It’s a strong and dynamic step forward for the group and deserves to bring them a level of recognition commonly accorded their more famous Montréal label-mates.

In essence, the group has adopted the smartest possible approach on Tour de France Soundtracks by simply making quintessential Kraftwerk music of a kind stylistically consistent with the music of its past but with subtle enhancements that suggest a connection to the present.

The Kings of Convenience don’t stray too far from their basic formula of guitars, upright bass, twinkling piano, viola, cello and soft percussion in the background. It’s consistent and it works.

Camper's new work is not only as strong as ever, but also more relevant than ever before.

The areas where Try This falls down are those where P!nk eschews the eclecticism of the stronger tracks and instead produces bog-standard pop-punk or R&B tracks.

To the casual observer there's really no need to get this album if you already own Is This It or Turn On The Bright Lights.

Not quite the apocalyptic inverse Screamadelica that XTRMNTR was, it’s still a damn site more radical, experimental and dangerous than anything produced by any other mainstream rock band this year.

Music fans of the world rejoice--Yo La Tengo can once again hear the heart beating as one.

An album of quiet, introspective folk music.

Honestly, I can think of few albums more perfectly structured than The Lemon of Pink, and far fewer that end as nicely.

By capturing moments of ancient past, Gerrard and Cassidy have somehow created something timeless through set-in-stone permanence.

Avril is not some brilliant songwriter, and her voice is good, but not amazing, and her ‘tude is a little ridiculous at times. Despite this, she is the most refreshing and exciting girl in pop rock today.

While it&#146;s unrealistic to expect another Kid A-like transformation, by pulling all those familiar elements together, Hail to the Thief sounds, well, a little familiar.</A> [Note: Score listed is an average of two separate reviews: a <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/radiohead-hail_to_the_thief2.shtml" TARGET="_blank">68</A> and a <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/radiohead-hail_to_the_thief1.shtml" TARGET="_blank">90</A>.]

Pink has fought the record companies for control of her career and won- and with the sage advice of producers and executives she has come out with one of the best pop albums of last year.

A 21 minute 41 second short burst of booming, stylish rock alchemy.

Velocity is one massive dose of extremely fuzzed-out pop.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1416" TARGET="_blank">Ultimately, Closer doesn&#146;t disappoint and represents a legitimate fifth installment in the Plastikman series, in spite of the fact that it breaks little new ground beyond its predecessors.</A> [score=75]; Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1417" TARGET="_blank">Hawtin [is] firmly again in the leagues with the masters of the genre.</A> [score=81]

Elvrum&#146;s tightest song cycle yet, truly focusing and clarifying the themes and ideas he&#146;s explored on all his albums.

Despite some clunkers, Dirty Dancing delivers.

Though you really can&#146;t forget any of the work he&#146;s done in the past decade or so with his former band, Jason Loewenstein has really pulled off a gem of a record that momentarily loses you in his own music.

It may not be the psychedelic mind-warps that the Chemicals usually offer up, but it is an excellent debut and delivers the tunes we were hoping for earlier in 2002.

The songs here are full of life, moving freely, focused without being bare and controlled without being uptight.

The sound of the recording is clear, the audience is not annoying and Hayden&#146;s banter in between is quite humorous and as good as the music.

Anyone that expects the pulsating You Guys Kill Me would be better off sitting this one out, but Elliot has pulled off a tricky feat here: stripping down his sound to more orthodox "rock" instrumentation, without losing his edge.

Perhaps the producers have toned themselves down a bit just so Aesop can rock harder. Maybe they don&#146;t want to steal his thunder. Whatever their motivation, the beats feel somewhat restrained, lethargic and lazy. But they are perfectly suited to Aesop&#146;s limpid down-tempo rhymes.

A polished, carefully crafted set of beautiful, intense songs that lay bare the singer&#146;s heart as honestly and effectively as anything she&#146;s attempted before.

For the first time since their full-length debut album 1977, Ash have achieved synergy between their sweet-as-milkshake pop and the full-on heavy metal and punk that inspired Hamilton and Wheeler to pick up guitars in the first place.

Another fine batch of eloquent, classic sounding pop songs, with a little bit of mustard added to it as well.

While the record is surely Tweedy&#146;s most experimental to date, it&#146;s also, amazingly enough, his most lighthearted. In the end, this is both the gift and curse of Loose Fur, in band and album form.

The restless Broder can&#146;t see the problem with shredding flavours as disparate as folk, rock, post-rock, the avant-garde, hip hop, electronica into a powerful, sometimes jarring, sometimes bewitching pulp, and neither should any music fan. Listen and free your mind from convention.

Somehow The Polyphonic Spree have managed to make a record that actually is simple, joyous, and spiritually uplifting.

Power In Numbers is like a coming out party for J5, as it shows their ability to shed their label as a novelty and proves they are talented in their own right.

It's a mixed bag, to be sure, but even Autechre's clich&#233;s are more interesting than nearly everything else you'll hear this year.

This is North London collection-plate-pub music of a very high calibre.

All the songs sound almost exactly the same. I don&#146;t care! It doesn&#146;t matter! Just dance!

The album maintains a consistency that was sorely lacking on Amon Tobin&#146;s previous records. However, in doing so, the album sacrifices the innovation and uncontrolled experimentalism one expects from Tobin.

Kinky has the potential to transcend both the dance and Latin music genres, simply because of their ability to do just a little bit more than what&#146;s expected.

Despite the ubiquitous lackluster second half, and some weak tracks scattered throughout, the opening triple-threat supersedes them.

&#147;British Sea Power&#146;s Classic&#148;? Not quite. Not yet. But we can see the high-tide mark.

The album is not quite a match for The Facts of Life, then, but a more than adequate follow-up.

Never once during the course of the album’s ten songs, do its creators even graze the surface of mediocrity, instead settling in the sunny middle ground that Gibbard so often inhabits.

Saint Etienne have regained their touch.

No longer does he sound on the verge of breakdown with every aching syllable, no more pent-up jadedness---this is pure, cheerful post-orgasmic clarity.

The language barrier and discord makes the record incomprehensible, but nearly everything is still as intoxicating and entertaining as hell.

His lyrics may be doggedly unspecific, but ear-worming hooks and top-shelf instrumentation largely rectify that shortcoming.

Bitter Tea is probably my favorite Fiery Furnaces album to date, but it isn’t without snags.

Version has its share of undeniable clunkers, but its successes are so immediate and so animated that no reasonable listener could possibly begrudge Ronson for forcing them to rely on their track-skip button.

This album comes in a neat package: well-guarded and wry, artists competently displaying their hard-earned skill. It's all very professional, but no more meaningful than the titular appellations, the smile of a persona.

My December isn’t the kind of earth-shattering fuck-you accomplishment that would make this story too good to be true. However, it’s not nearly as bereft of good songs and great moments as some folks would have you believe either.

The album has a smooth flow, using careful production and consistent guitar tones to blend the different musical influences and varied performances into a piece.

By peppering in just enough new tricks to keep things interesting and stepping up the songwriting this time out, Visitations succeeds where Winchester Cathedral failed.

Chavez Ravine drags occasionally, the result of too many serious narratives, but the stories that do work are jaw-droppingly simple and painfully familiar.

The results are often wonderful.

Absolute Garbage makes a fine reminiscence, a gift from a party that was fun for its time but left a nasty hangover.

Playtime Is Over is exactly what we've come to expect from the garage sound of grime. It isn't trying to be anything it's not.

The Double has a high ambition of making outré textures pop, but their obliqueness can walk a fine line between compelling and evasively wussy.

There's a sustained tone to Time on Earth that Finn's rarely mastered, and that alone comes closer than you might have thought possible to making the record an unqualified success.

This is a pretty great album, filler and all.

It’s enormous, senseless, superficial, selfish, and cocky past the point of absurdity, but it’s never wrong.

It's not too hard to hear amid the swamp bass and prickly guitars, that this group seriously brings the funk.

This is not a ‘return to form’—how could it ever be? A band of this age have some many peaks and troughs in form as to render that kind of phraseology practically meaningless. Just as Porcupine should, just as Ocean Rain should, Siberia too should be taken in isolation.

Where the debut sounded like a drunken nihilist romp, Castle sounds like an artistic presentation of a drunken nihilist romp.

A work far more potent and lasting than their debut.

His brand of subtlety yields far greater rewards and makes for a surfeit of future discoveries upon repeated listens.

Kicking Television is consistent, professional, and unapologetically inclusive. It’s also a uniformly strong testament from one of rock’s most endearing acts, capable of producing both heady noise jams and shameless lighter-wavers.

Just Like the Fambly Cat, even more than Grandaddy's past works, carries the weight of death.

Although this LP is sequenced into tiny fragments of varying speeds of mood, the LP feels like one super-caffeine express fairground ride.

The Boss’ most lively release since Born in the USA.

Avatar shows Comets capable of a level of sophistication and skill previously unconsidered.

For fans of indie-rock with a poppy slant, Stars of CCTV is an absolute necessity.

Why Should the Fire Die? may see Nickel Creek turn further away than ever from CMT’s trappings, but it also shows the band reaching to eclipse its more generic pop-rock reference points as well.

Thanks to some subtly disquieting diction it’s almost as disturbingly memorable as a cuddly cartoon blood orgy.

Unfortunately, the magic of [the] first three songs is never captured again.

Other than a few cliched song titles and lyrics (this is rock 'n' roll after all), Twilight of the Innocents actually demonstrates a refreshing maturity and breadth; sure it rocks, but never in a clumsy or callous manner.

This is a solid, sturdy set of songs befitting their rootsy-but-not-exactly-honky-tonk settings.

Though The Wilderness is filled with stunning songs, by album’s end, they tend to meld together. Their uniformity is their greatest fault, though admittedly one that can be overlooked during its best moments.

The larger scope of the album bodes well for The Raveonettes... [but] it’s a shame that there are several clunkers mixed with such strong material.

Electric Six make junk music for junk times, and they’d be nigh-unbearable if they weren’t so much fun.

It's like a medicinal tonic cleansing your system of the toxic effects of 10+ years of boring, bloated rap full-lengths.

Remember that concept album Tori Amos did that was supposed to reclaim all those male-oriented anthems from their blowhard XY carriers? Smith paints over Amos’ tedious version and executes the idea so much better, without even bragging that she’s doing it.

The entropic quality of the &#145;yellow&#146; Pole has undergone a &#145;rehab&#146; of sorts, resulting in a cleaner and reinvigorated sound.

Nothing too dire mars Vega’s compositions, which remain as condensed and detailed as Victorian miniatures.

The band is still fun, successfully completing their transition from cutesy electro-Baroque to a twee-funk sensation.

There&#146;s a bit too much flab on No Cities Left for it to be the truly great album it aspires to be.

Springtime is... the unveiling of a toothier sound that better reflects both Holland’s bloodiness and booziness.

An immediate and combative disc that blurries up a litany of angers over surprisingly versatile layers of pop-punk guitar thrusting, The Body, The Blood, The Machine is a focused tantrum, irresolute in its actual stances, but pissed and rambunctious enough to overcome its vagaries.

Get Evens is the aural embodiment of the sublimated rage of their debut. Though the instrumentation is still spare, it's meatier and more aggressive.

A record for the creeping darkness of a hot summer night in which the night seems to last forever and the heat, the same.

Its unbearable tendencies are avoidable because they're overshadowed by bursts of creativity.

Natural is their prettiest album; in spots it's almost pastoral.

For those of you familiar with the band’s debut, 2004’s Tiger, My Friend, I can make this simple: The Only Thing I Ever Wanted is just as good.

If the album has a fault, its that LFO can occasionally be accused of complacency, and a handful of tracks here stray into bog-standard Warp generictronica, but it&#146;s a minor gripe considering the joys on offer elsewhere.

A little bit of kitsch is important... Begin to Hope has enough of it to stand out, and enough ethics to keep the whole thing grounded.

Favourite Worst Nightmare, a demonstrative record of small deviations, may pale before its predecessor but is better.

It is a funereal album whose spark and anger is obscured like the smoldering foundations of a burnt out city.

Mostly though, it’s status quo.

Promise Of Love is chock-full of pretty, melancholic music. In other words money well spent.

The combination of Treacy’s back-story and the complexity of My Dark Places makes it hard to live with at times; it is a supremely disquieting record.