" We are everywhere at once/ We are waiting for the sun/ What to do to pass the time?/Ride the highways of our minds." It's this sort of playful, sing-along, gang chorus nonsense that fuels Portland, OR-based Alan Singley's Lovingkindness and slots much of the album into a fairly recognizable niche: Funk-inflected stoner frat rock with a devil-may-care, hands-in-the-air attitude. "I Don't Know Where to Start" (which is precisely where Singley chooses to start) has a tongue-in-cheek Bloodhound Gang groove to it, and "Short Sleeve Stumblah" recalls Crooked Rain-era Pavement in both sound and title. Yet the points where Singley & Co. depart from this upbeat, bubblegummy formula can be painfully awkward and mawkish. The ballad "Yr Little Hand in Mine," with its peculiar inclusion of what sounds like a digeridoo, is musically accomplished but lyrically dull, though even then it's ten times stronger than the rambling, trite "Watersong."

The second half of the album shifts gears ever so slightly, moving away from the hip-swaying crowd pleasers but not the bathetic ballads. "Bruises" is more in a Jonathan Donaldson vein: soft pop with dreamy vocal harmonies offset by raw retro moments – moments that will be drawn out to song length in the ensuing Kinks-influenced "Cruel, Cruel World" and "4 Dollahz." Then comes the final onslaught of ballads, three in a row, each built around high school poetry grasping at some kind of larger meaning.

Lovingkindness is a generally good showcase for Singley and his band's musicality, and it's equally good as a soundtrack for the kegger at Kappa Phi. But despite the episodes of clumsy earnestness, it's also quite a shallow album, which makes it difficult to imagine coming back to these songs again and again. – Eric J. Iannelli (2006, The Daily Copper)