Slowing down, but in no need of the hard shoulder. [March 2011, p. 97]

London singer-songwriter attempts to annex the middle ground between Benga and Anthony Hegarty. [March 2011, p. 96]

Swedish chanteuse returns with guns blazing. [March 2011, p. 96]

For all its romance, this is a record at the sharp end of mortality. [March 2011, p. 96]

Chillwave premier goes in search of the funk. [March 2011, p. 95]

Cherished Canuck crooner recruits Metallica's producer. [March 2011, p. 95]

Can a band that has been as good as defunct since the 1980s truly recapture their spark? The answer appears to be yes. [Apr 2011, p.98]

The stated modus operandi--everybody is leading and following--results in some fascinating new angles and delicious surprises on familiar material. [Apr 2011, p.107]

Tell Me is a pure and earnest amble through heartbreak, Bluegrass-tinged, with Seldom nods to anything approaching modern. [Apr 2011, p.106]

Only on the title track's cavernous '80s-era bass synths does Jaar come close to being conventional. [Apr 2011, p.105]

They write about what they know. Once that was dashed hopes and broken hearts, now its families and what sounds like pages from a diary. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Uneasy listening at its ghost-in-the-machine best. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Its mood affecting. its melodies haunting, Fading Parade is spellbinding. [Apr 2011, p.101]

While White Wilderness lacks the edge of Emerald City it's an inspired set of songs decorated by Minna Choi's imaginative orchestrations. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Ben Chasny's annual solo folk extravaganza. [March 2011, p. 95]

A band featuring such like-minded oddballs as Sufjan Stevens lend nice textures to the psychedelic swirls of Olympic Portions and Hovering Above That Hill, but simpler fare is more memorable. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Expanding on the rolling grooves of 2009'a Song Of The Pearl, The Gathering is a sonic monster. [Apr 2011, p.101]

This long-rumoured debut is a thing of stark intimacy, rendered by just Pearson's rustic voice and roughly picked guitar, with an occasional smear of wintry violin or doleful piano. [Apr 2011, p.100]

Very sad and very beautiful. [Apr 2011, p.100]

The vocals of core dynamic duo Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers instantly proffer more light and shade, while the punchy garage of Kraut Of All Of This, distorted, gliding My Bloody Valentine-lite of Frayed And Spank, or thundering Chemical Brothers detonations at the heart of A Wolf In Geek's Clothing all point to far more than just obscure psych records in their collection. [Apr 2011, p.100]

What Did You Expect is a breathlessly exciting debut, it's giddy raunch'n'revisionism hard to resist. [Apr 2011, p.100]

The overall effect is like being trapped in a lift with McFly on a sugar-rush. [Apr 2011, p.98]

This album more than does him [Vic Chesnutt] justice. [Apr 2011, p.98]

The sequel to 2006's Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural lays needling waves of in-the-red euphoria and cymbal-saturated pummeling, with the occasional scenic feedback plateau to catch one's breath. [Apr 2011, p.97]

Though there are also moments when TDD's seemingly random amalgam of influences and styles doesn't quite work, Fuckarias rocks like a bastard and frontwoman Linnea Jonsson has all the poise and tone required of a top-notch pop singer. [Apr 2011, p.97]

It's rocky Americana: swaggering and infuriatingly satisfying. [Apr 2011, p.97]

Parts & Labor have made their best album yet. [Apr 2011, p.95]

Drawing elements from both [previous albums], Horses And High Heels is a similarly accomplished if more playful affair. [Apr 2011, p.94]

Conor Oberst regroups with the band that made him. [March 2011, p. 94]

Whether Liam Gallagher's band is the start of a new story or a diverting subplot to an on-going saga remains to be seen -- and you can imagine where the smart money lies. [Mar. 2011, p. 92]

Standouts include Burn Through, a Springsteenesque tale of blue-collar grit, and the haunting Corner Girl, where a lonely kid opens up her world like a plant unfurling. [Feb 2011, p.109]

While there's an invigorating charm to Blue Songs, you're left concluding that it lacks its predecessor's USP. [Feb 2011, p.108]

These carefully manicured, self-serving triffles nearly all fall flat, despite the nonstop roll-out of A-listers. [Feb 2011, p.108]

Alongside The Miracle 3's rich, roughneck guitar grind, Wynn's odd perspective gathers strength on two songs that involve gatecrashing private homes or events. [Feb 2011, p.107]

It's far from a one-dimensional experience though, thanks to Mehldau's jaw-dropping virtuosity. [Feb 2011, p.107]

It's early days, but given everything is self-played, and the guitars are as deftly layered as they are swiftly shedding, Baldi might rise to something magnificent once the hormones have been expunged. [Feb 2011, p.107

The album delivers on the promise. {Feb 2011, p.104]

Ultimately, you suspect that their natural habitat are shoegazey guitarscapes like Everyone I Ever Met and Forever The Bridge, which marry controlled noise, atmospheric arrangements and subtly insidious melodies. Either way, it works. [Feb 2011, p.104]

A pea souper of an album, beneath which there is some gold. [Feb 2011, p.104]

The grammatically doubtful One Less Heartless To Fear finds the quartet in more punishing mode. [Feb 2011, p.101]

Face Tat is less free-form than Astrological Straits, 2008's exhilarating, exhausting debut, but it's still a full 15 rounds of aural boxing. [Feb 2011, p.100]

This is a richly textured debut that creates a very agreeable collision between the organic and the electronic. [Feb 2011, p.100]

Some of the lyrics, translated from the Dutch, are a touch clunky, but all in all a lively set and not, I suspect, Bishop Burke's final memorial. [Feb 2011, p.100]

The Detroit budget-punks follow last year's eponymous art-scuzz by zinging through 12 anthemic amp-melters in 26 minutes. [Feb 2011, p.989]

The San Francisco pair Sic Alps present 22 concise numbers and commendably few lo-fi cliches. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Hellswinter refrains from overdosing on distortion before the title track's 20 minutes of funereal beauty. [Mar 2011, p.99]

It finds the Seattle quintet making a convincing case for being The Last Rock Band To Believe In. [Feb 2011, p.96]

Jonny's debut is splendid, user-friendly stuff. [Mar 2011, p.97]

Lee is so commanding that guests Lucinda Williams and Willie Nelson are drawn into top-of-the-range duets and still don't take over. [Feb 2011, p.96]

This is passionate music, delivered with verve. [Mar 2011, p.104]

Blending machine rhythms and subterranean beats with ghostly atmospherics, world music chants and groaning analogue disquiet they create a rich, unnerving sound that feels both modern and ancient. [Mar 2011, p.114]

Few, if any of 2009's more high profile rock releases could match the adrenalin charge of Death's 34 year-old debut. [Mar 2011, p.114]

Secret Sisters ably court both the family market and those who haunt Past Times stores in search something new. [Mar 2011, p.108]

Incredible Machine, however, is mostly just Nettles having a bawl. [Mar 2011, p.108]

It's the skill of Tabor, the lyric interpreter, that is most telling and, predominately set around atmospheric piano and accordion arrangements, this deeply affecting collection of sea stories demonstrates the core of her art almost to perfection. [Mar 2011, p.108]

There's nothing staggeringly new happening here, but it's all deftly delivered and sure to find favour. [Mar 2011, p.106]

The 62-year-old Bradley, meanwhile, has all the marks of the soul greats who have gone before him; the testifying smart Syl Johnson, the grit and gusto of Otis Redding, the raw power of James Brown, the smoulder and shudder of James Carr. Together they make an intoxicating sound, one that would have fit in perfectly at Twilight in the late-'60s.

His newest group find hum as ever ricocheting between rusty rock'n'roll and perfect pop melodicism, the title track to their debut album adding string-adorned country-psych to his CV, while the rest of his contributions finding him on his strongest form. [Mar 2011, p.1010]

Topped off with lo-fi synths and Victor Truicard's taut riffology, PSY are fresh, fiery, top fun. [Mar 2011, p.101]

When they strip down everything down for the closing pair Fear and the onomatopoeic Organ Blues, the nape hairs rise even higher. [Mar 2011, p.100]

While brutally impressive, if it's subtlety you're seeking, look elsewhere. [Mar 2011, p.100]

Recorded in five days in 2008 with Frank Black in Salem, this album makes you realize where all the rage had gone from Back & Forth; it was here. [Mar 2011, p.99]

Hopscotching from arrhythmic electronica to brutal DJ Shadow-style sonic assault and back again, it's a final demonstration that at last Stateless have arrived somewhere they can happily call home. [Mar 2011, p.98]

The way a latent power blends with an occasionally slightly gauche drama suggests early Radiohead. And, as with Radiohead, it feels like the second album could be the key event, deciding whether these collegiate English sounds can enrapture the wider world. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Something Dirty is powerful and multi-textured, but there's less of the studio experimentation that marked 2009's C'est Com...Com...Complique, despite Peron being promisingly credited with flamethrower and goat hooves. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Their strong suits are Nathan Nicholson's forlorn warble and the pop hooks that pepper quiet melodramatic, minor-chord rock songs like Locked In The Basement. [Mar 2011, p.98]

We get strings, care-worn piano, and lots of subtle detail, the last deepening the listener's relationship with the excellent, lyrical mature songs over repeat plays. [Mar 2011, p.97]

It's a fine bookend for a man who defined one parochial corner of the music world. [Mar 2011, p.96]

Don't Look Surprised strays into Killers Territory but the doo-wop strut of Hunger and calypso jangle of Photograph more than make up for it. A life-affirming debut. [Mar 2011, p.95]

Here Tyler not so much steps out of the shadows as over to a slightly less darkened corner on nine delicately plucked acoustic daydreams that also showcase his talent for arrangements. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Just like her collaborator Bon Iver, Lia Ices seems to instinctively know that less is delectably more. [Mar 2011, p.p94]

This is a big album in every way, full of ambitious layers, heavy on piano, strings, brass and drums producing vast soundscapes and lavish arrangements which place strong emphasis on the atmospheric undercurrent of some unerringly dramatic material. [Apr 2011, p.99]

A low-key, highly engaging covers album. [Nov 2010, p.99]

This collection of rarities includes songs from their "mystery year" of 1998, an MOR cover oof Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart and on, Turn Up The Radio, a song written as a YouTube collaboration with fans, yet is still stronger than most albums in the current mainstream pop/punk realm. [Jan 2011, p.110]

His modified piano is used sparingly throughout, making its most telling contribution on Mount hood, a smouldering invocation of the misty Oregon peak--but the complex, emotional ensemble arrangement is what impresses most. [Jan 2011, p.105]

Faun Fables do gothic folk with admirable vigour and this is incontrovertible force of nature. [Jan 2011, p.104]

There's no joker in this kind of casual big top tourism, and the album flatly perches in the middle like some neutered, latter-day Green Day. [Jan 2011, p.100]

The One's meditation on the price of fame is especially good value, but the Ace of Base-style of What Do They Know is hard to forgive. [Jan 2011, p.99]

San Franciscan psych moodists here to reclaim independent music. [Jan. 2011, p. 98]

New all-star trio featuring Joseph Arthur, Ben Harper, and George Harrison's son, Dhani. [Jan. 2011, p. 96]

James Jackson Toth aka Wooden Wand is at home on Michael Gira's label. [Jan. 2011, p. 94]

She was born on Christmas Day, but has an unsentimental take on the holiday. [Jan. 2011, p. 94]

This compilation is a reminder of the stillness and quiet power at the heart of his frank, softly sung confessional, of Smith's talent as an arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and of his able, Paul Simon-like finger-picking style. [Dec 2010, p.114]

Ultimately, the official album remains the crucible of the artist who flourishes to this day. [Dec 2010, p.112]

The best tracks see the pair sparring over hymnal slow-burners that feature contributions from Neil Young, Brian Wilson, and Booker T. [Dec 2010, p.108]

Listeners outside their target teen demographic will find all this painfully sincere emoting pretty joyless. [Dec 2010, p.106]

For a man with a suspect hipster mustache and a vast lick of asymmetrical hair, Lewis' music has serious depth. [Dec 2010, p.106]

From One Day's po-sweet surprise to DsharpG's shivery vocal/harmonium drones, each gear shift is proof of a compelling new voice. [Dec 2010, p.100]

Still winging it, still wearing it well. [Dec 2010, p.99]

Mapping the winding path of Chrissie and Jp's relationship as it came unstuck, Fidelity! is brave and tender, tingling and troubling the nerve-endings. [Dec 2010, p.98]

I'm Having Fun Now is a musical meeting of minds, sure, but more significantly it's continuing evidence of Lewis's rapid artistic evolution. [Dec 2010, p.98]

Dense of riff and melody but not crassly anthemic, their sledgehammer euphoria is Kyuss gone monster trucking. [Dec 2010, p.97]

Ancestral Star finds Barn Owl alchemising those touchstones into new sonic vistas evoking either nocturnal desert chill or fathomless cosmic expanse. [Dec 2010, p.97]

Marnie Stern is a strong statement from a musician whose confidence is soaring. [Dec 2010, p.97]

Not Music can feel a little like trying to solve a series of Sudoko puzzles, the brain fully engaged but the heart untaxed. [Dec 2010, p.97]

Small Black are more convincing when they move into sharper focus. [Dec 2010, p.96]

Although this is never less than excellent fun, the originals are still the best. [Dec 2010,. p.96]

For a band feeling they had painted themselves into a corner, this is them sodding the consequences and stomping their way out. [Dec 2010, p.96]