Yours Truly occasionally provides pummeling feedback rock ('It's the Weekend'), but when Lytle's lullaby vocals suggest, "You should hold my hand / While everything blows away / And we'll run to a brand-new sun," it's like Bruce Springsteen's open highway finally reached a melancholy kid from Modesto.

Vedder's incantatory vocals and campfire instrumentation evoke the eerie beauty of untouched lands. [Nov 2007, p.126]

Drum and guitar free, with stark string orchestration, this imaginatively selected and sequenced collection achieves such a haunting consistency of tone that its spell lingers long after the speakers fall silent.

An impressive balancing act that name-checks Ween and cracks wise about Stevie Wonder's vision while spinning bighearted melodies and harmonies over quirky beatscapes. [Jan 2005, p.89]

Every sweetly conflicted track sounds almost exactly the same, but his perverse playfulness makes that limitation almost feel like liberation.

There aren't any plinking pianos or Hollywood strings, but the music still goes big the way we've grown to expect from Green Day.

The album's guitar- and keyboard-heavy production obscures some of his folky Britpop melodies, but it shows off his Bruuuce heart in a big way. [Oct 2006, p.105]

Snowflake Midnight ranges widely, from synth-heavy orchestration to film-score dramarama. And between those ambient bookends, there's virtually no filler.

The result may be the year's heaviest, creepiest, and sexiest hard-rock group effort. [Oct 2007, p.104]

Isolating his experimental tendencies to specific tracks leads to some uneven pacing on the album's second half. Otherwise, Green Language fully delivers, serving as a fascinating turn for an artist who earned his reputation by essentially bashing fans into submission with bass.

A far more sonically consistent and textured work, cushioned in Americana, drenched in soul.... But there's no urgency to this album, which stops looking out at the world and settles in for some serious celebrity navel-gazing. [Nov 2000, p.195]

An album sanded with sad humor and a return to old loves. [Mar 2004, p.96]

On their second album, this Aussie duo's buzzy guitar pop is more hyper and gripping than ever, as she breathlessly spews dramatic tales that have the immediacy of crazed Twitter posts.

Lovage's schtick wears pretty thin by album's end--but if it works like it's supposed to, you won't need to play it that long. [Feb 2002, p.108]

Extra Playful is as easygoing and steady rolling as he's ever sounded, serving up hooks, elegant Euro-beats, and a modicum of glee in poking fun at his own uptight image.

The Mountain Will Fall is only somewhat transcendent in its quiet moments, and the highs are too few and ephemeral. It’s quaint--a step away from the zeitgeist, but not quite future enough.

Despite its tortuous path to existence, Joyride is a strong, cohesive project.

Gucci is not always so reflective; sometimes he's as broad and bracing as a ball-peen hammer....But more often than not, the prolific MC (in 2009, he released more than 100 songs on mix tapes) limits his id, and emphasizes a surprisingly gripping superego. Case closed.

Shadow's bold beat-scaping is missed, but guests galore lace the esoterica with plenty of angsty personality. [Dec 2004, p.124]

Bassist Ariana Murray steps up to provide sonic stability. [Sep 2007, p.129]

There are the irretrievably cheesy moments.... [But] Therein lies the strength of Kiss Me Once: Minogue's ability to turn any contrived situation into something positive, magical, and utterly her own.

Ready to Die is a weirdly exhilarating gem, thanks to Iggy's fiery eloquence and the Stooges' still-raw power. Apparently rock'n'roll can be an old man's game after all.

Blitzen Trapper's Eric Earley performs the amazing feat of making alt-country seem fresh on the band's gripping sixth album.

This time around he's tryin' too hard to be everything to everybody. [Apr 2005, p.97]

All over the map. [Feb 2004, p.104]

The Raveonettes haven't sworn off droning melodies and minimal percussion, but the duo's morbid Psychocandy métier gets a slight makeover on their fifth album.

While [Quality] cautiously courted the mainstream, he's made mass appeal Job No. 1 of late. [Oct 2004, p.112]

Cut Mr. Hansen up, and he reassembles nicely, but weirdly enough, it's tough to out-Beck Beck. [Jan 2006, p.92]