A saddening case of brick production, paper soul--here the Quins are little more than twin airbags.

This EP titillates before leaving you wanting more; just how it should be.

There are four or five genuinely decent songs on here - but ultimately, as a whole it just feels a little too worthy, a little too overwrought, and a little too formulaic to be worth the 64 minutes and 32 seconds of your life.

'All Rights Reversed', the Chems' collaboration with Klaxons, saves 'We Are The Night' from sounding like it's still stuck in the mid-'90s and with Willy Mason and Midlake cropping up, Tom and Ed have again found just enough cool mates to save them from a general feeling of naffness.

<i>An End Has a Start</i> turns out to be a pupae album--it's Editors stretching their sonic muscles, poking the first spindles of whatever new form they'll take out of their gloom-rock cocoon come album three.

They've delivered the tunes, alright, but they can't help but fill them with angst, confusion and lashings of amp fuzz. Safe, predictable and packaged for the mainstream? This album is anything but.

It's best treated as a curio in the Smashing Pumpkins' legacy; and for those who grew up on 'Today', '1979' and 'Ava Adore', you're better left with your memories.

Interpol have made a great album.

Justice? Talent to spare, but that doesn't stop '†' being just another frustrating dance music album.

This, his third album and major-label debut, stretches this sea of sound even further, ebbing and flowing from ethereal opener "Never Be The Same," to the folky strum of "For Good."

It's far from their best work, yet from the fuzzy lollop of the title track to the reverb-drenched "Pendleton," it reaffirms that not only are Buffalo Tom one of America's great lost bands, but that real estate's loss is rock'n'roll's gain.

Ultimately, Gogol are all about a collective euphoria that's right in the here and now.

Their best album to date.

Fantastic Playroom packs enough innovation in its boosters to reach new rave escape velocity.

As debut albums go, it's unnerving that The Enemy are already this good and yet barely old enough to buy their own champagne when the ridiculously high chart placings inevitably come in.

Happy Mondays' first album since 1992's "...Yes Please!" is the sound of a damaged former addict being ushered into a studio for one last shot at the big time - before falling on his arse.

Ash come close here to that which has always eluded them: an album that amounts to more than the sum of its singles.

His many personas have made for an oddly characterless record.

There's 100 reasons to worship the Beastie Boys. But, plugging in a wah-wah pedal and writing an album of indulgent jazz-funk instrumentals is certainly not one of them.

Monch stays versatile, political, and intellectual as he uses his many gifts to be at once motivational ("Hold On") and verbally ambidextrous ("The Trilogy"). A winner.

As melody-ripe as anything from [Brian] Wilson's brain.

There's plenty of interest here, then--but is anyone still listening?

'Icky Thump' is brilliant, there's no way around that.

'The Sun'... lacks urgency and focus.

Unlike their debut's thrilling-but-ramshackle garage rock, this time round the words are harnessed to the kind of big, bold tunes that will lodge the five-piece in the mainstream consciousness.

'Idealism' is dusted with the kind of metallic house glitter caking LCD's 'Sound Of Silver', and, just as promisingly, the title track could have been carved from Daft Punk before they decided they were human after all.

An authentic graininess permeates In Camera, like you're listening to the whole thing in sepia-tone - from the coy country call-and-response of 'Come to View (Song For Neil Young)', which could have soundtracked a Jane Fonda film, to the lolloping 'Afterglow', and tambourining of 'Lion's Mouth'. Lush.

In short, it's as Icelandic as whale pie--elevator music, sure, but heaven's own elevators.