Nick Lowe has made the album of his career, a dozen stories of love and loss so beautifully simple that you'll never get to the bottom of them. [Nov 2001, p.12]

Uplifting, exuberant gloom. Tremendous. [Oct 2001, p.108]

A quirkier affair than their previous works.

Alluringly odd. [Mar 2002, p.112]

This time Linkous lets his gift for fractured folk song to resonate without encumbrance from freaky noise slugs. The results are sensational. [Jul 2001, p.98]

An album of joyful, desperate and messy songs, as honest and delicious as any on Pavement's 1992 classic, Slanted And Enchanted. [Sep 2001, p.92]

Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier's prettiest songs since '95's Music For The Amorphous Body Study Center. [Oct 2001, p.116]

A wealth of gorgeous melodies and hallucinogenic kitchen-sink orchestrations. [Dec 2001, p.98]

A gorgeous reverie. [Sep 2001, p.99]

More judicious editing might have rendered this a classic return to form, but there are still enough high spots to keep nostalgic fans happy. [Sep 2001, p.92]

Countless moments of sheer melodic magic. [Dec 2001, p.116]

The perfect album for cool, sequestered evenings in scary cities. [Sep 2001, p.102]

In many ways, My Love is an excessive, ludicrous - no, make that brazen, unapologetic - record; vital because it wasn't born out of a painfully self-conscious view of its maker's place in the world.

The bluegrass scene is now offically in touch with its feminine side. [Sep 2001, p.96]

Further evidence who believe Coxon is the most creatively restless member of Blur. [Aug 2001, p.98]

This is a profoundly good record. [Nov 2001, p.102]

It proves to be a violent, uncompromising record throughout...

The key problem lies in the album's occasional sense of underachieving drift. [Aug 2001, p.104]

The Detroit duo spin sordid tales and lovelorn drama with just the right amount of restrained percussion, blooze picking and screaming confessionals. [Sep 2001, p.93]

He's made the album he should've made right after Maxinquaye -- i.e., a listenable one. [Jul 2001, p.112]

In pursuing the anarchic, joyous mash-up of their debut Remedy to its twisted conclusion, Basement Jaxx find themselves in androgynous, genre-bending territory that is Prince-ly in spirit even when it isn’t in sound.

An album which makes his previous excesses seem conservative.... Dazzling though this bombardment is, it's a draining experience. [Jul 2001, p.97]

An interestingly mixed-up album. [Sep 2001, p.114]

It's a mellow, meditative and mid-paced work... TIB is still a strong record, which fans will grow to enjoy immensely. [Jul 2001, p.94]

If all you want to do is throw the same funky shapes you threw a decade ago, this long-awaited outing will more than suffice. Otherwise, it's the same old same old. [Jul 2001, p.114]

On first listen Poses feels diffuse and unfocused. [Jul 2001, p.108]

There's no easy niche in which you can place this new statement: like Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, it ventures into a doomy, mythological area, where the directions are muddied and the heartbreak is total. [Jul 2001, p.98]

Deliriously provocative, Amnesiac is as splendidly other and awkward as its sister album. [Jul 2001, p.104]

The album might almost be a study in stretching the limits of silliness, cliche and old-school rock'n'roll unreconstruction... [Jul 2001, p.114]

But once you settle into its desolate vista – and, believe me, it’ll take a few plays – 10,000 Hz Legend becomes just as addictive as its ancestor.

The mind-boggling intricacies and moody, broody sound-sculpting on tracks like Pen Expers find Autechre zooming off, leaving their followers eating cosmic dust. [May 2001, p.110]

The former Talking Head has rarely sounded so vital.

A slightly awkward but ambitious beginning.

Overall, the pickings are too thin for a band of their capabilities.

If beauty and ambition be the defining values of that album title concept, they're served up here in spades.

Blissed out, beautiful... and quite probably bonkers, with Dilate Bardo Pond seem intent on redrawing their personal cosmos's final frontiers yet again. [May 2001, p.100]

As one MOJO staffer commented, "This sounds like I'm trapped inside a damaged mechanical brain." Yes, it's that good. [May 2001, p.116]

The record is such a sprawling, unwieldy beast that the instrumental hooks take time to emerge.

A string quartet, reverby backing vocals, and Kraut keys crowd the songs like weeds strangling a once hearty plant. [May 2001, p.104]

Rarely has any modern band made The Difficult Third Album sound so breezy... [May 2001, p.96]

Incredibly, No More Shall We Part is as urgent and vital as Cave has ever been.... Raging and delicate, complex as faith and simple as a goodnight kiss, it is an incredible summation of a singular career.

All BRMC really have in common with The Strokes is hype and haircuts, but their music lives up to both. [Feb 2002, p.92]

As a singer, the South Dakota-born, Ontario and Illinois-raised Colvin occupies a niche between pensive Sheryl Crow and pre-jazz Joni Mitchell: no histrionics but a telling, often moving restraint.

Though "French Rock'n'Roll" is somewhat lacking in zest (quelle surprise), the care afforded to the rest of this record's conception and execution is obvious.

An eminently listenable collage of jittery grooves, lop-sided beats and wayward electronica.

It's hard to envisage anything this parochial moving beyond cult status.

The pair's lack of ambition might eventually grate but listen to this on your own on a rainy Sunday, with the thermostat set on 25 and its hallucinatory qualities might well invade your being.

If rock'n'roll is supposed to be dying, then these are exactly the guys we want manning the emergency room. [Aug 2001, p.98]

Despite a shared Giorgio Moroder influence, they are more DAF meets Soft Cell and early Detroit techno than a 21st century Human League.

Measuring out grief and resilience with a steady hand, these are the best songs of Low's quiet career. [Feb 2001, p.98]

Their groovy, meditative parlaying consistently elevates Live! Beyond the realm of optional for-diehards-only purchase. [Feb 2001, p.94]

On a couple of tracks neither hard-working studio team nor visiting vocalist get it right, but the impression is of all ego finally set aside in favour of engaging musical honesty.

There is an inflammatory urgency here that reminds you of why Kurt Cobain considered Black an almost saintly figure. [Feb. 2001, p.88]

Godhead take this '80's obsession one step further, crafting a sound so hypnotically synthetic it makes Heaven 17 sound like Robert Johnson. [Feb 2001, p.94]

Sadly, their steadfast refusal to engage the emotions is irritating and alienating. [Feb 2001, p.95]

Equal parts tantalising, frustrating, and riveting. [Jan 2001, p.106]

This crisp, Rick Rubin-produced outing packs away a machine that was well-oiled to the last. [Jan. 2001, p.107]

[Richard] Warren still makes great pop music--free of formula but full of character.

Her sinuous, Lady Dayish voice sets her apart. Unfortunately, it's not to be heard in full effect until about a third of the way through Mama's Gun... [Jan 2001, p.104]

It's all pretty essential stuff.

As ever, this is a very knowing and authentic nod to retro chic, but one which occasionally crosses the line between infectious and neve-jangling pop, with just a little more style than content. [Jan 2001, p.94]

For those new to Sylvian's work or for those who tuned out after Tin Drum, this welcome career cherry-picker serves as a perfect portal to discover some of the most haunting and beautiful music of the last two decades.

The use of computers and electronic SFX here emphasises their dark, distorting, disturbing qualities...

Cook has attempted to vary the Fatboy formula here but it's all gone a bit "mature".

The playing is terrific throughout... [Jan 2001, p.98]

Crafting a sound that incorporates stinky Funkadelic psych with Prince harmonics and Rick James' pimp disco, this is hip hop with the power to convert even the most reactionary nonbelievers. [Jan 2001, p.107]

If Swingle Singers melodies and mind-numbing repetition is your bag, you're on a winner here; basically, it's easy listening with a bit of electronica.

The solo J. has all the heartfelt keening of Where You Been-era Dinosaur, but with a fresh approach to his trademark blending of powerchords and melodies.

Stories is a leaner, less experimental-sounding record than 1998's Is This Desire, its chips stacked on visceral power and vitalising vocals.

Slimmer, leaner, more disciplined than its predecessor.

The higher production values simply water down R.L.'s natural vigour. [Jan 2001, p. 103]

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

The Parisian has lost his cool, let rip, taken his metaphorical shirt off, and it sounds liberating.

Though Black Jesus and Graves To Dig weld slow-burning hip-hop beats to politically astute lyrics, elsewhere the abundance of self-conscious singing and menopausal guitar noodling sees the album shuffle, uninterestingly, towards the middle of the road.

Nothing here will change your life, but rest assured that there's also little in the way of filler. (Oct 2000, p.104)

Breach is a dull affair of humdrum tunes, mundane performance, and lyrics which lose themselves in vague imagery as if Dylan were actually evading the chance to express himself.

The quality of both performances and recordings is exceptional for the time, with elegant versions of Starman and Oh! You Pretty Things affirming the confident new direction of Bowie's pop sensibility, and muscular renditions of Suffragette City, Queen Bitch and Changes.

This is undoubtedly his best record...

The results are engaging without quite reaching flashover.

Kid A is intriguing, eccentric, obviously a grower, but by Radiohead's standards it can't help but disappoint.

Warning is the sound of three men growing old far too gracefully.

Ultimately The Sea And Cake are just making timeless, faultless pop music.

Paul Simon still has it.

Hiatt's misfortune is your guaranteed entertainment.

There are glimpses of Curt's former shambling genius; I Quit and Pieces Of Me are both mournfully melodic, while Tarantula has the nimble bluegrass pickings of Up On The Sun-era Meats, but elsewhere rap-metal stupidity (Hercules) and over-polished rock plodding (Batwing) sour the beans.

Twelve years after the band split, it's immensely reassuring to hear Forster deliver lines only he could have written in his bruised, laconic, declamatory tone...

Misconceived is the polite word.

Music is fitful and its charms aren't all immediate, but Madonna is still doing what she does best--giving a lick of pop genius to the unlikely genre of experimental dance music.

An album of supreme control, Solaris proves that not all Zeitgeist tickling beats are necessarily bound for the coffee table.

In a nutshell, if you liked the previous stuff, you'll like this... it has as much right to a place in the world as Huey Lewis and the News ever did.

A fairly routine batch of middling-to-turgid funk numbers about lurrve performed with rather more duty than excitement.

Jones admits a queasy air of self-congratulation to her third album of jazzified covers.

Her songs, paradoxically both epic and intimate, shimmer and pulsate as their kaleidoscopic images and mysterious characters drift in and out of focus.

Godspeed have taken their by-now familiar elements and rearranged them in often beautiful or surprising ways.

The big tunes--Push Upstairs, King of Snake, Born Slippy--are brasher and more powerful, and while the studio subtleties evaporate, they are replaced by thundering rock-n-roll energy and even wilder streams of lyrical consciousness.

They deliver breathless, urgent rifferama, elements of which can be traced to RATM, The Stooges and Placebo.

The results can, surprisingly, prove as musically rewarding as they are entertaining.

As with all Stephin Merritt productions, the real stars are Stephin Merritt's wonderful songs, and the 14 love songs on Hyacinths And Thistles are as sweet and prickly as the title suggests.