Barring "Blade Runner," the best pop art by a former adman. [June 2008, p.119]

Funeral For Justice represents another step in decentralizing the public discourse from Western normative standards, hopefully allowing for a better understanding of others and ourselves.

It’s not only Vegyn’s curation of shifting instrumental sound, from jazzy and transcendental to glitchy and trip-hop symphonic, that showcases his dexterity. At the album’s centerfold, three tracks (“Everything Is the Same,” “The Path Less Traveled,” and “Makeshift Tourniquet”) repeat the album’s title in three different tones: one a scratchy, insidiously inhuman voice, the next a distant human echo that feels like a fading memory, and the last that’s closely spoken like a self-reminding mantra. Its meaning morphs and settles like a redemptive exhale and inhale.

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

Unlike many rockers who cherish childlike ideals only to fall prey to amateurism or whimsy, Ze is aware that kids are both complex in their inventions and earnest in their intentions. [May 2006, p.93]

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]

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

With her deft band, the New York-raised, New Orleans-based musician (on cello, banjo, and guitar) pairs music from her Haitian-American roots with threads of its Caribbean, Latin-American, and African family tree. .... It’s the most engaging, dynamic and, crucially, personal of her five solo albums.

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

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

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]

Pig Lib is both the loopiest music Malkmus has ever made and the most direct. [Apr 2003, p.104]

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

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]

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

Wildflowers is very much a showcase for Petty as a solo artist. At that point in his life Petty was a songwriting machine and this reissue has the demos to prove it. ... He was still displaying extraordinary ambition and, most importantly, still speaking to and for his very large audience. ... Tom Petty had the miraculous ability to write songs almost anyone could identify with and enjoy. Wildflowers & All the Rest is the most revealing window we have into his process so far.

Frances explores an explosive groove Comatorium only implied. [Mar 2005, p.83]

Delicate Casio-toned anthems. [Mar 2005, p.91]

In spite of all their stony sonic exploration, they never let Z turn into Zzzz. [Oct 2005, p.133]

The Jane's Addiction album Jane's Addiction should have made last year. [Jun 2004, p.108]

An atavistic orgy of recycled riffs and lifelong obsessions. [Sep 2004, p.120]

This is the album Metallica lifers have been waiting for: an inspired return to the complex savagery of old. [Jul 2003, p.109]

His grinding blues buitar/aggro piano and her Bonham-bashing coalesce in a sound as heavy as his soul. [Apr 2006, p.91]

Scarily intimate and irresistibly beautiful. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Like Elliott Smith after ten years of Sunday school. [May 2004, p.108]

A perfect album, except perfect is the wrong word for a band so dedicated to kitchen-sink oddness. [Mar 2004, p.96]

What it sounds like to be sucked into doomed romanticism rather than aspire to it. [Jun 2005, p.108]

This time, the band lug the still-smoking amps from their lightning-strike live show into the studio and let the noise chase the midnite vultures away.