A standalone success that also whets the appetite for Fuck Buttons’ return.

Those heavier cuts are the album’s best--dark, dreamy and abrasive.

The only clanger is 'Do It'.... This aside, it's a nest of treasures.

The Nextwave Sessions EP careers wildly between moods and atmospheres, and sounds like a band happy to let go and experiment because they’re comfortable with who they are.

So, yes, it’s a tougher collection than the first, lacking the merciless hilarity you’d expect. But it’s also a strong step forward and one that proves they won’t disappear in the changing breeze of fashion.

There's a smorgasbord of top tunes here.

It's surprisingly gentle, allowing the emotional context of a soundtrack or accompaniment rather than the vacuum-packed, controlled conditions art of their last album.

'Reformation...' is darker and deadlier--more Cramps than Killers. [10 Feb 2007, p.32]

While I Want To Grow Up doesn’t exactly break new ground, it compensates by being affecting, relatable and having occasional gnarly solos.

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

It's a fine debut that hints at a finer future - and for their determined attempts to twist something new out of retro influences, we salute them.

After three Twilight albums that never lived up to his previous might, he's now hit paydirt. [13 May 2006, p.41]

In the album's quieter segments he proves that his deft touch remains.

It's a record of rare precision; the kind that comes from figuring out exactly what you want. The kind that comes from being all grown up.

Evan Patterson's lyrical turns of phrase are still subtly unsettling, and the overall collision of punk and blues is a bit like Grinderman, without the spectre of ironic smirking.

[A] groovily electronic, acid-addled collection of throat-tickling, Venusian rhyme formations. [23 Oct 2004, p.51]

This is an album that you'll like rather than actually love.

It shouldn't work, but it does - perhaps, because, for once Albarn doesn't sound like he's trying too hard.

There is a tail-off in quality at the end, but every track still has a chorus that Swedish song factories would sell their grannies for and, most of all, there's a sense that Take That are genuinely challenging themselves here.

It's not perfect--but no Big Star album ever was. [24 Sep 2005, p.47]

At times Siskin’s story is also the album’s downfall, the music suffering from a lack of diversity despite being heart-wrenching. The high points salvage things.

Mixing the exotic sounds of Laibach, Sparks and forgotten camp Euro-disco heroes Army Of Lovers, he's on to a winner even if he feels he's losing the corporate fight.

The album ends up as a tribute to each of the individual singers rather than Sound City itself.

II is the noise of all their Christmases turning up at once.

His [singer Brian Fallon] dramatic vocals might be in full force, but conspicuous by their absence are The Gaslight Anthem's usual lyrical canvases of Americana, save for a couple of brief glimpses of the old dive bar-dwelling, jukebox-thumping badasses in the pair of back-to-back weepies that close the album.

Tassili, too, sounds neither glossily packaged for western audiences, nor too easy to please.

There's a bunch of teary emotions bagged up in the spikiest of descending scales.

Things do sometimes get laboured and one-dimensional. But, there's a wry Glaswegian humour here, which ensures there are plenty of smiles to go with those dance moves.