The astonishing thing is that on any other record, the two above low points [Snaps and Invincible] would be stand-out tracks. With Tinie, only the best will do.

The Raveonettes are super-cool Scandinavian noise-rockers and they’ve shored Lust Lust Lust in that turmoil to create their most engrossing album to date.

Bosnian Rainbows finds Omar in controlled, more conventional territory than he has been in a while. There’s structure, sub-four-minute songs, melody. It’ll never be Nick Grimshaw’s Record Of The Week and it’s still prog, but it’s a punky prog that at least feels like it is actively trying to make friends with you.

While it's still shrouded in the frontman's down-in-the-mouth moodiness, its slinking rhythms offer the album's most striking and effective contrast between light and dark.

What’s really intriguing about Jungle, though, is its darker side. There's a tone of inner-city malaise, romantic ruin and psychedelic alienation to a raft of its tracks that speaks to those modern urbanites feeling screen-wiped and robbed of opportunities, busy earnin’ for nothing.

This is funny peculiar, not funny Barenaked Ladies.

Luck has its moments, but in terms of defining a way forward for Vek, chance would be a fine thing.

Mostly, Landshapes sound like a band that might be a better prospect live, where their ever-shifting ideas can fully flourish.

Night Work makes no apologies; Stuart Price creates a sound that is fierce and muscular.

Currently, there are few notable British producers creating such brilliantly odd pieces of music as this.

A lot of Every Now And Then was recorded in the rural French studio they’ve compared to the doomed country retreat featured in cult comedy Withnail & I. And that fits, really, as the place this album had to have been made: somewhere haphazard and idiosyncratic, but weirdly brilliant.

If 'It's Never Been Like That' is a failure, at least it's not a boring one. [20 May 2006, p.31]

['Wrist'] sees [Deftones] continue to explore that hazy hinterland, where The Smiths' sensitivity and Sepultura's sledgehammer riffs overlap. [28 Oct 2006, p.35]

Up there with Cash’s ‘American’ series this is not. But 48-year-old Lanegan is a classy bastard, so he just about gets away with it.

It’s a self-important album, but an accomplished one.

Occasionally, Smith slips back into blandness. ... But like Adele’s ‘25’, this is an undeniably accomplished album that will, deservedly, shift a helluva lot of copies.

Always Ascending is, everywhere you look, a record driven by vim, vigour and ideas, and plenty of Kapranos’ idiosyncratic way with a lyric.

From there on in, though, it's ploddingly lightweight.

Like their sonic brothers Iceage, they’ve evolved without losing their edge.

There's little warmth other than a palpable meeting of minds of its creators, whose culture of experimental collaboration is only to be lauded.

It's a little like a Crimewatch reconstruction: very well put together, all in a good cause, vaguely entertaining, but really they're just hoping it'll vaguely remind you of something that happened years ago. [1 Oct 2005, p.47]

Missteps are few. Instead of taking a battle-axe to what came before, ‘WOMB’ refines Purity Ring even further. The subtle experiments pay off – even if you may sometimes wish they’d surprise you more.

The Day's trademark bubblegum punk rock guitars have all been turned down in favour of a less electric, more organic sound. Where once they rocked out, now they polka on the awful Levellers-like 'Fashion Victim' - a song about Gianni Versace. Please.... 'Warning' is the sound of a band losing its way.

Common Existence is a worthy addition to Thursday’s canon.

The Irish duo are joined by an unnamed vocalist on a couple of tracks, but the instrumentals are the best work here.

One knock-on effect of going professional is that you can now hear the music clearly and properly, and it turns out that Mr. Williams isn't exactly a Mozart in the songwriting stakes.

Dulli generally succeeds in keeping things as darkly hypnotic as a rain-lashed midnight motorway.

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