Few other bands could provide properly sympathetic backing for a singer who delivers his roiling emotions in such sad, sleepy tones. [Oct 2004, p.112]

A grimier, more uncomfortable listen. [Nov 2004, p.100]

Fails on multiple fronts. [Dec 2004, p.116]

[Pinback's] blend of warm and wistful is almost impossible to resist. [Jan 2005, p.104]

A drizzly doomsday masterpiece. [Nov 2004, p.108]

He sings with committed restraint and plays outspoken guitar. [Feb 2005, p.95]

These stark, sweet confessionals easily rank among the best of his career. [Nov 2004, p.108]

While there's some inspired moments, much should've been discarded on son Woody's bedroom floor. [Oct 2004, p.104]

The first out-and-out dull R.E.M. album. [Oct 2004, p.97]

A collision of Dylanesque surrealism and Bert Janschian finger-picking. [Nov 2004, p.114]

His first, full-tilt protest record... he comes out swinging, in every respect. [Oct 2004, p.110]

Big issues... are chewed over with bittersweet humour and musical sophistication. [Nov 2004, p.110]

Profoundly disappointing. [Jan 2005, p.105]

The perkiness and quirkiness are paper-thin. [Dec 2004, p.112]

A masterpiece of controlled electronic violence. [Nov 2004, p.102]

She can carry a tune, sure, but as far as expressing emotion goes, she's relentlessly, huskily one-note. [Oct 2004, p.112]

As overdriven and mutated a noise as ever they've managed, Damage also retains Blues Explosion's trademark sweat-drenched feel for soul. [Oct 2004, p.101]

Like a cookie full of arsenic, Universal Audio's indie sweetness conceals a dark, deathly heart. [Nov 2004, p.114]

As for her voice, that's still a remarkably sassy tool. [Nov 2004, p.108]

Revives the windswept drama of Porcupine-vintage Echo & The Bunnymen. [Dec 2004, p.99]

Annoyingly, [the] high marks are all too infrequent. [Oct 2004, p.116]

There is genius in here... [but] Shangri-La does sometimes drift into lazily delivered Knopfler history lessons. [Nov 2004, p.96]

There is a remarkable consistency about Smile's complex tapestry of delights. [Oct 2004, p.98]

It is Kweli's diligently intelligent worldview, dextrous wordplay and often breathtaking flow that enrapture. [Jan 2005, p.96]

Tender dream-pop which is simulataneously familiar and novel. [Aug 2004, p.96]

Songs terrific, band sensational, and -- big plus -- Costello's voice late-developing way beyond that pinched whine into an instrument of substance and character. [Oct 2004, p.97]

It's exhilarating stuff, the kind of record that sets new parameters as to what is possible from a punk rock'n'roll band in the 21st century. [Oct 2004, p.106]

Whether you consider London Calling to be the last great rock album of the '70s or the first great rock album of the '80s, the extent to which it fully merits its cultural and aesthetic status is utterly beyond question. [Oct 2004, p.123]

Nino Rojo is no mere best-of-the-rest affair, but a sibling piece of equal intimacy and inspiration. [Oct 2004, p.102]

Has lingering '80s elements, with some pompous lyrics, laborious arrangements and long, drawn-out vowel sounds, yet it is also fresher and less strenuous than before. [Apr 2004, p.114]

A noble addition to the Giant Sand canon. [Sep 2004, p.96]

There's some startling songwriting on Let's Bottle Bohemia. [Oct 2004, p.104]

A covers album supreme. [Dec 2004, p.114]

Lacks the hooks and memorable vocals... that formerly made this band so effective at marrying the pop and the underground. [Sep 2004, p.92]

What Dizzee Rascal has done with this record is find his own - profoundly satisfying - balance between grime's digital vortex of ringtones and car alarms and an older more contemplative electronic tradition. [Oct 2004, p.104]

Their candour is as refreshing as it is revealing. [May 2005, p.108]

There's little attempt to get under the skin of these songs, or really bend them into new shapes. [Oct 2004, p.100]

All the components that make the Arcade Fire such a gripping live proposition remain intact on this full-length debut. [Apr 2005, p.96]

This is well-muscled, heavily mascara'd dance music. [Sep 2004, p.99]

That voice remains intact, warm, ever communicative, ahead of the game. [Oct 2004, p.112]

Heyes has polished the band into tedium, with live guitars and drums drowned out by high sheen studio gloss and painfully dated loops. [Sep 2004, p.104]

This is some coming-of-age classic. [Sep 2004, p.96]

As complex, compelling, and at times unsettling a record as Cale has unleashed since 1982's Music For A New Society. [Oct 2003, p.105]

Marks a major leap along the road to recovery. [Nov 2004, p.96]

The duo-only, no bass required songs don't lack for sonic depth. [Sep 2004, p.98]

An extraordinary record... It's not, nor is it intended to be, easy listening. [Sep 2004, p.94]

Tender, wise, compassionate and magnanimous, it's a special, special record for anyone who has ever hurt. [Dec 2004, p.114]

Not only the bravest record she's ever made, it's also one of the strangest and most uncompromising by a major artist to get a commercial release. [Sep 2004, p.93]

A charming glide of warm fuzz-pop that suffers only through their influences being worn perhaps too clearly upon their sleeves. [Oct 2004, p.101]

A seamless, melodic blend of psychedelia and C&W... the songs and instrumentals here hang together beautifully. [Nov 2004, p.95]

They're a bit like '80s vintage Judas Priest but not quite as good. Or indeed as gay. [Sep 2004, p.99]

Ratchets up the accessibility quotient considerably. [Nov 2004, p.102]

It's hardly a career-defining collection. [Sep 2004, p.98]

They sound a bit tired. [Sep 2004, p.98]

These may be other people's words, but Dulli well knows the vocabulary. [Nov 2004, p.112]

On Everyone Is Here, you'll find some of the most haunting music to bear the Finn imprint. [Sep 2004, p.95]

It's a fine album, mixing lean rock anthems... with the kind of ballads lesser artists would need years to write. [Oct 2004, p.116]

Display[s] a lurid intelligence that seeks to explore an alternate American history. [Oct 2004, p.102]

Material which says something, but feels nothing real. [Nov 2004, p.95]

This [album] finds her with a steelier determination in her country soul and an inclination to rock out that she's only previously hinted at. [Nov 2004, p.116]

There's a wit, charisma and individuality at play that lends teeth to Rilo Kiley's tasteful alt country/indie-rock sound. [Mar 2005, p.104]

If the likes of 154-era Wire, early Cure and New Order appeal, this is for you. [Oct 2004, p.101]

Starts promisingly soulful, but soon descends into faux gangster bullshit and lazy, dumb-ass sexism. [Feb 2005, p.100]

It's too taxing for the less intense of the band's admirers. [Nov 2004, p.127]

They've surpassed most of their contemporaries to climb right to the top of the chill-out tree. [Sep 2004, p.104]

Few bands can make desperation sound so all embracing and enticing. [Jun 2004, p.111]

It's the feeling of almost imperceptible menace that makes Bubblegum so unsettling. [Aug 2004, p.84]

A gem. [Nov 2004, p.98]

The results are strangely disorientating and at times Carr's brittle, acoustic sketches are smothered by skull-jarring percussion. [Sep 2004, p.92]

An ambient set of quite stunning beauty. [Sep 2004, p.95]

Electric piano and pedal steel-caressed intimacy rules the day, keeping attendant preciousness almost, if not completely, at bay. [Aug 2004, p.99]

An open, emotionally congruent record that never tries to be clever and yet rarely seems dull. [Apr 2004, p.99]

This time [COF] have tempered their voluminous superfuzz with scenic bliss. [Oct 2004, p.101]

Kiss & Tell, although superbly polished and instrumentally powerful, suffers from a claustrophobic sheen. [Aug 2004, p.99]

lang's expansive delivery makes the album sound overblown in a few places. [Oct 2004, p.102]

Spread over a whole CD, there is some worryingly featureless stuff. [Apr 2004, p.102]

(I)NC's pop-punky take on early Deep Purple-ish blues-rock is elegantly streamlined by Rubin's lucid production. [Sep 2004, p.104]

Fathomlessly beautiful. [Aug 2004, p.110]

A razor sharp updating of previous themes. [Aug 2004, p.98]

The third choice record from McIntyre in as many years. [Aug 2004, p.99]

The surface mayhem actually masks an admirable craft. [Aug 2004, p.96]

If you can stick with its synthetic marionette oompah band designs, become immersed in its whirlwind momentum and flint-eyed wit, the chances are you'll fall in love with the album's deep miined reservoirs of charm and sheer eagerness to impress. [Sep 2004, p.90]

If it weren't all so damn happy this would be the most terrifying music in existence. [Aug 2004, p.98]

While they're hardly cutting-edge these days, The Orb's gently pleasing grooves... still work as aural enhancers for the cannabinoidally-incliined. [Jun 2004, p.114]

Sounding like lost transmissions from classic '70s AM radio, it's Stringfellow's best yet. [Dec 2004, p.116]

Nothing on The Spine drills into your cerebral cortex and demands to be whistled on public transport like earlier hits, but the tunes are agreeable enough. [Aug 2004, p.99]

Tightly packed with Eight Days A Week-style harmonies and immaculate, 12-string strumming. [Oct 2004, p.100]

This time, the division between uninspired, joyless Gang Starr pastiches like Don't Say Nuthin and the polymorphous likes of Stay Cool or Outro has never sounded so glaringly obvious. [Aug 2004, p.92]

Not as immediate as the previous two albums, this one takes time before its effortless flow, interweaving harmonies and low-key chords really sink in. [Aug 2004, p.102]

Such earnestness makes for a terrifically hard slog. [Aug 2004, p.93]

The recorded-live-by-candlelight performances documented herein aren't short on the kind of clamorous foreboding and twisted pop nous a fan of Disintegration or The Head On The Door might hope for. [Aug 2004, p.87]

Though the detail in these blurred vignettes sometimes upstages the foreground, the moments of magic make the odd longueur worth enduring. [Sep 2004, p.95]

There's nothing here that elevates the Goodies above the level of the ordinary. [Aug 2004, p.96]

Wide, sprawling, often anxious canvases that deliver the same rebel-hearted romanticism, promises of social insurrection, and weary stream-of-consciousness confessionals he's been turning out for years. [Aug 2004, p.89]

Stirring but sombre stuff. [Aug 2004, p.86]

Drifts somewhere between Mogwai's softest moments and Her Space Holiday's wry prettiness. [Aug 2004, p.101]

He puts down the rumour-mongers with an acid tongue. [Nov 2004, p.100]

Isn't an easy listen but those with an adventurous ear will be well rewarded. [Aug 2004, p.101]