A total car-crash of excess enthusiasm. [12 Jun 2004, p.49]

The Killers have made half of the album of the year. Lucky that now we've got Napster, you only need to buy half. [5 Jun 2004, p.55]

Sounds like a brilliant album by a lesser band. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

A bit like playing Russian roulette in reverse: you spin the disc and pray in vain for something to stick in your brain. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

For their righteous dance moves alone, these guys are for keeps. [5 Jun 2004, p.56]

This stunning second album... exudes brash, chaotic energy from every pore. [12 Jun 2004, p.48]

Melissa has delivered a hugely sexual, gleefully psychedelic rock record that’s so full of deliciously melancholic stadium destroyers and beautifully de-tuned melodic bombs that, at the perfectly reasonable age of 32, you get the impression that the really good stuff is only just beginning.

An affectionate, fuzzy-felt melodic alt.country rocking affair with sugarcane barbed lyrics. [26 Jun 2004, p.54]

At least two thirds of it is still comprised of head-spinning speed metal, but there are signs of genuine progression -- not to mention progressive rock -- from the off.

The band's best album yet - which is to say that it contains considerably more than three good songs.

Athlete's lyrical content is shockingly mundane.

Has the pungent whiff of an album with an imminent expiry date. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]

If there's a clear problem with the album, it lies in the sugar-coated crystalline sheen that surrounds everything.

The Machines have grasped that the zero tolerance of punk for the values of Yes did as much harm as good. [26 Jun 2004, p.56]

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

'A Grand Don't Come For Free' is proof that 'Original Pirate Material' wasn't a happy fluke.

The album Daft Punk should have made. [7 May 2005, p.66]

Having eschewed the garage rock roots of their debut, DOLL have morphed into a temper-explodin', strop-throwin' antithese to their Swedish peers. [3 Jul 2004, p.65]

Has them concealing Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, Wire and U2 under a thick pea-soup of organ and rolling bass. [30 Oct 2004, p.65]

[A] ladyfolk wonder. [30 Jul 2005, p.49]

Ultimately, 'Musicology' is a kind of flawed redemption, neither inspired enough to be a true classic, nor insipid enough to make it unworthy of your attention.

A real-life pop record. Well, not pop in the Girls Aloud sense of the word obviously, more in the drop-dead, fuzz-box brilliant 'Here Comes Your Man' sense. [10 Jul 2004, p.48]

Packs melodic punches with its killer Wilson-esque tunes. [18 Dec 2004, p.51]

Muse have widened the goalposts and re-established what rock is allowed to stand for. Next to ‘Absolution’, even something as majestic as ‘Elephant’ sounds so painfully small.

The whole thing fizzes with a wired guitars-on-sleeve honesty and an artful intelligence more akin to The Mars Volta after an emergency jazzectomy thanThe Datsuns’ deadheaded dolt rock.

Williams has clearly approached 'Fly Or Die' as the kind of project where the central aim is to show us all how clever he is, and as he flits from musical style to style like a hungry pop bee, you're pounded into submission because HE IS JUST SO GODDAMN GOOD AT EVERYTHING.

This time around, Beam is less like some dungaree-wearing, O Brother, Where Art Thou? throwback, and more like the natural - and, frankly, wonderful - successor to the Elliott Smith and Nick Drake school of perfectly beautiful songwriting.

Boy do they give good ocean of sound. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]