By celebrating what it is to be a freak in 2004 they've made a debut that's unique yet uniting, deep yet designed for the dance-floor.

Slightly less lo-fi than previous efforts--although as it blends together Slayer, Japanese noisecore and warp-speed prog intricacy, sound recording fidelity is a relative concept. [5 Nov 2005, p.45]

It is miles better than 'Innerspeaker', and quite possibly the best album released so far this year.

A reverence-inspiring return.

A real-life pop record. Well, not pop in the Girls Aloud sense of the word obviously, more in the drop-dead, fuzz-box brilliant 'Here Comes Your Man' sense. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]

This is wild music, a celestial cabaret that absorbs and unsettles.

Girls are genuine drop-outs, bona-fide freaks who’ve made a record far removed from the predictable cycles of the music industry. Now that’s a real story.

The emotive finesse of ‘Cherry Blossoms’ might further the calls for a shoulder to blub on, but chugging full-band showstopper ‘Ramona’ shows Yellen’s songwriting to be as rich as his voice.

Cooked up in a session originally meant to spawn a batch of B-sides, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed instead debuts 10 songs that outstrip LC!’s debut album at every turn.

One of Sufjan’s most fat-free and consistently stunning records, but also his darkest.

The eloquence, barbarism, tenderness and sweat-drenched vitality of 'Elephant' make it the most fully-realised White Stripes album yet.

It is its author Kieran Hebden's best work to date and confirms the prolific young soundmeister as a major talent.

It's every ounce of Idlewild's potential fulfilled at once.

This is an album of genuine depth, one expressing the nervous conservative shockwaves which charge through party kids once they start to come down.

There’s still a lot to love about B&S, but there was something magical, otherworldly even, about them during this period that this compilation captures perfectly.

Remarkably, with this astounding debut, an unassuming 21-year-old from SW2 has revitalised a forgotten form to make one of the finest forward-thinking British pop albums of recent memory.

Their most focused, energetic pop record since 'Radiator'.... Certainly, 'Phantom Power' shows up Radiohead's timid adventures, while giving The Coral something to aim for too.

A miniature classic. [14 Aug 2004, p.49]

The Adams of ‘Love Is Hell’ has gone out to make an album that actually is classic rock ‘n’ roll rather than one that can simply impersonate it, and sound convincing. [Review applicable to both Part 1 and Part 2]

A masterpiece.

Seems that after all the pale imitators, Radiohead finally have a competitor worthy of healthy comparison.

Taking Mangum’s recorded-on-cardboard lo-fi folk epics as their ground zero, TRAA turn in the best alt.debut of the year.

'Smile' stands up with any of the great music of the 20th century. [25 Sep 2004, p.63]

Every tangled note of Option Paralysis drips with honesty and endeavour, and it shines like a beacon of integrity in a world that's been focus-grouped into the dirt.

The funniest, most refreshing British debut in years.

Here's music for the twilight hours - feverish, contemplative, nostalgic. It resonates with the force of a thousand passionate post-club conversations in darkened, smoke-filled rooms, of intense, doomed liaisons, of youthful arrogance undercut by fear and failure.

Bono's genius is that his inner monologue is so huge and heroic that it matches the scale of the music. And, even more so than on 'All That You Can't Leave Behind,' the music is enormous. [13 Nov 2004, p.55]

This is murderously good stuff. [25 Sep 2004, p.64]

What you have here is the most agonisingly voyeuristic listening experience in rock, ever. It's also some of the most exhilarating and brilliant rock'n'roll of the past 20 years. [7 Aug 2004, p.46]

Album of the year? It's definitely a contender. [7 Aug 2004, p.49]

The Child Of Lov may have started off as a shadowy enigma, but now is when Cole Williams lays his cards on the table. Turns out he was hiding a royal flush.

All told, it's incredible this is a debut album. Accomplished, yet subtle, it works perfectly as a whole in a way all the production skills in the world couldn't replicate.

Let's Stay Friends arrives as a startling cannon-shot message of brain-thawing intent.

Stripped of all the sonic flotsam that usually surrounds them, Animal Collective come into their own--if you can ignore the chatter to listen with innocent ears, they surpass ‘good’ and remain bewildering.

They’re too wilfully mad to emulate Tame Impala’s success, but if you’re after a freaking out, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s outrageous noise deserves attention.

Once I Was An Eagle sets a high bar.

In spite of all the terror and uncertainty, it's the warmth that lingers.

Where 'The Remote Part' was their 'Green'-esque lunge into the spotlight, 'Warnings/Promises' is their full-blwon 'Out Of Time' spectacular. But with less twangle, more teeth. [5 Mar 2005, p.50]

Soul music full of remarkable sonic ideas.

Rips is a reminder of rock’s glorious communal potential.

Their world - sexual, drug-filled, and occasionally paranoid - has become progressively darker, and as such we find them nothing less than guardians of the rock flame.

An album which radically extends the Franz musical palette.

By any criteria an astonishing work.

While this is clearly not the record Smith intended to make, it's still an immensely gripping and cohesive piece of work. [23 Oct 2004, p.47]

Overall, you get the kind of lush musings that’ll soundtrack all the pivotal moments of your wayward summer romance. Blissful.

Put simply, this is fantasy pop, performed to perfection.

The angriest, least compromised, most utterly justified pop record in years ?

When your nightbus home is beset by phantasmagorical drunkards with beady, threatening eyes, when your ears are bashed by mendacious line managers and eyes beset by the violence of news/advert/news, then this incredible album is your passport to a better place.

Showcas[es] Rufus as one of, if not the best songwriters of his generation. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

For all his fragility, Avi is as good a songwriter as anyone who's ever traded under Sub Pop's logo. And that's quite a claim.

Complex and artful, there’s no need to understand fugues and canons to appreciate this--its utter perfection and joy is self-evident.

The objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded.

By turns brooding and effervescent, but always outrageous fun, 'Writer's Block' is a compact minor classic.

Stay Positive not only confirms The Hold Steady’s status as one of the best rock’n’roll bands in the world, but establishes them as one of its most important too.

Lyrically it's astonishing. [28 Aug 2004, p.55]

A record of glorious parts that are just too weighty, too emotionally complex and rich to hang together well as a whole.

‘Fenian’ is a spraypainted brick wall of consistency, amplifying the adventure of The Prodigy and Burial, seamlessly but tastefully hopping genres while keeping the vibe up to retain Kneecap’s knack for having a good time to illuminate the hard times.

It is one thing to make a clever record, it is quite another to make a clever record that could pass for a pop album, and which oozes humanity while simultaneously delivering a perfect snapshot of modern British life.

This is a deeply personal record, unequivocally sensual.

Believe the hype, this is even better than 'Ray Of Light.' [12 Nov 2005, p.45]

Warpaint's is a different darkness, not delighting in splendour or show, but in deftly exploring a bleak internal, romantically bereft landscape.

Complete and utter filth from start to finish, and that's as high a compliment as we can bestow on an album.

'Since I Left You' is proof that while being a vinyl junkie might not make you a teen idol, crafting a joyous, kaleidoscopic masterpiece of sun-kissed disco-pop definitely will.... Cool? Sure, whatever. Brilliant? Undoubtedly.

Cranking the urgency and confrontation of last year's self-titled debut to neck-breaking intensity, RTJ2 is an urgent, paranoid album for a violent, panicked time.

Swans' bleakness is beset with great beauty, black wings to another world.

Imagine 'Lost Souls' injected with Prozac and a huge dose of weird guitar noises that give you goosebumps from head to toe. That's 'The Last Broadcast'. It's one of those rare albums that makes sense first thing in the morning but you can still yell along to when your head's exploding.

A set of immense maturity that never rubs your nose in its thematic complexity, compositional innovation and thunderous thump-beats. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]

Swoon is a bit of a dying whale of a record. In a good way; vast, dark, a little mysterious, sad, dignified and palpably in pain.

Lee’s lyrics are sometimes sentimental to the point of potentially seeming trite, but they’re logical for a situation where love and pain have become so overwhelming that simple statements seem the most trustworthy.

Filled with both a clarity of instrumentation and thought, this is an album of undeniably mature work. And one which knows how to effect a large emotional impact without unsightly flexing of the muscles.

A+E is Coxon's most thrilling and noisy album since 2000's The Golden D.

Kiss Each Other Clean is a surprising and majestic triumph.

on their third album, the combination of Canadian indie (Broken Social Scene), psychedelic ’60s rock (Love), cosmic ’70s pop (ELO) and shoegaze (Ride) is nothing short of beautiful.

Despite all this seemingly new wave-laden, impeccably cool, retrograde influence, 'Make Up The Break Down' is indisputably now.

What it does do, however, is remind us that he is a copper-bottomed genius.

A painfully honest, emotionally draining album. [22 Jan 2005, p.49]

Being doomed seldom sounded so beautiful.

It traverses a spacious, synth-dusted soundworld many future-dreampop miles from their girl-group and grit beginnings; the ambition will be a sonic shock to those who wanted the band to stay the 'working-class heroes' they wryly joke about being. It shouldn't, really.

[A] brilliant album.

A masterpiece that merges the experimentation and freedom of their side projects with Cave’s most tender songcraft.

Mac knows better than to let his bellyaching get in the way of everyone else's good time--instead, he’s simply dialled down the quirk and written his best record yet.

Our Love, then, is the moment it all came together for Caribou.

An album with a distinct dual personality, Marina’s dazzling ‘The Family Jewels’ pitches the confident, MTV Awards-headlining superstar of our dreams against a more self-deprecating girl-next-door Marina who’s dead set on Supertramping and vamping her way out of her fug.

It’s an insane and challenging, ambitious and exceptional work of art.

It's easily the electronic album of the year, but for all that, it doesn't break particularly new ground. The point more is that what ground is broken is done so with exquisite artistry.

'The Contino Sessions' can mean whatever you want it to. All we know is that it feels amazing. Warhol also said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Death In Vegas' glory starts now.

It's clever, brave and seamless enough to become a classic.

Even the most hardcore disciple is likely to get something they might have missed before. [21 Oct 2006, p.35]

Muse have widened the goalposts and re-established what rock is allowed to stand for. Next to ‘Absolution’, even something as majestic as ‘Elephant’ sounds so painfully small.

A seething, furious album; a declamatory statement against cynicism and passivity and the simple injustices of everyday life.

Burn is her first album recorded with a full band, though the resultant fuzzily glam swagger doesn’t forsake her wise style, instead coming off like Bill Callahan covering T Rex.

It’s a more honest, human, realistic--and totally wonderful--guide to life.

Whatever he does is never less than great, and these 11 songs are no exception.

The tightness of ‘First Two Pages…’’s singles like ‘Tropic Morning News’ and ‘Eucalyptus’ are somewhat absent, though the looser structures and decision to allow the songs room to grow, melodically and lyrically pays off.

Francis Trouble is a bright blast of radiant, prismatic indie rock. More surprisingly still, it’s Albert’s most fun record yet, hurtling along on his trademark zipping guitar lines.

See, in All Or Nothing, The Subways haven’t just made a great record – they’ve vindicated everyone who still believes in the power and the glory of three chords and distortion pedals.

This record is fun with a capital ‘F’, but there are moments of gravitas too. Not easy to do, that.