His delievry now possesses a wry, self-deprecating warmth which, along with Mitchell Froom and Lenny Waronker's unobtrusive production, suggests a man coming to terms with it all and who realises he's as much a part of this mess as anyone. [Sep 2008, p.110]

On its own perhaps a little on the skinny side for a new Oneida full-length, but as an appetiser ffor the triptych's next instalment--due early next year--this'll work just fine for now. [Sep 2008, p.102]

Malakian's Scars On Braodway further explore his love of machine gun guitars, bongs for breakfast, scatological lyrics and permeating sense of paranoia. [Sep 2008, p.108]

Waiting in Vain mines a harmony-rich seam of sticky-fingered country rock and blue sky FM pop. [Oct 2008, p.109]

Alice still makes Marilyn Manson sound like Mickey Mouse. {Sep 2008, p.112]

The highs, lows and bitter aftermath are all documented, in some of the classiest electro-pop of the past 20 years. [Aug 2008, p.102]

There are great albums that are nose-to-tail singles, but 22 Dreams is not one of them. Settle in for the duration, however, and expect a genuine trip. [June 2008, p.104]

The space disco of 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again)' and Listen To Your Body Tonight' are destines for repeat plays on this summer's festival circuit. [Aug 2008, p.106]

It all becomes a bit of a grind--and not entirely in a sexy way. [Aug 2008, p.103]

With Fate, Dr. Dog have begun to deliever the sort of super-confident songs that, up until now, have proved frustratingly out of reach. [Sep 2008, p.108]

It's all tenderly delivered and definatly indie--both sonically and spiritually. [Oct 2008, p.113]

'Beautiful Summer's' spectral chamber rock and a take on Fleetwood Mac's 'Over & Over' prove there's life in the franchise just yet. [Aug 2008, p.103]

Stay Positive has consistently stronger material than its preecessors and, perhaps more importantly, is sequenced to maximum efficacy. [Aug 2008, p.100]

Neither sparkly nor weird enough. [Sep 2008, p.110]

Mellencamp croaks a sequence of raw, all but nihilistic yet far from self-pitying first-person tales about, well, death mainly, leavened by the odd rather forlorn reference to the life, love and freedom elements of the title. [Nov 2008, p.111]

The Allstars have that same dynamism plus a similarly brutal rhythm section, which sounds like a billion wasps playing Sister Ray in your brain, but they have found some missing ingredients, such as melody and variation. [Sep 2008, p.112]

Sometimes erratic and headstrong, at others whimsical and somewhat listless, it ultimately sounds like an unsatisfying curio. [Nov 2008, p.110]

So does the pairing work? The answer, from the first, strutting beats of Modern Guilt's opener, 'Orphans,' is a gleaming Yes. [Aug 2008, p.104]

¿Cómo Te Llama? is not a bad record, just so unrelentingly average that you wonder how in this age of music biz recession, it could be worth anyone's 14.99. [Aug 2008, p.112]

[A] gem-filled recording. [Aug 2008, p.111]

Sexsmith's mournful voice and lyrical skills, so admired by the likes of Elvis Costello and Neil Finn, detail a world of love and hopeful expectation. It all makes Exit Staretgy... an almost infinitely rich and subtle album. [Sep 2008, p.98]

Nude With Boots alternates between their trademark, skin-crawling sludge rock, and more accessible, almost anthemic moments. [Aug 2008, p.106]

Away from the atmosphere and visuals of live performance, over an hour of such dense and highly personal account of pain and beauty on the threshold of death is particularly demanding; a pity it's not available on DVD. [Aug 2008, p.103]

This sort of works, but clearly their obsession lies with the lyrics. [Sep 2008, p.106]

An impressive debut. [Nov 2008, p.109]

Though she occasionally loses focus Leila mostly pulls off this ambitious album and ends on a high note with 'Why Should I?' [Aug 2008, p.106]

A more charming and seductive album you're unlikely to hear this year. [Nov 2008, p.116]

The songs are beautifully crafted in that Davies/Weller/Doherty English tradition. [Aug 2008, p.103]

Hercules And Love Affair exist in that mighty unreal demimonde where dancing and art are not mutually exclusive. [Apr 2008, p.105]

There's still some beautifully glacial music....but now, occasionally, the Arctic exploration party becomes simply a party. [Aug 2008, p.103]

The Watsons' approach is softer, and more affecting, than wry, tack-sharp Lewis. [Aug 2008, p.114]

Digi Snacks is pleasingly lean on fillers , and finds RZA again at his peak as a producer, effortlessly balancing the slow burn bangers wirh tracks of soulful uplit. [Sep 2008, p.110]

On record, it's nutty maze-rock with hair-raising highs and the odd dead end. [July 2008, p.112]

Any number of Zutons and Corals have already trod this path, and to keep up Kane will have to try harder than insering words like "insane" and "psychotic" into music that sounds as if it was made by James Shelley's naive young cousins. [July 2008, p.101]

Clean, reverbed electric guitar chime and twang gorgeously and the production is simple and simpatico, but it's Berman's strange yet archetypal-sounding tales of gulible skinsmen and prisons built from sweets that keep you coming back for more. [July 2008, p.108]

While they fight shy of radical "Kid A"-style reinvention, hats should be doffed to Coldplay for at least having artistic cojones to mess with a winning formula. [July 2008, p.101]

This belated reunion has developed further into thr most affectingly sad, sweet, sepia sound rooted in Marcus's forlorn vocal and delicate ripples of detail--jazzy-to-motorik rhythm and haunting synthetic drones. [JUly 2008, p.102]

The resulting oestrogen charge--an operatic Tori Amos with a dab of Jane Siberry--is terrific when Worden reins in the "hello trees, hello sky" imagery, wincingly precious when she fails. [July 2008, p.110]

The piano-led 'New Beginnings' is one of several sombre mood pieces on what is the most ambitious work of the band's 40-year career. But fear not, headbangers: 'Revelation,' all chugging rifferama and panto villany, prove that Priest are still mad for it. Metal, that is. [July 2008, p.100]

O resoounds with the lustily imparted vocals of Kianna Alarid and Neely Jenkins, while the band's signature instrumental palette--fizzing guitars, chunky '60s organs--has expanded into a thick sonic cheesecake. [Nov 2008, p.109]

'Where to Here,' Slippery Slope (easier),' and 'In My Arms' are equally deadly writing, with gripping melodies and sing-out performances that seem to have benefited from listening to his pal Rufus Wainwright--and from arrangements by Wainwright's latest producer. [Sep 2008, p.112]

The band remains shackled to that wearying off-beat pulse that cauise trhe likes of 'Fire,' 'Vision' and the title track to tire. [July 2008, p.112]

She has the voacl talent of a young Alison Moyet, and thankfully this debut lives up to expectations. [Mar 2008, p.112]

This muscular, everyman rock could have been produced at any time in the past 35 years, but has charm and character nevertheess. [Apr 2008, p.104]

They've made their finest LP since 1995's "The Charlantans." [June 2008, p.112]

This misfires more than its hits home. [June 2008, p.108]

Heard back to back they almost make sense, but the sequencing here amplifies the disjointed feel of an album that facinates and frustrates in equal measure. [July 2008, p.108]

The Ottawan's new record abounds with moments most arresting for the crazy chutzpah with which she'll shoehorn a line of verse into a line of music whose rhythm puts the stresses on all the wrong words. [July 2008, p.104]

She draws in appropriate songs by Merle Haggard, Patty Griffin and Jack Wesley Routh, but excels them all with her own 'Not Enough.' [July 2008, p.104]

He's beautifully world-weary in songs such as 'Valley of the Low Sun' and 'Will it Grow.' [Sep 2008, p.102]

Given the backdrop to Joan Wasser's second album was her mother's passing to cancer, it's unsurprising that To Survive also packs a soporific sadness that can be draining despite our hostess's artistry. [July 2008, p.110]

Like other recent albums, this is not consistent enough to be classic Wilson but her voice still regularly seduces. [July 2008, p.109]

He calls his style 'slavishly copying,' we know it better as sweet soul. [July 2008, p.108]

A psych-folk bent for harmonic discord and atmospheric dread finds something forever sinister lodged at the album's heart: the kind of beauty that makes sailors run aground. [Dec 2008, p.102]

Marvellous. [Jul 2006, p.106]

The singles--'Fruit Machine,' 'Great DJ' amd the electro Krautrock of 'That's Not My Name'--are supported by the equally impressive 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' and closing title track, all bouncing beats, shiny samples and an invigorating knack for a pop tune. {june 2008, p.109]

Impressively, he makes it all his own--at times it feels like the songs might have been written by, or for, him. [June 2008, p.115]

Their third album is a confident return with staccato guitar/vocal interplay re-infused with wit and mechanical melodies. [June 2008, p.106]

Velocifero is comparable to pop at its best--travelling straight to the brain's pleasure centres but taking a strange tantalising cargo with it. [July 2008, p.110]

The Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee-produced follow-up to 2005's "Make Believe," finds Cuomo precariously balanced btween amused/amusing self-obsessed and de facto narcissism. [July 2008, p.110]

Smilers is a masterpiece from a songwriter who's quietly chronicling the blanched last days of a sunshine empire. [July 2008, p.112]

The sense of wonder in Fleet Foxes' songs is matched only by the discipline and talent that created this adventurous, evocative record. One which is already shaping up as an album of the year. [July 2008, p.98]

A dash more melodic brio wouldn't have gone amis, but its muted charms gather cumulatively nonetheless. [May 2008, p.109]

The 10 songs here complements mainman Creston Spiers' whisper-to-howl vocals with startling dynamic shifts. [Sep 2008, p.106]

Howver uncool, these la's will have loads more hits in '08. [July 2008, p.104]

From the gentle fire of the first, and title track, this is Green in the role of Love Man and in very fine form. [July 2008, p.100]

Sadly A&E neither draws on personal crisis or the intimacy of "Acoustic Mainlines" [June 2008, p.106]

Certainly, for anyone dosed up on post-Sisters black-attired rockisms, these Alabamans are a pulse-racing godsend. [Jan. 2008, p.110]

Those Libertines comparisons are a distant memory on Emergency, an album that ditches any tentativeness felt on last year's "Wait For Me," the band and producer Stephen Street going for Yorkshire-patented, Kaiser Chief-sized choruses, and Arctic Monkeys' kitchen-sink philosophising in the verses. [June 2008, p.102]

A musical sub-genre rebooted. [May 2009, p.104]

Much of this album's re-booting of Waits' back pages in an ambient '80s style is fussy and forgettable. [June 2008, p.112]

Mudhoney celebrate 20 years of mucus-crusted punk hootenannies with a raw restatement of basic priciples. [June 2008, p.113]

'Easy Does It' is pleasant and clever rather than emotive and memorable, like so much of this album. [Aug 2008, p.114]

No "George Best," perhaps, but a rugged, well-meaning Paul Scholes of a record nonetheless. [July 2008, p.100]

While there's some decent garage-punk dirt in 'Roughshod,' and lengthier tracks like 'Free Kitten on the Mountain' and Monster Eye' both briefly echo the menancing screwl of Magik Markers and early Sonic Youth, there's little here that really pushes the envelope much beyond an awkward and mildly abrasive collection of indie rock off-cuts. [July 2008, p.102]

Sometimes Duffy tries just that little too hard to capture the sound of soul music's glorious past. [Apr 2008, p.102]

We Are Scientists now sound less like a band you might have seen on a bill with Bloc Party. [Apr 2008, p.112]

If the imagery on this album is often solemn--ice, looming meteorological disaster, remote canyons--it isn't melodramtically so. [June 2008, p.109]

They all bed down with perfunctory efficiency as the voaclly gifted, lyrically vague Mraz holds court with a nylon-string guitar. [Feb 2009, p.112]

As fans of the or two previous albums might expect, there's little on this covers collection that proves Vetiver's love of the three-minute pop format: the mood is instead tuned to the free-festival campfire and the misty morning meditation. [July 2008, p.111]

Undeniably grandiose as the Black Angels may be, the unrelenting darkness becomes too claustrophobic; even the Velvets sometimes let the sunshine in. [Aug 2008, p.113]

They've forged a sound that's ambitious and close to unique. [May 2008, p.109]

The Last Shadow Puppets is an extraordinary side project that's even more enticing than the mothership. [May 2008, p.100]

All the ingredients for another hit album are here. The only thing missing is soul. [Dec 2007, p.110]

The reinvention is thrilling to eavesdrop. [June 2008, p.106]

Supreme Balloon is an airy sphere of joyful electronic possibility. [June 2008, p.103]

Fans of dramatic Diamond are well taken care of here. But the real masterpieces are the opening and closing tracks. [June 2008, p.104]

The one constant is their ability to chill the nape hairs, which ultimately is all that matters. [Apr 2008]

The ultimate sugar hit: an occassional buzz but ultimately unsatisfying. [June 2008, p.103]

Shine justifies John Legend's signing of her to his Homeschool label and finding producers she could inspire. [Mar 2008, p.112]

Third shows Portishead in the tradition of, say, Fairpoint Convention as much as Massive Attack, and though it might not convert sceptics it is convincing, and occasionally thrilling, demonstration that the wilderness can be a great place to cook up new ideas. [May 2008, p.103]

What might sound like a depressing work of angsty indulgence is in fact an uplifting record of angular alt-folk. [June 2008, p.108]

His near facsimile approach to fond memory demands a revitalising new element and he hasn't got it. [May 2008, p.112]

Flowing with an easy energy, it's the last track on an album that shows Madonna still firmly on the dancefloor, but with her eyes now turning to the USA. [June 2008, p.106]

The whole record's buzzy, hat-wearingly trendy; but also irresistible, and almost boundlessly exciting. [July 2008, p.104]

The brooding 'Singing Man' and the euphorically optimistic 'Rising Up' underline that the best hip hop is about taking chances. [July 2008, p.100]

Smile finds them advancing that set melodic agenda and playful rearrangement of classic rock DNA. [June 2008, p.109]

The Evangelist is tinged with the voyeur's illicit thrill a Forster spies on his neighbours and loved ones, but these are slso some of the most direct songs he's written. [June 2008, p.114]