Skip ["Last Song" and "Desperanto"], and you've something very much like a classic. [9 Oct 2004, p.57]

But for every moment where the echoes of what's gone before threaten to engulf them, The Stills have ten more that shrug off the dead weight of their influences and reveal a thick, dark veneer of anguished sincerity.

An assured debut that scores as much for what it doesn't do as it does for its low-key, insidious rhymes and chrome-gleaming rhythmical clatter. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]

Personality, his third album, conforms to type, while confounding expectation.

A belligerent surge of dub-influenced electro-rock and angst-ridden sloganeering.

Leaves sound zeitgeisty and minty-fresh enough to inject some cold fire into the soft-rocking mainstream.

It's a tougher listen than usual, but it's still laden with lashings of classic Lekman pop hooks and a vocal that's sweeter than a Swedish cinnamon bun.

For an album that you might think is merely an excuse for a megabucks world tour, it sure does, er, wail.

'Survivor' is brimful of staccato Timbaland skew-beats and a heroic disregard for the 'all-important' milkman whistleability factor. It is, quite frankly, nuts.

Ultimately, Darkstar's maturation from dubstep's next big things into modern pop classicists continues to intrigue.

Those wanting clangour and dissonance will be disappointed, but everyone else will be pleasantly surprised.

Perfect pop is not something you can design; it’s an alchemical accident resulting from a freakish alignment of melody, words and rhythm that unifies all who hear it, an H1N1 strain of music. That Little Boots so nearly achieves the ultimate chart-slaying, cerebral-cortex tickling, Bradford-hen-party-and-Shoreditch-rave-soundtracking album is, frankly, amazing.

Butler’s done well to harness the fuller ideas first explored on "Smokey" but, in doing so, has sacrified raw Devendra for something just a bit too, well, Bees-y.

Gone are the ill-advised brass and bare-faced chart aspirations of 1996's awful 'Wild Mood Swings', as are the flippant pop songs that commercialised The Cure in the mid-1980s. What we are left with is the dark, dense core of Smith's psyche, and a reminder that The Cure are at their fearsome best when creating soundscapes awash with uncertainty and dread.

But Paramore have always been more pop than their fans may like to admit, and this mainstream rebirth feels like a transitional step to something gigantic.

With their third album, bijou trippy-hippy souljazzfunksters Morcheeba have let it all hang out - and so all those half-formulated ideas they hadn't the guts to record earlier are here. It's

His solo debut is frequently as imperfectly perfect as Pavement approaching their best...

At times things seem a touch over-produced--something that's always a risk when you spend half a decade working on 11 tracks. But mostly, Marshall's thickly layered studio shenanigans make Sun shine.

The trio have discovered a few new sonic tricks, but it's the celestial duel-vocals of Parker and Sparhawk which continue to ensure that Low always reach such beautiful highs.

It feels like Maximum Balloon is a project that could inflate infinitely. Let's hope it does.

Just because Brain Thrust Mastery doesn’t attempt to shoehorn some hamfisted social commentary or poverty-ending rhetoric into its 11 tracks doesn’t make it lightweight indie fluff; far from it–-We Are Scientists are serious about having fun.

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two is undoubtedly a good record. It's just that in the Beasties' case, merely being good doesn't seem, well, y'know, good enough.

The results on their 10th studio album are pleasingly baffling.

Flawed, but impressive.

All pastel tones and carefree (minutely detailed) complexity. [5 Mar 2005, p.51]

To be completely honest, it's no revelation – at times the music feels incomplete, like a lonesome Portner is missing his bros – but it's played out beautifully, sunny in disposition and just a little wild around the edge.

It's an impressively unpredictable record that veers down wildly different paths, in ways no previous Modest Mouse album has dared.

Henson spends 20-odd minutes working his tremulous voice--somewhere between Paul Simon and Wayne Coyne--around echoing guitar.... Then suddenly he finds the socket and ‘Don’t Swim’ rages into life, his guitar bashed and throttled.

Eating Us is their fourth full-length, and it’s a delight.

The 23-year-old is most impressive when channeling the heartfelt huskiness of Edith Piaff on the old timey ‘I’ve Got A Girl’, which rolls across the backdrop of a hefty Waitsian polka.

Eitzel does doomed introspection with more wit than the average bear, however, and more tunefully, too.

An impressive consolidation rather than a startling revelation.

Tempest is a relentless exploration of bleakness.

Slowly, their melodic smarts outweigh their influences.

It [the first Mariachi El Bronx album] was a beautifully anarchistic move that's now spawned its second (more polished) album under the Mariachi El Bronx alias.

Thankfully, this is more absurd than mawkish, made even better by the fact that Tahiti 80 are French people singing in English, and therefore do not always make sense.

Happy Mondays' first album since 1992's "...Yes Please!" is the sound of a damaged former addict being ushered into a studio for one last shot at the big time - before falling on his arse.

Despite No Age’s enforced restrictions, they’ve come up with an album that--in its urgent, accidental variety--is far more exciting than the studied stylistic uniformity of most rock bands’ efforts.

The assembled talent takes This Is The Kit’s traditional folk to the edge of the avant-garde.

While it’s not the glorious shambles we were hoping for, there’s a feeling that no matter what rehabilitation they go through, thankfully they’ll never lose those magic battle scars.

For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called 'Kid A' betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally.

Deceptively inventive, darkly melodic Simon & Garfunkel and (Elliott) Smithisms. [4 Sep 2004, p.72]

While the journey isn't quite as as spectacular as you'd hope, the destination is reassuringly familiar: Foo Fighters making fist-pumping rock'n'roll.

The record leans at times too heavily on its basic formula of pizzicato electric guitar and seedy, somnambulant basslines. Still, as a slice of squalid glamour with a beating heart under its rusted exterior, Coastal Grooves deserves your attention.

Oh Fortune spans a wider spectrum than its folky core might imply, adding grandeur and a refreshing, cerebral spin to proceedings.

Overlong at almost an hour but, largely, as pretty and organic as crystal.

[Evans is] a sharp songwriter with an acute ear for melody and a voice that could bitch-slap any R&B wannabe into place. [21 May 2005, p.66]

She sounds more relevant on these songs than she has in years.

The highs on The Men’s album are higher than Milk Music’s, but Cruise Your Illusion is the more cohesive statement.

For all its slavering over archaic ‘80s production cheese, The Desired Effect is a consistently impressive collection--probably the strongest Brandon’s produced since 2006’s ‘Sam’s Town.’

This first instalment is impressive, but thin at eight tracks. Would it not have been better to hold back, and release just one, truly stunning record?

BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.

'Aerial' has more than its share of static, but the highs are more than worth the lows. [12 Nov 2005, p.45]

Across is nonetheless a very fond retread around the outskirts of a dank, delectable career.

Recorded in a primary school, the Reading warbler's third solo record is whimsical, pleasant and calming, with shades of Damien Rice and Regina Spektor.

An album that veers between the lush pop melodies of her last two LPs and a full-frontal riot grrrl assault.

Guaranteed to leave you speechless, one way or another. [12 Mar 2005, p.58]

The record boasts maybe his finest solo single to date in 'Brittle Heart', plus a clutch of mid-tempo rockers that scrub up nicely--even if the seedy Soho glam of yore is replaced by a leadenly earnest tone.

It all adds up to a cerebral and entertaining tribute to the many and varied incarnations of dance.


What gives Saturnalia its real kick is the way it emotionally engages.

Mourn exhibits a young band fully aware of their own qualities: fierceness, confidence and brutally simple songwriting.

Another Eternity is a far more mainstream-sounding album than their 2012 debut ‘Shrines’, but it’s also rooted in sounds from the underground.

Price has pulled off a smarter trick: after doing ’80s Britain and ’70s America, The Killers now finally sound like… themselves.

Yet in his desire to create a self-consciously classic album, BDB has erred on the side of generosity. At 63 minutes, 'The Hour Of Bewilderbeast' is true to its title: there's simply too much to sustain one's unswerving attention.

MTMTMK is all about neon-soaked city raving, and the result is a stiffer, uglier and over-Westernised sound, too reliant on soulless computerisation.

At 30 minutes long, the trip is brief, but it covers so much ground.

This is an album of difficult rhythms, squawking guitars and bohemian eccentricities that will leave fans delighted and everyone else baffled--just as their 12 others have done. Business as usual, then.

Unfathomable brilliance from start to finish.

For all its high-mindedness, it’s garage-rock primalism is just as easily enjoyed with your brain switched off. Perhaps that’s the point.

Maybe they're just too solid, too classic, too... lacking in danger, but Bruiser proves they're still putting up a hell of a fight.

A few indulgences like an ‘Auld Lang Syne’ singalong are the main gripes to dampen an otherwise monumental presence.

A mix of Trent Reznor and Patrick Wolf, he’s both an industrial piledriver and theatrical show-off, making this debut record disorientating, confusing and exciting.

Ash come close here to that which has always eluded them: an album that amounts to more than the sum of its singles.

Snoop takes a surprising back seat, singing low in the mix and seldom rapping--an odd decision, but it works and when Bush is good, it’s an absolute joy.

This is no identity crisis, it's the sound of beautiful evolution.

Simplicity means the record occasionally feels samey, but it seems mean to criticise something that feels so pure.

Bazaar elevates Wampire alongside those bands, while retaining the skewed oddness that made them so likeable in the first place.

The album itself follows the thread started on 2005’s "With Teeth," which is to say Reznor’s again favouring songs over soundscapes.

The quintet are a crack unit, powered by hard rock riffs, jazz and Krautrock-informed drums and flights of flute-based fancy.

Look beyond the spasm-inducing bass solos to Scott herself: a frequently magnetic performer, with a certain brave, defiant spirit that her peers lack.

'Yours Truly...' is a rip-roaring pop record - sprightly, lean and adventurous - a bold leap skyward from 'Employment'.

It's the less controlled, less sleek excursions that are more exciting.

Sustained power and little in the way of variety can make for quick fatigue, but at just 38 minutes long Cope has hooks and energy to spare.

None of [the guest producers] manage to shift the band far from their roots--an intense punk Elvis growl that's impossible to replicate. [16 Oct 2004, p.49]

What 'Disappeared', in all its stealthy innovation and breathless compendium of sounds, amounts to, is a kind of avant-garde musique concrète - difficult noises shrouded in a cloak of accessibility.

It's managed that rarest of feats, a techno record with a heart.

They blend chiming, Television-style guitars and swooning miserabilism. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

This is both a fine and fun album. [21 May 2005, p.65]

This is Americana of the highest order. [20 May 2006, p.33]

They're a confident band, but the tragedy is they're at the top of someone else's game.

Macy effortlessly combines the classic pop of Chic and Bill Withers with the sort of flamboyant, contemporary chart-frippery Mika probably thinks he's up to.

They have clawed their way back with an album encapsulating much of what initially made them such an exciting group.

'Sky Blue Sky' returns to the original formula with which they made their name.

As ever, the all-female pop-punk trio finds its inspiration in the seemingly mundane.

'Ariels,' which never raises above shuffling pace, is beautiful in places. [28 Aug 2004, p.56]

It's the sound of a band knowing exactly who they are, what they want--and how to get it.

Sounds as if it were recorded on one perfectly wasted afternoon. [22 Oct 2005, p.43]

Forget their poor punctuation: this debut LP is awash with bittersweet romance and deadpan derision.