So listener-unfriendly that it's almost amusing. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]

On this evidence, SMD aren't quite there and the result is, sadly, a bit boring.

The record isn’t weighed down by its ideas--it could just do with a filter, a producer with more sway, or even someone in the process to say: “Actually Jaden, mate--most trees are green.”

If it doesn't quite scale the dizzy heights of 'The Holy Bible' or 'Everything Must Go', it certainly comes close and is, in many ways, the quintessential Manics album - the cathartic regeneration that the band really needed in order to become relevant again.

Modeselektor bridge the gap between manual-memorising electronics and brick-subtle, MDMA-peppered bouncy abandon.

It’s no radical reinvention, sure, but the singer captures these songs in their most up-close-and-personal state, with instrumentation stripped back to nearly zero.

Their first record is good; their next could be mega.

The rattling drums and broad, ambient synths on closer ‘Beams’ represent a rare foray into a fuller sound, but, for the most part, Dark Red plays out like the soundtrack to a creepy sci-fi-horror flick.

This is an album that can and should be enjoyed without over-thinking.

It’s a tender passing of the torch.

Warm and welcoming, Alphaville sounds a great place to lose yourself.

When The Wytches employ a lighter ‘Suck It And See’-era Arctic Monkeys touch they’re capable of ‘Wire Frame Mattress’ and ‘Track 13’, exceptional songs full of both melody and menace.

The 1975 have somehow put out an album made for introspection and headphone listening and dancing around your living room, something deep and sprawling and occasionally silly to dig deep into over many listens, during which your favourite track will shift on a daily basis. Something that requires time and attention – something just right for now.

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


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]

An impressive consolidation rather than a startling revelation.

Semisonic are the lambswool jumper pulled over the eyes of people who have an irresistible soft spot for 'classic' songwriting. Fail to give their songs full attention - and God knows, that's easy enough - you could almost believe this is literate radio-friendly pop; just the thing for those blustery rides through an imaginary Santa Monica freeway.

Better moments appear when they get a bit ballsier: 'On The Radio' and 'As Four' are jingly upbeat numbers that show they haven't spent all their in-between album down time crying into their pillows. [4 Mar 2006, p.29]

It’s not a perfect ride.... Cosentino’s honeyed vocal is the only true constant. It’s a radiating sunbeam.

Retaining your sprightly playfulness while making a mature comeback isn't easy, but Sky Larkin straddle the two with ease.

While it's an impressive document, it can’t quite recapture the nocturnal intimacy of ‘Nothing Else But This’ and ‘Dream’.

With so many influences laid bare, it does take until seven-minute-long crescendoing closer ‘Saintless’ to truly showcase what they can achieve musically.

The result is joyous electropop with depth--dance beats, '80s-ish synths and Caila's soulful, voluminous vocals fanning out into gorgeous harmonies.

Whenever Mr Rager sets off on his next adventure we're ready, musical machetes in hand, to follow him into the undergrowth…

The good news is that lyrically, Nas is pretty much back on form.

We Are The Ocean's third is a record full of lean, muscular rock and sees a band who were once regarded as sub-You Me At Six also-rans, deliver an undeniably stonking LP full of catchy choruses and chunky riffs.

To the ears of their detractors, Courteeners will always sound unexceptional, but in the eyes of the faithful, Mapping the Rendezvous will only make them more irreplaceable.

It hasn’t completely reinvented the wheel for Hurts, nor has it allowed them to rest on old habits. Instead, it presents them at their most open – and in age of isolation, there’s much to admire in that.

Even if ‘Access All Areas’ doesn’t overwhelmingly herald the return of R&B girl group dominance, the massive momentum FLO have built over the past two years hint that the dam is about to break.

Overall, Painting With is a dizzying, lurid treat, almost too much to take in, craving its natural habitat. And it’ll really come alive out in the wild.

Spins a web of eerie jazz-junglist percussion. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

There's no escaping it: Foster The People are a great pop band, and Torches pop production accentuates every handclap and harmony for maximum effect.

The Brooklyn duo's fifth album is less pan-pipe chill-out and more a brooding and oppressive morass of sound akin to a shamanistic Zola Jesus.

In their relentless slavery to the groove, the songs fall hopelessly flat. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]

They've set themselves up nicely here, already nipping on the heels of fellow slacker extraordinaires Surfer Blood and Yuck.

A stern but playful combination of caustic menace and bright hooks.

An utterly charming album.

the promised sense of youth and experimentation rarely surfaces. If anything, Feel Good goes too far the other way, sounding insipid and polished in comparison to The Internet’s debut.

It's blissful, soulful proof that although SMD might have stopped chasing the hit parade, they haven't stopped making hits.

His attempts to revolutionise, strip bare and stretch the borders of R&B with all manner of glitches, gollums and glaciers are admirable, but it’s only when he tranquilizes his inner Usher for the downbeat piano throb of ‘See You Fall’, the spectral orchestration of ‘Pour Cyril’ and the acoustic minimalism of ‘2 Years On (Shame Dream)’ that he achieves the subtlety and invention of, say, Sufjan Stevens.

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.

You'll be comfy, you might spot some pretty things on the hard shoulder, but ultimately it doesn't get you anywhere.

The album is beautifully structured, leading from spare and shimmery beginnings into harder, weirder and more varied territories, all those snippets and elements and personalities crafted into a shifting, subtle whole that quietly captures your attention from start to end.

We’re unlikely to be totally rid of guitars on a Kings Of Leon album any time soon, but there are more daring rhythms and more sophisticated production here.

A solo charm assault with mixed results.

The sad fact is that Blink-182 are now indistinguishable from the increasingly tedious 'teenage dirtbag' genre they helped spawn.

Listening to 'Blue' is like meeting your first girlfriend ten years on, and realising that the things you fell in love [with] are long gone. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

If you don't mind the odd reflective moment, the odd luscious production value, then this has plenty to offer. [25 Mar 2006, p.37]

The pair [Ghostface Killah and D-Block's Sheek Louch] strike up a good chemistry... The rest of the record, sadly, struggles to get out of first gear.

An expansive ode to human ingenuity and the boundless ability of music to foster connection.

This record’s slower pace won’t be for everybody, just as unassuming previous album ‘This Old Dog’ wasn’t, but, should you let it, this record will transport you somewhere calm and reflective.

DB's spry, Breeders-style way of recasting '60s and '70s rawk is enough to rescue it--and us--from tedium. [23 Jul 2005, p.50]

Fantastic Playroom packs enough innovation in its boosters to reach new rave escape velocity.

What it shows is that if you're going to do the hits, the thing to do is pin them down, fuck them up and HURT THEM. [average of scores of 90 for Disc 1 and 70 for Disc 2; 16 Oct 2004, p.48]

Its portraits of downtown legends like Lou Reed and Alan Vega are far more affectionate than much of his scabrous output, with music that flits between dreamy Velvets simplicity and the synthetic throb of Suicide.

Their classics remain buried in web mixes, but this set captures PC Music’s sublime pop philosophy.

Zayn has clearly achieved his aim of making an album of sexy, credible pop-R&B.

Guilty of knocking underdeveloped material out one minute and trying to be too clever the next, It's What I'm Thinking... is surely the most focused and mature record of his career.

Unfortunately though, Fields never quite reach such dizzy heights on the rest of the album, preferring instead to apply their considerable talents to creating numerous prog-outs that lack the heroic factor of their first single.

This effort is a bold step that shows no compromise on the horizon.

The main criticism of this record is that a few tracks are merely good, as opposed to epochal.

Much like the sardonic vocals heard in the latest post-punk revival, Ice Spice says plenty in her delivery, relying on the tonality of her voice – levelled, calm – to do much of the heavy lifting. It makes ‘Like…?’, her debut project, such a sharp listen. Her voice remains monotone but that only makes the lines hit harder.

If this is an indication of what to expect [on the next LP], things are going to get very hairy. [8 Oct 2005, p.43]

Let it be said that Lex Hives is amazing.

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.

The production is too breezy in places and at 19 songs, it is at least half a dozen too long. Not the classic Adams fans demand, but he’s moving his ducks into a row.

John & Jehn probably imagine themselves as Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie And Clyde, when in reality they’re more like the indie-goth Richard & Judy.

aside from the throaty rasp of singer Kyle Falconer on lead-off single ‘5Rebbeccas’, the mushy ‘Temptation Dice’ and Paolo Nutini-featuring ‘Covers’ – there’s little here that’ll appeal to the hundreds of thousands of people who bought "Hats Off To The Buskers." Yet it’s a good record regardless.

The result is an album as art smart as Franz, as disco droll as Hot Chip, as pose pop as The Naked And Famous and as catchy and cool as the Two Door lot on the other lot's Indian cycling holiday.

Things are less enjoyable when musical boundaries are pushed--and at 25 songs long, albeit with nine of them shorter than a minute, it’s a joke that wears thin.

There's undoubtedly something there with Frankie--those effortless, skippy choruses aren't as easy to do as they seem. But he and his Heartstrings haven't quite found their true north yet.

While a couple of songs--most notably ‘Satisfaction’, a three-note guitar riff spun out for eight-and-a-half minutes--suffer from an acute case of stadium bloat, it’s all done in such a jubilant fashion that it hardly matters.

An exuberant record that is well worth your time.

They pick a traditional genre and do everything in their wicked power to leave it a broken, quivering wreck by the time they’re finished with it.

At times, in the past, he has relied on his autotune to compensate for lacklustre lyricism, but Future is a megamind whose pioneering spirit is the very reason trap feels alive today. With ‘I NEVER LIKED YOU’, you’ll happily applaud him for that.

The odd well-intentioned platitude hardly spoils an album of killer choruses on which Ryder’s infectious likeability shines through at all times. Next time he might want to chuck in a few more curveballs, but for now, ‘There’s Nothing But Space, Man!’ sounds like the beginning of what could be a really stellar career.

It’s the kind of album that sounds best listened to solo.

Dry, controlled music. [11 Jun 2005, p.67]

By turns anthemic, experimental and boldly poptastic, Forever Neverland hits multiple grooves, proving she’s a fascinating, multifaceted musician in her own right. As an artist, she’s much more than someone to lean on.

From the brief flamenco break in the pummelling ‘Night Night Burn’ and the doomy guttural rumblings of ‘In The Name Of’ to the horns-up thrash anthemics of ‘Distortion’, ‘Metal Galaxy’ is a wild ride that, through its sheer energy, is somehow infectiously accessible.

Lo-fi electronica ('Getaway Ride') and ambient pop ('Dominic') create the spine of a charmingly off-kilter record, while 'I Love Our World' is essentially a field recording.

The Glasgow trio bring an almighty ruckus on second album Youth Culture Forever, building on the ear-splitting success of 2012 debut ‘Cokefloat!’ while discovering enough new shades of grey to give EL James a run for her money.

Woman is a joyous album of hope and optimism.

They're hardly bringing in a new era, but there's definite promise here.

Oczy Mlody is the sonic equivalent of a deserted space-ship adrift in the cosmos, with Coyne as the lonely repair-bot dusting the diodes. A psych rock Passengers, then, rather than Barbarella.

The Messenger isn’t just a summary of everything worthwhile in contemporary rock music, it’s an insightful and informed dissection of life in 2013 and all the futile iOS updates, cyberstalking conglomerates and financial travesties that clog up the spaces between us. In a world claiming to connect us all, it argues, we’re getting more and more dislocated.

Second album ‘Cry’ sees the band not stray too far from proven formula of slow and sexy sadness, but this time with a little more love thrown in and all held together by a more filmic approach.

It’s unspectacularly solid stuff.

After years of chopping and changing, Bombay Bicycle Club have finally found an iteration worth sticking with.

About half of 'Rock Steady' is just great, a career salvage job to compare with Madonna 's 'Ray Of Light'.

This is a left-field masterpiece and Brown's best work for a decade.

Adams has stripped most of '29''s tracks down to spare, brittle bones.

Coheed have picked up more prog nuances so it fits that this, the last in the sequence, is their most ambitious yet, best embodied in the eight-minute 'The End Complete.'

Crazy as a second Gorillaz B-sides album might sound, this rummage through the "Demon Days" cutting room floor is totally justified.

Largely, though, Nash sounds just like herself, and that's exactly when she shines most brightly.

Austra’s music has always felt like it comes from the same place, too--a dark dancefloor mania of hot-blooded movement and dark sentiment – and new EP Habitat is no different.

Kill This Love ... showcases a band who are certainly talented but perhaps not quite ready for the next upward arc in the ride they’re currently on.

Rather than sounding like a vintage group struggling to find their identity, though, Swedish House Mafia’s debut album sees the trio flexing their musical and emotional muscles across 17 brilliant, fearless and often surprising tracks. The kings of dance music are very much back.