Still sounds like the work of someone desperate to gain the approval of the Drag City clique. [#215, p.69]

Let It Come Down suffers just a little from Pierce's presumably healthier outlook. [#211, p.66]

At the heart of Rain On Lens, [Callahan] comes clean for the first time: Smog is subjective, not omnipotent. Hardly a psyche stripped bare, but at least it's a start. [#211, p.65]

There is a kind of exuberance you thought went out of fashion with The B-52s. [#211, p.66]

To expand simple love songs into extravagantly gilded showstoppers is to risk lapsing into bombast. But for all their love of musical saws and [Jonathan] Donahue's quavering voice, Mercury Rev are unashamedly grandiose, and their references may be too in thrall to the rock hegemony for some. [#210, p.60]

What's lacking on Date Of Birth, though, is any sort of excitement. [#212, p.75]

Consistently entertaining. [#215, p.69]

There's everything to like about this release, but nothing to grip or to enage the senses... Stereolab have now defined and refined themselves to a point where they are almost invisible. [#211, p.53]

In the end, Vespertine commits its magic by daring to go places more obvious and more human than one would have ever expected. [#210, p.52]

It's fair to say that not much new ground is broken here, but it's remarkable how endearing their blend of chugging underground pop and frail ragas still sounds. [#210, p.66]

Fans of Anderson's trademark spoken word phrasing, with pregnant pauses, raised eyebrows and question mark endings, won't be disappointed. [#211, p.52]

Finding Iggy as confused as ever, Beat 'Em up ranks alongside New Values and Blah, Blah, Blah as yet another missed opportunity. (#209, p.60)

Much of this fascinating, infuriating record is defined by his commingling of HipHop, Electro, dancehall, and, most problematically, stadium alt.rock... Some of it is just odd enough to work. [#209, p.62]

What's striking is that he's less wacky than he's ever been, instead pursuing a rougher, more complex sound. [#208, p.66]

They're both adept at the refined art of turning nothing new into something memorable. [#207, p.61]

Pleasant, yes, but not much more.... Too many of these 'songs' snap off at around the three or four minute mark, just as they start to get interesting.... It sounds consistently half-there. [#208, p.52]

Double Figure is as good as anything they have done. [#207, p.65]

However difficult is might appear on first hearing, his music is at once curiously involving and constantly inviting. [#209, p.59]

A thousand times more exciting in every way than most everything in the air at the moment.... Timbaland's production is frontier staking stuff... [#208, p.58]

Without the strength of material to prompt the question of whether Byrne should be taken at face value or not, the songs on Look Into The Eyeball simply glide by unobtrusively, and Byrne's romantic sentiments start to sound like Paul McCartney at his blandest. [#208, p.53]

Sadly much of Music Is A Hungry Ghost is marred by a pebbledash of clicks and glitches -- that already overused signifier of au courant production. [#207, p.87]

Granted, Flow's torrent of words is Thirlwell's familiar angsty blurt of near operatic proportions, but closer attention reveals his skill as an arranger, producer and rhythm sampler is now verging on the monumental. [#208, p.57]

A collection of slow, moody pieces whose unexceptional nature is made more frustrating by the occasional flashes of inspiration. [#206, p.77]

Bardo Pond's most focused work to date. Who knows whether the group would take that as a compliment? [#206, p.61]

Idiology refuses to cohere so completely that it plays out as part of Mouse On Mars's very approach; the duo hop from style to style, treating them like so many stepping stones to no destination in particular. [#206, p.72]

Marks a radical departure in its scope and overall sound.... Unwound have reinvented their music as Progressive hardcore, framing abstract conceits in rock solid structures. This brave, ambitious record retains its edge in a blur of invention. [#206, p.76]

A highlty nuanced album which is at once razor sharp, and rich in new openings and possibilities. [#206, p.60]

A splendid piece of work; compelling even when shorn of its conceptual and procedural backdrop, and infinitely more invigorating when considered as one with its making. [#205, p.58]

Sunny Border Blue marks a return to a less considered, rawer style, and to lyrics which are nakedly confessional, mercilessly exposing her own and other people's weaknesses. [#206, p.67]

[Tipsy] painstakingly process small episodes of manufactured excess and thoughtless musical effect into tracks evoking the giddy pleasures to be found in running your favourite party tapes at the wrong speed. [#206, p.81]

Unremittingly bleak but absolutely compelling. [#204, p.68]

It's an extremely listenable record, full of stray moments of delightful mischief, but it's as innovative as a favourite old armchair. [1/2001, p.63]

No great leap forward, but with a sound this distinctive, that's not yet a problem. [#205, p.59]

If you value surehandedness, richness, immaculate timing and the occasional tilted eyebrow then there's a lot to enjoy on Tortoise's most assured set to date. [#204, p.65]

The album is not so much a departure as a continuation of Pavement, satisfying and occasionally inspired. [#205, p.59]

Low's original stark minimalism has gradually given way to a broader sonic range, without sacrificing their strangely accessible otherness. [#204, p.68]

Blues Dream is both a compendious evocation and synthesis of a range of genres that never sounds merely eclectic... It's one of Frisell's most ambitious productions to date. [#207, p.61]

The comforting familiarity of the Boards' muted beats, synth washes and glowing keyboards is just as potent and valium soaked as it was on their brilliant 1998 debut. [1/2001, p.71]

It's hard to shake off the suspicion that The Fifth Release contains more than a few offcuts and outtakes that never quite made the final cut of its more assured and inventive predecessor. [#202, p.55]

These heavily layered, smoothly produced compositions emit occasional warmth, but coolness is the prevailing order; the intricacies of arrangement demand admiration but fall short of engendering a more heartfelt response. [#204, p.68]

What emerges so strongly from this collection is evidence of gradual development over time--stumbling, erratic, silent and brilliant by turns--ultimately leading to a stage of maturity. [#200, p.68]

What might have been an interesting exploration of Industrial Lite Pop gets spoiled time and again by badly rewired breakbeats and fussy electronic background chatter. [#201, p.66]

More Light is, on the whole, more of what made him great--songs with airhead titles like "Where'd You Go," which stretch glorious guitar solos over solid chopping riffs--but it's packed with too much filler. [#200, p.80]

Given her capacity to align reinvention with a developing maturity, the 13 lucky songs of Stories deliver a complex text. It is certainly less frenetic, as if Harvey is finding new ways to exert her presence. In addition, its thoughtful spaces and pauses suggest room for doubt and manoeuvre. [#202, p.49]

Intermittently pretty, massively inconsequential. [#215, p.69]

The sonic scribbles of Kid A are far more stimulating than their regular grind.... Along with Primal Scream's Exterminator, Kid A is a vital work. Anyone remotely interested in contemporary music should listen to it at least once. [#201, p.59]

Oui may lack songs as vivid as those found on the [Sam] Prekop and [Archer] Prewitt records, but it has enough charm of its own to recommend it. [#201, p.63]

This recording attests to their powerful rock credentials. [#201, p.63]

For Bjork, this release marks a development in her craft.... SelmaSongs is a little big brave collection of songs that makes me feel better whenever I listen to it. [#201, p.58]

On earlier releases, the traces of anger, sorrow or despair rippling through the found voices seeded roaring rock improvisations that empathetically rooted and resisted the calamities visited upon them. But the improvising on [Skinny Fists] falls within beat parameters too tightly determined to generate any really useful dissonance. [#200, p.66]

Abalanced, democratic collaboration, with neither unit dominating.... Ghost's faraway sound lends Damon & Naomi's straightahead arrangements a yearning, devotional air... [#199, p.56]

Those expecting further dubwize excursions from this duo may be disappointed by their venture into the lounge rather than the yard. Unfair, really, as Thievery Corporation have embodied eclecticism from their beginnings, and the bass booms as sweetly as on any of their previous efforts. [#200, p.83]