Lets you better appreciate his knack for weaving glorious pop songs out of change-ups and mixed signals. [Jul 2004, p.109]

She's become masterful at painting in the blues and grays of everyday emotion. [Feb 2005, p.92]

Whether Eleanor echoes her grandmother or provides a less mature counterpoint, her gravity melds with Sarantos' gusto for a dissonance that's never entirely discordant. [Nov 2005, p.100]

The best record they've made. [Apr 2003, p.107]

Is Dark Matter that different from immediate predecessors Backspacer, Lightning Bolt, and Gigaton? Not really. But is it somehow Pearl Jammier, in an ineffable sense? Yep—in fact, it’s something special.

It's not gallows humor, just the most natural thing in the world. [Oct 2003, p.113]

They sound like they're too busy tearing their limbs off and hitting one another over the head with them to think about what the songs actually mean. [Apr 2003, p.102]

There isn't a tune on No Cities Left, the Dears' gorgeous second album, that's not pitched at a minor state of emergency. [Jan 2005, p.99]

A fresh, literate blast of nuanced screamers and mid-tempo heart purging. [Aug 2003, p.119]

Sounds as informed by middle-American community theater, church choirs, and John Adams' American operas as any canonical "folk rock" it may resemble. [Jul 2005, p.102]

There's a nifty kind of egolessness about the NPs: They're team players in a way that few other bands are right now. [Aug 2005, p.93]

Years of gradually opening up their minimalism have imbued Low with the wisdom to make every new layer count. [Feb 2005, p.91]

Finds these thoughtful Brits exploring even more emotional territory. [Mar 2004, p.96]

Savage punk rock that shifts and shakes like the bleachers during a homecoming orgy. [Jan 2005, p.98]

Both sucks the air out of Dixie legend and revives it. [Sep 2004, p.122]

For the juke-joint blues of “Jimmy Mathis” and the breezy mountain song “Comin Round,” he takes old-school-as-the-hills song forms and gussies them up for the club.

[A] more toned-down, at times strikingly sincere, follow-up. [Dec 2005, p.104]

They're better at evoking turbulence than talking about it--efforts to cop '80s-pop vocals are overshadowed by the cascade and rumble of the instrumental long-players. [Apr 2005, p.102]

The flow is straight-up alien: chilled-out and frantic at the same time, slightly breathless. [Feb 2004, p.95]

A Kleenex-grabbing, chain-smoking, staring-out-the-window, in-bed-for-days breakup record. [Jun 2004, p.106]

A dark, emotionally intense record, best experienced on headphones. [Jan 2004, p.97]

Repulsion is like The Wild Bunch seen from the outskirts of Edinburgh, a European reflection of the stylized American West. [Aug 2005, p.99]

Few bands this side of Wilco float along so easily on little more than diagonally rendered elegiac noises and severe anxiety disorder. [Mar 2006, p.95]

His characters feel like individuals, not archetypes. [Sep 2004, p.114]

They do it better [than the Postal Service]--catchier songs, chillier production and more sophisticated beats. [Nov 2004, p.118]

They clearly prize improvisation and spontaneity; the songs always sound like they were written this morning, refined over lunch, and recorded in time for happy hour. [Jan 2004, p.103]

His loosest, most inspired set yet. [Mar 2005, p.86]

Even when the music flags, Common's remarkably hungry raps push it along. [Jun 2005, p.102]