Sisterworld's art-pop is perhaps more accessible than much of Liars' discography, but it's a sound this most restless group will likely tire of long before you do. [Mar 2010, p.98]

The resulting 10 songs are an intriguing genetic mix of modern psychedelia and eccentrioc pop. [Apr 2010, p.93]

Generous handclaps and a beautifully thrumming guitar buoy The Loneliness & The Scream. Living In Coulour, meanwhile, is a statement of intent, chiming pianos and a reeling rhythm pushing things along, typifying an album made by a band happily at the peak of its powers. [mar 2010, p.90]

A restful, even romantic experience, Kastlander echoing Tracey Thorn's plaintive soul, in a beguiling confluence of wan Scando-folk currents and American hip hop. [June 2010, p. 97]

Taken as a whole, these poignant moments never threaten to cohere into a greater whole. [Apr 2010, p.111]

More muscular, less ethereal than 2007's "...Are The Dark Horse," it is no less exciting. [Apr 2010, p.99]

The Chieftains lay a vibrant carpet of colour but veering between joyous and heartbreaking, the fiery Mexican element is what makes it so compelling. [Apr 2010, p.105]

The quality across this neat primer demands the high star rating. [Apr 2010, p.112]

There's no mistaking this advent of a genuine original, the woozy, whacked-out linguistic precision of A Sufi And A Killer resisiting all efforts at summary. [Apr 2010, p.105]

Casey and collaborator Shawn Creeden deliver a bold album that eschews their previous organic approach in favour of a more electronic direction. The effect is intoxicating. [Apr 2010, p.92]

The sweetness of its sun-kissed textures and playful melodies mark out El Turista as his best work since 2005's near flawless "Nashville." [Apr 2010, p.98]

Encyclopedic US indie rock--American Civil War, Walt Whitman, Hold Steady, Shakespeare all included.

Hands sees the 24-year-old blossom into a throughly modern chart contender, but at the expense of some of that quirkiness. [Jul 2009, p.95]

First new solo album for four years from the young jazz maverick.

The overall result is not the studious mess it could have been, but an adventurous, challenging and futuristic recording, albeit one that might cause a little aural indigestion. [Feb 2010, p. 93]

This is spare, emotionally charged piano music which always errs toward the melodic side of melancholy. [Mar 2010, p.99]

An album to make you happy feeling sad, Scratch My Back gets better with each play; it might just turn out to be the best surprise present of the year. [Mar 2010, p.88]

They've never been subtle, but they're still highly effective. [Mar 2010, p.93]

While he's putting love into these rippling, galloping beats, the vocal melodies get a little samey. [Apr 2010, p.103]

Pollack's velvety, diction-rich voice shines on the syncopated, a cappella intro of "The Loop," and her idiosyncratic, mostly cryptic lyrics can be striking. [Apr 2010, p.104]

This lavish song cycle, embarcing intricate choral, chamber and post-rock passages, is the feted US/Australian ensemble's first non-instrumental album. [Jul 2010, p.95]

There is a pinch of prog too, manifested in kaleidoscopic intricacy rather than anything unnecessarily tricksy - their sound remains muscular and funky. [Feb 2010]

Don't expect a companion to the "Life On Earth" soundtrack though, even the ballads here are highly strung, some made otherworldly by drones, controlled feedback and mallet percussion, other stung by Meiburg's vocals, gear-shifted from choirboy puriety to anguish. [Mar 2010, p.98]

It would be easy to write off the album as pastiche but a confessional, honky-tonk-styled "Cigarettes," and the grit Merriweather puts into the immaculately fashioned grooves, show he's more about feel than fashion. [Jul 2009, p.95]

The economy and velvet touch of Efterklang's music-making have survived, except the finesse is now allied to a newly arresting, wistful songwriting style that carries with it echoes of the early Coldplay.

That's the master interpreter, though older and creakier. He brings the song to you in detail. [Apr 2010, p.93]

Have One on Me is a very mature work indeed, even its resonant, discursive themes are underpinned by Newsom's usual playfulness. [Apr 2010, p.90]

Not many bands who've been going since Kurt Cobain was alive are capable of improving on their work. [Apr 2010, p.94]

This parting gift from Philadelphia-based guitarist Jack Rose stands as a superlative statement of his love for pre-war American music. [Apr 2010, p.95]

Where her previous band, Williamburg's The Jealous Girlfiends, struggled to reconcile an awkward mix of styles, the vision on Miranda's solo debut is seemless. [Mar 2009, p.90]

This dispararte set is a promising indicator of what its debut album might hold: wistful, psychedelic musing, gentle folk and splashes of electric blues. [Mar 201, p.100]

There's an impressive sense of pop classicism, but these songs are even more melodically insistent, occassionally verging on show-tune mellifluousness. [Apr 2010, p.105]

What's truly remarkable about the interplay, however, is the way the two seemlessly bridge the gulf between their cultures. [Mar 2010, p.93]

Monstrous stoner-psych jams from, of all places, Williamsburg. [July 2010, p. 95]

There's an engaging sense of uncertainty running through these songs. [Mar 2010, p.96]

Black's chops and tunes suggest he won't stay underground. [Aug 2009, p.99]

After 2008's The Hungry Saw simmered with a new, diehard energy, Falling Down A Mountain is more like climbing up. [Feb 2010, p. 103]

Despite being probably the best illustration of the scope of his creative impulses, ultimately Life Is... capsizes under the weight of its own cleverness. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

Green can turn on the charm--countrified finale Blacken My Stay and Castles And Tassles are winners, and "castles and tassles and fatulent assholes" is a hysterical refrain - but overall, Minor Love is a curiously enervating affair. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

The Brewis brothers opt for distinctive texture of sampled acoustic guitar. Measure--a sprawling gem of album-- is full of such inspired decisions. [Mar 2010, p.98]

Peace & Love continues this new mature streak with her most musically stripped down but lyrically most strident and complex collection yet. [Feb 2010, p. 102]

Quality inessential entertainment. [Mar 2010, p.97]

Elegiac Montreal collective's relatively orthodox sixth album. [May 2010, p. 97]

Willfully odd, beautifully hypnotic and with a wonderful lightness of touch: a straw poll of the office drew comparisons to Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire and Take That. [Feb 2010, p. 100]

Hot Chip's impressive musical facility remains, it's merely a little out of focus. [Apr 2010, p.102]

There is a stark grandeur in songs like the almost Leonard Cohenesque title track, and the gritty, abstract New York Is Killing Me. [Mar 2010, p97]

[The album] sees the reunited Grand "Daddy G" Marshalll abnd Robert "3D" Del Naja proving they can still corner the market in atmospheric glooom, even if their era-defining days have passed. [Mar 2010, p.90]

Sade has, as ever, fashioned an album that sounds both classic and current. [Mar 2010, p.91]

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]