For the most part, this Stockholm outfit's sun-streaked, clever-white-boy pop-funk catches a season as expusitely as Air did circa Moon Safari, or as Hot Chip have more recently. [Aug 2006, p.104]

Too often, Aereogramme's tastefulness veers on the side of caution. [Mar 2007, p.75]

This may just be [the] finest pop break-up album since [Justin] Timberlake's Justified. [Aug 2006, p.95]

A flawed but fascinating follow-up. [Feb 2007, p.85]

What's especially daring about Not Too Late is the degree to which Jones and [producer Lee] Alexander trust their songs and her languorous voice to hold the listener's interest. [Feb 2007, p.75]

It's over-polished and lacks excitement. [Jun 2007, p.119]

RoadKillOvercoat fattens his usual oblique rhymes into even more demanding, bombastic forms. [Apr 2007, p.93]

Over time, vocalist Aaron Ross stands out as the weak link, his voice merely shrill and average. [Apr 2007, p.102]

Stuttering breakbeats, looped effects and suffusive psychedelia. [Feb 2007, p.72]

Live may well be the best place to encounter them. [Feb 2007, p.73]

Cadogan's threesome seem an altogether leaner, meaner deal. [Feb 2007, p.78]

The result is akin to walking in the woods alone at midnight--both spooky and compelling. [Nov 2006, p.104]

Clearly, appealing quirks can easily become irksome affectations. [Apr 2007, p.94]

The biggest surprise is how rarely this scratch supergroup really swings to its full potential. [Feb 2007, p.68]

Wincing isn't so much a departure as it is an all-out augmentation, taking the best things about The Shins and amplifying them. [Feb 2007, p.72]

At best, Hissing Fauna... posits its creator as the missing link between Hot Chip and Morrissey. [Mar 2007, p.88]

Reuniting her ex-bandmates adds a rock impetus to Doiron's more fragile solo work. [Feb 2007, p.74]

Like its predecessor, the most impressive aspect of The Enemy Chorus is not so much the breadth of its references as the tumescent, head-spinning harmonies. [Feb 2007, p.74]

The intense grandeur... is still quite a shock. [Feb 2007, p.73]

Though garlanded in elegant strings, it's as furiously seething a record as she's made in 20 years. [Mar 2007, p.82]

This wonderful record already feels like a cult classic. [Feb 2007, p.88]

A sluggish, garage rock set. [Jun 2007, p.99]

Remarkably alluring. [Apr 2007, p.93]

[It] isn't so much More Fish as it is Cheap Fish. [Mar 2007, p.81]

This largely instrumental set is a nicely ambient version of their usual hellacious harmonics, but also a reminder how the band have attained creative control on a major label. [Feb 2007, p.85]

Delivers much of the same. [Feb 2007, p.86]

Another terrific collection, tacking a stylish course between Jam and Lewis, Zapp and raving crunk. [May 2007, p.88]

Concise at 12 tracks, the stylistic coherence seldom fails to engage. [Feb 2007, p.73]

The band seem to have suffered a who-are-we?-style mid-life crisis. [Jan 2007, p.100]

A dense and abrasive record of astonishing precocity, which, if it has a fault, is only that it occasionally offers brute intensity in excess of the impact Pemberton's razor-sharp verses. [Oct 2008, p.87]

Whilst a gift for converting arrogance into entertainment has always been one of Jay-Z’s strongest suits, Kingdom Come skirts perilously close to the showboating that marred 2002’s bloated double album, The Blueprint 2.

Beast Moans can be drowsy at times... but it's punctuated by bursts of poetic insight and near-orgasmic glee. [Jan 2007, p.103]

If the scale is almost beyond comprehension, Love also represents a sonic Da Vinci Code for Beatles trainspotters. [Dec 2006, p.104]

It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]

Snoop's patter soon descends into G-funk pastiche and cretinous misogyny. [Feb 2007, p.85]

The tone is generally one of mild encouragement, of jollying-along the reluctant participants in this most fraught of celebrations, as indicated by titles like "Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!" and "It's Christmas! Let's Be Glad!".

Their scratchily rhythmic guitar music with dour, sardonic vocals has proved immensely influential. [Dec 2006, p.114]

For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.

[It] curbs some of the excesses that made 2005's Worlds Apart so unfocused. [Dec 2006, p.101]

Sounds astoundingly like an album from his '70s heyday.

A delicate and sometimes bleak record. [Dec 2006, p.123]

[It] lives or dies on whether you think... Jack Black is a comic messiah or a juvenile chump. [Dec 2006, p.129]

Although the songs are both traditional and modern, the mood of gentle awe and foreboding wonder is all of a piece. [Nov 2006, p.102]

[It] sees [MacKaye] playing to his weaknesses. [Dec 2006, p.106]

Stark, often stunning. [Dec 2006, p.121]

The contrived newer stuff suggests she should stop trying to impress US hip hop royalty. [Mar 2007, p.91]

A record that feels massive without tipping into bombast. [Nov 2006, p.106]

The sound is urgent and instinctive. [Dec 2006, p.124]

Madly ambitious and deeply heartfelt, it's a grand folly in the great tradition of British rock. [Nov 2006, p.96]

The lurch towards conventionality has exposed Isis' limitations: their paucity of melodic ideas, the pompous drumming, the lack of wit or soul. [Jan 2007, p.100]

Not wholly satisfying. [Mar 2006, p.102]

In short, Legend does for trad-soul what Oasis did for The Beatles. [Dec 2006, p.116]

[It] sees them break out of the subculture in spectacular style. [Nov 2006, p.123]

There's mammoth hooks and meaningful shouting galore here. [Jul 2007, p.116]

Sometimes enthralling, sometimes throwaway. [Nov 2006, p.120]

Full of fleeting revelations, Calamity is as bewitchingly fractured as The Red Krayola's subversive attacks on pop/rock form. [Dec 2006, p.106]

It's not always pleasant... but at its best... it's the funniest, most adventurous and liveliest record of his career. [Nov 2006, p.134]

Oddly life-affirming. [Nov 2006, p.99]

For the most part [it] is worth the wait. [Feb 2007, p.74]

There's a self-indulgence at play when can become aggravating. [Nov 2006, p.128]

Press Play works rather well. [Dec 2006, p.106]

Effectively picks and mixes from the Jansch stylebook. [Oct 2006, p.130]

Vivid, diverse and faintly trippy. [Nov 2006, p.99]

Shrill, theatrical, and unhinged. [Feb 2007, p.71]

Things are more cinematic here, with every melody weaving through a mise-en-scene packed with dramatic incident. [Nov 2006, p.101]

Though his voice is as lugubrious as ever, there is more light and shade than before. [Sep 2006, p.95]

There's something curiously inviting about this understated music. [Nov 2006, p.120]

As usual, Pollard sabotages his commercial potential with weak production values and occasionally straining vocals. [Dec 2006, p.121]

It's both Gothic and arch, meaningless and amusing. [Nov 2006, p.110]

When the adrenalin stops pumping, the reality is that labelmates The Constantines do this stuff much more effectively. [Dec 2006, p.118]

The harmonies are undeniably pretty. [Nov 2006, p.120]

Some of their poppiest songs to date. [Nov 2006, p.106]

Breathless power-pop offset by an innuendo-laden lyricism. [Mar 2006, p.98]

Amid snatches of skewed beauty, it seems Akron/Family have lost a sense of who they really are. [Dec 2006, p.101]

The Information often feels hygienised and missing some grit. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Finn’s writing is sharper than ever, the various narratives driven less by the wordy exposition of yore than acute observation, devastating detail, by turns exclamatory, epigrammatic and grainily authentic.

This... is still very much a Dears record: confused and unfocused, a messy kind of masterpiece. [Sep 2006, p.90]

A real grower. [Feb 2007, p.73]

A fairly conservative affair. [Nov 2006, p.101]

Stodgy miserablism predominates. [Nov 2006, p.117]

With Shine On, Jet manage to establish a common ground between Badfinger and AC/DC. [Nov 2006, p.110]

One of Hitchcock's very best. [Nov 2006, p.114]

A 10-track masterclass in spectral, psychedelicised pop, it's awash with great tunes and soaring arrangements. [Nov 2006, p.117]

Neither beholden to tradition nor self-consciously moderne, she crafts skeletal songs of great warmth and grace. [Oct 2006, p.117]

Running over with ideas. [Nov 2006, p.128]

He concocts a series of dazzling interior epics with just a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and his echo-drenched voice. [Nov 2006, p.101]

[It] revisits the chamber pop of their 1998 debut... equalling it in beauty and surpassing it in punch. [Nov 2006, p.123]

Through the simplicity of their languid melodies, Beach House access a portal into pop's truly uncanny nature. [Jan 2007, p.93]

The problem... is that size seems to be used as an excuse for the lack of musical ideas. [Nov 2006, p.102]

A softly glowing and unerstated album. [May 2006, p.98]

20 Y.O. is a lazy timewarp, not a retro treat. [Dec 2006, p.114]

A moody, giddy, charming album, as ragged and dynamic as those the band were making half a lifetime ago. [Oct 2006, p.100]

The second brilliant Scissor Sisters longplayer and the greatest album John/Taupin never made. [Oct 2006, p.96]

It's unmistakable, unsettling, classic Linkous. [Oct 2006, p.120]

Haines... is shaping up as the most impressive writer of the current wave of Canadian indie. [Jul 2007, p.103]

A near-perfect balance of industrial threat, hardcore power and black comedy. [Oct 2006, p.134]

It can take its place alongside Live At Leeds, Rock Of Ages and Wilco's more recent Kicking Television as a live classic. [Nov 2006, p.104]

Burke... intuitively transforms a bunch of country tunes into gospel rave-ups and secular hymns. [Nov 2006, p.101]