Elsewhere, Lamontange's vocals slip back into mope mode, but his tour band's firm playing and decent string arrangemebts add an aura of depth and substance. [Dec 2008, p.110]

The NYC three-piece are a band playing to their strengths. [Feb 2009, p.113]

At Carnegie Hall, doesn't so much add to the legend as confirm the original was no studio-contrived fluke. [Nov 2008, p.109]

Tobacco is more appealing when playing it straight. [Aug 2009, p.108]

It's not much different (from their first album), and that's no bad thing with Holly Golightly and Lawyer Dave's self-produced duets recalling Leadbelly and Jimmy Reed, as well as the gospel recordings of Loretta Lynn and Nancy & Lee. [Nov 2008, p.109]

These lads really knock together a proper tune. [Oct 2008, p.108]

While the album has its awkward moments, there are enough slinkily wonderful tunes, gleeful beats and miments of genuine tenderness to make Skinner's transformation not just convincing but also really rather lovely. [Oct 2008, p.100]

Dig Out Your Soul might not be the sound of envelopes being pushed, but its mix of kitchen-sink production and too many vague songs mark a deviation from business as usual that ultimately fails to deliver. [Nov 2008, p.105]

'Of Raymond' one exquisite lick of brass sends out enough light to illuminate the whole record. [Nov 2008, p.106]

The surprises keep coming. [Nov 2008, p.108]

This record is looser and more organic, and a different sonic palette for Hynde. [Jul 2009, p.106]

A few songs confirm her gifts....More often, self-satisfaction takes over and the final track's dull. [Nov 2008, p.108]

Maybe if they'd dated this collection back to 1979 and the Christian albums, they'd have a more interesting storyline, but we definitely wouldn't have had a better collection of songs. [Nov 2008, p.122]

It boasts stronger songs than Stern's 2007 debut "In Advance Of The Broken Arm," without losing the fretboard fireworks that made its predecessor an underground smash. [Feb 2009, p.106]

Un Dia is if anything, even more challenging, a set of songs that demand interpretation even as they beautifully defy it. [Nov 2008, p.106]

The music is sneakily sophisticated, buoyed on a mesh of relentless guitar tracks and driven by motorik drums toward a golden pyschpunk horizon. [Nov 2008, p.106]

Elephant's songs of love and death are heart-wrenchingly sad, movingly performed and sung in a poignant, luminous voice betwixt pop and country folk-country. [Apr 2009, p.110]

With her flinty guitar growling eloquent melodies and stricken solos, the group rock with a primal sensitivity akin to early Throwing Muses, but it's Powell's voice that's their truly irresistible element. [Nov 2008, p.118]

The sounds that Volker Bertelmann creates with(in) a piano is astonishing. [Oct 2008, p.112]

Fans of Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs take note. [Nov 2008, p.19]

Their full-length follow-up to 2007's "Burning Off Impurities" is a multi-textured out-rock masterpiece. [Jan 2008, p.101]

Some more like-minded collaborators might raise the temperature. [Feb 2009, p.112]

Part polemic, part paean and featuring contributions from amongst others, Paul McCartney, Imogen Heap and Tina Grace, it makes for an arresting colection that's as valid musically as it is for any mesage it is sending. [Nov 2008, p.12]

He hones in on what he does best, and improves it. [Nov 2008, p.109]

This bunch of Southend art school layabouts, constrastingly, really cut the mustard, kicking up a distinctively murky din. [Oct 2008, p.108]

Folds' leaps from satire to farce to domestic drama are part brilliant, part alarming, yet he still seems to wear wit and the manic energy of his voice as a carapace to conceal his soul. [Dec 2008, p.102]

This Rev record is another triumph in which all is dream and this sometimes symbolism, the overall effect trippy, though less dark than of yore. [Oct 2008, p.102]

This fourth album proper is a stunning return to mind-melting form. [Nov 2008, p.118]

Seeger's voice is frail now and he has to rely on an array of accomplished singers to help him deliver his message....Even so, Seeger remains innovative. [Jan 2008, p.100]

WLIB AM is best taken as a whole. [Nov 2008, p.116]

A hypnotic and original treat, an utterly timeless futurist retro symphony. [Jan 2008, p.100]

Well yes, there's that ear-splitting explosion of aural nihilist expressionism, but still it's thrilling and has lost little of the initial impact. [Dec 2008, p.120]

It is mainly a joyous affair, good-timey in a well structured way and often reminiscent of the kind of thing Johnny Rivers used to dispense at the start of the '70s. [Apr 2009, p.101]

Hearing Mahal mimic African Blues players is usually fun, but 'Zanzibar' is underwhelming. But when Ben Harper turns his guitar up, things get interesting. [Nov 2008, p.116]

This follow-up to The Aliens' debut "Astronomy For Dogs" keeps the faith. [Oct 2008, p.109]

His whip-smart three-string guitar licks still take centre stage and his banter sizzles with the personality and charm that have won him so many new admirers. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The Hawk Is Howling finds the Glasgow's guitar army relaxing the taut, economical songcraft of its 2006 predecessor, "Mr. Beast," and setting a new standard for irreverent track titles. [Oct 2008, p.102]

Only By The Night is best viewed as a transitional record from a band who have quite literally done their growing up in public. [Oct 2008, p.98]

Malone excels himself with the brassy pop of 'Lover's Day' and 'Golden Age.' [Oct 2008, p.112]

This second album easily stands on its own merits. [Oct 2008, p.102]

Its facinating music nevertheless and extremely psychedelic, with gospelly backing singers, flutes and guitars reaching the listener through a reverb-heavy haze. [Dec 2008, p.104]

Radio Retaliation is another example of the Corporation's remarkable consistency. [Dec 2008, p.104]

File under 'brilliantly out-there.' [Oct 2008, p.110]

On the second listen it sounds like a future classic. [Nov 2008, p.109]

Six years on from his last, with a white beard grown, Browne delivers elegantly considered weight and truth. [Nov 2008, p.119]

Flawless.

[Laurenz's] supple grooves energise their quixotic synth patterns and intricate guitar-scree, ensuring this wordless yet dramatic debut triangulates the oft-dweebish worlds of electronica, no wave and retro sci-fi with a funky red-blooded brio. [Sep 2008, p.106]

'Love Runs Deeper' is vintage Buckingham soft rock, while the barmy title track recalls the new wave-inspired weirdness of 'Tusk.' [Nov 2008, p.118]

The Way I See It is refreshingly different, eminently listenable. [Apr 2009, p.110]

His breathless falsetto remains a dealbreaker, but such vaulting ambition should appeal to fans of US forebears Deerhoof and domestic square pegs Wild Beasts. [Oct 2008, p.109]

The project pushes him into new and different directions, with beat band ballast ('Ate It Twice'), horn-laded soul ('Ready To Pop'), orchestral gloom (the title tracks) and pleasingly weird mini-epics ('Still In Rome'). [Oct 2008]

A square-jawed, piano-based, falsetto-flecked collection of sediment sentiment. [Oct 2008, p.109]

A slushfest it isn't....Melodically sussed, wryly observed post-60s pop nuggets are humorous, trenchant and reflective. [Nov 2008, p.104]

It's as though they've kept the whole catch, driftwood, prize-fish and all, rather than sorting through it. [Oct 2008, p.100]

Buoyed with emotional heft and supernova guitar riffs, their second album is wired around a maturing songcraft and the studio savvy of grunge producer Butch Vig. [Aug 2008, p.112]

It's not a groundbreaking record, largely because Tricky himself broke most of the ground here 13 years ago. [Aug 2008, p.103]

With 15 tracks, there a good deal to like. [Oct 2008, p.112]

Day After Tomorrow finds her in fine form, the famous falsetto is an octave or two down but the conviction that she brings to the songs is as strong as ever. [Oct 2008, p.106]

At their indie-disco feyest they can elicit comparisons with Hot Chip, but Lightbulbs trips the dark fantastic in its own deadpan style. [Sep 2008, p.110]

She gives each song an unforced intimacy. [Feb 2009, p.115]

It's full-bodied baroque. [Oct 2008, p.109]

Brodericks' augmentations tend to eclipse Rngle's sometimes evanescent songwriting. [Jan 2008, p.101]

Here nothing has changed as she melds all these influences ub a tribute to her now beloved New York. [Dec 2008, p. 100]

Let It Die's first six tracks find The Shaky Hands joyously rocking it up - like the less self-consciously arty Wilco, pre-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - while the more reflective mood that settles over the album's second half is a wistful reverie rather than a spiritual malaise. [Feb 2010, p. 102]

It's a beautifully rounded affair though--sometimes elegiac, at others uplifting, no matter how dark its heart. [Dec 2008, p.112]

Emiliana is blessed in her musical collaborator Dan Carey, with whom she calibrates an acoustic-led chamber trip-hop with plenty of room for her voice to breathe. [Nov 2008, p.111]

The band sound like they're striding into the mainstream, leaving Desveaux sounding more of a sweet, upbeat pop-rock songstress than she should. [Apr 2009, p.109]

At its best, as on 'Heartbreaker,' the singing has the deadpan charm of Talking Heads or Kraftwerk, adding to the likeability of men who know its better to be a robot than a hippy. [Oct 2008, p.108]

Instrumentals with texture and surface but not much substance make the LP trail off in a sequence make the LP trail off in a sequence of audio watercolours possibly in need of a big screen and some diverting pictures. [Nov 2008, p.112]

That Lucky Old Sun is easily Brian Wilson's most consistently enjoyable, moving solo albums; indeed you have to go back to "Surf's Up" itrself to hear a Beach Boys long-player as good. [Spe 2008, p.99]

Only a fraction of the songs here reach a truly memerizing apex. [Sep 2008, p.110]

Joe Henry's production is spot on, giving Crowell's vocals ample breathing room while acknowledging his excellent support team. [Oct 2008, p.106]

The cover of P.J. Harvey's 'The Desperate Kingdon Of Love' encapsulates the album--restful, intoxicating, sounding gorgeous. [Oct 2008, p.102]

Slime & Reason practically revels in its juicy sense of freedom. [Sep 2008, p.112]

The Peth prove they're no mere cracked actors. [Oct 2008, p.110]

In Anderson's own context, it's slight, awkward stuff. [Oct 2008, p.110]

Forth is a good, but not great Verve album, then, its glimmers of brillance all too brief. [Sep 2008, p.98]

So far they make phrases rather than lyrics and sounds rather than songs, but they have a nice semi-chaotic way about them. [Sep 2008, p.108]

In these crop-to-fit times, omnivorous, visionary pop is at a premium, and there's all the more reason to prize an omnivorous visionary pop record like the Week That Was. [Sep 2008, p.96]

There's little original in the likes of 'Psychosocial' 'Snuff' or "All Hope is Gone,' but the bludgeoning guitars are crisp, the overload of percussion suitably crunchy and a sense of bravura and commitment that's lacking in many of today's metal bands runs throughout. [Nov 2008, p.118]

Matthew Sweet returns with a tenth tune-fest that's equal parts sunny delight and cathartic, Posiesesque bluster. [Oct 2008, p.106]

The sunshine's grim down their way, but their best songs allow a glimmer. [Apr 2009, p.109]

You know how it sounds: the same as ever. [Oct 2008, p.110]

He and Lucille are still as one and the guitar licks come exquisite and often. [Nov 2008, p.119]

Fed is something of a lost classic. [Sep 2008, p.123]

Once they settle in, Cats In Paris could be a hyper-modern Stackridge. [Sep 2008, p.98]

They return with an eleventh album on which they seem to have distilled every good idea into these 14 short, smart songs. [Sep 2008, p.106]

He can make a sweet music, as on the soulful warble of 'Georgia,' but on most of the other occasions when Votolato's choppy riffs and off-beam melodies threaten to seduce you, Whitney's caterwaul butts in again. [Sep 2008, p.110]

'Welcome To The Third World' is a likeable pastiche of post-Chic funk, but tiresome country skits and Musee D'Nougart's 15 minutes of ambient fart-around are less welcome. [Oct 2008, p.110]

The Stills still aren't sure of their true identity, but at least those Interpol comparisons are way behind them. [Jan 2008, p.101

The arrangemnts are smartly constructed, Campbell's guitar is economical and crisp, and his interpretibve skills and singing are as sharp as during his commercial peak. [Sep 2008, p.112]

It's hard to love anyone as self-absorbed as Wainwright, but it's impossible not to admire his ability to craft enduringly engaging music. [Nov 2008, p.112]

Against this highly contemporary but ever-wacko sonic backdrop, the Upsetter orates magisterially. [Sep 2008, p.98]

Its highlights peaking above those of its predecessor even if the quality of the often plasticky beats means it's a little more uneven. [Nov 2008, p.108]

Their first full-lengther is a seemless, beat-driven shadowplay, wherein luminescent passages of prog-pop uplift are stalked by eerie, intense atmosphere. [Sep 2008, p.106]

Irma and producer Scott Billington have devised the perfect setting. [Sep 2008, p.1000]

True, there are some facinating arrangements on songs written during a summer in Berlin. But those songs, bar the first and last track sound oddly wanting. [Sep 2008, p.108]

All serious stuff--but it never quite sounds that way because the Levs provide rugged anthems for crowd consumption. [Sep 2008, p.111]