American Life is revealing and diverting -- no bad things in a record -- but in the end the brow-beating, finger-wagging and psycho-babbling take their toll. [May 2003, p.86]

She breathes the vocals as if she were drifting in and out of death's door. [May 2003, p.95]

Despite being accessible like an electricity pylon, this trio of art-punk hysterics are as righteous as they are ridiculous. [Jul 2003, p.108]

The result is laidback and chilled. [Apr 2003, p.104]

Sound[s] like a typical Elephant 6-related band--absolutely fantastic. [May 2003, p.108]

Mesmerising stuff. [Mar 2003, p.109]

If you think The Rutles' Double Back Alley is better than Penny Lane, then this just-over-35-minute's worth of semi-reverential fun is for you. [Aug 2003, p.95]

There are times... when the stripping-down of The Jayhawks' aesthetic reveals [Gary Louris'] designs to be uncomfortably slight. [Apr 2003, p.92]

Adult. add unflinching aggression to the razor-sharp beats and vaguely sinister lyrics first mapped out on 2001's Resuscitation. [May 2003, p.104]

The pleasure... is in hearing it unravel. [Aug 2003, p.98]

A dozen simple, beautiful dirges. [May 2003, p.108]

A set of busy beautiful whispers, 62 minutes of exquisite suspended animation. [Apr 2003, p.87]

It is all heart, it is truth and it is beautiful. [Jun 2003, p.94]

A claustrophobic, mesmeric soundscape akin to My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3's early work. [Apr 2003, p.114]

A rich, compelling album. [Jun 2003, p.93]

Diego Garcia has fallen hard for Interpol's diagonal guitar/bass chimes, but his band's debut also suggests The Cure's pop-conscious first album rather than Joy Division. [Jan 2005, p.102]

Where Elephant does differ from what has gone before is in terms of quality. It's just better all round. [Apr 2003, p.88]

A record of substance, one that stands head and shoulders above today's garage bashers. [May 2003, p.89]

There's some terrific and accessible stuff here.... but the result is still an album that retreads old Placebo themes. [Apr 2003, p.110]

These 10 tracks positively bristle with feral, street fighter 'tude. [May 2003, p.97]

The failing voice at its core would clearly be happier in the privacy of lo-fi. [Mar 2003, p.106]

Full and lush, yet somehow homey and direct. [May 2003, p.97]

Their atmospheric twist'n'drone merits more acclaim than they've received so far. [Mar 2003, p.112]

A compelling blend of 21st Century world music. [May 2003, p.106]

Sounding assured and triumphant, Scotland's finest finally have realised their true potential. [Aug 2002, p.112]

There's a moving intimacy and improvisational feel to the wistful, late night, piano songs. [Apr 2003, p.108]

Bold, stirring and so unfashionable it just might work. [Mar 2003, p.114]

While the comparisons to Springsteen's Nebraska and Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) are obvious, they don't do justice to Jurado's wholly original craft. [Jun 2003, p.98]

Pig Lib is full of as many little mysteries as it is revelations. [Apr 2003, p.91]

Nobody's idea of "the new rock'n'roll," certainly, but it rings seductively true. [Mar 2003, p.109]

At times positively fizzes into life. [Jun 2003, p.110]

The highest of hi-technicalia and lo-fi acoustic instruments alternately clash, embrace, or pull apart, but ultimately, like Siamese twins, can't be parted. [Jun 2003, p.110]

If the album has a weak point, it's a sense of congestion. [Mar 2003, p.110]

Their most accessible, and arguably best, long-player yet. [Apr 2003, p.112]

There are no punk-lite hits here, but cult stardom is knocking at the door. [Mar 2003, p.112]

Frustratingly short of utter genius, but largely lovely too. [May 2003, p.102]

This is thrilling, intelligent stuff. [Dec 2002, p.122]

Sadly, the results are soul-less. [Apr 2003, p.99]

An unconventional beauty. [March 2003, p.114]

While the music is a combination of old Smog and new... there's a freshness here, a sense of change, and most remarkable, a real empathy on display. [May 2003, p.89]

A real emotional rollercoaster ride. [Apr 2003, p.102]

He sounds like a cross between Sonic Youth and Massive Attack, and the results are immediately convincing. [Apr 2003, p.100]

The wit and intelligence rarely lets up. [May 2003, p.95]

A fine piece of work. [Mar 2003, p.106]

Harper offers nice lines in homages to Marley, Basement Tapes Dylan, and funky James Brown. [Apr 2003, p.106]

An album of relentless, aching beauty. [Mar 2003, p.96]

Sounds surprisingly traditional. [Jul 2003, p.115]

For better and occasionally worse, it feels effortless for listener and writer alike. [Apr 2003, p.112]

Hersh's voice is measured, husky, and quietly defiant, the sound of the [Throwing] Muses' ambient alter ego. [Apr 2003, p.97]

An elegant digital reverie. [Apr 2003, p.112]

Stellar noise pollution. [May 2003, p.99]

This is a more consistent set, and, hopefully, a revelation for a few young metal heads. [Feb 2003, p.89]

Occasionally ground down in the past with the sheer weight of sadness, here Songs:Ohia sound defiant, uplifting, and never better. [Apr 2003, p.102]

Its songs hurtle at Buzzcocks pace and fizz with nagging melodies. [Jun 2003, p.110]

Donelly's wild, sweet tones are the perfect counterpoint to Hersh's cajoling banshee of a voice. [Apr 2003, p.97]

Cursive employ musical inventiveness and a healthy dose of self-awareness to set themselves apart. [Apr 2003, p.102]

Fantastic! [Aug 2002, p.112]

There is little truly distinctive here. [Jun 2003, p.113]

A reflective, pop album fit for a rainy afternoon. [Mar 2003, p.103]

Winds the clock back to a mid-'80s electro-soundworld in which melodies are crafted alongside beats, rather than crushed by them, and the tinkle of a keyboard carries a sinister air of mystery. [Mar 2002, p.104]

More accessible than of old. [Mar 2003, p.108]

An overreaching cathedral, designed by Spiritualized, Kris Kristoferson and John Barry, Human Conditions still somehow charms with its hungry troubadour's idealism. [Nov 2002, p.102]

The formula eventually sags. [Oct 2002, p.92]

Smoother than last year's Sign, this capricious set also contains some finely crafted instrumental sections. [Mar 2003, p.114]

This is accessible, if sometimes austere, modern electronica, distinguished by passages of unmitigated prettiness. [May 2003, p.108]

Thrilling. [May 2003, p.106]

Surprisingly much more accessible than the idea first sounds. [May 2003, p.106]

She's somehow too like several other singers and perhaps too unambitious a writer to immediately engage novitiates. [Mar 2003, p.114]

Somewhere between Faultline's bedroom-boffin invention and Stephen Merritt's pensive elegance. [May 2003, p.99]

Seductive, stirring songs about crushed hope and the corruption of beauty and some of their most ambitious arrangements make this their most fully-realised and accomplished album yet. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Occasionally... there's a sense of things being too studied, the brain doing the work of the heart. [May 2003, p.106]

[The Datsuns] do the rawk thing so well you can forgive them almost anything. [Dec 2002, p.106]

With You Are Free it feels like she's reached some kind of accomodation between a celebration of her vocal gift and a context within with she can happily offer it to everyone else. [Mar 2003, p.102]

Overlong, but Chocolate Factory is an impressively varied opus. [May 2003, p.100]

The Aislers don't always hit their mark, perhaps because the disparate interests at work also contribute to some unengaging instrumental, noise and nearly spoken word pieces. [Apr 2003, p.103]

Unfolds like a hand-stitched musical patchwork quilt, gently educating its listeners in the great American songster tradition. [Apr 2003, p.114]

It's recognisably the same band, but lower key, less structured, a set of soundscapes rather than songs, and sometimes almost gothic in its mood. [Mar 2003, p.97]

This is exhilarating stuff. [Mar 2003, p.111]

What they achieve here is hard to get right: lush, summery music-for-pleasure that sounds effortless. [Album of the Month, Sep. 2002, p.92]

Cave has managed to move away from the stifling atmosphere and the false captive environment of No More Shall We Part and somehow create a Cave world where The Bad Seeds can indeed stretch, howl, riff, sniff, grind and bark with a freedom unheard on record since 1993's Live Seeds. [Album of the Month, Feb 2003, p.84]

These songs of faith and endurance work because the singer/guitarist and his band play according to their album's title--with hearts of oak, which refers not to flesh turned stiff, but to spirits that are stout, strong, tall. [Apr 2003, p.112]

It's impressive, but heavy going, with scant trace of 50's acerbic humour. [Apr 2003, p.114]

As a record of one man's love affair with his guitar, it's a solid testament. As the work of one of British music's unshakeable geniuses, however, it's not really worth the name. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Still very much on the cerebral side of math-pop, Joan Of Arc have rarely sounded so open and welcoming. [Feb 2003, p.91]

Wheel reinvention, it ain't, but for insidious, emotionally overblown ear candy, Let Go hits a real sweet spot. [Nov 2002, p.113]

Occasionally meanders into lift muzak for people who only ever travel in really cool lifts. [Mar 2003, p.103]

Neither miraculous nor wholly divine, but it does mark Corgan's return to form. [Mar 2003, p.102]

Demanding, certainly, but a formidable and ambitious endeavour achieved with wit and passion. [Feb 2003, p.86]

It doesn't matter whether we're spying through his windows when he's so clearly spying through ours, his peculiarly stilted narratives and ageless music fusing into universal images of loneliness. [Feb 2003, p.94]

Malin and Adams have managed to create a record whose fearless classicism is all part of the point. [Dec 2002, p.114]

Hate is a record of immense ambition and sophistication, a bold vision, a beautifully calibrated meditation on the messy business of life. [Nov 2002, p.98]

One Bedroom finds the group in a more forthright mood -- just shifting up a gear makes a big difference. [Feb 2003, p.90]

A slick, clever and diverse set of populist dance and digi-rock songs. [Nov 2002, p.110]

Too wholesome for some, perhaps, but the melodies are reassuringly strong. [Oct 2002, p.96]

A record of startling breadth. [Feb 2003, p.96]

Less conceptually pure than its predecessor in terms of tone and motivation it may be, but Evil Heat's bespoke tailoring pays dividends time and time again. [Aug 2002, p.94]

The Roots have created another masterpiece. [Jan 2003, p.100]

A four-course meal of a record. [July 2002, p.108]