Even when the concept stumbles, parts of Vide Noir are pretty enjoyable listening anyway, like the flecks of psychedelic guitar across the title track and the filigree detail and sensual current of “Moonbeam.”

The songs are catchy and nuanced, and the rage that defined them a mere seven years ago comes across here as measured, simmering frustration.

Adorned with piano and synth, the ten songs on Re-Arrange Us are fuller, more elegant vessels for the duo’s warm, intricate melodies.

Twenty years since their last album of new material, Gill and vocalist Jon King spit out splintered riffs and skewered tropes that approximate the band's peak on grabby party-starters ("Who Am I") and mesmerizing midtempo grooves ("A Fruitfly in the Beehive"). The rest are only slightly damaged goods.

Opener 'Another Likely Story' sets the mood, dovetailing chilly lunar textures with hushed vocal harmonies to often nap-worthy effect.

The album is full of catchy guitar rock anthems that recall their '90s alt-rock heyday but also showcases some of the maturity and experience they've gotten since then.

Plays like a poppy salvo against [Broken Social Scene's] cerebral forays. [Oct 2005, p.138]

Nash's bluntness and detail make for a good spectacle. [Feb 2008, p.96]

Fang's edge is a bit more mosh-by-numbers than Hole's. [Dec 2003, p.129]

A dark, emotionally intense record, best experienced on headphones. [Jan 2004, p.97]

What could have been hipster reach is multiculti grasp of the sweetest kind. [Jun 2001, p.148]

A masterful blend of electronic genres. [Oct 2006, p.102]

Episodic is a steady, ten-track affair that doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it leaves on an anxious note.

Supergrass' Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey deliver 12 blasts of stylistic tinkering that never subsume the songs' original intent: to rock.

The North Carolina native's third album unveils deceptively sharp tales of hearts in distress, implying fierce emotions just under the surface. [Mar 2008, p.106]

It swaggers like prime Replacements, though with far better polish. [Jan 2008, p.103]

Instead of sounding like a half-baked aberration or a tedious, overlong experiment, Die Lit broadcasts a refreshing and well-developed aesthetic--one that feels like Carti’s specific achievement. Its appeal feels distinctly corporeal, like it’s inducing some swag-rap equivalent of ASMR through exploring a limited and tightly EQd collection of sounds.

Lewis' wordplay smartly unspools over the course of a song--with 'Breakin' Up,' she creates a 'Since U Been Gone' for grown-ups, and on '15,' narrates an Internet jailbait vignette without melodrama or moralizing. [Sep 2007, p.132]

The tropes in YG’s songs are West Coast traditional (women, realness, threats, repeat) but there’s a combination of veteran savvy and lane mastering that refreshes the more expected moments.

This is the work of noise nerds bent on finding beauty where others see nothing but a tangled mess. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Shift[s] between singer/songwriter Rhett Miller's heartrending country and mojo-fueled power pop. [Sep 2004, p.120]

In the grand, elegiac 'Legacy,' singer Neil Tennant delivers what's either a farewell kiss or simply a cheeky end to the most thoroughly heartfelt chapter in the pair's 25-year story.

There's real drama in the band's sweeping crescendos and ringing guitar chords; there's something genuinely affecting in their newfound emo overtones.

The sharp riffs only occasionally add up to anything with a pulse, but the Pornos have always been bad mathematicians. Archaeology -- that's their subject.

This mysterious Swedish dream-pop band's music remains hazy--mucho echo, blurry harmonies, soft acoustic instrumentation buoyed by generous synth strings, and a bright white ambience suggesting both sunny Balearic beaches and blinding Scandinavian snowstorms. Yet its emotions are conversely vivid.

[BRMC] have never sounded more self-assured. [May 2007, p.84]

Never has she sounded freer than she does here, a self-styled villain biting the forbidden fruit of gossip and letting its juices run down her neck.

Whenever it seems that Islands are losing you, Arm’s Way coughs up a moment so beautiful it might make your heart swell and burst into a bloody, disgusting mess.