Regan cross-wires mid-'60s Dylan and Paul Simon with the '70s CBGB pantheon, his songcraft on the verge of cohering his quirkily arresting strengths into true brilliance. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Guest appearances from the venerated likes of Percee P and M.E.D. and Mr Lif & Edan prove these Brothers' breakbeats more than pass muster. But it's the more adventurous instrumentals that impress most. [Mar 2010, p.92]

Instead of warm colours they work with a more monochromatic palette. There's darkness, rain, a chill in the air, remoteness, a sense of nature--and more of than not, a very British remoteness and sense of nature. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Its first side pelts past in 12 minutes, melding the brittle charms of Modern Lovers and Wire with a muscular garage rock dynamism: the joyous hurtle of Down On Loving makes like a more savage Strokes, while the caustic Answer To Yourself draws the fuzzy '60s classicism of the The Black Lips into tighter focus, a Nuggets-worthy anthem. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

Slick's shuddering electro, 808 handclaps and foundation-bothering Miami bass drops go to work on your endorphin levels and display astute songcraft. [Mar 2010, p.100]

With its profusion of delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios and fine string arrangements by Beck's father David Campbell, much of the rest of IRM steers a more organic, at times almost skiffle-like path, but the twist is Gallic melancholy. [Feb 2010, p. 93]

Their slightly shambolic and unapologetic pop-fused sound works, though, and looks likely to speed Los Campesinos! to the cult canonical Brit-indie status reserved for the other outsider troupes like Belle & Sebastian and The Cribs. [Mar 2010, p.96]

Teen Dream is a lovely album, but there's more to admire here than to actually love. Oddly, that may not be a problem. [Feb. 2010, p. 94]

Unlike the super-saturated rush of Everything Ecstatic, There Is Love In You radiates a mellow subtlety, the wonderfully named She Just Like To Fight a twinkling pastoral while the luscious groove of Plastic People pushes its most interesting clicks and skitters to the periphery. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

There is much to love here, just as much to hate, and nothing to be indifferent about. [Mar 2010, p.99]

What Realism does best is preserve Merritt at his most real, a blend of Cole Porter, Morrissey and Eeyore, a master of what he labels as "cosy, charming, subtle" gestures, which on several occasions (especially You Must Be Out Of Your Mind and I Don't Know What To Say) reach a level of miserablist perfection. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

At its best, though, The Sea is not just honest and cathartic, but jaw-dropping - and a difficult call for any critic. [Feb 2010, p. 93]

Five unreleased LP outtakes and alternate versions make this essential even for Fucked Up completists. [Feb 2010, p. 115]

The strung-out meanderings of Doggy or De Soto De Son veer equally toward indulgent and the cosmic. [Feb 2010, p.112]

Citay's third album ratchets up the production values from its predecessor, 2007's "Little Kingdom," emphasising deluxe stoner grooves and coruscating fuzz-guitar wig-outs. [Mar 2010, p.92]

But despite the lack of surprise, Gold Rush is a fine, rollicking jig, and Sparrow's skeletal voice and uke combo feels like it's been pulled from the ground still caked in Prairie soil. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

Whenever he lays down his licks atop the bed he's made, there's never any doubt that this is a Pat Metheny record. One of his better ones, too. [Mar 2010, p.101]

When Jones starts singing about Clapham over the clipped, welter-weight indie of this quartet's second studio album it begins to seem a curiously south-eastern English rock vision - the clean guitars and Cure-style vocals suggesting a lighter shade of Bloc Party. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Formed around Orcadian singer/guitarist Erland Cooper, former Verve guitarist Simon Tong and drummer David Nock, best known for his work with Paul McCartney's The Fireman, Erland and co meld influences to create a psych-folk mosaic. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

It's a curiously dated backdrop that, although sitting well with Smith's occasionally pompous lyrics, does no favours to the singer's foghorn baritone; a problem that might have been saved by some radio-friendly tunes, which are notably thin on the ground this time. [Nov 2009, p.90]

But there is nothing here that will leap out of the speakers to entice the unconverted, despite the Weezer-like spod-rock of Fot Nuffin and Trouble's garage pop stomp. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

With its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

What could of been a sedentary stopgap has become an heroic attestation to the thrillls of music fandom. [Apr 2010, p.104]

Foster's extraordinary voice is suited to Dickinson's poignant rhymes, and tracks like They Called Me To the Window and I see Thee Better -- In The Dark, are concentrated, exquisite and oddly moving. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

The trio are at their most effective when meshing from-the-streets comment with clanging guitars and harmonies in the vein of early-period Who, see the wry poke at tabloid celebrity, "Keep Your Eyes On Me." It's only when they descend into the Kinks pastiche of "Mr. Grey" that the bar is lowered. [Mar 2010, p.96]

From Palm Beach, the new wave of 21st century powerpop. [July 2010, p. 97]

Lostprophets neuter any genuine bite their music may have had with slick, histrionic choruses that render them as impotent as the dozens of other MTV-worshiping derivatives. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Contra is the sound of a band driving themselves to very satisfying extremes. [Feb 2010, p. 96]

Ultimately over-long, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky is still a preconception-changing album. [Mar 2010, p.100]

Ringo makses a good fist of his production debut. [Apr 2010, p.98]

The whole sprawl of tooting loops, sawing violins and Pallett's unlovely operatic warbling feels gruelling and indigestible - prog stodge in a dashing post millennial disguise. [Feb 2010, p. 93]

Unlike some other nu-folkies, this feels organic and unforced; one reason why her albums, and this in particular, have such resonance. [Jan 2010, p.92]

A New York studio may not be the ideal place to summon up the atmosphere of the Wild West, but these desperadoes on Barry Adamson's lable make a pretty good fist of it. [Dec 2009, p.101]

Lawrence Arabia's world may lean toward Edwardian anachronism, but that echo of simpler times will charm your socks off. [Jan 2010, p.123]

With six producers and 10 guest stars, Malice N Wonderland sees the ageing gangsta casting an eye over modern hip hop in all its forms, including Pronto's nod to the AutoTune phenomenon featuring the manipulated vocals of singing robot Soulja Boy. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

If harvest Moon ever threatened to melt your teetch, now's the chance to really bite down. If You already love iut, you can get a sugar rush all over again. Win-win. [Feb 2010, p.112]

Attention wanders as the album slips into a lazy mid-pace skunk groove and Robinson falls back on 'one love' lyrics, but when the duo are joined, on three tracks, by the spider-baby vocals of Kiki Hitomi the effect is unnerving, like modern urban folk tales whispered by a disembodied duo of night bus wraiths. [Jan 2010, p. 96]

There are no masterpieces here. But it's a brave venture nonetheless, and one that does succeed in becoming something more than the sum of its parts. [Jan 2010, p. 95]

The good news, however, is that admirers of the later albums such as Bone Mahcine, the Black Rider and Real Gone are very well served. [Jan 2010, p. 91]

Few are better placed than Bostonian Edan Portnoy, who uses access to the old-school masters owned by Traffic, one of the few reissue imprints interested in rap, to curate a fine, fun funky and fascinating half-hour mixtape interlaced with new sample-based production. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Thirty years, 170 shows, a repertoire of 400 songs in 3,509 performances: from that motherlode we have 48 nuggets chronicling the live career of the South's Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

Structurally, melodically and harmonically some of the material is formulaic but the sublime quality of Stone's vocals - especially on shimmering ballads such as Maybe and Tell Me - save the day. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

Reality Killed The Video Star - produced, as the title suggests, by Trevor Horn - offers more than a glimmer of hope. [Dec 2009, p. 94]

The wrong kind of sonic adventure undermines about half the songs. A drop of Waitsian, drunken, junkyard percussion might have been just the ticket, but the plethora of drony guitar and keyboard distortions proves distracting, rather than "atmospheric", and impairs the effect of some strong songs including Back To Manhattan and Stuck. [Dec 2009, p. 88]

The mood is meditative, a West Coast dope-smoker's take on Neu!'s unvarying grooves; the songs are mostly named after ancient villages dotted around Somerset. [Dec 2009, p. 93]

Ultimately, such details of momentum and mood are testimony to how Them Crooked Vultures flouts the supergroup manual. It doesn't sound like the work of rich men on holiday, but rather three serious individuals looking to prove themselves over again. [Jan 2010, p. 88]

As with its predecessor, 2006's Continuum, not a note, not a breadth, is wasted--and the playing, from a crack team including Pino Palladino, Steve Jordan and Ian McLagan, is unfussily superb throughout. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

Ultimately though, too much of Echo is over familiar. By the end you find yourself longing for some subtlety or more light and shade.

He sounds as raw and vital as ever. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

While good stuff (with good sound) in the main, its sheer length and predictability mark this as one for the fanatics. [Jan 2010, p.114]

The Cribs of 2009 sound bold, fully-realised, their anthems polished and radio-ready, without sacrificing the acerbic edge that's powered them this far. [Sep 2009, p.88]

Sumner's fans won't be disappointed, but it feels a bit like a stopgap. [Nov 2009, p.90]

Twenty-five years after their creative peak, it seems as essential a purchase as a book of new jokes from Bobby Darvo. [Nov 2009, p.91]

In this 30-track collection marks Snow Patrol as a band backed with some serious songwriting heft.

But whereas their 2004 debut EP Headgit was intriguing if slightly stiff, they have developed into a propulsive unit with good tunes and a panoramic, near-psychedelic guitar sound. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

Musically slick but unpredictable, Only Revolutions is the stuff of stadia; a more obstreperous Foo Fighters; if you like. [Dec 2009, p. 92]

Julian Casablancas emerges with this engagingly odd collection of songs. [Nov 2009, p.92]

The themes are familiar, yet still captivating, as rock's most misanthropic man sings about a world of emotional retardation and alienation. [Dec 2009, p.111]

Bleach sounds liked a valiant manifesto for something new that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest nightmare. [Dec 2009, p.112]

Their work together hits an irresistible sweet spot between old-school r&b and punky ramalama. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

Its follow-up features a batch of songs Jones has lived with and reworked over 20-plus years, and the material radiates with a well-worn intimacy. [Dec 2009, p.90]

A delicate affair sometimes too wistful for its own good, even with the added colour of Dede Sampaio's bird sounds, Extended Vacation is a complex exercise in delicate melodies, field recordings and repetition. [Jan 2010, p. 100]

This eco-themed, sci-fi clad concept album bristles with electro-pop sounds (Light Years, the OMD-ish title track) yet retains Gab's furrowed-brow lyricism and singular approach as he forges his own space within this changing landscape. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Their fifth album still features plenty of trademark thrills - Brian Chippendale drumming junglist breakbeats at heart-attack velocity, bassist Brian Gibbon's' riffs sounding like a grindcore group playing gabba - while the bark-spitting tempo-shifts of opener Sound Guardians wouldn't alienate the Metallica set. [Jan 2010, p. 96]

For every throughly relised composition, there is a meandering fragment, great only as far as it goes. [Nov 2009, p.90]

Clearly the thrill of hearing new songs in their embryonic state could never be replicated, but as rendered in such pristine isolation even the cavalier back catalogue selections (rarely played early classic 1,000,000;one-that-got-away Romance) fell flat. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

A dizzying series of minimalist Afro-psych mantras, Ay Ay Ay interlaces eccentric pounding beats, multitrack boom-tsch hiccups, and nervy fragmented vocals, building a groove that crackles with the rhythmic perversity of Arthur Russell's strangest sound experiments but drives on like a reborn TV On The Radio who've learnt to lose it down the disco. [Jan 10, p. 90]

But despite its mining of a bygone age, Cosmic Egg has two clear 21st century counterparts. Far Away and Violence of the Sun are the sort of pristine epics found on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy., while lysergic piledrivers 10,000 Feet and the title track could easily have appeared on Kasabians' West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

The results is mixed, but at times instinctive and powerful. [Apr 2010, p.93]

The album is loaded with plenty of sonic winks and nods for record collector types. [Nov 2009, p.94]

Fits is sublime, sexy, unmisable. [Jul 2009, p.99]

This is a brave, bold, inevitably flawed record from the kind of talent we should be esctastically happy to have around. [Aug 2009, p.92]

He's still a remix away from getting played at Gatecrasher, but full marks for effort all the same. [Nov 2009, p.95]

If "Street Horrsing" was a bit of a lark, then Tarot Sport plays an altogether more serious game. [Nov 2009, p.92]

The bona fide release is a triumph, there's an understated elegance about Logos, which dabbles in Kraut-and math-rock and slacker-styled electronica. [Nov 2009, p.91]

At best, Oye and Boe capture loniness in a saue way and both are wonderfully fluid guitarists. But they can also be overly precious. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Impressive as it all is, a genuine follow-up to Illinois feels overdue. [Dec 2009, p. 92]

Like the second series of their HBO sitcom, from which most of the tracks here are culled,...Freaky feels a little rushed, but there's still plenty to love. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

Here, Scott 'Spiral Stairs' Kannberg's music feels more direct and unguarded than might have been expected given the more crafted, at time arch, music that has hallmarked his two groups. [Dec 2009, p. 90]

Her jazzy instincts and surreal lyrics perfectly offset the music's mosaic minimalism. [Sep 2009, p.92]

It's Converge's energy that impresses first, their brutal, full-blooded fury, the sheer physical assault; listen closer, however, and you'll find a group as inventive and progressive in their riffage as Slayer or Metallica at their early apex, a compulsive complexity to their chaos. [Feb 2010, p. 100]

On Trapped Animal they bring that approach to bear on a wider range of styles--dancehall, digi-dub, roots reggae, lover's rock - although the title track and Reject stand out as the most originally shaped punky pop songs. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

New Clouds is poised between towering psych-noise and ambient beauty, intermittently etched with quicksilver. [Nov 2009, p.101]

With the group of temporary hiatus, Ounsworth spreads his wings here, delivering a solo set that combines his gift for melody with more adventurous instrumentation and stylistic detours, waltzing between deft piano balladry (Holy, Holy, Holy Moses), high-drama orchestral-pop (That Is Not My Home), and lilting, horn-bolstered calypsos (South Philadelphia Drug Days) with grace, confidence and wit. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

Espers III is brilliantly atmospheric, more chilling than chilled but also, frequently, very beautiful. [Dec 2009. p. 94]

It's themes may be familiar, but its fine, dazzlingly outlandish music is fresh and utterly fearless. [Nov 2009, p.88]

Baroness's second full-length somehow tops their powerhouse debut for riffs, songwriting and cohesiveness. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

It's surprising how straight down the line this album is. [Jul 2009, p.94]

The results make for a chilling and captivating experience, with the unexpected musical flourishes in stop-start songs. [Sep 2009, p.104]

"This is a song for anyone with a broken heart," Fink sings on 'Blue Skies' and the break-up album of the year is complete. [Sep 2009, p.98]

An unshamedly fun album. [Sep 2009, p.104]

As ever, it's best to not to take them too seriously. [Nov 2009, p.90]

The album's seven-minute epics, Done and Tomorrow, chase their melodies to powerfully dramatic heights, pocket symphonies that stir and haunt with graceful, emotive crescendos that beg lighters waved aloft. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

The music is taut, the vocals, if anything, under-emoted, and the overall feeling is that of a muse rediscovered. [Jun 2009, p.108]

It's funnier than the Crue. And that's no mean feat. [Jul 2009, p.106]

There's a kernal of quality to Goodnight Unknown that renders Barlow's obsessive self-absorption palatable. [Nov 2009, p.102]

It's all about Rosanne's voice. And she's rarely sounded better. [Nov 2009, p.96]

Bonfires is an honourable epitaph. [Feb 2010, p. 100]