Citay's third album ratchets up the production values from its predecessor, 2007's "Little Kingdom," emphasising deluxe stoner grooves and coruscating fuzz-guitar wig-outs. [Mar 2010, p.92]

But despite the lack of surprise, Gold Rush is a fine, rollicking jig, and Sparrow's skeletal voice and uke combo feels like it's been pulled from the ground still caked in Prairie soil. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

Whenever he lays down his licks atop the bed he's made, there's never any doubt that this is a Pat Metheny record. One of his better ones, too. [Mar 2010, p.101]

When Jones starts singing about Clapham over the clipped, welter-weight indie of this quartet's second studio album it begins to seem a curiously south-eastern English rock vision - the clean guitars and Cure-style vocals suggesting a lighter shade of Bloc Party. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Formed around Orcadian singer/guitarist Erland Cooper, former Verve guitarist Simon Tong and drummer David Nock, best known for his work with Paul McCartney's The Fireman, Erland and co meld influences to create a psych-folk mosaic. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

It's a curiously dated backdrop that, although sitting well with Smith's occasionally pompous lyrics, does no favours to the singer's foghorn baritone; a problem that might have been saved by some radio-friendly tunes, which are notably thin on the ground this time. [Nov 2009, p.90]

But there is nothing here that will leap out of the speakers to entice the unconverted, despite the Weezer-like spod-rock of Fot Nuffin and Trouble's garage pop stomp. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

With its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

What could of been a sedentary stopgap has become an heroic attestation to the thrillls of music fandom. [Apr 2010, p.104]

Foster's extraordinary voice is suited to Dickinson's poignant rhymes, and tracks like They Called Me To the Window and I see Thee Better -- In The Dark, are concentrated, exquisite and oddly moving. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

The trio are at their most effective when meshing from-the-streets comment with clanging guitars and harmonies in the vein of early-period Who, see the wry poke at tabloid celebrity, "Keep Your Eyes On Me." It's only when they descend into the Kinks pastiche of "Mr. Grey" that the bar is lowered. [Mar 2010, p.96]

From Palm Beach, the new wave of 21st century powerpop. [July 2010, p. 97]

Lostprophets neuter any genuine bite their music may have had with slick, histrionic choruses that render them as impotent as the dozens of other MTV-worshiping derivatives. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Contra is the sound of a band driving themselves to very satisfying extremes. [Feb 2010, p. 96]

Ultimately over-long, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky is still a preconception-changing album. [Mar 2010, p.100]

Ringo makses a good fist of his production debut. [Apr 2010, p.98]

The whole sprawl of tooting loops, sawing violins and Pallett's unlovely operatic warbling feels gruelling and indigestible - prog stodge in a dashing post millennial disguise. [Feb 2010, p. 93]

Unlike some other nu-folkies, this feels organic and unforced; one reason why her albums, and this in particular, have such resonance. [Jan 2010, p.92]

A New York studio may not be the ideal place to summon up the atmosphere of the Wild West, but these desperadoes on Barry Adamson's lable make a pretty good fist of it. [Dec 2009, p.101]

Lawrence Arabia's world may lean toward Edwardian anachronism, but that echo of simpler times will charm your socks off. [Jan 2010, p.123]

With six producers and 10 guest stars, Malice N Wonderland sees the ageing gangsta casting an eye over modern hip hop in all its forms, including Pronto's nod to the AutoTune phenomenon featuring the manipulated vocals of singing robot Soulja Boy. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

If harvest Moon ever threatened to melt your teetch, now's the chance to really bite down. If You already love iut, you can get a sugar rush all over again. Win-win. [Feb 2010, p.112]

Attention wanders as the album slips into a lazy mid-pace skunk groove and Robinson falls back on 'one love' lyrics, but when the duo are joined, on three tracks, by the spider-baby vocals of Kiki Hitomi the effect is unnerving, like modern urban folk tales whispered by a disembodied duo of night bus wraiths. [Jan 2010, p. 96]

There are no masterpieces here. But it's a brave venture nonetheless, and one that does succeed in becoming something more than the sum of its parts. [Jan 2010, p. 95]

The good news, however, is that admirers of the later albums such as Bone Mahcine, the Black Rider and Real Gone are very well served. [Jan 2010, p. 91]

Few are better placed than Bostonian Edan Portnoy, who uses access to the old-school masters owned by Traffic, one of the few reissue imprints interested in rap, to curate a fine, fun funky and fascinating half-hour mixtape interlaced with new sample-based production. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Thirty years, 170 shows, a repertoire of 400 songs in 3,509 performances: from that motherlode we have 48 nuggets chronicling the live career of the South's Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

Structurally, melodically and harmonically some of the material is formulaic but the sublime quality of Stone's vocals - especially on shimmering ballads such as Maybe and Tell Me - save the day. [Feb 2010, p. 95]