Recorded as a tribute to former singer Beau Velasco, who died of a drugs overdose in September 2009, it's clearly a form of catharsis. Mercifully their sense of humour remains intact. [Apr 2011, p.101]

By the time Campbell opens penultimate boozer ballad Every Hour That Passes with "You can be the perfect bitch to my bastardness," you'll find it hard not to succumb. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Lou Reed guests and she's brave enough to wrestle with both Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan's unsettling The Stations, while her four lugubrious originals show the drugs didn't turn her brain to much. [Apr 2011, p.101]

While tracks such as This Day Is A Loaf could be straight out of an album by Stevens himself, it's when the band stretches out, on the gentle but unsettling Hosanna In The Forest, that they really excel. [Apr 2011, p.101]

The View appear to be growing up. Forever, of course, is a very, very, long time. But on this evidence, against all odds, The View look set to run and run. [Apr 2011, p.99]

The admirable rhetoric might mean something were it not backed by such a generic pastiche of Editors/White Lies/Interpol, all cavernous bass and drums and two-note guitar solos. [Apr 2011, p.98]

Skins is the sound of a band reinvigorated. [Apr 2011, p.98]

Whether they can carry with them a rebirth of indie as characterized by debuts by Suede, The Strokes or Arctic Monkeys before them remains to be seen. But there's more than enough here to justify their talk-of-the-town status. [Apr 2011, p.96]

Hunger's three-minute nuggets blend '80s guitar jangle with doo-wop harmonies, the nostalgic charm offset by the neurotic intensity of both the lyrics and frontman Frankie Francis's desperate vocals. [Mar 2011, p.104]

Davies' voice, weathered but still fine as a Waterloo sunset, is complemented by few here. [Dec 2010, p.113]

Beans is also in eclectic mood, delivering word association freestyles over a dizzying array of instrumental backdrops. [Mar 2011, p.101]

Mostly, he has little to say. [Mar 2011, p.109]

Cinematic, crammed full of literary allusions, odd time signatures and mature-in-wood musical textures, Nightingale is a record that will haunt you if you let it. [Mar 2011, p.110]

Cited as a missing link between Radiohead and Massive Attack following their self-titled 2007 debut, the Leeds outfit here start to live up to the hype. [Mar 2011, p.115]

Bewitching and hugely ambitious. [Apr 2011, p.110]

Gomez's future seems cloudy, but with these nine tracks, Ottewell has a fighting chance. [Mar 2011, p.112]

With his piano-playing accompanied by Daniel Joseph Dorff's drumming, the arrangements are minimal affairs, placing Moore's voice centre stage and allowing the songs to breathe. [Mar 2011, p.112]

The follow-up is far more coherent, as passionate but resisting the temptation to press the button marked "Gotterdammerung" with quite such abandon. [Dec 2010, p.103]

Immersion certainly contains its share of crossover anthems--not to mention some palette-expanding diversions into dubstep and progressive trance territories--but they'll be better appreciated in a festival field than the front room. [Jul 2010, p.135]

More engaging doom from the download kings. [March 2011, p. 101]

If this really is a farewell, Bright Eyes is at least going out with an apocalyptic bang. [March 2011, p. 100]

It's simply another excellent Elbow record. [March 2011, p. 98]

No Time For Dreaming has the gritty feel of the real thing, a man who's known mostly hard times and tells it with a pleading throaty roar and blood-curdling scream worthy of James Brown. A real find. [Mar 2011, p.117]

Tell Me is produced by The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, an arrangement that suits her lean, unsentimental alt-country just fine. [Mar 2011, p.116]

In time-honored fashion it rattles through a dozen tracks in a shade over 30 minutes, never getting close to overstaying its welcome. [Mar 2011, p.116]

An oddly addictive hip hop concoction of self-doubt and dread, set against a minimalist, almost jazzy backdrop that's also a bit Tricky, too. [Mar 2011, p.116]

Like most grime, the words come thick and fast, as do the beats, a feeling of punch drunkenness settling in long before the end. Job done, then. [Mar 2011, p.116]

Live On Ten Legs is career-spanning, expertly played, surprisingly spirited resume, with the curveballs of Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros' Arms Aloft and a slightly tweaked version of Public Image Limited's Public Image that misses the point by such a distance it borders on skewed genius. [Mar 2011, p.115]