These gradual pleasures fly in the face of today's pop/rock hardsell, for sure, but inexorably you are drawn into Kurt's world. [Mar 2002, p.100]

A few tracks sound blunt and under-realised, but mostly this is the sound of a champion artist getting good again. [Mar 2002, p.116]

There's an uncomfortable homogeneity about it all. [June 2002, p.100]

Fans are well served, but newcomers might tire waiting for the group's charms to percolate. [Feb 2002, p.93]

Every one of these 12 self-composed, played and produced tracks is absolutely stickled with hooks. [March 2002, p.108]

For the most part it's a genuinely thrilling, energy-charged adventure. [Feb 2002, p.98]

The same drifting mood is maintained from start to finish, all nine songs being gently eclectic acoustic musings with occasional electronic decorations. [Apr 2002, p.101]

Point is less a stylistic mash-up and more a stylish exploration of mood and groove. [Feb 2002, p.98]

The work of a genuine individualist. [Aug 2001, p.108]

Although [Future Songs] reveals no radical reinvention, it does see them stretching their creative legs. [Jul 2001, p.96]

Love Is Here is juvenalia -- persuasive, and suggesting greatness should the band have the courage (or the license) to cut loose. [Nov 2001]

An album as confrontational and consistent as Public Enemy's Apocalypse '91. [Feb 2002, p.93]

Holmes is scrabbling throught he ashes of Vegas strip supper-club jazz to craft a decidedly 21st century soundtrack, mourning its passing while happily rifling its pockets. [Album of the Month, Feb 2002, p.90]

The album takes on an airbrushed blandness that drowns out both the odd outbreak of compositional quality and the promise of adventure offered by the guests. [Dec 2001, p.104]

An enjoyably bad-ass record. [Feb 2002, p.102]

With a couple more new songs, this could have been a great second album rather than a stop-gap release. [Jan 2002, p.90]

A sprawling, instrumentally dazzling work which all but spurns pop songwriting. [Jan 2002, p.99]

The only gripe is that at 38 minutes, Insignificance is too short. [Feb 2002, p.92]

The thread which binds is Merchant's seductive, bittersweet voice, something which quickly finds the richer you, than nourishes it. [Dec 2001, p.104]

It's a puzzler.... Given brilliant execution, no doubt we'd still have come out with out hands up. Instead, it's patchy and the worst comes first. [Dec 2001, p.114]

This album stumbles on the lower slopes of her ambitions. [Mar 2002, p.101]

Hood have crafted a singular meeting of modern electronics, carefully layered arrangements and more conventional rock melancholia. [Dec 2001, p.96]

A satisfying, and often very moving, body of work. [Dec 2001, p.100]

Since I Left You fuses dozens of different styles -- and over 600 lovingly reconfigured samples -- into one riotously enthusiastic, awesomely seamless whole. [May 2001, p.116]

Tired, frightened-sounding and hopelessly misjudged.... Hugely disappointing. [Dec 2001, p.116]

There's a narcotic quality to these drifting ballads, one that perfectly suits these shell shocked, terrorised times. As the world gears up for the Apocalypse, I shall take comfort in Bavarian Fruit Bread -- a very haunting, beautiful record. [Nov 2001]

Listening to Bob Wratten is as necessary as a good cry. [Jan 2002, p.91]

Represents a giant leap backwards. [Nov 2001, p.112]

It's a pleasant place to hang out, though it occasionally feels like you're listening to a piece of fake history, a one-for-ourselves indulgence by a big band whose major work you've not heard. [Nov 2001]

Instrumentally complex and inventive. [Nov 2001, p.98]

Much of Get Ready is less a call to arms than the sound of an old man wheezing out of a creaky armchair. [Sep 2001, p.108]

Protest music that doesn't protest too much -- a music with such a joy and wit to its outrage that it acquires a universality beyond its subject matter. [Nov 2001, p.98]

The Sparks take the nascent country rock of their obvious influence and extraploate every last ounce of plangent guitar chime and yearing vocal polyphony until they ring afresh. [Nov 2001, p.100]

Like the band's best '80s output, Lilac6 is the work of a bona fide songsmith. [Nov 2001, p.108]

A heartily uplifting brew of scruffy street style, swear words and stammering pop tunes which sweat musical history. [Sep 2001, p.99]

His relentless intelligence is itself a consolation, bearing gifts of order and sly humour -- though not so many haunting tunes as on, say I'm Your Man. [Nov 2001, p.100]

Death Cab weave together smartly taut guitars with vivid observational lyrics to create perfectly crafted pop songs, stunning in their simplicity and beauty. [Apr 2002, p.96]

We could probably live without at least one of the three lengthy, slightly prosaic tracks that tail-end proceedings, but stand-outs Cup Of Coffee and Androgyny more than compensate. [Nov 2001, p.116]

Somewhere in there Brown's murmurous vocals and the lyrics tend to get lost. [Sep 2001, p.99]

Could well be her finest yet. [Oct 2001, p.128]

It is an unconvincing record as a whole, and parts of it are profoundly dull. [Oct 2001, p.124]

Their most affecting and cohesive statement to date. [Oct 2001, p.108]

Dour, sub-Velvets melodies and droll, haiku-like lyrics tinged with desperation. [Sep 2001, p.110]

The Id simply turns up the levels on what made her debut so big, in the process overshadowing the background detail that made that album so special. [Oct 2001, p.128]

The power and import of the record is undeniable. [Oct 2001, p.112]

Great tunes delivered in ways you'd never dreamed of. [Oct 2001, p.122]

A triumph, possessing a universal appeal that extends beyond the dancefloor straight to the heart. [Sep 2001, p.100]

An album virtually bereft of fluff and filler. [Album Of The Month] [Oct 2001, p.104]

If anything, surpasses its illustrious predecessor. [Sep 2001, p.98]

Most tracks succumb to unambitious disco stylings. [Sep 2001, p.108]

Folds' songwriting continues to impress. [Oct 2001, p.130]

A transformation beyond all recognition. [Sep 2001, p.114]

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.