It's often hugely clever... but tends to forget that the best metaphors are the ones that make you crack involuntary smiles, not the ones that require five minutes and a dictionary. [26 Feb 2005, p.66]

Harcourt... has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with a laydee and made his "happy" album. Luckily for us, it's the best of his career. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

Guaranteed to leave you speechless, one way or another. [12 Mar 2005, p.58]

There's nothing too complex or alienating about anything on this record; it is lowest-common denominator rock'n'roll painted in broad, primary coloured brushstrokes. [29 Jan 2005, p.57]

Mostly it's just a heavily lacquered drone, an album so restrained as to sound almost calculated. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]

Skip ["Last Song" and "Desperanto"], and you've something very much like a classic. [9 Oct 2004, p.57]

'Worlds Apart' reads like a suicide note of a band that's tried to intellectualise its place in the canon of Western music and, in doing so, recognised its own irrelevance. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

Where once lo-fi underachievement stifled Barlow's outsider pop genius, 'Emoh' abandons dictaphones to the dustbin and sees Lou documenting his wonderful, incisively literate pop songs with something resembling sheen. [5 Feb 2005, p.51]

A painfully honest, emotionally draining album. [22 Jan 2005, p.49]

A remarkable album... like an Americana 'OK Computer.' [22 Jan 2005, p.49]

An album that not only fudges golden opportunities, but finds this band's whole modus operandi laid embarrassingly bare. [15 Jan 2005, p.42]

They've stuck the bleeps on autopilot, the beats on cruise control, and can only be bothered writing a handful of half-decent tunes. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

Anger has always been at the root of Low's modus operandi; the difference, ultimately, is that where once it lurked behind marble pillars, it now stomps and snorts like a pig on a griddle. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

[M83] create some of the freakiest European-horror-movie soundtracks ever to see the light, all covered in Warp Records futuristic electro-plasm. [22 Jan 2005, p.50]

LJ retain their title as the world's premier inner-space invaders. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]

Full of sombre, skeletal and obliquely confessional songs, it's a crafted collection with ruminations on sex and loss. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

Frontman John Dwyer still sounds like he's singing through a kazoo, the drummer is still obviously banging away on cardboard boxes and keyboardist Val-Tronic plays like all her fingers are broken. [5 Mar 2005, p.50]

Spins a web of eerie jazz-junglist percussion. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

It's The Game's candour that is his unbridled strength. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

'Black Mountain' is like a stoned friend with really good taste in music burning you a mix CD. [Jul 2005]

The beats are from the worst Ice Cube album ever made and the rhymes are sub-Coolio. [18 Dec 2004, p.51]

If you like loud choruses, ceaseless energy and the bug-eyed extremities of crunk, look no further. [15 Jan 2005, p.43]

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

Effortlessly hip and seductively suave. [8 Jan 2005, p.44]

One of the most exciting hip-hop releases not only of this year, but in recent memory. [27 Nov 2004, p.61]

Bono's genius is that his inner monologue is so huge and heroic that it matches the scale of the music. And, even more so than on 'All That You Can't Leave Behind,' the music is enormous. [13 Nov 2004, p.55]

One of the most frivolously brilliant slabs of shiny retro-pop anyone's had the chutzpah to release all year. [20 Nov 2004, p.56]

If you're after better versions of classic songs, think again. But as a humanising, comprehensive and often heartbreaking document of a man who, in five years, changed the face of music, almost by accident, it's essential. [20 Nov 2004, p.55]