Incredibly, it works. [Nov 2009, p.104]

The multi-culturally correct Warm Heart Of Africa more than lives up to its title, Nsokoto and infectious Kamphopo being worth a place on anyone's shuffle. [Oct 2009, p.118]

Bipolar Texan tunesmith Daniel Johnston will never be more than an acquired taste. [Dec 2009, p. 126]

Whatever Port O'Brien went through over the last 12 months was evidently painful, yet it's upped their game considerably. [Nov 2009, p.111]

It's the contrast between lo-fi production and brilliant musicanship that makes Expressions special. [Apr 2010, p.116]

For all the fraughness there are unpredictable but always apposite moments of beauty. [Jun 2010, p.128]

They may still want to party every night, but it would take a Kiss Kasket full of Viagra to animate this limp cock rock. [Dec 2009, p. 116]

It's the gritty funk of the title track and production turns from Mark Ronson and Donae's that make this an outstanding hip hop album, establishing Bizzle as a worthy rival to the similarly eclectic Dizzee Rascal. [Nov 2009, p.109]

Nutty Boys no more, Madness may be big men but, judging by this, not entirely out of shape. [Jun 2009, p.131]

The influences may be retro, but La Roux use them as the starting point for something fresh. [Jul 2009, p.114]

Brand New Eyes sounds like an energised romp through the diary of a small-town American gal--albeit one struggling to reconcile Christian views with the celebrity afforded by more than two million album sales. [Nov 2009, p.111]

The quartet's hardcore horror shtick has been homogenised to such an extent that this teen-friendly eigth release could soundtrack the next Twilight movie. [Nov 2009, p.101]

A stunning return. [Oct 2009, p.116]

The voice may be thinning, but with age comes a quiet still wisdom. [Nov 2009, p.109]

While 'Pop Art Blue' strays a little close to coffee table pop, it's an absorbing jouney. [Oct 2009, p.119]

Perplexingly, the arrangements are so sparse that there's not quite enough fully formed songs to carry the album off. [Nov 2009, p.112]

While it's a policy of extremes that occasionally leaves little room for light and shade, it makes for an occasionally thrilling debut--ambitious, noisy and, most importantly, packed full of tunes. [Nov 2009, p.103]

Their stance is still refreshingly at odds with the mainstream. [Oct 2009, p.105]

Rising from the ashes of Nashville's junior punkers Be Your Own Pet, Echo Kid is a gloriously daffy collection of primal rock 'n' roll nuggets. [Dec 2009, p. 127]

While his fourth album shows he has learnt his way around a reasonable tune - opener Back To The Wild has a distinctive grace - his lyrics can descend into trite cliche or inane observation ("Time it goes on/Life it goes by", "you'd love to pretend you were right/But you're wrong") [Feb 2010, p. 108]

Focused and fighting fit, My way is proof that at 46 Ian brown is nevertheless prepared to go all 15 rounds. [Nov 2009, p.108]

A lovely collection of blue-eyed soul that sets out its stall right from 'Take A Chance's' opening parry. [Nov 2009, p.104]

What sets her apart is a nasal, high-pitched quality to her voice, which puts a fresh spin on what is otherwise a familiar format by now. [Nov 2009, p.104]

The Noisettes have done a stylistic handbrake turn for the follow-up, and come up with an intoxicating blend of pop, soul and disco. [May 2009, p.116]

This is as bold, daring and vibrant an album as we'll hear this year. [Oct 2009, p.106]

Exuding vague disquiet rather than outright despair, the self-produced DRaw The Line freshens up the formula just enough to keep things interesting. [Oct 2009, p.108]

Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton have retrenched, recruited a slew of vocalists and made the sort of uptempo record they were doing at the turn of the century. [Oct 2009, p.107]

Monsters Of Folk haven't quite produced the great American record the title promises, but they're a pretty super group all the same. [Oct 2009, p.109]

It may not be an unpleasant listen, but it's a strangely soulless one. [Aug 2009, p.101]

While the songwriting draws heavily on bigwigs such as Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson, albeit ckloaked in layers of woozy production. This is its chief asset, providing a dark undertow. [Oct 2009, p.111]

Lennon would be proud. [Oct 2009, p.114]

If the results are sometimes insubstantial, they can also be richly atmospheric. [Oct 2009, p.118]

Truelove's Gutter is a beautiful album. [Oct 2009, p.113]

Why? always had the brains, now they've located their heart. [Nov 2009, p.115]

In comparison, the second solo album from Broken Social Scene/Stars vocalist Amy Millan can't help but seem just a little routine. [Jan 2010, p. 126]

Rather like Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante's solo work, Malone pootles around the margins of commerciality, nodding to the avant mischief of Buthole Surfers and engaging folksy clatter of Devandra Banhart, while on Driftwood Heart the vocals are almost oepratic. [Dec 2009, p. 120]

What it lacks in orginality, it makes up for in sky-filling exhilaration. [Oct 2009, p.107]

Orthodoxy is dispensed with here, with varible results. [Nov 2009, p.103]

Compellingly bleak is a tough mood to sustain, however, and tracks sucj as 'Interrupted' edge them toward generic stadium territory. [Nov 2009, p.112]

Negotiate the idea that you're eavesdropping on a social anthropology seminar and ther are thrills to be had. [Nov 2009, p.110]

It's been a long time coming, but Brit-rap's first genuinely huge album is here. [Oct 2009, p.104]

For the first time in their 19-year career, Pearl Jam actually sound--whisper it--fun. [Oct 2009, p.119]

By breathing life into Richey Edwards's own last words, his friends have crafted not a memorial but a celebration. [Jun 2009, p.120]

It's confessional late-night fare but the warmth of Fink's soulful voice is captivating. [Jun 2009, p.121]

Epic pop has a new face, and it belongs to Joe 90. [Jun 2009, p.122]

If they tend toward the opaque, a soothing vibraphone or twinkling guitar arpeggio is never too far away. [Oct 2009, p.108]

Chalk this one down purely to an arrangement of Tinseltown convenience. [Oct 2009, p.115]

All this is but a prelude to the albums extaordinary, elegant climax, Bellamy’s three part, 12 minute orchestrial work 'Exogenesis: Symphony.' [Oct 2009, p.102]

A refreshing listen. [Dec 2009, p.120]

This exemplary boxset tells the whole, rather sorry saga of how a band who seemingly had everything going for them ended up with precisely nothing. [Oct 2009, p.122]

The resulting clash of classicial forms and electronics is a startling mix of chance and design. [Oct 2009, p.108]

It's sprawling beast, but for all its occasional spots of indulgence it's a towering achievement. [Oct 2009, p.115]

A reflection on a childhood spent between Glasgow and Newcastle, Get Lucky is all muted colours, bluesy licks and hard-won wsdom, delivered with a subtlety benefitting the presence of Scottish multi-instrumentalist John McCusker. [Oct 2009, p.113]

A genuinely quirky record. [Oct 2009, p.112]

Turn It Up is a wasted opportunity, weighed down by beige soul ballads and cheap-sounding R&B that could have been cranked out for any talent show contestant. [Oct 2009, p.113]

There's little revelatory, but it's another fine record to add to their cannon. [Oct 2009, p.119]

Thier first albun of entirely self-penned instrumentals should finally see an end of [the world music tag], the fluid yet percussive tunes also impossibly nimble. [Oct 2009, p.116]

Infectious, sun-bleached and psychedelic--the welcome return of a South American institution. [Oct 2009, p.114]

Aside from the cavernous 'Tension' mosty of the tracks here are disappointingly interchangeable. [Nov 2009, p.114]

Imagine a less florid Rufus Wainwright , or Paddy McAloon without the lyrical smarts and you'd be getting close: he even claims Prefab Sprout - along with A-ha - as a key influence. [Dec 2009, p. 116]

What sounds difficult at first unfurls with force over repeated listens, veering from the chant-driven 'Molalatladi' to 'Lakeside's' space rock reverie. [Oct 2009, p.108]

Retro, but in no way passe, it's little wonder that kindred spirit Mark Ronson recently proclaimed himself a fan. [Oct 2009, p.112]

East Of Eden is bold and strange, fusing alien-sounding instrumetals woth wide-eyed Scandinavian pop to dizzying effect. [Oct 2009, p.117]

His third album keeps the momentum going, even if its utilitarian construction is probably better live. [Oct 2009, p.118]

Thirty-one minutes in there's almost a tune, but mostly this happily meanders like a horse grazing a path to nowhere in particular. [Oct 2009, p. 115]

Quietly confessional and ever so slightly disturbing. [Oct 2009, p.117]

The results are entertaining and witty, as well as educational, even if at times the tunes have to perform contortions to squeeze all the lyrics in. [Jul 2010, p.141]

The quiet, melodic Curse Your Branches - think American Music Club with superior melodies - is an open-veined, self-lacerating look at his break-up with God ("You expect me to believe that all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree?" he asks on the brutal Hard To Be), his subsequent alcohol issues ("All this lethal drinking is to forget about you") and his estrangement from his young daughter. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

It's pastiche, certainly, but of a pleasingly arresting kind. [Jul 2009, p.118]

Before The Frost... is as comfortingly familiar as one of Chris Robinson's kaftans. [Oct 2009, p.108]

A tightly constructed record, its hushed instrumentation and Southern Gothic lyrics give it a melancholic mood, one that Bondy handles beautifully. [Dec 2009, p. 117]

If that hardly sounds like the greatest thing to happen to hip hop in recent times, it's nothing compared to his fourth LP, which is a litany of lazy beats and even lazier rhymes; "Your mama she gets crazy," he instructs on Krazy. [Dec 2009, p. 120]

Possibly the greatest campfire singalong ever. [Dec 2009, p. 113]

For all her Stakhanovite efforts and the title track's Hole-esque venom, the fact is she's yet to prove that it is music and not acting that is her true calling. [Oct 2009, p.112]

You can hear where the money went, even if her voice is far from the soaring force of yore. [Nov 2009, p.114]

Somehow nothing appears to be missing from the tantalisingly brief beats and blues of 'There Is No Light,' while 'Chain Of Steel's' tick-tocking marimba adds spooky variation. [May 2009, p.119]

Ellipse is typically facinating and frustrating. [Oct 2009, p.112]

The 41-year-old Frenchman's fourth repeats the same formula 12 times: namely, get someone from the world of hip hop/R&B to sing over a pumping house groove. [Oct 2009, p.111]

What Mew have come up with here is a gently twinkling Mercury Rev-ish album of experimental percussive nonsense and occassional jazz-like noodling that somehow manage to hypnotise even while they irritate. [Oct 2009, p.114]

His 10th effort is his most focused since 2001's "Kittenz And Thee Glitz." [Oct 2009, p.111]

Shaka Rock avoids critical flak, however, by harnessing their Stones-age rock with a groovy undercarriage. [Oct 2009, p.114]

Hardly essential, but brimming with late summery charms. [Nov 2009, p.101]

This follow-up to 2006's clubland sleeper Disco Romance revealing a polished synthesis of Balearic beats and featherly harmonies. [Oct 2009, p.116]

The rest is a textbook example of a major African artist successfully reaching out toward Western ears without sacrificing integrity. [June 2009]

Everybody is a sweet-voiced cross between Colbie Caillat and Lisa Loeb's fourth LP and, even without the stately strings on the genuinely affecting Sort Of, it would be her most accomplished yet. [Dec 2009, p. 119]

On his incredibly busy album, Light, there are signs of diversification too. [Jul 2010, p.140]

Truely, there's no one like them. [Dec 2009, p.127]

Everything I sNew is an inspired volte-face that gives second albums a good name. [Jul 2009, p.128]

It shows a poetic MVC pursuing catharsis for emotional scars, societal ills and mispent time. [Jul 2009, p.121]

A musical vigil primed to cut a path from bedside to festival stage. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

While there is plenty to admire in the ambition, there's little to love, as memorable hooks prove to be at a premium. [Oct 2009, p.116]

At 20 tracks long, Imperial Blaze suffers badly from a lack of editing, however, Paul also spends hald the album in ballad mode. [Nov 2009, p.111]

Daft, complex, and beautiful, it's also his best yet. [Jul 2009, p.133]

He's not quite established his own sound, but that will surely come. Meanwhile, Braveface remains hugely enjoyable. [Jun 2009, p.121]

The folowing eight songs amount to a proper return to formm, with Middleton's always literate eye for trivial detail matched by catchy acoustic pop tunes and an underlying bleakness that is quietly gripping. [Jul 2009, p.128]

Whether anyone would actually buy it is debatable, but certainly everyone should hear it. [Aug 2009, p.110]

Potent, and strangely noble. [Nov 2009, p.112]