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]

Overlong, but provocative and engaging. [Dec 2002, p.116]

The album is packed with sunny tunes which carry a '60s and '70s feel, but Prewitt never coasts. [July 2002, p.104]

The album only stretches to 35 minutes but its quality more than compensates. [July 2002, p.112]

Last Broadcast is visceral, pulsing, uplifting, widescreen but has none of the bluster that would tip its forbears into self-parody. [May 2002, p.108]

With The Private Press DJ Shadow ups even his own considerable ante. [May 2002, p.96]

High Society [proves] Schmersal capable of a good, straight-forward pop song. [July 2002, p.100]

Their pop peaks sound like an ecstatic communion of Mercury Rev, ELO and the cast of Hair. [Oct 2002, p.110]

An extraordinary album. [Aug 2002, p.95]

A pleasantly surprising step in the right direction. [May 2002, p.104]

A languorous, mid-paced affair that eschews visceral assault and pop nous for a raw, prowling, feline angularity. [June 2002, p.108]

A distinctly melancholic affair. [Aug 2002, p.102]

You finish listening to 18 feeling as if you've heard a decaffeinated version of Play. [June 2002, p.98]

For all his sour wit, however, Zevon remians a musical craftsman who's happy to leave the lyrics to others. [July 2002, p.102]

Charms on the surface yet stays in the memory. [Oct 2002, p.108]

Listen closely and you'll probably detect the likes of Wire, XTC and New Order but like contemporaries Hot Hot Heat and Ted Leo's Pharmacists, French Kicks are rocking their own joyfully addictive sound. [Jun 2003, p.101]

Vaporous, layered, beautifully evocative, with moments of discordant madness. [Co-Album Of The Month [with 'Blood Money'], May 2002, p.94]

Blood Money makes for an extravagant headphone experience if you're in the right frame of mind. If not, its clatter and blare and nihilism will genuinely jangle your nerves. [Co-Album Of The Month (with 'Alice'), May 2002, p.94]

The aural palette is as wide as ever... but in the service of songs that might be sung on the morning train, under stars on a moonless night or even in the bath. [Apr 2002, p.116]

The seemingly effortless confidence displayed throughout is startling. [Apr 2002, p.108]

When I Was Cruel is bursting with bile and romance, tricky lyrics and tantalising tunes, and finds him practically trampolining with the thrill of messing about with sounds. [May 2002, p.108]

The perfect vehicle for Eitzel's gorgeous, weary voice and wry, savage humour. [June 2002, p.106]

Exuberant and undeniable... if you don't own a Luna album, start here. [Aug 2002, p.112]

These songs move so languidly they seem self-pitying. [July 2002, p.104]

A masterpiece, exactly the sort of record that your average sentient pop genius should make in 2002. [May 2002, p.99]

Manages to provide a more coherent and enjoyable listening experience than mainstream dance bods like Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx have delivered of late. [Album of the Month, April 2002, p.94]

Half of Release feels like an old routine -- looming melancholy and not-quite-cheery disco by the pound. [Apr 2002, p.108]

Armstrong takes the Massive [Attack] approach to celebrity guests, utilising them in imaginative ways to avoid the pitfalls of self-parody. [May 2002, p.97]

Holmes's genius is to create a space in which these records are not only at home, but where they shine. [Apr 2002, p.128]

It's not perfect by any means, and having two of the weakest tracks in pole positions doesn't help. [May 2002, p.98]

An homage to Memphis soul and R&B that initially seems a pleasant lark but grows blander and more characterless the more it is heard. [Apr 2002, p.106]

There's enough happening here to perk up demanding ears. [June 2002, p.106]

Brings to mind the MC5, the Stones and Otis Redding. [Jun 2003, p.113]

A profoundly ordinary, deeply monotonous LP. [Apr 2002, p.100]

SFA's first truly flawless album.... Sad, lush, romantic, beautiful, heartbroken, crazy, this is an album powerful enough to make you shout out loud in public or cry alone at night. [Aug 2001, p.96]

An eccentric, genre-hopping tribute to the mutability of song-craft. [Mar 2002, p.101]

One of the most cerebral-yet-groovy hip hop albums you'll hear. [Apr 2002, p.104]

It is quizzical, troubled, socially concerned, compassionate, schizoid, retro-eclectic, strikingly modern, racially mixed--and even likes women. [Apr 2002, p.112]

Is not only utterly delectable but manages to find genuinely new ways to shape heartbreak. [Dec 2002, p.114]

Unfashionable and intensely melodic. [June 2002, p.110]

The actual tunes may not be particularly strong, but crucially, at the centre of it all Natalie croons and sighs with all the clear-eyed moonfaced sweetness of Juliette Binoche baking cakes. [Dec 2001, p.116]

The results are mesmeric in their stately extrapolation of gloom. [May 2002, p.102]

Ten years from now, someone will stumble across this in a thift shop, buy on a whim and be thrilled. [Sep 2002, p.96]

Clinic just aren't as sinister as they first seem. They're damaged, but friendly and worth visiting. [Mar 2002, p.105]

This is Billy Bragg as known and loved by many. The difference comes from the never more buoyant Blokes. [Mar 2002, p.114]

Astonishingly, her own production makes much of this guff zing along with dirty guitars or big drum beats and improbably insinuating choruses. [Apr 2002, p.100]

Not a crossover record, but invigorating. [Mar 2002, p.114]

The quirky rhythmic tics remain, as do the cheeky little melodies, but this is a tougher and funkier project altogether. [Feb 2002, p.100]

Challenging and sometimes extraordinarily beautiful. [Mar 2002, p.108]