On the album’s best moments, he pours his hopeless longing into sweaty, inebriated celebrations of love’s boundless optimism.

It's 10 tightly wrapped wads of black bubblegum, not a politicized sci-fi fantasia like "year Zero" or a two-hour drift into instrumnetal blip 'n' grind like this spring's "Ghosts I-IV." [July 2008, p.74]

Youngblood's tunes are so clever it's easy to overlook the commitment to new wave it took for him to avoid wasting his love of wordplay on folk music. [Aug 2008, p.84]

With CSS, even biting the dust is a blast. [Aug 2008, p.82]

Even as they take on the album title's potentially heavy theme, two vocalists sing with wide-open smiles, and they toss in new-wave beats alongside the saloon pianos and tube-amp guitars. [Aug 2008, p.84]

Now and then, the energy lags. But mostly, Sugarland’s shameless mining of VH1 Classic hooks keeps their more tepid tendencies in check.

With music that evokes cheesy early-’70s MOR and the modern Hollywood-hipster songbook invented by Beck, this is pop that gets out and moves, and has you rooting for the wallflower with the yawny voice to do the same.

Finn has been sharper and funnier before, and their fast-and-down-the-middle rock has gotten more experimental, which isn't the same as better. But it's still a pretty good way to spend 45 minutes. [Aug 2008, p.86]

Even when the Wire slow way down, their densely layered riffs reward wall-shaking volumes. [Oct 2008, p.83]

By now he's decided he'd rather be Bob Dylan--recent Dylan, that is, devoted to phlegm-clogged blues-codger grumbles about how he's ready for his pine box. Producer T Bone Burnett proves a willing accomplice. [Aug 2008, p.88]

He tries to atone on the bluesey and somber 'Cadillac on 22's Part 2,' but--like much of this album--the sequel is a downgrade compared to its wrenching and confessional original. [Aug 2008, p.82]

In a style gentler and more richly textured than the crudely amplified minimalism of the series’ debut by Konono N°1, the songs swell in and out of expansive and hypnotic patterns, forming clouds of interwoven rhythms.

Produced by hip-hop head case Danger Mouse, who is half of Gnarls Barkley, Modern Guilt mixes ancient rock--mainly the incense-and-peppermints-flavored ’60s psychedelia of Revolver-era Beatles, the Zombies and Pink Floyd--with the woozy, abstract beats Danger Mouse manages to turn into freaked-out fun.

When the singer’s overfamiliarity with certain material risks turning him nonchalant, Dan Nimmer’s barrelhouse piano picks up the slack; just when you’re ready to give up on an uninspired Hank Williams cover, some New Orleans parade funk kicks in.

It occasionally feels slack, especially compared to old faves like “Wildcat” or their bootleg hip-hop remixes.

Unfortunately, it translates into kohl-eyed pantomime, rather than cathartic music, with lyrics so hopelessly trite they sound like a feel-good tract for preschoolers.

Sometimes they're tossing salad, with predictably sappy songs about sainted all-stars Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson, yet theyre funny throwing chin music at cult figures Fernando Valenzuela and Harvey Haddix. [Sep 2008, p.76]

She’s more geeky than queenly anyway, ­jazzily singing and breezily rapping over buoyant reggae and soul throwback beats sculpted by a guy named Adam who previously worked with American Idol finalist Elliott Yamin.

These gothed-out Chicago yeomen relish a catoonishly dark lyric and if they eke new inspiration out of anything on their sixth studio album--which bounds along, as though bunny-powered, on a pop-punk beat--it's war. [July 2008, p.70]

Her voice was made to rip, and when she lets go just a little, the coyness turns sultry--proof that she might just have a life after high school.

On this clamorous, relentless album, a violent death lurks in every bar (“Rider Pt. 2”), licentious catcalls have replaced slinky come-ons (“I Like the Way She Do It”) and guns seem to fire of their own accord (every other song here). In doses, it’s rousing. Over the course of a whole album, it’s exhausting.

Its penitent but hopeful mood still suggests a Catholic equivalent of corporate Christian rock

This album is luxuriously, fantastically gay, a nod to the origins of disco, when the music was known for its queer fan base as much as anything else. [July 2008, p.73]

Their Fire Songs can seem a little thin-boned--the twins’ intertwined voices are lovely but ethereal, the steel guitars melting into the horizon like a mirage.

Creatively cast, bonkers as ever--it’s a bright spot in the Bobby Digital series.

At his best, Berman used to refract sage-with-guitar tropes into dryly perverse insights; but this time he's just smothering them in weird phrases. [July 2008, p.76]

Viva La Vida still manages to seem downsized compared to the band's gradiose early work. [July 2008, p.69]

Arcade Fire never babbled about “horse-shaped fire/Draggin’ stereo wire.” These guys make it seem like an Olympic sport.