There's nothing on their fourth album that couldn't have been recorded in the early to mid-1980s. [Sep 2010, p.50]

Together, these two collections add up to a desolate statement that is naked enough to make listening feel like a act of voyeurism. [Sep 2010, p.62]

Ultimately, though, one crucial element is missing: El-P's voice. His desperate, throbbing-forehead-vein rapping is as vital as his sound as the synths or the beats, and this disc would have been vastly improved by even one bilious verse. [Aug 2010, p.61]

He telegraphs all too simplistic rhymes schemes and rarely offers subject matter beyond deeply cliched braggadocio. He's rapping like he doesn't want to be there. [Oct 2010, p.67]

There is aimlessness on occasion--the mainly instrumental "OVNI" frankly just sounds like messing around--but for the most part the sense of glee in vigorous sound making for cranky and rebellious ends is infectious. [Aug 2010, p.86]

If Richter was attempting to instill some of the haunted bleakness of Winterreise into his own music, he has certainly succeeded. [Jul 2010, p.60]

It all slides down very easily--but there's isn't much of an aftertaste. [Aug 2010, p.66]

He frequently seems bored with his own raps, rarely breaking his monotone and indifferently fluctuating between bragging about the quality of his weed and bragging about nothing. The record's saving grace comes with reemergence of producer Ski Beatz. [Sep 2010, p.68]

The feeling of opiated depressive inertia that weighs it down is compounded by the sugary viscosity of Danger Mouse;s production. Yet it's these slower songs, shaped by Linkous's Country-inflected enervation and Danger Mouse's attention to sonic detail, that work best, while the more up tempo, rockier tracks come off as perfunctory. [Jul 2010, p.53]

The album is the product of a consistent vision, synthesizing hip-hop's beat architecture and sound manipulation with bespoke funk playing. [Sep 2010, p.50]

The results are mixed. The album never fully escapes the feeling of rootless hipster genre-rifling. But the skill of Mast and Stroud at engineering riffs cannot be denied. [Jul 2010, p.60]

It seems likely Buzz and company have also been listening to a fair bit of Magma and Aphrodite's child, given the interludes of unaccompanied percussion, brooding Gothic keyboards and tightly complex arrangements which result in the most consistently impressive album this line-up has released to date. [Jul 2010, p.64]

There are signs of eclectism creeping in, but these are balanced by the group's tendency to consolidate its progression with a rearguard action of sheer brute force. [Jul 2010, p.56]

This mood of rocking-chair wistfulness becomes soporific, and there are times when, frankly, the mind, unjabbed by the sort of stimulus that was once Byrne & Eno's stock in trade, begins to wander. [Oct 2008, p.54]

His maniacal energy is infectious. [Nov 2008, p.77]

Hebden is clearly striving for dancefloor impact--but Reid's drumming is so untethered and, frankly, messy, that it sucks the explosions out of whatever bombs Hebden's trying to drop. [Dec 2008, p.60]

The elegantly bruised production is so captivating that I'm left longing for Ripatti to once again sink the vocals intot he subliminal and the sublime, as he did on "Vocalcity." [Nov 2008, p.66]

This 21st century Berlin sounds more muscular and dangerous, but not without a certain delicacy either. [Nov 2008, p.68]

It all makes for an album which is strangely boring; the baroque detailing becomes an inaudiable blur. [Dec 2008, p.65]

This is one of the best garage pop sides sine The Chills' own "Brave Words." [Dec 2008, p.70]

Once you make the adjustment and accept these songs for what they are, ther are moments of loveliness. But for the most part, one can onlyy wonder what attracted Russell to indulge in this sort of stuff given his more renowned output. [Nov 2008, p.68]

There's Me And There's You, it turns out, a perfectly logical oddity. [Nov 2008, p.62]

Car Alarm strips away the exotic and the curious. [Nov 2008, p.70]

It all sounds wonderful, sparkling and glistening. Yet it doesn't make a dent that one might expect. [Oct 2008, p.56]

If the crackling electronic chaff of previous efforts seems less dominant this time around, it most likely because the group have learned to skillfully incorporate it into their increasingly accomplished and accessible songcraft. [Nov 2008, p.74]

Just as David Tibet uses English folk to create his own apocalyptic mythos, so Wood takes the bare bones of Americana and makes something personal and timeless. [Oct 2008, p.58]

There's little in the way of structural reinvention, but then Oldham has never really been a sonics man, and the success of this album rests on one's appreciation of his songwriting alone. [Oct 2008, p.52]

Pioulard's work is a remarkably effortless cohabitation between bedroom electronics and wistful songwriting. [Dec 2008, p.64]