Middleton here surely approaches full brilliance. [July 2009, p.96]

She's clearly still diamond sharp, with a larynx to match. [Aug 2009, p.103]

His nicotine-gritted , hurt-strained voice finds a honeyed foil in Dave Amels' swirling organ, while rhythm section David Wayne Gay and Lance Willie provide R&B warmth and swinging, bar-band stomp. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

The earth doesn't move, but sands shift seductively. [Sep 2009, p.102]

Yacht are a band that know how to party; they just need to lock it down. [Oct 2009, p.108]

You might even give it a cuddle because it delivers the kind of ultra-friendly music that sits up and in a cutesy manner demands such attention. [Fall 2009, p.93]

It's the songs on which she distances herself from that occasionally tiresome persona where she really shines. [Aug 2009, p.94]

Much of The Ruminant Band comes sunny side up. [Sep 2009, p.90]

Drawn to look within, you run into the smart opacity of Reitherman's lyrics. [Sep 2009, p.96]

A newly dynamic SAG here build on the intuitive eclecticism of last year's "59:59" debut. [Nov 2009, p.100]

Of the various sidelines spinning off Vancouver psych-rockers Black Mountains, this is the prettiest. [Sep 2009, p.102]

The former Vincent Frank has filled his debut with a hard-to-stomach collection of shiny pop tunes floating between Alphabeat's sing-along-a-showtunes and Mika's falsetto muggging. [Aug 2009, p.96]

There's nothing here to advance the small-scale acclaim gathered by their debut. [Aug 2009, p.95]

For Radio Wars, producer Dan Grech-Marguerat has opened out their sound, but the atmosphere of intrigue remains. [Apr 2009, p.98]

McClure has since retracted his retirement outburst, and rightly so: a third attempt might make him a contender. [Aug 2009, p.95]

The music and mood's emotional connection makes the Furnaces a band to love at last. [Sep 2009, p.95]

It's a strangely stilted approach on songs. [Sep 2009, p.92]

The constant, keenig purity of Ohiona Molina's vocals save all this from becoming too relentlessly dispiriting. [Aug 2009, p.104

The strongest parts of this record have a yearning, almost devotional quality which can unlock something in the patient listeners. [Aug 2009, p.96]

[It is] a testament to Hunter's ongoing vim. [Sep 2009, p.96]

Mostly these provoke wows and crikeys of crooked pleasure. [Jan 2010, p.93]

The core idea brings a bright focus and forward movement to their gummy, ambrosial stoner sound, adding bright melody and fairytale zing to these end-of-summer tales of beachbound escape and smalltown torpor. [Nov 2009, p.101]

As you hit repeat to hear Horehound for the umpteenth time, what's remarkable is that these 11 tunes, with their sonic curveballs and causl vim, suggest that a second Dead Weather LP would be almost as welcome as the White Stripes' seventh. [Jul 2009, p.90]

To be fair, Sharpe, a dramatic alter-ego for leader/singer Alex Ebert, does corral a few tunes infectious enough to last the distance on Broadway. [Sep 2009, p.90]

Beautiful, minimal and bewitching, it is both another reason to hate Peter Broderick and another reason to admire him. [Aug 2009, p.102]

It's their talent for great hooks, that gets you in the end. [Aug 2009, p.99]

At points they're both elegant and, dare we say it, beautiful, so if this is the emperor's new clothes then they're wonderfully cut. [Jul 2009, p.97]

The overall feeling, despite all the musical mix'n'matching is of a traditional record: a rootsy return, rather than a copy of a certain Canadian seven-piece art-rock racket. [Jul 2009, p.105]

There's a back-to-basics feel on the mid-tempo country rockers, the slow beauties and mournful lap steel, and even on the musically warm, more upbeat, almost Tex-Mex opening song. [Sep 2009, p.92]

It represents the singer's best work since the aforesaid "Urban Hang Suite." [Sep 2009, p.93]

The result, unfortunately, is one of the dreariest hours you will even spend listening to music. [Aug 2009, p.100]

Sparse backing, strings or a brimming organ interject occasionally, and enhance their combined voices on a brilliantly realised record. [Aug 2009, p.100]

As this crackles with youthful brio and subtlety, we can start speculating what this band may go on to achieve. [Aug 2009, p.98]

Oneida may well be evil geniuses in the midst of creating a classic, multi-album masterpiece. [Aug 2009, p.103]

Five albums in, his music finally sounds as threadbare as his chosen eulogy, dropping any evidence of the richer--if still ragged--arrangements that launched his deeply affecting six-track debut. [Jul 2009, p.107

Unfortunately, much of the rest veers from lightweight to teeth-grindingly irritating, suggesting a private joke that perhaps would have been best left in private. [Sep 2009, p.93]

There hasn't been quite enough time yet for them to construct much of a unique sonic indentity. [Aug 2009, p.94]

The full-tilt, punk-like intensity manifested on the band's first two long players is further honed and sharpened. [Aug 2009, p.109]

Wilco (The Album) is as consummate as anything its author has yet delivered. [Aug 2009, p.97]

Electric Dirt, as implied, is a continuation of "Dirt Farmer's" themes, packing a sharper jolt. [Jul 2009, p.94]

It's a doleful piece, with many trad Moby elements present. [Jul 2009, p.94]

Its choice of selections successfully reinvent the familiar and/or introduce the less well-known. [Jul 2009, p.104]

With standards so consistently high, picking further peaks is a tough call but the surging wah squel of 'Over It' and 'I Don't Wanna Go There's' stellar guitar squall also score way up at the top of the scale. [Jul 2009, p.105]

This is, however, their most mellow, reflective and tempered release yet. [Sep 2009, p.95]

This is an adventurous, joyful album from a major talent. [Aug 2009, p.98]

The quintet's first bona fide album in five years, perhaps acknowledges the baton passing, as does an absence of post-rock tropes. [Jul 2009, p.97]

He manages to retain every essential element of blues tradition, sounding as basic as Hooker, yet at the same time probes ever forward into areas previously unexplored. [Sep 2009, p.96]

Results vary, froma plodding, Kasbian-like 'Deeripper' to the charmingly labyrinthine 'Headdress,' which is so fresh it feels like the genuine article. [Jul 2009, p.96]

With four tracks topping 12 miutes, it's essentially a celebration of pre-punk boffin-rock, 'The Best Of Times 'and 'The Count Of Tuscany' both prog-metal masterpieces worthy of imperial-phase Rush. [Jul 2009,p.95]

Ambivalence Avenue presents a livlier Bibio, tastefully absorbing hip hop and disco beats. [Aug 2009, p.104]

God Help The Girl has real class. [Jul 2009, p.99]

It's guitarist Kaye Woodward who remains the band's covert star: her fuzzy solo on 'Crimson Enemy, limpid precision on 'Satellites'a dncrystalline backing vocals throughout represent thefairy dust on a record full of highs. [Jul 2009, p.97]

An achingly sharp comedy album then, but at 19 tracks it's to be admired rather than loved. [Jul 2009, p.92]

This is fresh music, making exciting shapes with primitive resources, and though some will find Longstreth's keening bleat and bravura deconstructions show-offy there are constant flowerings of devastating prettiness, and when all the singers blare in unison the beauty they summon is almost overwhelming. [Jul 2009, p.100]

Almost three decades into their journey, age has only emboldened them. [Jul 2009, p.99]

The result is Placebo's best album since 1998's magisterial "Without You I'm Nothing." [Jul 2009, p.97]

This is an album that demands careful attention before its meanings and musing reveal themselves, blending apocalyptic visions with occluded celebration. [Sep 2009, p.91]

The results so far, as on 2006's martial piledriver "Empire," have both been levitating and gut-level, as befits a group who count DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" and Oasis's "Definitely Maybe" among their musical epiphanies. These same virtues are all over "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum." [Jul 2009, p.93]

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin may well be the second best cabin-in-winter indie album ever made. [Jul 2009, p.96]

It's a creative fecund, primeval power. [Jul 2009, p.100]

The resulting album is, as expected, old school chest-beating man-size heavy rock. [Jul 2009, p.104]

The album has its moments, but you really couldn't call it the main event. [Jun 2009, p.99]

Costello has again hauled material from diverse regions of his writing life into a strangely cohesive cornucopia. [Jul 2009, p.96]

Although every other verse here is filled by paradiddles, polyrhythms and wilfully complex time signatures, DMB's ear for a tune at least provides us with some fine choruses. [Jul 2009, p.94]

Lean and timeless sounding, it's also as truthful as Everett's sobering autobiography, Things The Grandchildren Should Know. [Jun 2009, p.104]

The sound is excellent, especially considering the age and the state of technology of some of the recordings. The songs, too, are invariably excellent. [Jul 2009, p.111]

Rancid's strength is singer Tim Armstrong's touching depictions of the world; from his heritage on 'East Bay Night' to swimming through the devastation of hurricane-stricken New Orleans and on his brother's time in Iraq on the acoustic 'Civilain Ways.'

The going is initially uncertain, but by 'Turn It On,' space and size begin to shift and singer Alex Kapranos shimmers in and out of the mix. [Jul 2009, p.106]

All passable fare. [Jul 2009, p.92]

Grace only had 10 songs, and though it seems tiresome to sit through multiple live versions of 'So Real,' the title song, 'Hallelujah' et al, it's not. [Aug 2009, p.118]

If his lyrics do have merit Chabot obscures them with generic electro-riffs. [Aug 2009, p.98]

Awesome in scope and execution, it's an album that's ultimately easier to admire than it is to love. [Jun 2009, p.108]

There was potential for so much more. [Jun 2009, p.98]

The assured Eating Us proves that distractions aren't necessary. [Jul 2009, p.93]

Beautifully arranged, its four pieces amplifiy Sunn O)))'s signature drone rumble. [Jun 2009, p.96]

A real treasure. [Sep 2009, p.90]

What they bring to the table is a living, breathing sence of the organic. [June 2009, p.109]

The exuberance and delight in the newness and rightness of it all is captivating. [Jul 2009, p.107]

The Glass Bead Game sees him broadening his palette to even greater effect. [Aug 2009, p.96]

Not an easy listen, but a brave, bold debut. [Apr 2009, p.99]

And while White Rabbits' wild Americana and freaked folk makes for a varied and vivid sprawl of sounds, their knack for addictive melody and honed songcraft delivers a beguiling, coherent and memorable whole. [Feb 2010, p. 97]

Gone is the Fisher Price-redolent instrumentation and found--sounds, in their place something more measured and radio friendly. [Jun 2009, p.98]

Toriphiles will be delighted to find a generous 76 minutes of songstuff here but the less committed might never get past the veritable encyclopedia of tortured vocal affections that blight the stodgy opening track. [Jun 2009, p.102]

Much here stands in marked contrast to that lushly arranged benchmark ["The Shepherd's Dog"]. [Jul 2009, p.114]

The record's familarity is nourishing rather than revelatory. [Jun 2009, p.99]

Much of it is unreconstructedly rockist. [Jun 20009, p.102]

Over the course of a whole album their light-as-afeather mix of glacial keyboard, breathy vocals and mid-tempo time signatures begins to grate, and you wish producer Thom Monahan had made them take more risks. [Jun 2009, p.99]

His sometimes unkempt vocal performances can work better in the smaller doses of singles or cameos, but here, as on 2006's "The Big Bang," he sounds like he has made the album his metier. [Jul 2009, p.98]

The result is a brilliant modern singer-songwriter record, full of wit and musical variations. [May 2009, p.100]

Hard Islands is evolution. But some will hanker for Fake's fluffier vintage. [Jun 2009, p.102]

Armstrong's anti-establishment shtick has lost some of its impact. [Jun 2009, p.102]

The overall effect is more inline with how Townes made his early albums. [Jun 2009, p.96]

There are perky alt-pop nuggests aplenty here, so it's a shame the momentum can't be maintained. [Jun 2009, p.96]

Sewn Together is as winningly tuneful as it is raggedly charming. [Jul 2009, p.95]

Graham Coxon has left behind his early Jam-meets-Syd-meets-Billy Childish thrashings and his more petulant little-boy-lost vocals, and recorded an album seemingly inspired by Paul Weller's "22 Dreams." [Jun 2009, p.98]

Fabulous. [Jun 2009, p.98]

Its successor emanates a similarly yeasty authenticity, stretching songs into epic ballads, its acoustic guitars, bass and drums ornamented by a lattice of deftly plucked and strummed things. [May 2009, p.105]

Decamping to Mexico with a gang of musician friends and collaborating in songwriting as well as performance has made for Conor Oberst's most colourful, upbeat record so far. [Jun 2009, p.100]