The mood is meditative, a West Coast dope-smoker's take on Neu!'s unvarying grooves; the songs are mostly named after ancient villages dotted around Somerset. [Dec 2009, p. 93]

Ultimately, such details of momentum and mood are testimony to how Them Crooked Vultures flouts the supergroup manual. It doesn't sound like the work of rich men on holiday, but rather three serious individuals looking to prove themselves over again. [Jan 2010, p. 88]

As with its predecessor, 2006's Continuum, not a note, not a breadth, is wasted--and the playing, from a crack team including Pino Palladino, Steve Jordan and Ian McLagan, is unfussily superb throughout. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

Ultimately though, too much of Echo is over familiar. By the end you find yourself longing for some subtlety or more light and shade.

He sounds as raw and vital as ever. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

While good stuff (with good sound) in the main, its sheer length and predictability mark this as one for the fanatics. [Jan 2010, p.114]

The Cribs of 2009 sound bold, fully-realised, their anthems polished and radio-ready, without sacrificing the acerbic edge that's powered them this far. [Sep 2009, p.88]

Sumner's fans won't be disappointed, but it feels a bit like a stopgap. [Nov 2009, p.90]

Twenty-five years after their creative peak, it seems as essential a purchase as a book of new jokes from Bobby Darvo. [Nov 2009, p.91]

In this 30-track collection marks Snow Patrol as a band backed with some serious songwriting heft.

But whereas their 2004 debut EP Headgit was intriguing if slightly stiff, they have developed into a propulsive unit with good tunes and a panoramic, near-psychedelic guitar sound. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

Musically slick but unpredictable, Only Revolutions is the stuff of stadia; a more obstreperous Foo Fighters; if you like. [Dec 2009, p. 92]

Julian Casablancas emerges with this engagingly odd collection of songs. [Nov 2009, p.92]

The themes are familiar, yet still captivating, as rock's most misanthropic man sings about a world of emotional retardation and alienation. [Dec 2009, p.111]

Bleach sounds liked a valiant manifesto for something new that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest nightmare. [Dec 2009, p.112]

Their work together hits an irresistible sweet spot between old-school r&b and punky ramalama. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

Its follow-up features a batch of songs Jones has lived with and reworked over 20-plus years, and the material radiates with a well-worn intimacy. [Dec 2009, p.90]

A delicate affair sometimes too wistful for its own good, even with the added colour of Dede Sampaio's bird sounds, Extended Vacation is a complex exercise in delicate melodies, field recordings and repetition. [Jan 2010, p. 100]

This eco-themed, sci-fi clad concept album bristles with electro-pop sounds (Light Years, the OMD-ish title track) yet retains Gab's furrowed-brow lyricism and singular approach as he forges his own space within this changing landscape. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Their fifth album still features plenty of trademark thrills - Brian Chippendale drumming junglist breakbeats at heart-attack velocity, bassist Brian Gibbon's' riffs sounding like a grindcore group playing gabba - while the bark-spitting tempo-shifts of opener Sound Guardians wouldn't alienate the Metallica set. [Jan 2010, p. 96]

For every throughly relised composition, there is a meandering fragment, great only as far as it goes. [Nov 2009, p.90]

Clearly the thrill of hearing new songs in their embryonic state could never be replicated, but as rendered in such pristine isolation even the cavalier back catalogue selections (rarely played early classic 1,000,000;one-that-got-away Romance) fell flat. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

A dizzying series of minimalist Afro-psych mantras, Ay Ay Ay interlaces eccentric pounding beats, multitrack boom-tsch hiccups, and nervy fragmented vocals, building a groove that crackles with the rhythmic perversity of Arthur Russell's strangest sound experiments but drives on like a reborn TV On The Radio who've learnt to lose it down the disco. [Jan 10, p. 90]

But despite its mining of a bygone age, Cosmic Egg has two clear 21st century counterparts. Far Away and Violence of the Sun are the sort of pristine epics found on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy., while lysergic piledrivers 10,000 Feet and the title track could easily have appeared on Kasabians' West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

The results is mixed, but at times instinctive and powerful. [Apr 2010, p.93]

The album is loaded with plenty of sonic winks and nods for record collector types. [Nov 2009, p.94]

Fits is sublime, sexy, unmisable. [Jul 2009, p.99]

This is a brave, bold, inevitably flawed record from the kind of talent we should be esctastically happy to have around. [Aug 2009, p.92]