I was a huge fan of Low before A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief, but the perspective it casts both by amassing so much of their beautiful music and by casting new light on the people who make it make this box set utterly essential.

It’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.

It all sounds nice enough to start with, but as you hear it more and more you love it more and more, the simple charms showing themselves to be more and more complicated but no less delightful.

There isn’t a single mis-step on Last Exit.

A wonderful album stuffed full of sentiment, emotion and melody--and traverses the bridge between teenagerdom and adulthood with a moving and thrilling honesty.

The effort that Cogleton and his band have put into God Bless Your Black Heart is impossible to ignore.

He has captured a sound that few current artists challenge, and none have mastered to such a degree. Quite simply, Ta det Lugnt is one of the best releases of this year.

Disparate though its individual elements may seem (and they certainly are), the sum of the parts is remarkably cohesive.

Kesto is an overwhelming, unbelievable adventure, but it's not for everyone.

With more concern for melody and rhythm than partisan politics, they use modern technology and an open mind to nimbly skip between the opposing camps of black 70s Disco and white 70s AM Radio, but in their songwriting methods The Sisters embrace the now mythic open arms party spirit of the early dance movement.

What results is an achingly brutal intensity given to each broken phrase, scream and sigh.

From a Basement on the Hill is a far better album than it has any right to be, with its bizarre sequencing and improbable ambitions.

One of the best and most refreshing albums released in a long time.

It’s easy to get over-eager about a decent album that appears after some significantly less magnificent efforts, and perhaps that’s precisely what I’ve just done. But I don’t especially care. What I hear throughout this release, and what I’m latching so strongly onto, is my own imagined version of what a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds record should be like.

As ever Wagner’s voice is rich and warm, the instrument of a faltering singer that just gets better with age, cracked and croaked and delivering lyrics with a strange phrasing that makes the most indecipherable and idiosyncratic observation take on a wealth of meanings for the listener depending how they first, or last, hear it. [combined review of both discs]

In Split the Difference, Gomez has not lived up to, but surpassed, their initial success.

A band as talented and enjoyable as Clinic should be allowed to distill and advance their sound without getting tarred with the brush of stagnancy.

Easily their most cohesive and satisfying full-length to date, Chapel shows that Weatherall still has a few tricks up his sleeve and isn’t afraid to use them.

Take the pop from Guns ‘N Roses, take the pomp from Van Halen and take the piss out of uber-serious nu-metal and you’ve got one of the most inventive metal outfits in recent history.

One of the best albums of 2003, one of his best albums post-Clash, and as the highest note Joe Strummer could have exited on.

It is a wonderful album that explores separation and endings and life’s journeys – and their inevitable end - in Zevon’s inimitable style.

With about twenty killer lines or couplets per song, unexpected hooks coming from everywhere and one of the most ingenious track sequences of the year, it’s not really so hard to imagine what The Wrens have been doing all this time.

This is an album that seems to effortlessly evoke the kind of lazy summer days that everyone claims only ever happened when they were kids.

One of the best debut albums of the last five years.

It’s the most lush, symphonic pop music since, well, Wilco’s Summerteeth.

It’s not the most subtle or nuanced album, you can’t really dance to it, and it’s not particular clever. What it is: brutal, full of hooks, rock solid and fucking loud.

With Change... The Dismemberment Plan feel little need to show off with self-conscious musical ostentation and excess, instead choosing to focus themselves on making a fantastic, understated and involving record.

Unlike cLOUDDEAD, every track on Oaklandazulasylum is, at least musically, accessible and inviting.

Perhaps the greatest expansion in Herren's sound is the range of emotion conveyed in One Word Extinguisher.

The record is very innocent on the surface, but it’s in the lyrics (again) of Alun Woodward and Emma Pollack that make it cold and dark, even though their vocals seem to make it all sound safe.

The energy the band packs into their songs is unbelievable.

Us has a dynamism and vastness that makes Loss cower in its shadow.

True, Think Tank is flawed. There are many, many things wrong with this album.... But the record’s peaks are extraordinary.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1514" TARGET="_blank">She&#146;s done it again, and the fact that we&#146;re not surprised shows just how valuable and talented she is.</A> [Score=91] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1515" TARGET="_blank">The new Missy album is terrific! Maybe even more terrific than her last one, and almost certainly better than the one before that.</A> [Score=84]

Nastasia&#146;s pen has sharpened greatly since The Blackened Air. No more does she scratch out mental images and feelings into terse songs, but builds upon those images and experiences -- placing the listener in her worn, ragged shoes -- instead of in our Gucci&#146;s, 20 feet away, behind a chained link fence.

Quite simply, Sunshine Hits Me is fantastic.

Though this album may not change the minds of the numerous naysayers, it does show an interesting development in the group&#146;s all-around craftsmanship.

Of course, as far as production goes, it would be nearly impossible to top Doggystyle. However, Paid the Cost tries as hard as it can.

One of the more unique pop albums of the year.

Ward’s controlled voice never falters or fails, which makes his words of wisdom drill into the soul with unquestionable power.

My Morning Jacket has come into its own here, transcending underground fetishizing to become the kind of band that can make jaws drop and tears fall anywhere it damn well pleases.

No period of Ferry's extraordinary career goes untouched on Frantic, easily his most rewarding solo work since Roxy's disbandment in 1983.

It&#146;ll take an adventurous set of ears and some headphones. Don&#146;t worry, take a deep breath and relax. You see, Beans makes it easy for you by spitting with what is, perhaps, the most technically gifted flow in hip hop today.

You Forgot It In People is a tremendously accomplished album, magnificently achieving its goal of creating bonafide pop music and doing so with admirable style.

Frankly, the results are incredible.

A fantastic revelation.

All you have to do is plug Coral Fang in and turn it on to experience [Dalle's] greatness.

Their best album since Dubnobasswithmyheadman.

More rounded and less determinedly schizo than Fantasma, Point is a great album of delicious odd-pop made by a whimsically modest genius.

By taking the visceral punch of Dig Me Out and The Hot Rock, blending that with the pop sensibilities of All Hands on the Bad One, and throwing in a few bonuses, Sleater-Kinney have crafted their best album yet.

It's an album that is filled with plenty of big hooks, ample rock crunch and a loving attention to detail.

Bachmann&#146;s transition from indie curmudgeon to singer-songwriter is complete: his arrangements are now horn- and string-fattened creations of grand sophistication; his songs now contain hope and broken spirit simultaneously; but the most significant growth displayed on Red Devil Dawn, and the reason this album is Bachmann&#146;s finest moment since his Barry Black days, is that you can now see Eric Bachmann as the subject of most of his songs.

The fact that the music, vocals and melodies are stunning is just icing on the cake - a cake that is crumbling before your eyes.

Review 1: He may well be repeating himself... but Spiritualized are still a force.</A> <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1300" TARGET="_blank">Review 2: With Amazing Grace, Pierce has achieved a perfect balance between his traditional blues-rock leanings and his appetite for studio excess. [Score is an average of both reviews: 79 and 90]

A tremendous step forward, an emotional, melodic smorgasbord of pop bliss.

It&#146;s not a real consistent journey, because of the eclectic styles, but the masterful sequencing makes it flow smoothly from track to track.

Feast of Wire is a startlingly diverse album.

Supper is a fine accomplishment, a record of sad grace and folky simplicity that outdoes its predecessors and hints at a very worthwhile future.

Few songs on the album are as perfect as [the opening] two, but many of them are nonetheless excellent.

It&#146;s the rare reunion project that actually adds something of significance to the band&#146;s catalogue.

A disjointed mess- brilliant songs gone so awry that I find myself no longer excited by the prospect of listening to the album through, but disappointed.

The nice thing about God&#146;s Son, although it isn&#146;t fantastic or at the level of Stillmatic, is that it honestly doesn&#146;t feel rushed. Nas is responsible for the lyrical content of the album, and it, like his previous releases, is nearly flawless.

Never, Never, Land exposes Lavelle and File as, surprisingly, excellent songwriters with an ear for a good chorus and a knack to fitting performers and material together.

The songs are intriguing and engaging, invoking the ability to make audiences to both dance and pay attention to how well the music has been produced.

A tender, imaginative collection of disparate songs, How Animals Move is less an album than a steady stream of wonderful, unpretentious surprises.

Betke hasn’t merely licked his wounds and retreated into familiar territory, but fused some lessons learned from his own back catalog to create a shiny new beast, at once identifiable as his work and yet something tangibly different.

One of the better American rock albums of this year.

It’s not that the male-female duo vocals make it or even the moments where the group channels the Delgados in their sublime use of strings and horns; it’s more that Stars has gotten tighter since their last outing.

It’s a passionate and at times painful aural experience as a whole, but it’s one that has to be taken from start to finish.

Wainwright exhibits a rare talent as a confessional singer/songwriter; her album is an impressive, not to mention emotive, first LP from an ambitious artist unwilling to cling to her family’s famous coattails.

Nothing’s Lost is a more stately affair, flaunting van Petegum’s growth as a producer without losing his child-like talent for awkward emulation.

It's hard to argue with any album that possesses the virtues Z does: James' voice, one of the most astonishing instruments in rock; a band who, turnover notwithstanding, play like they've been doing this for decades; a sense of delight that often eludes young men with guitars; and songs that let you use the descriptor “rocks” without fear or shame.

Leaving Songs sounds a lot like a Tindersticks album, one that eschews their more baroque offerings for mature balladry.

For something so obviously and deeply grounded in marketing, it’s still an outstandingly solid and enjoyable debut.

With the Fiery Furnaces bringing indie-prog rigmarole back in fashion, Face The Truth might get a little more love than Pig Lib did, despite being the same album with a few more fart sounds.

Pieces of the People We Love is a great funky dance record with guitars, and not much more. Luckily, it doesn’t need to be.

With “Crazy,” the duo hits its apex without really shrouding the rest of the album.

Songwriting necessarily takes a backseat here most of the time, but it’s hardly missed when there’s so much gorgeous, woozy texture to loll in.

It’s certainly another step forwards and upwards for one of our only real musically emotional geniuses.

Buckner’s interest here is in a wallowing mouthful of atmosphere—dominant drums, throbbing guitar, and a fair amount of piano. This has always been the case, but the compositions are seamlessly edited and cleanly brought from instrument to recording.

For Hero: For Fool is a complete work from artists working at the top of their game.

Idols is not quite “country” enough to tackle the road to the prairies, but the headspace of the album is clearly in a place with plenty of room to breathe.

There’s usually more than meets the ear about their aural illusions, and they’ve gotten more overt about sticking in some genuine pop missives into their lattices of clean guitars and metronomic drums.

The Evens’ self-titled debut does sound curiously like hardcoreless moments of The Argument polished and lengthened into full-fledged songs.

Foregrounding the self-doubt that was a quiet but insistent subtext on the eponymous album, producer John Shanks provides unobtrusive arrangements and lets Phair strum more electric guitar; this is a singer-songwriter record, like Exile On Guyville. It’s also warmer than its predecessor.

It’s mostly top-flight crudity, though admittedly the album’s intensity wanes over its second half.

Unlike its Fridmann-produced predecessor Dreamt For Light Years employs a stripped-down approach more akin to its debut.

The album swells with beauty, but an intimate, unapologetic beauty drained of gravity or mystery that invites and comforts in one stroke, stronger than the gravest clock and gentler than a stray sigh.

In Stormy Nights is by no means the first time Ghost have plugged in and upped the volume, but it is easily their most unhinged, aggressive record; they make a show of steamrolling their subtler instincts.

The Breakthrough is easily Blige’s finest full-length since ‘99’s Mary.

Even on the tracks with mediocre melodies and concepts, T.I. plugs away at the beat and never loses control of King.

No dispute: Usher, Beyonce, Christina, Britney were just keeping the seat warm: The King’s back on his throne.

This tapestry of homemade instruments gives the mythology of Konono a potent, raw edge, and the ferocity with which they play them only further substantiates the feeling that the music has been pushed into a raw, indelibly pure zone.

Sharp, intelligent, and (most importantly) highly enjoyable, Enemies Like This is probably the height of the group’s creative abilities.

“I am a writer, writer of fictions,” Meloy claims on “Engine Driver,” and that’s exactly what he does, but it’s what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.

Kano has spent the last several years making “grime” records, but for better or worse, Home Sweet Home isn’t one of them.

The Else is their best whole album since, because it’s also the most melodic.