Warning is the sound of three men growing old far too gracefully.

Ultimately The Sea And Cake are just making timeless, faultless pop music.

Paul Simon still has it.

Hiatt's misfortune is your guaranteed entertainment.

There are glimpses of Curt's former shambling genius; I Quit and Pieces Of Me are both mournfully melodic, while Tarantula has the nimble bluegrass pickings of Up On The Sun-era Meats, but elsewhere rap-metal stupidity (Hercules) and over-polished rock plodding (Batwing) sour the beans.

Twelve years after the band split, it's immensely reassuring to hear Forster deliver lines only he could have written in his bruised, laconic, declamatory tone...

Misconceived is the polite word.

Music is fitful and its charms aren't all immediate, but Madonna is still doing what she does best--giving a lick of pop genius to the unlikely genre of experimental dance music.

An album of supreme control, Solaris proves that not all Zeitgeist tickling beats are necessarily bound for the coffee table.

In a nutshell, if you liked the previous stuff, you'll like this... it has as much right to a place in the world as Huey Lewis and the News ever did.

A fairly routine batch of middling-to-turgid funk numbers about lurrve performed with rather more duty than excitement.

Jones admits a queasy air of self-congratulation to her third album of jazzified covers.

Her songs, paradoxically both epic and intimate, shimmer and pulsate as their kaleidoscopic images and mysterious characters drift in and out of focus.

Godspeed have taken their by-now familiar elements and rearranged them in often beautiful or surprising ways.

The big tunes--Push Upstairs, King of Snake, Born Slippy--are brasher and more powerful, and while the studio subtleties evaporate, they are replaced by thundering rock-n-roll energy and even wilder streams of lyrical consciousness.

They deliver breathless, urgent rifferama, elements of which can be traced to RATM, The Stooges and Placebo.

The results can, surprisingly, prove as musically rewarding as they are entertaining.

As with all Stephin Merritt productions, the real stars are Stephin Merritt's wonderful songs, and the 14 love songs on Hyacinths And Thistles are as sweet and prickly as the title suggests.

While it still whispers, this third endeavour works its way into your soul.

Damon and Naomi haven't so much altered what they do as augmented it, often beautifully. The results are occasionally breathtaking.... A rare and graceful record. (Oct 2000, p.92)

Unlike many of dance culture's dedicated dilettantes, theirs is a smooth and millifluous whole, underpinned by the gentle pulsing of liquid bass lines.... Delightful. [Sep 2000, p.94]

The Menace is a far more varied and ambitious LP than the first and, one suspects, than the Elastica album we'd have got four or three years ago. A very pleasant surprise.

Highly listenable and equally danceable, a kind of Pet Shop Boys meet Gary Numan at the gates of Georgio Moroder. (Sep 2000, p.95)

The synth-laden tunes are relentlessly upbeat--sort of New Order on Prozac--with a Lightning Seeds blitheness.... Though no groundbreaker, 'Monaco' is catchy as flu.

An endearingly petulant collection of nasty hardcore guitar tunes.

Often he sings with a richness, depth and conviction worthy of Johnny Cash. [Jan 2001, p.98]

An earthy, beat-oriented album... It ain't '3 Feet High'--or even 'De La Soul Is Dead'-- but it ain't half bad. (Sep 2000, p.96)

A stoner's paradise from start to finish. Most pleasurable.