In truth, only an uncharitable curmudgeon could fail to appreciate Tim Rice-Oxley's vastly improved pop songwriting. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Stately, thoughtful balladry. [Jun 2006, p.115]

A fantastic hybrid of Spacemen 3 and Deep South voodoo. [Oct 2006, p.99]

While he recreates his past modes, he can't recapture the audacious conceits or raptures of Liberation and Promenade. [Jul 2006, p.90]

For better, and for worse, this is a band who still haven't figured out who they are. [Jul 2006, p.95]

Like mid-'80s Scritti Politti, News And Tributes is pop music made by young men loath to sell their intelligence down the river. [Jun 2006, p.114]

An unqualified triumph. [Jun 2006, p.122]

With The Warning, they've willed themselves beyond bathos by sincerely embracing their English art-pop sensibilities. [Jun 2006, p.103]

Her keenest yet. [Jul 2006, p.108]

[El-P's] sinister, scarified industrial noise and beats bring a grimly thrilling dimension. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Rhymes hasn't sounded this energised in years. [Sep 2006, p.76]

A mighty blend of doomy, Jansch-ish meander and sepulchral drones. [Jul 2006, p.92]

Several tracks are up with their best. [Jul 2006, p.88]

Spektor's biggest-hearted, clearest-minded effort yet--achieved, thankfully, without sacrificing any of her wonderful weirdness. [Aug 2006, p.111]

Contains flashes of his finest work. [Aug 2006, p.84]

Son's patchwork of fluttering loops and vocal delays align Molina with kindred spirits Animal Collective, though her listless delivery can dull proceedings. [Jun 2006, p.106]

Evident is a sizeable debt to '80s electropop. [Aug 2006, p.84]

It's an album, like most teenagers, that is sometimes awkward and exhausting, but also joyous, un-jaded, and bursting at the seams with promise. [Apr 2006, p.114]

With [Belle & Sebastian] now seemingly lost to soft-pop pastichery, CO have come out of their shadow and flourished. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Costello... sing[s] with the enthusiasm and fun of a true fan. [Jul 2006, p.110]

The stumbling spontaneity is refreshing. [Jul 2006, p.95]

For the most part, Laugh Now, Cry Later plays like an unsuccessful attempt to regain hood status. [Sep 2006, p.86]

Too lo-fi for its own good. [Jul 2006, p.102]

It'll work neither in the club or in the home. [Jun 2006, p.108]

A decidedly sassier affair. [Jun 2006, p.110]

Happily, their third set rejects the sterility of 2004's When It Falls in favour of the kind of nuance-rich arrangements that give contemporary jazz-funk a good name. [Jun 2006, p.126]

Anone who saw the original Cars will tell you that these guys blow those guys off the stage. [Jul 2006, p.104]

There are mooments... when you get the feeling The Feeling will soon achieve more. Or rather, MOR. [Jul 2006, p.97]

Entertainingly eccentric pop, even if at times it seems to pull in too many directions. [Jun 2006, p.103]

While poppier and more accessible than his albums fronting Fantomas, it's worth the wait. [Jul 2006, p.104]

This is a record that genuinely sounds like nothing you have heard before. If you can rise to its portentous challenge... The Drift will prove to be a frightening, bewitching and rewarding experience. [Jun 2006, p.96]

Coming from a former punk goof, all this sentimentality feels somewhat po-faced. [Jul 2006, p.84]

The development in their songwriting is dramatic. [Jul 2006, p.90]

MoB have... not lost a cent of their turbulent, controlled-chaos energy. [Jul 2006, p.101]

The overwhelming sense is of a group needlessly hobbling themselves. [Jun 2006, p.110]

Although A Hundred Miles Off doesn't always score a bullseye, its vibrancy and colour win through. [Oct 2006, p.133]

Features more of the uncomplicated Californian country-rock fare that was hinted at by the cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Save Me A Place" on last year's Between EP. [Jul 2006, p.116]

Much of Broken Boy Soldiers is fired by the same liberated, intuitive spirit that drives the Stripes. [Jun 2006, p.86]

Comes closer to capturing their arse-shaking live performances than any of its predecessors. [Jul 2006, p.104]

Mostly the mood is dark. Kinda seductive, too. [Jun 2006, p.120]

This is a terrific, sustained album. [Aug 2006, p.93]

The emotional distance in their music is hard to bridge. [Jun 2006, p.126]

Comes across like a hi-fi version of Tom Waits at his gnarliest. [Jun 2006, p.92]

Guthrie folds delicate electronic treatments into his statuesque, joyous melodies. [Jul 2006, p.95]

Rather than a departure from the zig-zag folktronica of The Beta Band, [it is] more an incremental shift in oddness. [Jun 2006, p.105]

This doesn't disappoint. [Jun 2006, p.114]

Adopting Franz Ferdinand's arty edginess and the raw energy of the Pistols, Art Brut tilt at everything from the ephemeral nature of popular culture to erectile dysfunction. [Jun 2005, p.100]

DM's production is unfocused but showy and the album's postmodern lurches suggest a frustrating attention defecit disorder. [Jun 2006, p.90]

For those of us who prefer Neil when he's plugged-in and splenetic, it's tempting to call the album his best since 1990's Ragged Glory. Living With War, though, is too much of a frontline dispatch, too consumed with the present, to be easily catalogued for posterity. [Jul 2006, p.82]

Snapping snare, pump-organ and wiry guitar frame Jenkins' mood of stoned baroque beautifully. [Jun 2006, p.122]

These rattling songs... feel like disturbing European fairy tales. [Jun 2006, p.97]

Everything now seems as worn out and used up as Lytle's subjects, along with the imagery that brings them to life. [Jun 2006, p.108]

[It] is such an unassuming creation that the deceptively vast scale of its ambition only becomes apparent after several listens. [Jun 2006, p.103]

By turns poppy, cerebral and conceptually cute. [Jun 2006, p.106]

The supersized culmination of the Chili Peppers' artistic journey. [Jun 2006, p.102]

A comeback of unexpected maturity and power. [Jun 2006, p.110]

So much of Eyes Open is nearly, but not quite. [Jun 2006, p.114]

Intriguing. [Jul 2007, p.116]

There's a naivety at play here, recalling Daniel Johnston, Vashti Bunyan and Syd Barrett. [Jul 2006, p.86]

It's impressive... but it will be interesting to see whether his undoubted talent will flourish beyond such a conceit. [Sep 2006, p.83]

One of the most intriguing walls of sound since My Bloody Valentine circa Isn't Anything. [Jul 2006, p.97]

Talk of Simpatico as the band's Sandinista! is, in truth, wide of the mark. It's better seen as a footpath linking the claustrophobia of their early work with the Black Country funk of Wonderland, while hinting at a way forward. [May 2006, p.124]

It understandably struggles with a weightiness, an emotional claustrophobia. [Jun 2006, p.100]

Only emphasises their problems. [Jul 2006, p.92]

Fortunately, the sturdy rock instrumentation of Green Day producer Rob Cavallo serves to tamp down her pervasive air of self-importance while minimising the cringe factor in her lyrics. [Jul 2006, p.98]

At best this sees them hold their own. [Jul 2006, p.101]

If their songs occasionally resemble the power ballads that grunge supposedly outmoded, that's the price of being a truly potent classic rock band. [Jun 2006, p.109]

As daunting as its title suggests. [Jul 2006, p.114]

Amazingly, it somehow avoids the drivel of The Darkness by sheer gleeful abandon. [Jun 2006, p.98]

A sprinkle of Flaming Lips fairy-dust may be just what the genre needs to slip its genre straitjacket. [Jul 2006, p.114]

A fine showing. [Jul 2006, p.84]

An erratic mix of mundane, London-centric Skinnerisms and out-of-focus political ire. [Sep 2005, p.100]

If there's any justice, the stadiums of tomorrow await them. [Apr 2006, p.105]

The setting may have changed, the soundtrack is boosted and richer, grimier yet cleaner, but Skinner's predicaments remain the same. [May 2006, p.110]

A powerful example of how songs reverberate through the years to accrue contemporary meaning. [Jun 2006, p.92]

Riley has mellowed with age, so the politicking is shot through with humour. [Jun 2006, p.94]

All The Roadrunning isn't quite the success they would have hoped. The problem, perversely enough, lies in the disparity of voices. [May 2006, p.126]

Vent and Nunez revel in their experiments like science nerds let loose in the lab. [Jul 2006, p.111]

A somewhat humourless affair. [Jun 2006, p.115]

The best tracks... are almost as good as Television's monumental Marquee Moon. [May 2006, p.100]

Spiky, lyrical, quiveringly pretty. [May 2006, p.100]

Another melodic, meticulous, faintly redundant restoration job. [Jul 2006, p.90]

A fearsome blast. [Jun 2006, p.100]

Without the scuffed overload of his teenage releases, it's obvious that these are newly minted. [May 2006, p.98]

Fairly mundane. [Aug 2006, p.86]

While the debut was full of witty, Sparksy songs, Yes, Virginia is awash with mawkishly earnest ballads that suggest Tori Amos after a spell at drama school. [May 2006, p.104]

A Blessing... is perhaps a more personal and introspective record than usual. But truly there's still a lot to marvel at. [Apr 2006, p.112]

Clever-clever, emotional-emotional avant-pop. [Jun 2006, p.100]

What elevates Under The Covers above mimicry is the poignancy of the performances from all concerned. [May 2006, p.124]

Joyless but effective. [May 2006, p.124]

Built To Spill's blend of expressive guitar playing and light to moderate whining plays as well today as it did when the band emerged nearly 15 years ago. [Jul 2007, p.96]

Burns and Convertino prove they can play it relatively straight, without sacrificing Calexico's hard-earned status as a band that matters. [May 2006, p.104]

This is one mighty party album. [May 2006, p.105]

Elan Vital takes the visceral, intense beauty of... The New Romance and turns it up a notch. [May 2006, p.119]

There's a tendency to drift rather than fully engage, but... "Wolves" and... "Thin Blue Line"... dazzle with poetic imagery and invention. [Apr 2006, p.102]

It's a pity that the immaculate construction that is Ghosts now has an extension tacked on to it. [Apr 2006, p.119]

More organic and less electronic... but... still thrillingly left-field. [Jun 2006, p.106]

[Has] an uninspiring production line-up. [Jul 2006, p.101]