Its successes just about match its failures. [#70, p.100]

The finest moments here are all Feist-like. [#70, p.102]

Rouen is all long jams and breezy acoustics, the telltale signs of a band that feels it's time to sober up. [#70, p.110]

When this band surprises... it provides moments indie rock could use more of. [#70, p.102]

Consider this follow-up one step back. [#69, p.98]

An ambitious album... but it's undercut by Fink's inconsistent readings. [#69, p.96]

Nearly buries itself in interesting ideas that are ultimately unrewarding. [#69, p.98]

Songs that actually shoot for happy tend to slide into saccharine. [#69, p.96]

The hooks fail to sink in, and Kinski is occasionally too clever for its own good. [#68, p.100]

Too much of A River, though, doesn't give you enough music to love it. [#68, p.110]

A quartet of droney sameness [in the second half] essentially grinds Moonlight's funkiest ingredients into a sluggish, repetitive pulp. [#68, p.111]

By its very generic nature, Seadrum/House Of Sun sounds more like background music than anything the Boredoms have ever recorded. [#68, p.87]

Taken in one sitting, Our Thickness is just wearying. [#68, p.110]

There's never a sense that the singer convinces himself he's got anything beyond the rote punk/blues motions to draw from. [#67, p.112]

It's an overstuffed, uneven album, one that's not disappointing as much as it is disorienting. [#67, p.111]

Evokes an industrial Enya soundtrack that would play on Frodo's laptop. [#67, p.112]

As it's continued to grow, Ida has begun to sound almost ordinary. [#67, p.98]

"The Lost You" is a breathless, if unfortunate, peak. What follows are four miserable, mostly tuneless dirges that bring a slow death to [the] album. [#67, p.97]

Once a means to subvert pop/rock formula, the band's abruptly shifting dynamics have themselves become formulaic. [#67, p.97]

Pretty and pleasant without ever being especially compelling. [#67, p.100]

All Rise flitters about like an overly melodramatic actor: it might be pretty, but it offers little more than monotony. [#67, p.97]

Where the smart rap of Antipop Consortium came off as quick and cutting, Maverick just seems remote. [#66, p.86]

Gradually succumbs to torpor, with track after track given over to midtempos and pretty-yet-languid riffing. [#64, p.104]

It seems so mild. [#64, p.98]

An occasionally rewarding but often confusing listen. [#64, p.108]

The melancholia lacks distinguishing marks. [#64, p.80]

The occaisonally infectious hooks keep the shtick from falling into one-dimensional parody. [#64, p.104]

A better-than-average Sonic Youth album. [#64, p.106]

Winds isn't without charm, but it feels like the work of a different group. [#64, p.84]

It mostly drives down that most scenic of romantic-pop roads, honking and waving at fellow motorists Death Cab For Cutie. [#64, p.104]

There's something far too aloof about Again. [#64, p.84]

Pop uses the strengths and weaknesses of his many guests to differing--and sometimes distracting--effect. [#61, p.88]

The first Wheat album that'll make you cringe through four or five listens before you can tolerate its artificial sweetness. [#61, p.111]

There's something undeniably mechanical about Room On Fire. [#61, p.107]

The tunes wear thin before the bluesman gimmick does. [#61, p.110]

Some songs here make more sense than others, and the musicianship, while spirited, isn't quite accomplished. [#61, p.92]

The endless Anglophilia gets boring, especially when Pulp, Blur and the Auteurs have all done it better. [#61, p.86]

Much of the material is mid-tempo and occasionally bland, but in its best moments... Kill Them With Kindness soars. [#60, p.105]

While all this sounds real pretty and is a pitch-perfect soundtrack for your hip cosmopolitan engagements, You Forgot doesn't have enough stick-to-your-gut songs to sustain a long-term, repeated-listening relationship. [#60, p.93]

The problem is that the half-hour Squares is as unfocused and repetitive as a double album. [#59, p.108]

The perfect soundtrack for winter 1996.... It's icy, robotic and just a little bit behind the Curve. [#58, p.88]

There are great moments that grasp for--and sometimes reach--the bombastic ground between Radiohead's pop days and Sunny Day Real Estate's proggier side; then there are long stretches that fail to push any buttons at all. [#59, p.90]

After a promising start, the album charts a steep and steady decline into ersatz Bowie and slapdash psychedelia. [#58, p.96]

He slouches in with "Sisters" and begins his album-long teetering on the brink of affectation, sounding like a teenager with restratint. [#59, p.89]

Keep On Your Mean Side suffers from the same-samey quicksand tha bogs down the overhyped Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [#58, p.95]

Just start at track six, where the getting gets good. [#58, p.97]

The misfires pale in comparison to the stomp and swagger of the record's best songs. [#58, p.91]

Sounds like classic overcompensation, a racket on wheels trying to live up to its hype by merely playing over it. [#59, p.98]

Play[s] like a remember-the-'90s rundown. [#58, p.98]

A half-hearted attempt to outshine 2001's A Better Version Of Me, but lacks all the "Spit And Fire" that made that album so human. [#58, p.105]

Predictable. [#57, p.105]

For all its attempts at hipster currency, Evil Heat reveals the needle-shaped creative hole where the drugs used to be. [#57, p.102]

She's a ghost in the machine; unfortunately, the machine is an Atari 2600. [#57, p.80]

Like a handful of Flinstones Chewables, Velocity is sugary, prehistoric and well-intentioned, but Apples don't make a meal. [#56, p.78]

The album fares best when Evelyn lets his sampler do the talking. [#56, p.101]

Fully realized tracks such as "Affection" and the peppy "I'm A Vampire" are so fetching that they eclipse the rest of Eternal Youth, which is padded with brief, blippy non-songs and is often top-heavy with (literal) bells and whistles. [#56, p.93]

The mixed results are troubling. [#55, p.86]

It runs longer than an hour, and no matter how much you liked the Smiths you probably don't hav ethe patience for that much Gene. [#56, p.89]

Listening to Coyne retreat behind the faux-Power Rangers horror-movie shtick he's created here is puzzling and ultimately disappointing. [#55, p.73]

Many of the songs meander, and the constant back-to-the-'60s vibe loses its charm. [#55, p.94]

A note-cramming session heavy on the Little Feat and light on the Sea And Cake. [#55, p.70]

Music, while a pleasant listen, is nowhere near the heartfelt art Eitzel normally blesses us with. [#54, p.86]

Their second album only partially makes good on their promise, delivering a lovely package that lacks the emotional punch of last year's terrific self-titled debut. [#55, p.70]

If only [L'Altra] would wipe away the polish, stop being yet another tender pop band and let its melodies be springboards for exploration instead of straightjackets. [#54, p.94]

At points, Life Is Full Of Possibilities certainly sounds as if Tamborello realizes what distinguishes the good from the great. [#53, p.72]

Finds the group farther afield than ever from the playful, energetic randomness that made its first records so utterly fantastic. [#52, p.88]

Eno brings interesting and complex rhythmic counterpoints to his 3-a.m. atmospherics.... It all sounds so very sleepy in the end, and quite numbing, in a most uncomfortable way. [#51, p.92]

The songs on Sucker aren't the greatest tunes Brock has ever committed to tape... [#51, p.103]

Their dizzy, easygoing drone-pop has been replaced with faceless consistency, a sonic chutzpah that cries out "modern rock." This in itself doesn't mean Take Back... is a flop -- far from it. [#49, p.71]

The Facts of Life is a more polished affair, casting vocalist Sarah Nixey's wispy hush into a pool of plucked strings and orchestral flourish -- duly poisoned by some blippy Air trippiness. [#49, p.68]

Just when the Los Angeles-based trio's fourth album threatens to dissolve into another sleeping-beauty effort you might enjoy as a nightcap, something happens... [#48, p.74]

At its best, Bewilderbeast promises pastoral beauty.... At its worst, the album's faux-jazz workouts, painful disco homage, sappy ballads and pointless instrumentals stretch a decent EP into a bloated, hour-plus opus. [#47, p.84]

As a group, they're missing the sheer fuck-it-all unpredictability of the original band.... For the first half of Golden Lies, everything clicks with long-remembered power; but after half an hour, Curt and Co. start groping for new ideas and wind up repeating themselves, falling into formula instead of rewriting it. [#47, p.106]

Space-rock created in an energy vacuum. [#47, p.104]

Cosmopolitan, but often dull, easy listening.... Basically, Thievery Corporation skims the surfaces of more substantial styles and reconfigures them to create pleasant dinner-and-drinks music. [#47, p.124]

There's some buzzing and belling on "Puzzle," some crimped cracking that doubles as new wave, but for the most part, it's California dreaming at its dumbest.

The balance of the album is crammed to capacity with placeholders for more fully developed ideas.