Let's Stay Friends almost captures the band's sweaty, live weirdness on record, and it leaves enough breathing room for their wicked smarts to shimmy up through the hip-shaking indie punk. [Oct 2007, p.106]

Unlike her major-label LPs, this is a stringently stripped-down, dark-side-of-the-mountain album that's near impossible to cozy up with. [Oct 2001, p.131]

It’s more of a mixed bag.

The Hold Steady are mellowing, and it doesn't really suit them.

Subtle... build their hybrid from a quarter century of pop and college radio, then animate it with a megawatt jolt of race/class anxiety. [Dec 2006, p.100]

He’s not really in a fun mood, and the music follows. The lushness has diminished, and the work evokes increasing comparisons to ‘70s singer-songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, who hid their acidic commentary within sturdy pop structures.

Almost every track on The Impossible Kid is indistinguishable from the next, blending together in a way that converts the man’s talent into his fatal flaw, due in part to the forgettable beats.

There are interesting moments... but too often they're smothered in a formless buzz of guitar, samples, voilin, harmonica--you name it. [Jul 2006, p.87]

Flashes of fun appear--dig the glam-Sabbath stomp of 'Inconvenience'--but most of Dark could use more color.

Philippe Zdar handles most vocals, sneering through the propulsive dance-punk single 'Toop Toop' but failing to sustain the drones that dominate this overlong disc's second half.

Here, tunes about racism, consumer culture, and the evils of TV hit their marks, then hit them again and again and again.

[Patterson Hood] cedes too much of the spotlight to competent but less distinctive mates Mike Cooley and Shonna Tucker. [Feb 2008, p.92]

The more down-the-middle SVIIB shows that these postscripts aren’t always special, but we’re grateful for the closing chapter nonetheless.

For now, we’re stuck with a record that’s both intentionally and unintentionally frustrating: A record about self-loathing where the actual remorse is absent, where its creator would insist that’s the point.

Amedeo Pace's wailing, overemotive tenor invites the mess of Blonde Radiohead jokes the band will inevitably receive. [Apr 2007, p.86]

Snaith now claims he's taking time to composae songs, rather than winging it out in the studio, and these sticky-pop confections are the result, full of lithe vocals, swooping keyboards, distant drums, and assorted benign flashbacks. [Sep 2007, p.124]

They're still not so great at turning their majesitc heft and pushy paradiddles into memorable songs with hooks. [Oct 2006, p.100]

The harder the music hammers, the flatter the lyrics get. The more the band holds back, the stronger the songs become. Consequently, there's half of a great album here. [May 2007, p.83]

The vocals can still dilate your pupils, but her melodies (on "Ruler," "The Package Is Wrapped") deserve equal attention, as Stern bids to become one of the few finger-tappers who's also a songwriter.

Cool It Down, is less of a step forward, or in any meaningful direction, and more of a twirl in place. It’s a pleasant and polished listen, more palatable than its predecessor, with glimpses of the band’s top gear. But fans anticipating some return to the frenzy of “Tick,” “Man” or “Pin” will keep waiting.

In small doses these acoustic dirges and country-rock laments--played at tempos that make Crazy Horse sound like Slayer--pass by indistinctly, but over time, the slow-blooming guitar solos and age-old folkie melodies of tracks like 'Bowery' and 'Trouble in Mind' reveal their sturdy, dignified strengths.

Too often on tape, though, the album sags under its own weight.

The songs are about love and sex, but a hint of nihilism still lingers in Wolf's melodramatic vibrato. [May 2007, p.91]

For the first half of the album, this tested formula works as well as ever.... Moone runs out of flavor, however, when the Apples trade colorful and ebullient for derivative and listless.

Not many of the expansive, leisurely songs on Asleep In The Back stick in the memory once they've ended, but they swoon nicely. [Mar 2002, p.127]

Ripped is about three- or four-minute songcraft--never the highlight of their resume. [Jul 2006, p.88]

The result boasts an admirably moody menace, but lacks the debut's darkly comic drive.

The collision of rhetoric and intentions result in both colorless abstractions like piano ballad and first single "Where Are We Now," and grand melodrama like "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die."