The Used remain best when dripping with sweat, not sentiment. [Jun 2007, p.108]

The songs are more blustery than ever. [Jun 2007, p.108]

Sky Blue Sky often feels like the Dead's American Beauty if Jerry Garcia had taken Paxil instead of acid. [Jun 2007, p.103]

There's no great leap into maturity... They've kept their salient feature--scorching, adolescent tantrums--unchanged. [Jun 2007, p.109]

It's better written than her previous CDs... But this new old style is far less suited to her talents. [Jun 2007, p.110]

The Bush-Blair era has damaged these guys, and the results rule. [Jun 2007, p.105]

Even if nobody's made a record that sounds much like this before, she's given her performance here too many times already. [Jun 2007, p.106]

New Moon sounds less like a pile of outtakes than an official album released in a parallel universe.

Texturally, it's a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun-dappled 2005 The Beekeeper. [Jun 2007, p.105]

The elliptical vein opening, restless country twang and surging metal riffage have never sounded more confident. [Jun 2007, p.107]

[The] sense of playful adventure ensures that smooth needn't mean snoozy. [Jun 2007, p.108]

One long, shameless come-on. [Jun 2007, p.107]

Lambert has a strong voice, if not an exceptionally pretty one, and it suits her badass hell-raising much better than it does quiet laments like "Desperation." [May 2007, p.107]

This odd cast creates strangely beautiful moods. [May 2007, p.104]

All too earnest. [May 2007, p.105]

In the tradition of thorny newbie bands that get scarily too big (Nirvana, Radiohead, Weezer), they’ve followed their funny, catchy debut with a less funny, less catchy second record to prove how little they trust the good times their music obviously inspires.

THe music is scarily gripping... his best computer blues since 1994's The Downward Spiral. [May 2007, p.108]

The big-screen sweep and high-definition melodies (suggesting Weezer’s sluggish pep buoyed by the Flaming Lips’ hallucinatory orchestrations) make this “malfunctioning android”’s anthems of depression extra vivid.

A riot of black humor, sex mania and mean-eyed, chaotic rock.

An ambitious, twangy and faintly psychedelic folk-rock set that still may not convince haters he isn't a twerp. [May 2007, p.102]

Witness the birth of a new dance genre: fantasy-core!

On Traffic and Weather, their lyrical touch slips. [Apr 2007, p.114]

The Kings sound huger, less moonshine-slurry, even more romantic.

While the lyrics are strictly study-hall (“I’m no gentleman/I can be a prick” = poetry!), TAI… separate from the emo wolf pack by cribbing furiously from ’70s rock.

It’s an immersive, art-school-bred aesthetic that, three or four times on the band’s debut album, makes for some very good music, too.

Angry Mob delivers 13 consistently catchy tracks that bounce unrelentingly. [Apr 2007, p.115]

13 tracks of Disney-channel-ready pop, buffed and Pro-Tooled almost beyond recognition--and it's not half bad. [Apr 2007, p.111]

will.i.am... does push [Big] beyond her Sly Stone safety zone. [Apr 2007, p.111]