While there's nothing quite as hugely hooky as Alright singles "Smile" and "lDN," the album feels more confidently complete.

Kicky enough for late-night drives, sultry enough for backseat prospecting, and versatile enough to sell anything, it may be the most user-friendly record of Underworld's career and a better follow-up to Play than Moby's own. [Oct 2002, p.120]

Alternately goofy, sweet, and weird. [Aug 2005, p.97]

Thankfully, their debut album does little to clarify the group's intriguingly eclectic sound.

Black twists prog and BBC radio samples into hissing, even "hypnagogic" hip-hop, then hands the results over to Brown, who shouts suicidal thoughts and sex boasts with wild abandon.

He’s both looking back and moving forward, attempting, successfully, to capture the nervous optimism of youth.

It’s disorienting, upsetting, and edges toward unlistenable in its brutalist structures. But it’s a reminder that even if claustrophobia’s an unpleasant feeling, it’s always a powerful one.

Sometimes they get stuck in gilded lyrical vagaries, but simpler subject matter serves them best.

It's the album on which the Chems relax into a comfortable maturity, secure in their status as elder statesmen. [Feb 2005, p.87]

That Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would score Tron: Legacy seems destined.

[A] cosmos-goosing masterwork. [Jul 2005, p.104]

With dance-rock standouts like "Julius" and "Bury Us Alive," the Portland quartet's third album is its best yet.

Gibbard mostly dispenses with his trademark jitters, leaning into Death Cab's tuneful guitar-band thrum with a confidence that eventually sells Codes and Keys' moments of 
eager-beaver optimism.

[The tracks are] thoughtful enough to help make this one of the year's best rap albums. [June 2008, p.104]

In the way the tunes crash and throb, much of the album could be the "Milkshake" follow-up Kelis never got around to recording. [Jun 2006, p.84]

Add the pipes of Nancy Whang on most tracks--giving Future a boy-girl dynamic--and there's a distinct suggestion that the Juan MacLean might just become the Human League after all.

Closer in spirit to Rancid's bighearted radio punk than to anything Pink has put her name on before--all scrappy power chords and wounded warmth. [Jan 2004, p.97]

Only later do you realize the cotton candy you've been enjoying is wrapped around a dildo. [Nov 2004, p.118]

The Id, like On How Life Is before it, never seems too polished because Gray adamantly pursues her complicated pleasures, belying her image as a stoned soul picnic... [Oct 2001, p.123]

When it all cooks properly, as on the sultry, sweaty "Number One," Jackson's retro pastiches generate steam heat. [May 2002, p.125]

The added dissonant improvisation replaces the Blade Runner futurism of his hip-hop beats with a chilling Taxi Driver dread. [Apr 2004, p.94]

Though sometimes courting sleepiness, the debut's barbershop harmonies, Hawaiian strumming, and lovesick melodies transform rock-club jadedness into an aesthetic fit for honeymoons, holidays, and other occasions where you savor small pleasures, even if they're quaintly recycled.

Tracks like "VHS Sex," the complex yet laid-back "Glawio," and the robotic apotheosis of "Futureworld" send you hurtling back toward electronica's past perfection.

The result is a thrilling, hyperpercussive collection of laptop ditties mixed so cleverly that they'll sound great ticking through earbuds or booming out of dad's trusty Cerwin-Vegas.

Imperial Teen still sound as fresh and vital as ever.

For all of the tension in the music, Barrow and his cohorts couldn't sound more relaxed, natural, and at home weird home.

Yoking fuzz-stoked guitars (credit Television vet Richard Lloyd) to gorgeous melodies derived from the Beatles and Big Star, Sweet serves up his best tunes since "Altered Beast."

There’s hardly an original thought here, but with arrangements so expertly composed, who’s complaining?