Pierce could still use lessons from Stereolab or Aloha on how to shape textures into songs. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.133]

In Our Bedroom After the War isn’t Stars’ best effort, but it ultimately satisfies: in wartime, one takes solace wherever one can.

The two discs offered here brim with ideas, some more navel-gazing than others. [#16, p.143]

Moorer's most muscularly produced and pointedly written release. [Aug 2006, p.87]

Electronic music edges ever so slowly toward nausea, a tendency to turn music into math. The best artists fight this with loving restraint. Bayonne is close to the mark, but there might be a few times when you reach for the volume and just say “enough” with the looping. Then there are times when it does work, as on the song “Spectrolite” with a heavier emphasis on analog instruments.

Oldham lacks the commanding vocal presence needed to convert delicate songs like "Master And Everyone" into shambling rock epics. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]

It's the band's fussiest, most elaborately conceived work to date. [Nov 2006, p.83]

So instantly pleasing, the trickery is transparent, a hook to keep listening until the content of Toby Leaman and Scott McMicken’s songs makes itself known.

Everything I loved about Fever... is minimized on this follow-up, replaced by a more temperate jangle. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.129]

In Our Nature’s fingerpicked reveries, sonic gentility and lugubrious vibe might tug at your eyelids, but be warned: Its heavy-hearted sentiments are hardly the stuff of dreams.

Strikes a nice balance between Shakira's more straightforward earlier sound and the bluster of her big crossover hits. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.122]

Happiness ultimately falls victim to a faintly generic feel. There’s nothing we haven’t heard before, so reserve the album for background music rather than close listening, and it shouldn’t disappoint.

With the title character appearing in several songs amid frequent descriptions of desert landscape, Josephine sounds like a concept album, at times tedious or academic....The Co. redeem these songs by creating beautiful scenery for Molina’s long, hard drive.

Display[s] a combination of openness and hookiness reminiscent of indie-minded chanteuses from Juliana Hatfield to Nelly Furtado. [Sep 2006, p.76]

While stocked with skillful guitars, tuneful vocals and the occasional hook, Without Feathers feels oddly unassuming, a plain-vanilla modern-rock record. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.122]

Though much of the blandness can be attributed to Matt Rollings' MOR production, one is left wishing an artist of Carpenter's considerable talents would eschew the aural dreck and truly shine. [May 2007, p.68]

It's refreshingly under-eager. [Aug 2006, p.94]

Put in context, White Chalk serves her purposes, much as Bruce Springsteen’s "Nebraska" served his. On initial listen, the album is not a step forward, nor is it a step back, but rather a lateral move intended to leave breathing room for her next attack.

These are lifeless non-revelations married to engrossing tunes.

It's on solo turns like "High Days"... that the elder statesman resounds much like... Bob Dylan recently did, stymieing a new generation with his continued craftsmanship. [Dec 2006, p.93]

Wonderful as they are, imagining the 76-year-old “Rocket 88” creator singing the weary gospel of “Remember When (Side A)” or the reflective “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be” makes Dan Auerbach’s vocals sound tragically demo-like.

A bevy of worthy underground rappers (Mr. Lif, The Coup's Boots Riley, Lyrics Born, and Lateef The Truthspeaker among them) struggle to distinguish themselves over the mid-tempo bootyshake churning around them.

It's actually a good radio-rock disc, just not the crossover hit Anastasio's been after. [Dec 2005, p.115]

While any given song on the album contains a memorable melodic passage or a compelling idea, some of them are more mixed in their results.

Aside from better production values, little has changed about the Scotsmen’s formula.

The album has the instantaneous feel of a blog. [Aug 2006, p.93]

What’s disappointing about A Fine Mess is not just that the songs are unremarkable but also that they don’t deviate from the band’s usual approach in any notable way. There are no oddball experiments here, no genre strays, no real risks to speak of. There are just five more songs that sound a lot like Interpol, for fans for whom that is always enough.

When so much music is so bleak, a little unlikely optimism might be a crucial palliative measure, rather than Pollyanna-ish head-burying, and it’s sanguinity that Dirty Vegas delivers in spades.