game without making too many sonic changes since 2005's self-titled debut.