One of their catchiest, most rewarding listening experiences to date.

Some may consider the Super Furries to be treading water on Phantom Power because it feels comfortable and familiar. But when something sounds this good and touches this many bases, I'll take a few more like this one.

It's rich and multi-layered, yet straightforward and deliciously chilly.

He's proven that he can do some beautiful long players, but this just sounds like someone else's greatest hits. Which isn't to say it's not one of the top 20 albums of 2002, because it is. But it shoulda been Top Ten.

Like The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency and I, this seems to glide from one high-energy song to another, each one unique and fascinating by itself, echoing the sparse tones of The Police here and there, or INXS's Kick-era attention to beat in other places.

Laced with bitter irony so thick it drips out of your speakers.

Moments of greater emotional color might have turned what is an exemplary post-breaks exploration by a master into something brilliant.

The lyrics are Echoboy's Achilles' heel.

We Are Science is strikingly gorgeous and powerful. It's also just a little bit cheesy (but in a good way), as though you were watching Patsy Kensit star in Breaking The Waves.

The end product falls short of being synergistic. Neither contender in this sonic duel really lets loose; both Shipp and Anti-Pop Consortium seem too passive and deferential toward each other.

This is a hard, focused album that should both piss off and impress the jazz and rock clientele in equal measures.

Vague and awkward.

This is a good album, though disconcertingly reminiscent of something you could have heard on Modern Rock radio 12 years ago.

It is the kind of album that becomes more endearing with each listen, with each song evincing a gorgeousness missed the first time around.

Life On Other Planets isn't quite as much fun as previous Supergrass releases; perhaps, a sign that the boys are growing up.

Have You Fed the Fish? seems like a bit of a let down. A surprisingly catchy and listenable disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless.

Human Conditions is the sound of Ashcroft searching for personal and spiritual connections and seeking higher truths in soaring pop choruses. All this existential meditation leaves us, like him, ultimately unfulfilled.

Ikara Colt deliver their rock with a boastful swagger but still fail to generate too much excitement.

As a whole, Man Vs. Machine signifies a dialectic vacillation between lyrics and beats that are refreshingly intelligent, without being pretentious, and themes (manifested sonically and ideologically) that are recycled and uninspired.

One By One, the latest album from the Foo Fighters, rocks. Problem is, that is about all it does.

Hints at greatness, but never quite sustains it.

Slideling isn't a terrible album by any means. It just doesn't have a whole lot of depth to it.

It's all too much like a fumbling Pink Floyd tribute, continually reaching a point where the psychedelica fails to follow up with the required kick, allowing the whole fragile structure to collapse into self-indulgence and bathetic kitsch.

Skimskitta's refusal or lack of ability to move beyond sketchy hisses and glitches makes for a too sprawling, too unfocused affair.

Unfortunately the record sports plenty of filler.

The Datsuns' biggest problem isn't the style of music they're playing, though. It's the sub-standard quality of their songwriting, the uninspired performances on here and the fundamental lack of willingness to stretch beyond the safe confines of their older brothers' record collections.

If the listener is patient, and wades through over an hour of mediocrity, there is brightness at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the doom and gloom here wears out its welcome quickly.