Williams' voice is weakly anonymous, Verlaine minus the venom. But his obsessive recreation of his heroes' studio tricks compensates. [Aug 2008, p.113]

Untrue is altogether warmer than its predecessor. [Jan 2008, p.87]

Best enjoyed with your brain set to simmer, it's harmlessly high-octane fun. [Dec 2007, p.119]

Buck 65 returns to abstract hip hop, but injects it with cool, psych jazz and '70s cinematic funk. [Dec 2007, p.86]

Sighing, panting and smouldering her way throufgh a dozen digitized come-ons, she maintains the fiction of a robo-pop nymphomaniac while all around her, Rome burns. [Jan 2008, p.102]

That band’s ambition is intact is remarkable--that they’ve made an album that captures the zeitgeist is maybe even more so.

The result is a collection that sounds like nothing so much as a modern-day Dock Boggs signed to the Lost Highway label.

The theme of lost innocence is ideal for the sad sweetness of Conor Deasy’s voice, which has never sounded better than on 'This Year,' a rush of noise which restores the busked immediacy of their debut.

Street entirely avoids DIA’s flinty spectrality and staticky crackle and turns a bright light on the smart, compact and relentlessly exciting arrangements he’s here coaxed from the band.

The album is a powerful exploration of faith, with Young circling his own mortality.

You leave Load Blown feeling that Black Dice, unlike many of their kin, are actually genuine experimentalists--even if it's with the caveat that sometimes it all rather blows up in their face. [Nov 2007, p.96]

Tankian combines prog pomp and a variety of vocal techniques, all irritating, to uniformly unlistenable effect. [Nov 2007, p.125]

'Object' is a highlight, as is the lovely 'Sweetheart In The Summer.' [Dec 2007, p.119]

Gahan is a way off from being a David Sylvian–-but not as far as you might think.

The pairing of the wily old tomcat and the classy country thrush turns out as magically in reality as it seemed unlikely on paper.

Preparations smudges the distinction between Herren's Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas aliases, and shares with Golden Pollen, his summer S&S release, a listless drift. [Dec 2007, p.101]

A full LP exposes their limitations and suggests that the songs may work best as soundtracks to their elegant stop-motion videos. [nov 2007, p.108]

Unsettling to the last, it’s Blanche all over.

In The Vines reveals more of its peculiar candlelit charm with every play. [Dec 2007, p.106]

Hooking up with Butch Vig, evidently--and trying for a heavier sound, It's a fair effort, certainly, but an unconvincing strategy. [Dec 2007, p.98]

This is a finely polished album, but low on guts, grit or urgency. [Nov 2007, p.129]

This conservative collection feels more like musical air freshener than any kind of statement. [Dec 2007, p.104]

It's harder to fault the tunes, however, smeared thick with QOTSA sludge or pretty 'Dakota' clones 'It Means Nothing' and 'Daisy Lane.' [Nov 2007, p.123]

The result is a delight. [Nov 2007, p.115]

Radiohead have made their most well-behaved, classically structured album since "OK Computer."

The results are frequently souless and over-produced. [October 2007, p.93]

If you can forgive Condon’s mannered delivery and overabundance of drunken waltz rhythms, this is an audacious experiment in cultural appropriation, an enchanting musical holiday in someone else’s misery.

By now the patience of even their most ardent fans must be wearing thin

The results sound like an update of the kind of AOR racket Pat Benatar and Heart were making in the '80s. [Nov 2007, p.116]

It's a sound that devotees of 'Crazy Horse' or 'My Morning Jacket' will find conspicuously pleasing, but fans of Band of Horses might just be disappointed. [Dec 2007, p.84]

Lekman makes the kind of Nick Hornby-ish "perfect pop" that no one actually listens to. Which is a pity, because his lyrics are Cole Porter witty, and his major-key songcraft delicious. [Nov 2007, p.110]

Rumours of emotional maturity are exaggerated...but the reflective moments are best. [Dec 2007, p.98]

Each song works brilliantly in isolation, making this a treasure trove of Wyatt’s finest work ever.

It's a potent combination and one made all more alluring by their refusal to settle for one chorus when about 12 all being played at once will do. [Nov 2007, p.98]

Almost succeeds through sheer force of personality. [Aug 2006, p.108]

The industrial grind of single 'Into A Swan,' glammed-up trashiness of 'About To Happen' and sinister alienation of 'Loveless' prove she's still the uncompromising outsider at heart.

It trades in giddying, irresistible, full-steam-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes rock'n'roll. But at its heart, it's essentially a thoughtful wander in search of personal and national innocence.

While the veteran singer's heart is in the right place, she sabotages her messages via the spouting of generalisations and the use of abstract language, with typically grating, inelegant results. [Nov 2007, p.110]

This fifth set strips back the gloss and points to some sort of redemption. [Dec 2007, p.89]

Amped to an industrial sheen by producer Youth and packed with stripped-back stadium choruses, Born Into This rips from the speakers like an irate Velvet Revolver, Billy Duffy’s relentless axe-hero riffing matched by Astbury’s typically waspish lyrics.

Reassessing the past and reengaging with the present, Revival lives up to its name.

The lissom guitars of brothers Dallas and Travis Good still allow for thrilling detours. [Nov 2007, p.121]

Elegant backgound music, better live, you suspect. [Dec 2007, p.98]

An album of lonely beauty and piercing sorrow, White Chalk is P.J. Harvey back at the peak of her considerable powers.

On the last Foos album, "In Your Honour" rock and acoustic music were exiled to different discs. Here, a satisfactory compromise is brokered between the two: the excellent 'Summer's End' is easy on the ear, easier still on the brain, and sets him up in the radio-friendly 'Wonderwall' district one imagines is his spiritual home.

It is, by any measure, a quiet revolution.

When it ends, the impression of Devendra Banhart that stays with you is of the artful songsmith, finding a confidence to express himself in something other than riddles.

Their third album is sprinkled with sensitive instrumental textures and plaintive tinkling noises, but their music remains utterly devoid of personality, not least because of Joel Potts' vapid vocals, while not even the best efforts of Gil Grissom and his eager CSIs could unearth a sniff of a decent tune. [Oct 2007, p.83]

It's all invigorating, wonderful stuff.

The Feist-like 'My Favourite book' and the triumphant 'Today Will Be Better, I Swear!' are songs of rare craft but you'll need to suspend disbelief to make it through to curtain-down. [Nov 2007, p.123]

This meatier effort offers more of the same dog-eared melancholy. [Oct 2007, p.90]

Go Go... is never less than delightful--at its best like Belle & Sebastian having a stab at Portishead. [Oct 2007, p.99]

A gleefully malevolent testament to the cathartic joys of furious, poison-flecked songwriting. [Oct 2007, p.113]

There's an elegiac beauty to these tracks. [Oct 2007, p.114]

This is a rock record, and Samson's band functions as the sharp teeth to his lucid tongue. [Jan 2008, p.112]

Like the five LPs preceding it, Last Light is dominated by autumnal mood pieces--but it rocks harder, making for a pleasing contrast with Pond's poignant lyrics and vocals.

The Connecticut pair's third album taps into the best qualities of alternative music, circa 1988. [Oct 2007, p.99]

There is nevertheless a supreme revitalisation of her deep-seated powers evident here. [Oct 2007, p.96]

When the shuffly mountain music is bolstered by some unobtrusive electronics it sounds more natural than it should. [Mar 2008, p.84]

Harte's voice is sometimes a little thin to carry some songs. [Oct 2007, p.104]

Upping the tempo-and libido of her Grammy-winning "Beautifully Human," here Scott lays the funky paramaters wide open. Jan 2008, p.100]

More memorable for famous guests than fine tunes, The World Is Yours does not diminish Brown’s reputation, but it lacks the exotic, adventurous reach of his best work.

Once Upon A Time In The West may lack the cultural resonance Archer so desperately craves, but it’s widescreen appeal makes most guitar bands sound like they’re on Super 8.

There's another side to the jaunty guitars and multi-tracked choruses that sometimes make Tunstall sound like she's singing an orange juice advert.... 'Beauty of Uncertainty' and the closer 'Paper Aeroplane' are stark and moody etudes as far removed from, say, Dido as it's possible to get.

The drawback, as ever, is Blunt’s warbly, whining, strangled voice, which sounds increasingly like a bad Weird Al Yankovic parody.

You’d be even more surprised to hear that it features 'songs'--proper, beautiful, well-crafted songs.

With Drew at the helm, however, it becomes a messier, less wholesome affair, seductively so on 'Lucky Ones' and 'Frightening Lives,' which scamper toward some grubby euphoria like a hal-cut Arcade Fire. [Oct 2007, p.87]

Just prepare for a Rogue Wave deluge. [June 2008, p.102]

With every album that he writes HIM mainman Ville Valo gets closer to his dream fusion of Metallica, Depeche Mode and Ozzy, while still remembering to add some distinctly gothic beauty. [Oct 2007, p.93]

It's business as usual. [Nov 2007, p.98]

The lyrics to these songs are themselves sketchy, enigmatic, quietly rousing, windily romantic, redolent of majestic vistas, vast horizons, a landscape of personal liberation.

Many of their songs go on for weeks, doing little but reiterating banal refrains, badly confusing hypnotic with merely repetitious. [Nov 2007, p.96]

It’s a welcome return, to say the least.

Al Jourgensen is bringing Ministry to a close, and truthfully, it's the right time. [Nov 2007, p.113]

His mystical belief in the power of love pervades the material, sometimes anthemically, sometimes playfully, but always disarmingly. [Oct 2007, p.96]

Gravenhurst prove that kicking arse is neither beneath nor beyond them. [Oct 2007, p.93]

Ultimately, the record is a tribute to McClure's charisma and unswerving self-belief.

Fourth album time for Turin Brakes, and practice is edging the duo closer to perfection. [Oct 2007, p.113]

But though much of the record revels in freaky electronics--'Chores' and 'Winter Wonder Land' rush through as though played by pixellated marching bands--there’s an overwhelming sadness to the undertow

If there's a criticism, it's that this rarely expands on the ideas of their debut: shouty kiddy-rapping, Motown samples, crashing drum loops. But when a band boasts such a unique sonic palette, "more of the same" surely ranks as a compliment.

Hot Hot Heat have recently toned down a lot of their jerkier tendencies and are a lot less annoying for it. [Nov 2007, p.107]

This sounds more like the Pixies than any of Francis' other solo albums. [Oct 2007, p.83]

Grand National lack Hot Chip's playful edge and by 'Joker and Clown,' thoughtful production is hitched to that last refuge of pop scoundrel--the Snow Patrol-style ballad. {Apr 2008, p.90]

It's the clever orchestration that elevates this above postmodern gag, all fluttering pipes and chiming guitar. [Nov 2007, p.98]

A cover of Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' proves you typecast Qui at your peril. [Oct 2007, p.102]

A likeable, modest debut. [Oct 2007, p.101]

Their fourth studio album combinds poignant odes to former drummer Ben Eberbaugh with a joyous refusal to take itself seriously. [Oct 2007, p.83]

It's commendable stuff, but you can't help wishing he'd kept the scattershot, carte blanche approach of before. [Nov 2007, p.121]

North Star Deserter is among his finest, sublimating Chesnutt's occasional tendency to cloying whimsy in gothic folk backdrops. [Oct 2007, p.87]

Scandinavian accents add to the sense of pop era unmoored from its time and place, and reconfigured into one coherent record with cool precision. [Feb 2008, p.78]

La Radiolina reaches out beyond it's core audience to a universal constituency, not so much a world music record as a global-rock mission statement.

As an exercise in historical re-enactment it works just fine, but not everyone will want to stick around until Going Way Out...comes around again. [Nov 2007, p.104]

Scialfa's third is the most complete and satisfying of her career, the lyrical candor matched by the open-ended optimism of the band which weaves doo wop, gospel and rockabilly influences into a convincing whole. [Oct 2007, p.102]

Best of all are the lyrics, with fragments of nursery rhymes, playground chants, witty wordplay and light hearted braggadocio which, rather like The Go! Team, will leave you with a big, stupid smile on your face. [Oct 2007, p.101]

A glorious blend of wired energy and sullen attitude.

She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically ("Take me on a genocide tour/Take me on a trip to Darfur") and musically. But a knockout's a knockout, however messy the bout.

Under The Blacklight is by far and away the most accessible album that Rilo Kiley have ever made.