Thickfreakness is an unrelentingly dour record - perhaps this music was best left in the past.

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.

From its opening bars of stop/start low end, to the motivational tape samples, to the aforementioned multi-tracking, Elephant just screams and begs to be viewed as a departure from the Stripes’ well-known approach. The problem is that in between all this commotion lie the same vintage jams that the group has trafficked in for years.

The Kills' sludgy punk-blues doesn't contain many pop melodies or catchy choruses.

More than anything in his career, Escapology is literally riddled with confession and confusion.

Luckily, his affable spunk grounds much of the exploration, yet, at some point, the line between circumstance and good songwriting becomes suspiciously blurred.

This album is flat boring musically and sonically.

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

It sounds as if a bunch of no-bullshit straight-edgers have been cooped up in an underground drug den for a week with only Pink Floyd records for company, and then released blinking into the daylight and shuttled immediately into the recording studio.

Burn, Piano Island, Burn is an album that must first be listened to twice: once to wrap your head around its peerless vigor and skull-rattling force, and again to revel in its restless creativity.

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

It’s phat, it’s hooky and it’s got tune after tune after tune of stylish, contemporary urban ragga-soul for 60+ minutes, all wrapped round with a voice like socially-aware and really angry honey.

The album’s beauty lies largely in its simplicity, but so too does its weakness.

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

Trip-hop has been brought into the 21st century, at last.

This record is packed with deceptively simple melodies -- often aping established pop forms and the singer’s usual array of influences -- that are nearly irresistible because of the detail that Momus and Talaga infuse into each of his songs.

Mostly consists of generic rock, the sparkling production wiping clean any trace of roughness or originality in the group’s sound.

Barlow has stripped away the beats that made it interesting and blurred the line between this band and his others.

Come Here When You Sleepwalk is a soporific reverie that wafts gently and beguilingly but ultimately insubstantially.

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

This material is as inconsistent as anything off their past few records, but when they do hit upon a good moment, it tends to be really good.

La Bella Mafia is one of the top hip-hop albums of 2003, so far.

Part Banana Splits, part The Wicker Man, part genius, The Coral may just have produced the most intriguing, tuneful, humorous and enjoyable debut album of the year, and then some.

Five decent tracks (only three new) does not make a good album, and that is why Street Dreams only improves on Fabolous’ debut marginally.

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

His last two efforts weren’t as focused, but this time he’s got about half an album’s worth of quality work.

Freeway is great on guest appearances, but it seems that he can’t string together an entire song by himself.

The Notwist are obviously talented enough to keep me guessing if they wanted to. They just don't. They are quite happy making simple pop songs, albeit with complex ingredients.