Tighter than anything they've recorded previously, it’s a great return and a slick change of direction.

It's certainly a messy record, made by half of a broken legend.

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

Sounds as hideously vital... as [Slayer] have at any time during their 23 year career. [26 Aug 2006, p.41]

Home Again provides a sumptuously soft place for tired ears to rest.

It all adds up to a deeply deranged and intermittently great listen, and serves as a decent stopgap 'til the band's next album proper.

Its high points are so charming you're willing to forgive the occasional low one.

There's no deely-bopping 'Wow And Flutter' on here. [4 Mar 2006, p.29]

I Disagree is her most accomplished record, full of daring theatre and snarling forward motion. While all our favourite rock bands are going pop, Poppy is unapologetically embracing her desire to go heavy. It might be inspired by the bands she grew up listening to, but there’s not a moment on ‘I Disagree’ that feels like a throwback.

Today, in a world rooted in an entirely different stratum of rock, they're as lively as the corpses that archaeologists hook out of peat bogs: perfectly preserved, but not great for dancing or conversation.

It works for the red-raw confessional 'Family Portrait', but everything else is so bad Natalie Imbruglia would be proud.

Starsailor have produced a debut album of real emotional depth.

Will shock conservative punk purists everywhere. [11 Sep 2004, p.57]

Like it or not, the songs penned for Britney by Swedish producer Max Martin, the man behind the even more successful Backstreet Boys, get into your brain like ketamine.

This is the sound of the US underground realising that its message is easier to swallow if it has a smile on its face. [9 Oct 2004, p.56]

Certainly confirms him as one of hip-hop's most gifted wordsmiths. [8 Jan 2005, p.45]

Mesmerisingly beautiful. [2 Apr 2005, p.50]

Smoke And Mirrors [is] a dense, torrid quicksand of clattering shoegaze chaos at the heart of this six-track stopgap between Brooklyn duo Widowspeak’s celebrated second album ‘Almanac’ and their soon-come third.

Though inspired by the endless waiting felt during the moving statues phenomenon in ‘80s Ireland, where religious statues reportedly moved spontaneously, there’s no anticipation for a holy punk apparition here. Everything we could have expected with ‘Time Bends and Break the Bower’ has been delivered.

Far from a total reinvention, but all adds up to a confident, rewarding and subtly adventurous new chapter for Interpol.

Itâ??s in its latter stages that Viva... truly goes stratospheric: on the magnificent orchestral pop title track, where Martin imagines himself as a deposed French king reduced to sweeping the streets; on the bruised â??Yesâ??, like Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode lost in a desert duststorm; on the Satanic blues hymnal of single â??Violet Hillâ??.

Not since Bon Iver’s "For Emma, Forever Ago" has there been such an accomplished album of torch songs.

In the same spirit as Broken Social Scene's baroque pop, his first album stitches together the psychedelic, lo-fi montages and creates something unworldly and unique.

I Know Myself (Montreal)’ revitalises the album version with warped acoustic guitar and brass, and Tanner adds foreboding guitar noise to a narcotic ‘Green Eyes (Music Blues)’. But the rich piano on ‘Love (Montreal)’ is best, crowning an EP that expands on the wealth of ideas McMahon put into Love.

It’s bolder than before, and easily their best-executed album yet.

Breathy, sophisticated and existentially troubled. [2 Sep 2006, p.19]

The music of Amplifying Host blends baked American blues with the ghosts of this island's folk tradition to wonderful effect, especially on 'Tessellations', which is like coming across a bedraggled family cooking beans around a campfire in the tinder-dry ruins of what was once a chocolate-box timber-framed cottage.

They're staying put, yet somehow they're kicking harder than ever.