In fact Gahan, whose ill health hampered the making of Ultra, has rarely sound more potent. This time it's Martin Gore who's out of puff. No amount of fashionable tweaking can hide the flimsiness of his offerings...

The 11 [songs] selected for The Green Album hark back to the keenly observed power pop of Weezer's multi-platinum '94 debut, and there isn't a bad apple among them. [Aug 2001, p.142]

It's a landmark album for REM and the fans who stayed faithful, a shot in the arm for music in 2001 and - unless they're too foolish to accept it - a long-awaited treat for all the listeners who bailed out after Monster.

Ultimately, it's Tool's experimental, borderline progressive, edge that proves most rewarding. [Aug 2001, p.141]

Dark and knotty, Open takes a while to win you over but when it does, it hangs around in your head like an unpaid debt.

All this introspection wouldn't be so bad if Stained put a bit of oomph behind it, but the musical changes lack dynamism and frame the groaning vocals almost reverentially. [#180, p.111]

Black Market Music feels like a watershed, a merely good record after a great one, and that in itself is disappointing.

When the Crowes stumble into the right place, they soar. Indeed, at its best, their sixth album delivers the same streamlined pleasures that the group rediscovered on 1999's By Your Side.

Hugely exciting one minute, unlistenable the next and far too much to handle in a single sitting, Thirlwell's noise addiction can still make Trent Reznor seem like a pussycat.

Trendy, sure, but occasionally terrific.

Yet despite the quality of Can't Get Back To The Baseline and the Kinks-like Give Me A Letter, several semi-acoustic fillers -- of which the dreary, You Are Amazing is the worst offender -- water down the album as a whole.

This is their most rewarding yet, built to enjoy in one 38-minute session, languid, melancholy tunes growing out of barely audible static pulses, incoherently Vocodered whispers or preposterously exciting cymbal splashes, carried on by soft pianos, vulgarity-free brass and strings into Bitch Magnet-meets-Samuel Barber electric cataclysms.

Cull the arrogance, the laziness, the ill-considered ignorance, the (that word yet again) sneering, and there wouldn't be a better album than Know Your Enemy, and not just of this year. Cull the brave lyrics, the moments of inspiration, the songs to treasure and the moments of honesty and, were it available in dogfood form, you wouldn't feed Know Your Enemy to your hounds.

The problems are compounded by the sheer awfulness of some of Jones’ lyrics.... What often redeems them is the music. On that front, Stereophonics have undoubtedly progressed...

Kozelek's less-than-euphoric vocals become wearying after a few tracks, though the band shuffle basic resources with some brio. Worth the wait, but only just.

Melody rarely comes easily, but this is a flamboyantly musical record that creates the perfect backdrop for Cave's theological, metaphysical musings.

It seems hard to believe that the man who made this album is the same one responsible for the 1984's still splendid Rattlesnakes.

What makes BRMC extra special and what steers them well clear of parody drone-rock territory is their three-dimensional sound. [Jan 2002, p.103]

Ridin', Porn Star and Slammin' are as disposably trashy as their titles suggest, and even the trowelled-on angst of Slit My Wrists and Whiskey In The Morning sounds like a pool party at a Beverley Hills bordello.

Singer Pat Monahan has a Michael Stipe-esque voice: part whine part sneer, but with an added dollop of believeable pathos. On this second album, his four colleagues concoct intriguing backdrops... [#180, p.112]

While this falls short of the momentous A Few Small Repairs, it's still something to treasure.

Simultaneously lovely and repellent, there's echoes of the Pet Shop Boys, Pink Floyd and Momus. But, in truth, their combination of the sinister and the delicious is entirely original.

Contains a clutch of crowd-pleasingly brutal anthems...

Wicked Grin is a bona fide revelation.... A rambunctious joy from beginning to end.

Sure, there are some moments of taxing weirdness but generally, it's good, albeit eccentric fun.

It's that sense of doing just enough but no more that permeates this album, at times rendering it laid back to the point of disengaged.

No moment of Discovery is left unfilled with an idea, a sonic joke, a spark of brilliance.... a towering, persuasive tour de force which ultimately transcends the dance label.

Not big, not clever, not hip, not trendy. Just fantastic.

Were they anything but Gallic, this approach would doubtless sound corny and contrived.

Unexpectedly vibrant, like riot grrrl with tunes. [Oct 2002, p.100]

There's no revist from the muse that delivered the exquisite Temptation Eyes back in 1990. [Sep 2001, p.107]

Like most blockbusters, the script is predictable - topics include no-good men, being hard and how great Eve is - but this is designed for booming out of car stereos rather than close listening.

A seedily romantic, kitchen-sink paean to London, We Love The City finds Hefner's previously wan guitar stylings given a coat of production lustre.

Yet while the sound of these songs is often great, the bad news is that most of the songs themselves leave little lasting impression.

There's lashings of charm in the way the songs unfurl, touch upon an array of ethereal womenfolk and end, having gone nowhere much, but prettily.

These are skewed, disturbing, beautiful songs...

Group Sounds is as good as anything they've put their name to previously. [#180, p.110]

Another triumph, brimming with soulful, languid grooves, deft samples and well-chosen guest singers.

This is largely Arab Strap on familiar ground: filmic guitar atmospherics backing an extended bout of post-coital melancholy.

It works for the first three tracks.

More tightly structured than their last outing TNT, this has enough dizzy polyrhythms and craziness for the free jazzers but is chock full of tunes, good humour and a certain grooviness

Kozelek's sparse, haunting delivery can render even the basest material achingly affecting...

Strangely engaging.

There's no doubt that his fingers still know their way around the fretboard.

Shunning those bawdy, mike-tossing rock'n'roll tendencies of yore and aiming at the modish pop/R&B middle ground inhabited by the likes of R. Kelly, he's made what is easily his most cheering, soulful collection in years.

This is Black's strongest set of songs since 1994's second solo selection, Teenager Of The Year, largely because the trademark wit and weirdness is back.

Little Sparrow mixes its trad tendencies with tunes, lovely instruments, and best of all, Parton's personality.

It's the continual indulgence of Lopez's Gloria Estefan ambitions with various generic Latin tracks, completely at odds with everything else, that really grates.

Where Marilyn Manson is dark and introspective, Godhead are much more outgoing.

The Donnas have reached the legal drinking age in their native California, even if their foxy glam/punk-rock remains fixated on teenage preoccupations...

A fine album which often suggests Elliott Smith wreaking merry havoc in a library of sound effects. [May 2001, p.116]

As so often happens, this is Neil Young doing what the hell he likes.

A couple of hours negotiating the treacherous whirlpools of Waters's fears, paranoia and loathing can still prove a slog, mind, no matter how stately the settings.

Those lying closest to their own unsubtle ouevre, ie the Minor Threat and Cypress Hill tracks, are as crunching as die-hards could hope for. But the arch sneer of The Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man and Bob Dylan's Maggie's Farm are predictably reduced to chalkboard lessons in "angry".

A rather erratic affair. [Apr 2002, p.119]

Heavy-duty electronics doing repeatedly bloody battle with grimy strings... An intense but worthwhile experience. [Nov 2000, p.102]

The W is largely a return to murky idiosyncratic form after 1997's filler-bloated Wu-Tang Forever. Weighing in at a svelte 60 minutes, it plays to the group?s main strengths: brutal hooks and scary ambience.

Vol. Two will please Everclear's long-term fans with a return to their harder roots.

The sound has changed little, and the level of emoting none. Still, thunderous grooves such as Everyone and Shining Star continue to be virtually irresistible, while the quieter moments, including the hit single Shape Of My Heart will wow the ladies and the more sensitive gents for a while yet

Baduizm was a remarkable starting point... It may have been too much to expect her to emulate it, but there's not quite enough here.

Drenched in feedback and carbuncled with extra riffs, Familiar To Millions makes Be Here Now sound like it was recorded on a four-track by Elliott Smith. Yet unlike recent Oasis albums it's mostly fun, going right back to the broad, singalong Gallagher-karaoke of more innocent times. It helps that the Oasis 2000 set consisted mainly of their earlier, more familiar, better material being put through a wringer of behemoth-rock.

Blur have had many more than 18 hits; certainly there are sufficient omissions to form the bulk of a second disc.

Essentially, it sounds exactly like each of her four previous albums. Sure, she's consistent, but does she never tire of forever sounding the same...?

The trio of Spanish songs are no fun at all and ballads such as Come To Me are more Michael Bolton than Michael Jackson, but - and let's not be coy about this - when he does Livin' La Vida Loca again, he's fantastic.

The Offspring are nothing if not reliable. If you're after jangly guitars riffs, chart-thumping production values and shouty choruses, then the Orange County punk outfit are still very much your guys.

If there's nothing on Lovers Rock as naggingly memorable as past triumphs Diamond Life or Your Love Is King, then the refined ache and minimalist chic of By Your Side and Somebody Already Broke My Heart are persuasive enough.

Attacking God and country and rubbing his fellow citizens up the wrong way, is par for Manson?s course. Yet never has he done it with quite such passion.

Plain Rap lacks the talents of Fatlip and Slimkid and it shows. The smart, polished Pharcyde backings - rich in jazz and rare groove - are still in evidence, but it's easy to miss the gawky verbals of all four rappers.

Their debut album's secret arsenal comprises frontman Chris Martin's voice - prematurely aged for someone in their early twenties - and some supple, persuasive melodies. That and a great big side order of melancholy.

Grandaddy sound like a lo-fi ELO and, in frontman Jason Lytle, possess an admirably unusual songwriter. Sophtware Slump is more coherent than their 1997 debut Under The Western Freeway, Lytle having settled on a theme: knackered electronics.... Cheap, cheerful and utterly charming.

For every fine song, such as recent single I Wish, there's a skip load of ropy ballads.

Vigorous and wise, this is dance music for grown-ups, with Cook keenly aware that any number of spritely garage and trance chancers have stepped in while he's been away making babies. Rather than match them in the disco stakes, he's re-grouped and drawn on previously concealed depths instead.

A heavyweight, goth-rock death trip, awash with mangled guitars and horror-film atmospherics. [Nov. 2000, p.113]

Stepping outside of their natural environment ensured their longevity in the '90s, stepping back in seems to have given them a fresh boost. For all Zooropa and Pop's pushing of the envelope, limiting themselves to rock's core ingredients has given the band a new challenge. Certainly, not since The Joshua Tree have U2 sounded so like U2 but, with songs of this startling calibre, right now being U2 is no bad thing.

Dre and Big Boi (alias Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton) fill their technicolour vision with the ghosts of Sly Stone, James Brown and, most notably, Funkadelic-era George Clinton. Factor in some distinctly unorthodox production and you've rap at its risk-taking best...

The mood is too heavy for far too long, but some good songs and more cohesive, melodic structures augur well for this damaged daughter's future. [Sep 2001, p.115]

Hard, reverb-heavy, yet fluent guitar arabesques topped by husky, yearning, sorely troubled vocals. [Nov 2000, p.110]

The swampy exotica that was draped around both 1995's To Bring You My Love and '98's Is This Desire? has been forgotten: as proved by the likes of Big Exit and the pleasingly frantic Kamikaze, the dominant sound is that of a three-piece garage band, fused with enough production panache to prove that Harvey remains an admirably intelligent auteur.

Pitched somewhere between Lauryn Hill and Alanis Morissette, Furtado's songs - sung nasally in a style which occasionally recalls a less hysterical Gwen Stefani - are playful, unaffected and full of little surprises.

Like its predecessor, In The Mode is a sprawling tour-de-force, and its 80 minutes contain much that is breathtaking alongside the pleasant if perfunctory. [Nov 2000, p. 112]

David Lewis Gedge seldom received credit for his Sinatra-esque vocal prowess or Dylan-style lyrical insights when fronting The Wedding Present, but his subsequent Cinerama project is a far more intriguing and beguiling affair.

While the lyrics portray only stereotypes - whore, ladyboy, hick - the music is a tumble of racing rhythms underlying slow, reflective vocals with empathetic groans, sighs and howls of matching emotion from violin and cello.

All in all, as resonant and dignified a covers album as you'll ever hear.

With deeply average tunes and deeply average rapping throughout, not even an appearance by Carlos Santana on Babylon Feeling can turn things around.

You'd expect better from a band so on top of their game.

Singer Jay Gordon spends much of the record predictably preening his way through third-hand Bowie and third-rate Simon LeBon impressions while the band labour on a set of half-baked electro-metal...

It's difficult to hear what was wrong with most of the never-before heard material. [Nov 2000, p.101]

The only flaw is the former soldier's gravelly drill-sergeant bark. It packs a visceral punch in small doses, but an unadulterated hour of it is like being violently bullied by Busta Rhymes.

Generic, maybe, but very nicely done. [Nov. 2000, p.117]

The songs here are rougher, louder, and often more exciting than their "official" versions. [Nov 2000, p.123]

A fresh production eye might have rescued its weaker segments - Love Calling Earth or the dull By All Means Necessary - and its surprising lack of overall oomph.

Quirky, spunky and really quite beautiful, this is British pop at its finest.

In the time since OK Computer, Radiohead seem to have built up reservoirs of fresh bile and listened to a lot of Aphex Twin records.... Musically, the album's best features are its keening, lapwing guitars and a thin, atonal orchestral drizzle.... Kid A will still baffle and upset those who are disappointed that they don't do Creep anymore. [Nov. 2000, p.96]

Hugely likeable, terribly noisy and cute, as well as being jammed with proper pop songs... [Nov. 2000, p.102]

Rhythms skip and play seemingly without touching earth... These are manifestly the labours of a man still with something to say. [Nov 2000, p.109]

The Magnificent Tree is accomplished, just unsensational. It nails the neo-'60s trip-hop set down by Mono and Olive but then tries too hard to have a finger in other pies.

A buzzy, incisive Randy Brecker on trumpet adds more than his fair share of excitement, and brings out the best in Summers's quavery delivery.

Although less retro than chums Jurassic 5, their Hispanic-flavoured style constantly edges between sounding cool and simply withdrawn. [Nov 2000, p.101]