Rolling Stone (3/18/04, p.73) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "[The Brooklyn band is] indebted to everything from late-Eighties indie rock to classic soul music....DESPERATE YOUTH is a rebuke to their retro peers: Not all the good ideas have been taken already."

Rolling Stone (p.152) - Included in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Records Of 2004 - "DESPERATE YOUTH is more proof that sometimes the best records are the most challenging."

Spin (p.66) - Ranked #12 in Spin's "40 Best Albums of the Year" - "Easily the year's dizziest album, their debut sounds like Kanye West producing a punkabilly space-rock troupe."

Q (p.124) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[U]niquely intriguing, weaving in influences that have no right to mesh as coherently as they do....Singer Tunde Adebimpe has fashioned a genuinely novel sound."

Uncut (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 - "A far more effective transcription of frantic, funky Manhattan than the CBGBs set ever dreamt of..."

Uncut (p.76) - Ranked #36 in Uncut's "Best New Albums of 2004" - "This smart and soulful transcription of Manhattan's frantic energy is one of the year's better discoveries."

Magnet (p.67) - Ranked #15 in Magnet's "The 20 Best Albums Of 2004" - "[A] subway rumble through 60 years' worth of the five boroughs' golden greats."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.116) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[A] debut album that elegantly pursues their quest to sound like nothing they recognise....TVOTR are coming over loud and beautifully weird."