Toe-curlingly unlistenable. [4 Sep 2004, p.73]

An enormous, symphonic, sprawling, highly ambitious, far-reaching work of wonder. [17 Jul 2004, p.48]

More of the same from an act who have been ploughing the same furrow for so long they'll be reaching the Earth's core soon. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

At least 40 per cent of 'The Spine' is really rather charming. [3 Jul 2004, p.65]

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

The Tipping Point has more soul, vision and musicianship than most bands muster in a lifetime. [31 Jul 2004, p.41]

Ultimately 'Porcelain' proves that there's more to great bands than good musicianship. [10 Jul 2004, p.49]

Oddly for an album so big in scope... it's very intimate and confessional. [3 Jul 2004, p.64]

Startling from the first listen... the band are heavier, more menacing, more rhythmic than ever. [19 Jun 2004, p.55]

If you like your rock with sawdust on the floor and blood in its mouth, this is as good as it gets. [14 Aug 2004, p.49]

Full of banging beats, big noise and abundant wit and joy. [26 Jun 2004, p.55]

An understated classic: a triumph of delicacy over decibels. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

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]

A superbly impertinent set. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]

Zooming sheets of spacious wind-tunnel prog and raw, solo-spattered soul. Commercially, it's suicide. [26 Jun 2004, p.55]

It's like Scissor Sisters on tranquilisers. With a bit of ELO. And a dash of Ramones. And, with this eclecticism, a worrying lack of focus. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

Goswell's voice... is a rich wonder in itself; and unlike every other singer-songwriter in the world, she sounds nothing like Nick Drake! [26 Jun 2004, p.55]

Wilson's voice is a sorry wisp of what it once was. [19 Jun 2004, p.57]

The immediate reference point would be a Swedish Coral to the power of ten--but it's more mental, more hippy and psychedelic. [14 May 2005, p.67]

Like Missy Elliott, the Beasties are reimagining hip-hop--what it was, what it is, what it can be. [12 Jun 2004, p.47]

A total car-crash of excess enthusiasm. [12 Jun 2004, p.49]

The Killers have made half of the album of the year. Lucky that now we've got Napster, you only need to buy half. [5 Jun 2004, p.55]

Sounds like a brilliant album by a lesser band. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

A bit like playing Russian roulette in reverse: you spin the disc and pray in vain for something to stick in your brain. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

For their righteous dance moves alone, these guys are for keeps. [5 Jun 2004, p.56]

This stunning second album... exudes brash, chaotic energy from every pore. [12 Jun 2004, p.48]

Melissa has delivered a hugely sexual, gleefully psychedelic rock record that’s so full of deliciously melancholic stadium destroyers and beautifully de-tuned melodic bombs that, at the perfectly reasonable age of 32, you get the impression that the really good stuff is only just beginning.

An affectionate, fuzzy-felt melodic alt.country rocking affair with sugarcane barbed lyrics. [26 Jun 2004, p.54]

At least two thirds of it is still comprised of head-spinning speed metal, but there are signs of genuine progression -- not to mention progressive rock -- from the off.

The band's best album yet - which is to say that it contains considerably more than three good songs.

Athlete's lyrical content is shockingly mundane.

Has the pungent whiff of an album with an imminent expiry date. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]

If there's a clear problem with the album, it lies in the sugar-coated crystalline sheen that surrounds everything.

The Machines have grasped that the zero tolerance of punk for the values of Yes did as much harm as good. [26 Jun 2004, p.56]

Uncomplicated, exuberant melodic thrash. [19 Jun 2004, p.57]

'A Grand Don't Come For Free' is proof that 'Original Pirate Material' wasn't a happy fluke.

The album Daft Punk should have made. [7 May 2005, p.66]

Having eschewed the garage rock roots of their debut, DOLL have morphed into a temper-explodin', strop-throwin' antithese to their Swedish peers. [3 Jul 2004, p.65]

Has them concealing Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, Wire and U2 under a thick pea-soup of organ and rolling bass. [30 Oct 2004, p.65]

[A] ladyfolk wonder. [30 Jul 2005, p.49]

Ultimately, 'Musicology' is a kind of flawed redemption, neither inspired enough to be a true classic, nor insipid enough to make it unworthy of your attention.

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]

Packs melodic punches with its killer Wilson-esque tunes. [18 Dec 2004, p.51]

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.

The whole thing fizzes with a wired guitars-on-sleeve honesty and an artful intelligence more akin to The Mars Volta after an emergency jazzectomy thanThe Datsuns’ deadheaded dolt rock.

Williams has clearly approached 'Fly Or Die' as the kind of project where the central aim is to show us all how clever he is, and as he flits from musical style to style like a hungry pop bee, you're pounded into submission because HE IS JUST SO GODDAMN GOOD AT EVERYTHING.

This time around, Beam is less like some dungaree-wearing, O Brother, Where Art Thou? throwback, and more like the natural - and, frankly, wonderful - successor to the Elliott Smith and Nick Drake school of perfectly beautiful songwriting.

Boy do they give good ocean of sound. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

There seems to be a hollowness, a lack of soul, an empty Big Mac carton where this album's heart should be.

It's this eclectic intensity which makes TV On The Radio such a vital prospect. [5 Jun 2004, p.55]

It marks the dawning of an era of British music that isn’t just for the casual petrol shop consumer, but stuff so important that you can give yourself to it completely. This is the album that’s going kick open the door for all the great British bands that’ll sweep through in their wake.

The most brilliantly ambitious record of the year.

Ultimately, we’re left wondering: have Liars lost it, or found themselves?

These blow-dried disco numbers are unmistakably well-toned. [18 Sep 2004, p.65]

Experimental pop that tries way too hard and yet paradoxically feels frustratingly half-hearted. [12 Jun 2004, p.49]

Suggests even more urgently that that landmark album that's so patently within their grasp is tantalisingly close. This, however, is not it. Not quite. It is still, nevertheless, a quite dazzling album.

This, basically, is an extremely tastefully done, soulful modern r’n’b record.

This being Courtney, there’s also an emotional rawness to ‘America’s Sweetheart’ which you’ll either love or be repelled by.

Overwhelmingly, it all adds up to an album that will never make a fuss in your collection, but every now and then you'll remember how much you love it.

For what it is, for what it does, for what it represents and for exposing the idiocy of people who only care about 'what it earns us', then, a truly, TRULY great pop record.

Lostprophets have, against the odds, carved something genuinely fresh.

‘Talkie Walkie’ deserves to do as well as ‘Moon Safari’. There’s no question that it’s a better record, a different record, written by a pair of supremely talented and greatly improved musicians enjoying total mastery of their studio and sound, who aren’t afraid to take risks for fear of offending their audience.

Brilliant band then, not so brilliant boxset.

A record that anyone who’s ever demanded anything interesting from rock music should hear.

Provides us with a fascinating insight into the mindset of a band who’ve gone from BMX riding curio’s to the oddest paid-up residents of the top ten for years.

One of the most assured debut albums of the last five years.

While it's unlikely that he'll pursue anything as historically precise as this for a solo career, 'Cold Mountain' proves what most of us have long suspected: when The White Stripes end, White will be far from finished.

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]

Fresh, modern soul music.

And what illuminating revelation do we learn from the half conceived, cottonmouthed rubbish that constitutes ‘Democrazy’? In full: ‘thank Christ Blur usually finish writing their songs before they sell them, otherwise they’d be shit’.

There's less space to breathe in 'This Is Not A Test!' than ever before - the beats are so relentless that just like the fiercest of the nu-prog bands it leaves you physically exhausted afterwards.

‘Take A Look In The Mirror’ doesn’t just sound like a bad album, it sounds like a broken record.

It’s ultimately toothless.

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]

An uproarious set of rock songs that audaciously ape the styles of several of his current iPod icons.

‘Room On Fire’ is a refining and tinkering with The Strokes sound, a carefully calibrated attempt not to fuck up too early in the face of untold temptations. The results are still sleek, sexy and thrilling, with a tantalising promise of even better to come.

A naggingly problematic record, with a void at its heart that no amount of cool celebrity mates can quite conceal.

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.

It's the sound of people having fun. [4 Dec 2004, p.55]

In making a record with such universal themes of love and hate, and sounding so pissed off in the process, Brody has inadvertently made herself the most important new rock star in the world.

It's a compelling, if far from satisfying, album: the awkward work of a man confronting mortality, global meltdown and fractionally diminished success, but still terrified of appearing pretentious, still stuck with singalong tunes in his head.

In under an hour B&S have reversed their decline, producing an album that ranks alongside ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’.

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

Their new stuff is – at best – like a minutely less-annoying Staind.

Two Technicolor explosions of creativity that people will be exploring, analysing and partying to for years.

The album has a coherency that was absent first time around, and there is also a rattling freshness to the sound that Timbaland has rustled up.

Just because it’s essentially heavy-metal karaoke, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy it.

BSP are an odd bunch: out of place, out of time, and quite possibly out of their minds. But given time to explore the depths of this record, they're also often out of this world.

It's neither exhilarating nor challenging, but it is a solid and energetic work, imbued with an unambiguous love of old-time rock.

The ultimate rare treasure. [24 Sep 2005, p.47]

'Take Them On, On Your Own' is a masterpiece. You should get hold of it as soon as possible.

This is a great pop record. [17 Jul 2004, p.49]

Right now this frazzled trio are the true sound of Detroit - confident, smart and absolutely essential.

One of the best rock albums of 2003.

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.

'Quixotic' is doomed to be a record that has dinner parties nodding in mute agreement at its quality. Albeit half a decade ago.

Every so often a record pops up that seems to exist in some alien world, unscathed by hipster fads and driven forward only by its own gorgeous mindset. With 'The Violet Hour', The Clientele have made a beautifully haunting album of music to take drugs to make music to take drugs to.

This record may not be as wild-eyed and rabid as it's predecessor, 2000's 'Cocaine Rodeo', but it's loaded with more illicit sex, insanity and glam-punk brilliance than you can shake Satan's pitchfork at.