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]

Richman gets more reflective with age. [Aug 2004, p.86]

It's as good as anything in this group's monstrous catalogue. [Dec 2003, p.120]

Sonic Nurse is not... a classic rock record. And it's not a classic Sonic Youth record. It's an excursion, into corners weird and corners familiar. [Jun 2004, p.100]

Farrar has rarely sounded so stirring on record. [Aug 2004, p.89]

A big wet dream of loss and isolation, sex and the search for grace. [May 2004, p.92]

This is the band at their melodious best. [Jun 2004, p.112]

At times, it's almost too tasteful a refinement of her work.... Yet there are some fabulous moments from both sides of Harvey's brain. [Jun 2004, p.100]

Beautifully skewed gospel-folk songs. [Aug 2004, p.101]

Quietly turn[s] into a rather good record as it goes along. [Jun 2004, p.116]

A perpetual guilty pleasure. [Jun 2004, p.107]

Repeated plays reveal a frustrating lack of memorable songs. [Nov 2004, p.102]

A welcome departure. [Jun 2004, p.114]

Cruel, sexy and offhand by turns. [Jun 2004, p.114]

Suffers from a paucity of premium standalone songs.... way too relentlessly generic. [Mar 2004, p.101]

Melds way-out weird with a pop welcome that sounds like no one else around right now. [May 2004, p.105]

It's not as spiky or sleazy as 2001's superlative Kittenz And Thee Glitz... but this is shiny, addictive pop that's never lost for a good tune. [Jun 2004, p.114]

Somewhere Only We Know is one of 2004's loveliest tunes, and while nothing else on their debut album quite matches this apogee of woebegone non-energy, there's plenty to keep the eyes welling up. [Jun 2004, p.116]

Deep, mournful, impressive. [Apr 2004, p.99]

Tired and contrived-sounding.... Baptism? Craptism, more like. [Jun 2004, p.102]

A return to basics--14 meticulously sculpted, wordless vignettes tricked out in blurry beats, subtle digital daubs and mellifluous bass counterpoints. [May 2004, p.104]

[A] breezy conflation of Beta Band-esque jollity, default indie guitar chime and High Llamas-style retro melody. [May 2003, p.95]

Sleepy, certainly, but never tired. [Aug 2004, p.89]

Their raucous, raw live show transfers effortlessly to record, justifying all three of those exclamation marks. [Jun 2004, p.116]

She's lost track of almost everything that made her music marvellous. [Jun 2004, p.101]

A superior folk-tinged brand of MOR. [Oct 2005, p.102]

Hayden's delicate little songs are potent, precious things indeed. [Oct 2004, p.110]

An oddly experimental record, prioritising texture over tune and betraying a river-deep confessioinal streak. [Apr 2004, p.103]

Improved fidelity aside, the song remains the same. [Aug 2004, p.88]

A Grand… isn't as immediate and vivacious as its predecessor. But credit to Skinner for pushing things forward; he remians one of the most compelling voices in British pop culture. [May 2004, p.94]

Those who have grown up with him will find much to love here. [May 2004, p.90]

There's still much to link the group to their musical past. [Jun 2004, p.107]

True, [Merritt] still sings in a voice that's subject to fairly strict demarcations of range and malleability, but his deft spadework in the trench of song-craft more than compensates. [May 2004, p.93]

Los Lobos' ingenuity with arrangements and atmosphere makes The Ride something special. [Jun 2004, p.102]

With elements of synth-pop, new wave and blue-eyed soul distilled into a succession of heart-beating hits, Trial Of The Century is a record that gets better with each listen. [Dec 2004, p.99]

Their debut, Mono, gave voice to little beyond their frustration, and the distance between that impressively venomous fit of black-hearted flailing and Penance Soiree's stereopathic, multiphonic attack is similar to that between Nirvana's Bleach and Nevermind. [May 2004, p.94]

An album of lightness and substance, in perfectly observed amounts. [Oct 2005, p.114]

A nearly flawless set of left-field folk. [Jun 2004, p.106]

A remarkable comeback. [Jun 2004, p.106]

Dreamily exploratory, but rooted in pop. [Apr 2004, p.102]

His songwriting has rarely sounded so acute. [Apr 2004, p.109]

To dismiss Heroes to Zeroes as a mere exercise in rock homage underestimates The Beta Band's charm. [Apr 2004, p.102]

In a way, Trampin' is to this decade what Horses was to the '70s: a repudiation of its time, and the promise of a way forward. [Apr 2004, p.98]

It really is incredibly good, even if sometimes it's hard to feel you're hearing the real Jolie and not a character she's adopted. [Jun 2004, p.110]

Starts strong and finishes weak, but it's forgivable considering the gems contained in this 12-song set. [May 2004, p.97]

The longer the album runs the more engaging the songs seem to become. [May 2004, p.104]

Lynn's voice... is as strong as it was during her heyday, while her songwriting ability has only increased with age. [Jun 2004, p.98]

Brilliantly produced and performed, rather than astoundingly well written. [Jun 2004, p.112]

Forget notions of old or new schools: this is an album that blends a kindergarten-level technique with styles that are strictly postgraduate. [Jun 2004, p.116]