Joni Mitchell's voice these days is as complex and adult as bourbon whiskey. [Dec 2002, p.116]

This band could, and should, go mega. [Jan 2003, p.99]

A quirky yet coherent whole. [May 2002, p.97]

Their songs aren't as good as their playing. [Apr 2003, p.98]

Characterised by both an ill-advised flirtation with cutting-edge electronics and an overabundance of rather washed-out reggae. [Jun 2003, p.98]

This album has plenty of ideas and plenty of 'moments.' [Jan 2003, p.92]

Testify really doesn't work. [Dec 2002, p.122]

It's the first time in the history of the Missy-Timbaland team-up where, having delivered the goods early on and earned the space to do whatever theheck they like, they tread water instead of pushing things forward. [Album of the Month, Jan 2003, p.90]

A sophisticated set of cutting edge R&B.... TLC's best, most consistent LP. [Dec 2002, p.106]

As a whole it lacks the unity of mood the characterised White Ladder... but there is much to love. [Dec 2002, p.106]

It's impressive stuff. [Jan 2003, p.100]

Not a record for those prone to depression, but a varied, substantial and intriguing one. [June 2002, p.112]

If this is to be Cash's last album, then what a magnificent way he has chosen to say goodbye. [Album of the Month, Dec 2002, p.100]

Part of a singular lineage of deceptively amiable and peculiarly British music that reaches back from Supergrass to Madness and Squeeze. [Nov 2002, p.102]

The Wallflowers make some of the best radio-friendly hooks and melodies around. [Mar 2003, p.112]

Sits to the right of the likes of Philip Glass and Glenn Branca while outdoing the experimentalism of either Radiohead or Sigur Ros. [Jan 2003, p.98]

The album rocks, its symphonic depth and stratosphere-surfing melodies more affecting with each subsequent listen. [Jan 2003, p.98]

Largely an enjoyable exercise in the perversion of the three-minute pop song. [Nov 2002, p.110]

[A] fractiously funky but resolutely glum return. [Dec 2002, p.108]

Has more to do with Primal Scream's Evil heat than any arched-eyebrow electro-clashers. [Dec 2002, p.113]

While her writing is often flattened by the ungainly toil of navvying away for the Big Idea, the flame of toriamosness burns through at times. [Nov 2002, p.114]

The album's real trump card is its abiding sense of goggle-eyed imagination. [Nov 2002, p.98]

Santana plays gloriously throughout. [Jan 2003, p.97]

Cracknell's straight '60s pop ballads sit oddly, but a clubbable Shower Scene and well-electroclash Amateur and New Thing suggest more than a fiar outlook for the weathering well threesome. [Oct 2002, p.110]

A very fine record. [Feb 2003, p.86]

They may have just failed to make a Great Rock Album--though it has many moments of greatness--but they have unquestionably become a Great Rock Band. [Album of the Month, Nov 2002, p.90]

Sure, Spend The Night's pile-up of head-nod riffs and fist-pumping chants gets a little repetitive, but the groove suits The Donnas so well, you can forgive them. [May 2003, p.106]

A winningly downbeat brand of urban realism, set to minimal, pounding drums. [Apr 2002, p.115]

[The] material [is] often so simple in construction that a check of the enclosed lyric sheet is sometimes necessary to ensure the songs really exist. [Jan 2003, p.102]

Listening eventually becomes a test of endurance for anyone raised on the true country sounds of a Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris. [Dec 2002, p.115]

It's a glorious entente of old and new technology. [Jul 2003, p.101]

The difference on this album is that their amps and tempos are turned up and their sound is pared down. [Jan 2003, p.102]

It's a little too long to sustain its fetid boudoir ambience; but that aside, this remains a deep red velvet swoon of an album. [Jan 2003, p.93]

Nothing sounds quite as expected. [Nov 2002, p.108]

When on their game -- about two-thirds of this to-the-point-set -- Hot Hot Heat are too breathlessly enjoyable to refuse. [Apr 2003, p.98]

What keeps him afloat is his unflagging pursuit of a good tune. [Nov 2002, p.102]

Great in places, but somehow not quite Ron. [Dec 2002, p.122]

An almost austere album, the production deliciously dry, forcing lyrics and beats to share the foreground. [Nov 2002, p.106]

Taken all together these songs pack a powerful punch and make for a much better record than we might have expected. [Dec 2002, p.108]

Without ostentation, The Ragpicker's Dream draws his major sources together: R&B, country, North-East folk. [Oct 2002, p.106]

Half existential joy'n'emptiness, half just empty. [Oct 2002, p.96]

A worthy addition to the small Boys catalogue. [Dec 2002, p.122]

Sea Change aches too thoroughly to be mere career shift. It's the kind of album that at times seems too sad for the singer's own good. [Album of the Month, Oct 2002, p.90]

A sometimes disturbing, but often breathtakingly lovely record. [Oct 2002, p.98]

Beam's evocation of elemental themes and dramas is too profound and affecting to deny. [Jan 2003, p.92]

A richly rewarding album. [Nov 2002, p.114]

They have settled gracefully into the task of making a consistently glorious racket. [Oct 2002, p. 100]

In replacing the stark natural timbre of recent albums with layers of reverb and oblique orchestration, the pure heart of the songs has been obscured, if not lost. [Oct 2002, p.96]

While on occasion disappointingly heavy handed, the more wistful moments shine through the murk. [Nov 2002, p.105]

Depending what side you take in the Heartbreaker v. Gold debate, you'll like some tracks more than others. [Oct 2002, p.92]

Another stirring record. [Feb 2003, p.88]

Consider this a Zen disc: sit with it awhile, and it will come to you. [Nov 2002, p.105]

This bloody enormous rock demeanour means Stone Roses fans may not be amused. [Oct 2002, p.96]

It's mostly a success, though its dominant tone of understated, rainy melancholia is unlikely to earn Parish a dressing room with a star on the door. [Oct 2002, p.108]

It's his skill as a bruised, intimate narrator that makes this album such an alluring addition to Doe's swelling canon. [Feb 2003, p.90]

You have wit, wisdom, and yet another Adamson sonic script you wish someone would film. [Oct 2002, p.100]

The cumulative effect is wildly narcotic. [Oct 2002, p.100]

ESG are still creating music of eerie austerity. [Oct 2002, p.108]

Some of the most powerfully surging melodies from a British band since the second Travis album. [March 2002, p.114]

All the elements which made its predecessor so great are here, but in excelsis, and occasionally excess. [Sep 2002, p.95]

The line between hypnotic and tediously repetitive is occasionally crossed. [Sep 2002, p.94]

Johns has finally learned how to cull from his influences without plagiarising them. [Sep 2002, p.95]

Michael Lockwood's production occasionally affects a sound akin to a Vonda Sheppard reared on black dreams and Russian literature. [Oct 2002, p.98]

Musically, it's the richest record of Pulp's career.... We Love Life isn't perfect, but it is vital. [Nov 2001, p.96]

Among their best. [Sep 2002, p.104]

She's one of a handful of people who could sing the telephone directory. [Dec 2002, p.115]

Humour saves the Liars. [Sep 2002, p.110]

Another masterfully blended cocktail of restless electronic beats, analogue daubings and digitally blasted vocals. [Nov 2002, p.110]

His most commercial sounding material to date. [Nov 2002, p.106]

Like most homage platters, the affair is only as strong as its weakest moments. [Nov 2002, p.113]

One Beat is not an album you slip into. You pick it up, study it, twist it, put it down, pick it up again. [Sep 2002, p.108]

It's ever so nice, except for the nagging feeling that a disembodied voice is about to say, "I'm going to count backwards from five and, when I snap my fingers, you will wake up and remember none of this." [Sep 2002, p.106]

A big, bold, brazen statement, epic in places, charmingly flawed in others. [Sep 2002, p.110]

The focus remains upon Lightbody's gauche romantic vignettes; nirvana for those who believe the world could usefully sustain a second Lou Barlow, but over an album's duration akin to persistent immersion in lukewarm herbal tea. [Sep 2002, p.104]

Kissin Time is full with Faithfull's own history: disaster next to glory, next to the overriding feeling that, come what may, she will slide through it all by dint of charisma, wit and, indeed, charm. [Album Of The Month, March 2002, p.98]

Miraculously, it succeeds as a rambunctious, unruly grenade of largely unmitigated spleen, a hail of words set to music. [Sep 2002, p.96]

A tad melodramatic at times, this remains a "Christian rock" album with a serious hellhound on its trail. [Sep 2002, p.94]

Relative to her potential, she remains an underachiever, straitjacketed by Nashville craftsmanship in writing and arrangement. [Oct 2002, p.104]

This is her best to date, but she'll be better yet. [Sep 2002, p.102]

There are more retro-sounding pop-R&B numbers with "sha la la" backing vocals than the subject matter might indicate, a stadium rocker, some soulful ballads recalling early Van Morrison, and stirring gospel. [Sep 2002, p.94]

Showcases her passionate and bittersweet voice in a stripped-down atmosphere. [Aug 2002, p.104]

Public Enemy are still making music of great substance and potency. [Dec 2002, p.122]

[The] eight covers [are] all imaginatively and emotionally committed, six of them brilliantly so. [July 2002, p.96]

If Yoshimi.... lacks the sheer shock value of Bulletin's panoramic delirium, its peak moments are enough to make it one of 2002's most rewarding releases. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.92]

Morcheeba's lightly shaken, hardly stirring sounds will doubtless satisfy fans, band and record company. [Aug 2002, p.104]

She's still producing songs that stand comparison with those past and purloined classics. [Aug 2002, p.106]

Subtle string and brass arrangements add to the brooding, stylish swing, evidence that some things never go out of fashion. [Sep 2002, p.97]

The strongest Chili's album since 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

There's only fleeting glimpses of Jason's weakness for dimestore Minutemen angularity. [Sep 2002, p.104]

There's got to be something better, man. [July 2002, p.94]

This is a raging leviathan of a set, each track a powerful, swaggering anthem. [May 2002, p.97]

It's hard to imagine a more perfectly realised Wire artefact. [Sep 2002, p.95]

The band's conventional elements are even more conventional while the boundary-pushers stretch as far as ever. [Album of the Month, July 2002, p.92]

Windsor For The Derby have finally planed away the rough edges from their music. [Dec 2002, p.110]

Universal Truths is not as raw overall as GBV's earliest efforts, but it seems much closer to their wonderfully chaotic live sound than the last couple of records have. [July 2002, p.104]

Equal parts fierce and sprightly. Excellent. [Jan 2003, p.93]

Heathen is a fine restatement of classic Bowie elements with contemporary twists. [July 2002, p.110]