This is one of the best albums of 2000.

Transcendent and well-turned, Soft Commands is another exceptional recording from a talented, aware artist.

She sounds as distant as much of the Anthology of American Folk Music, and yet there is an intimacy to her songs. This is a singer/poet who really feels things. And this is the new, weird America, and Holland is singing its woes with a wisdom far beyond her age.

The Strokes don't make the most original sounding music you've ever heard, but they make something that is only The Strokes.

The comparisons to the Mamas and the Papas are ultimately weak; there's a lot of blues mixed in with the folky pop, and traces of '80s British band Prefab Sprout, who also spun their troubles into melodic gold full of boy/girl harmonizing.

[He's] invented a loud and severely impassioned polished rock sound.

Listening to Hypermagic Mountain is like picking up the live end of a downed power line.

If Foxtrot's songs were fractured pop, then Ghost is just plain fracture, a soft and brutal self-examination that pulls no punches even as it manages to remain carefully elliptical.

Sigur Rós piece together breathtaking orchestrations that sound like they're singing to you from another world, telling you why your world is not so bad, that even in all the miserable monotony, something beautiful perseveres.

In the end, it is musicianship that makes Duper Sessions unquestionably successful.

YHF is a fierce record.

It's a sound that doesn't loudly proclaim itself, but nevertheless insinuates its way in, until it feels quietly indispensable.

Exceptionally beautiful and assured.

The Crane Wife is an impressively realized song cycle.

Cannibal Sea is startlingly immediate.

This is the defining Destroyer work because of its size and scope, because of its melodicism ("Painter in Your Pocket" the hottest pop song Bejar's authored yet), because of the caliber of its musical chops, and because of the shots Bejar continues to fire.

Berman's most accomplished album.

O's seductive, cooing/shrieking contributions to the power of the Yeahs are immense, but they are no bigger than those of guitarist Zinner or drummer Chase.

For Human Animal, Wolf Eyes have stepped back from pure violence, bringing in some of the old cinematic features while retaining pieces of the vicious nature that has served them well.

His 12th record holds no surprises for longtime fans, and yet here it is, his best, his greatest.

This is simply some of the best guitar-driven rock I've heard all year.

Donelly shows a grace on this disc that a lot of people her age aren't capable of.

Unlike previous albums, Ovalcommers wheezes and squirms its way inside.

No, this album is not superfluous -- far from it. The Avalanche brings Stevens' exacting vision on Illinois into sharper focus.

The icy qualities of Last Exit's synths are retained, but the old minimalism is certainly gone, and enough real warmth buoys these productions that songcraft actually develops.

Finn's masterful lyrics can't be ignored. And the music, stopping, starting and crashing with wrenching enthusiasm, is equally undeniable. But the way Finn understands the human condition in all its glory and contradiction is, simply, brilliant.

With About a Boy, Badly Drawn boy has grown up.

While their sound may be familiar, Camera Obscura are anything but run-of-the-mill.