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]

A mature and often profound record. [Dec 2002, p.102]

Post-techno production adds a depth and sheen to these fragile ruminations on the melancholy minutiae of existence. [Aug 2002, p.110]

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]