Their most adventurous and assured album to date?

A single 47-minute long track, subtitled An Electronic Night Ceremony, it begins with a slowly unfolding dystopian bass rumble to which a pulsing beat and subtle layers of electronic soup are laboriously added. Sounding more like the hum of a car factory (they still have them in Germany) than the celestial sphere of the title, it's a querulous throb of a record which, once heard, hardly invites repeated listening.

The results are perplexing. An artist who has made a career out of pushing herself to extremes has put together an album of pappy, poppy songs that sound like they were written between cups of tea in the garden.

Pop Trash proves to be far from embarrassing...

Sounds something like a male-fronted Cardigans... [Aug 2001, p.141]

This is a quietly adventurous coming of age, as languorous and fuzzy around the edges as a summer afternoon.

Moffat's half-sung, half-muttered confessionals still lurch between the pulsing beats and pensive instrumentation but the tone is now more funereal than carnal.

Looking for fresh inspiration, he relocated to Los Angeles for this third album, embarking on some musical revisions that will surprise even long-time fans.

Simone and Amedeo Pace weave intricate musical patterns on a collection of songs distinguished by their fundamental lack of tunes. Aside from the exuberant frisson of This Is Not, the album staggers unsteadily between serene chamber pop, looping layered electronics and shouty, full-on hyperactive thrashy punk...

There is no doubt that his songwriting chops just keep on getting better.

The album lacks the breathless show-stoppers that have long peppered their records.

There are few surprises here: white trash raps hollered over a musical backdrop that sounds like an evil pub rock band.

Vol. 2 proves the equivalent of its parent release.

Utterly forgettable and hampered by Ruth-Ann's thin vocals. [Nov. 2000, p.113]

Their second album is a melange of found sounds (Piero Umiliani, Nancy Sinatra, Harry Belafonte), daft titles (Duckweb & Fishlip, Barry Normal Eyes, Busyness Mans Lunch) and much studio jiggery-pokery. The result is a surprisingly viable whole... There's nothing of substance, despite the swearing on A Lot Of Stick (But Not Much Carrot), but it's fair fun while it lasts.

Using everything from string quartets to jet turbines, metal sheets and electric guitar, it moves from being severely irritating to moments of great beauty. Worth persevering with, if you're willing to go the emotional distance.

Their debut album sits comfortably between the party-heart, old skool shape-throwing of Jurassic Five and the darker weedscapes of Cypress Hill.

The follow-up is an equally passionate, turbulent affair, sounding, oddly, like a cross between Foreigner and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

True, even misdirected, Eminem's disaffection sucks you in and the wholesale nihilism can still provoke shivers. But it all used to be more fun.

They make often wistful, often wry, but always intelligent pop.

Yet tracks such as Moody, You're No Good and UFO are far more than mere sample food, and these original recordings recall The Slits given a rudimentary disco makeover. But where their British peers revelled in sloppiness, ESG's rhythm section is as tight as the JBs in bondage gear.

At their worst, Pearl Jam witter on pointlessly.... When Pearl Jam gel, though, it's close to special.

Beautiful Creature dwells too self-indulgently in a faux naïve girlish tone...

47 minutes of homogenous power pop...

A superbly stealthy assault on the ears, stroking and unsettling in equal measure.

By turns soothing and jarring, the tone suggests Death In Vegas with the neurosis replaced by a mood of ennui.

Hanson's second studio album is better than the first.