'Silent Alarm' is no 'Franz Ferdinand'. In fact, listen to it with the words 'popular' and 'arty' in mind and its spirit is closer to the Manic Street Preachers' 'The Holy Bible'. [5 Feb 2005, p.49]

Easy Pain proves hard to like; and with little more than aimless aggression to cling onto for eight songs, you realise it’s all muscle.

It’s another tension that helps to define ‘Girl With Fish’ — a sense that nothing holds so much weight that it can’t be taken elsewhere in the next moment. While that idea perhaps keeps these songs from being as memorable as they could be, it does occasionally work, shaping the album into a really nice cut of slacker-noise.

Musically, Carpenter mostly finds that niche she’s been searching for, getting comfortable in a country-pop groove on the likes of ‘Coincidence’ and ‘Please Please Please’, or nailing frothy pop bops like ‘Taste’ and ‘Juno’.

For the most part, this is an album of love songs: not in the trite, wishy-washy sense of the word but as an elemental and all-consuming force.

Funny, heartbreaking and at glorious odds with the world. [4 Sep 2004, p.73]

He calls love and life as it really is: occasionally sweet, rarely trouble-free and often so suicidally routine we could all become the man he speaks of on 'Ballad Of The Bastard'.

For two men famed as political firebrands, Robert Wyatt and Israeli anti-Zionist and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon certainly make a beautiful noise together.

As the name suggests, Nothing Is Still is a fluid, complete piece of electronic music that sways from thoughtful down-tempo beats to swelling pieces of orchestral beauty. There are particular moments of beauty, though.

Depending on your mood, there’ll be songs you’d happily lop off for a more streamlined listen, but by and large, all of these songs make the patchwork much more vibrant.

It all suggests a promising future for the reinvigorated band.

It's the mischievous desire to deconstruct his own perfectly rounded pop snapshots that marks him down as a post-everything wunderkind

The objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded.

Over length of 12 tracks, the soul/G-funk stuff becomes a little one-note, while the Disney-fied material lacks the charm that makes Prass such an engaging, idiosyncratic performer.

This is a simple collection of woozy slow-jams and blissed-out recollections (a step back from the hip-hop stylings of ‘Oxnard’, which wrong-footed some fans).

These are some of the most interesting and sonically varied songs of her entire career.

Yes, it's solid rock but what they might lack in glamour (no back up dancers here, dude), they make up for in sheer sincerity.

Within all the emotional turmoil, there's a lot for the listener to love.

It’s not an easy listen, but it may just be one of the most nuanced, soothing and adventurous of 2013.

As with some modern art, you may find Silence Yourself leaves you whispering, “I appreciated it, but I didn’t love it.”

There are moments where the production feels slightly misjudged. .... But ultimately, ‘Virgin’ is a vibrant combination of Lorde’s best qualities, and then some.

What could have been an act of self-sabotage or self-indulgence – or both – has transpired to be a welcome reminder of all that this band does best, rooted in raw relevance for today and the cyber-punk energy of tomorrow.

If you were looking for a new Bowie, Patrick Wolf is proving himself the Thin White Duke's successor in more than just his extravagant dress sense.

The Californian five-piece’s 14th album packs everything they’re good at into one concentrated effort: frenetic rock, pulsating psychedelia and buoyant melodies.

A new, added tunefulness makes this a much-welcome Exile In Nihilist-ville.

This is a folk-gospel tribute album with harmony and backing vocals so powerful you'd think it was the population of New Jersey marching in Technicolor over the grey, polluted Hudson singing along. [22 Apr 2006, p.39]

It's music for downhearted cattle rustlers to mournfully skin steers to. [9 Apr 2005, p.58]

Come the closing ‘Nocturne’, Bradford is wailing into a malfunctioning microphone like the late, great Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse phoning a wasted lullaby home with one unreliable bar of phone coverage, and ‘…Disappeared?’ becomes less Cox’s ‘High Violet’, more his ‘Low’. This is how you turn pop into art.