Back with less pressure, Champ packs that sweet sucker-punch we craved the first time around.

Potential cover performers take note: this is how you do it.

Album two demonstrates Lewis’ growing confidence as a frontman in the spotlight – long may it continue.

Albarn's best work has cheek, wit and a smart-alecky desire to shake things up. All this reverence doesn't really suit him.

Now they've reinforced their position as the credible elder statesmen of metal, with a tightly focused, self-referential effort.

With the help of former Coral man Bill Ryder-Jones, Liverpool's We Are Catchers (aka Peter Jackson) has captured the melancholy essence of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's solo album 'Pacific Ocean Blue' and distilled it in the murky Mersey to produce this confident debut.

Breakfast, for all its modest attractions, never quite transcends its talented-journeyman origins.

By and large this is as consistent a record as the Foo Fighters have ever made.

Damned if they do and damned if they don't, it seems, but never sounding damned enough.

As ever, he relies too much on accident to achieve interesting textures, flavours and rhythm, and only two tracks--‘Grapes’ and ‘Cheap Treat’--stand out as cohesive pieces.

Duffy’s debut is hoovered of personality, principally, because on this evidence, she hasn’t got any.

There’s no doubting the musicianship on display across ‘What Kinda Music’. Misch and Dayes certainly complement one another. But it’s hard not to long for a little disruption to the album’s soothing sonic cohesion. While they were clearly having fun, it was probably more fun to make than it is to hear.

They have done a hell of a lot of growing up. An immense album.

You’ll find Eels’ most revealing, autobiographical work-to-date to be the most beautiful break-up record since Beck’s ‘Sea Change’.

Ultimately the confusion and convolution is all part of the charm on this adventure into a world of history and imagination. It doesn't hit the peaks of 'Stainless Style', but is still a record worth investing time in.

Dithers between drone rock and harmonica-driven indie-strut. [14 Jan 2006, p.33]

This album is probably the most solid foundation this quartet have had in 15 years, and it would be a disaster if it wasn’t a springboard for several more.

His trademark woozy laments and waltzing rhythms are present, but buried beneath layers of tumbling horns they seem much richer, with the charming languor of his voice twisting the mariachi saunter into something dark. Strangely, it’s the synth-pop gems of second EP Holland that seem the most foreign.

TSOOL have made a double album that isn’t a burden, but rather something which is genuinely fun to get lost inside and attempt to unravel.

A brilliantly disquieting debut.

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

It's the sound of the band mutating from the exciting, mysterious person in the club to the partner you pee in front of and take shopping for carpets. [15 Apr 2006, p.35]

If the focus on 'I Predict A Graceful Expulsion' is sharp then its scope is overly broad, focusing in on vague sentiments that leave you fond, but never in love.

Still shamelessly livin’ it up, with an eyebrow cocked and high kicks galore, ‘The Human Fear’ is – as promised – Franz-y as fuck. You do you, hun; you do it so well.

It's fair to say you won't hear another album like this in 2005. Or probably until 3005. [30 Jul 2005, p.49]

From the robotic churn of ‘Blue Lights’ to the wiry rock’n’roll of ‘Tin Birds’, there’s little cohesion--rhaps understandably, given Sniper’s penchant for releasing new material every couple of days--t that simply makes it feel of a lovingly-crafted mixtape.

The album is split into 10 blasts of discordant brilliance.

This is pedestrian, derivative twaddle of the lowest order that embarasses both the '60s and the recent revival fad. [21 Jan 2006, p.33]