Happy Hollow serves up more emo with prog on the side, then adds dirty blues, cabaret and art-rock garnish. [Sep 2006, p.79]

Stylish and substantial, it's a deft masterpastiche that dissolves history for its own entertainment. [Oct 2006, p.114]

It strives shamelessly for the widescreen appeal of U2's Big Music. [Aug 2006, p.88]

Reveals a side to Broadcast rarely heard: that of a band who are relaxed, at play and in places almost carefree. [Sep 2006, p.76]

A brave, beautiful record. [Sep 2006, p.76]

There's a kind of redemptive comfort even in the album's bleakest moments. [Sep 2006, p.91]

Has the feel of an artist whose rougher edges have long since been washed away. [Oct 2006, p.119]

A spirited response to their detractors. [Nov 2005, p.106]

Ward's sweet, carefree voice is at odds with the urgency of the music. [Oct 2006, p.133]

She comes over like Tammy Wynette crossed with Parker Posey--an indie queen with a Kentucky twang. [Aug 2006, p.101]

Bachmann's gruff uniformity is, in the end, difficult to love. [Dec 2006, p.101]

While not quite hitting the heights of the recent Donuts LP, it again proves his brilliant nose for hip hop's pleasure points. [Oct 2006, p.123]

Lavishly appointed, expensively designed and almost entirely characterless. [Sep 2006, p.84]

Kelis' versatility... may mean she'll never hit like Beyonce, but she's still many producers' most stylish leading lady. [Nov 2006, p.117]

They produce big pop hooks via skewed My Bloody Valentine guitars more reminiscent of Giant Drag, but with the abrasiveness replaced by sugary harmonies. [May 2007, p.93]

One man's hurt is often another man's monotony. [Nov 2006, p.120]

Psychedelically strange and outrageously entertaining. [Oct 2006, p.99]

Distinctly average. [Oct 2006, p.119]

It has more garage-rock energy than the enervated Babyshambles. [Jun 2006, p.98]

Avatar... feels like the work of a band bursting with ideas, and with the confidence to realise them. [Sep 2006, p.96]

Reprieve is probably the easiest album to listen to that she's ever made. [Oct 2006, p.104]

Possibly cloying in large doses. [Jan 2006, p.112]

[Drummer Dave Lombardo's] return hasn't complicated Slayer's brutal, single-minded aesthetic, but it has stoked the hellfire that merely sputtered on God Hates Us All. [Sep 2006, p.97]

Not quite a match for the smoky blueprints, yet entertaining enough to inspire a trip to their source. [May 2006, p.128]

It's original member, turntablist Nu-Mark, who still provides the highlights. [Aug 2006, p.96]

Ultimately, In My Mind falters through narrowness of vision. [Dec 2005, p.120]

[An] instant classic. [Sep 2006, p.84]

The album is less of an indignant affair than you might expect. [Sep 2006, p.84]

It kicks ass. [Aug 2006, p.99]

Blends bluegrass, backwoods folk and hammered blues with a motorik groove. [Apr 2006, p.106]

It's Roderick's lyrics that really grip. [Nov 2006, p.118]

Could very well be the best record of this restlessly self-critical career. [Jul 2006, p.90]

You can't help thinking that by ironing out their creases, The Sleepy Jackson have lost a little bit of their spark. [Aug 2006, p.111]

The band's trademark punky abrasiveness and arty dissonance now serve a more dancefloor-friendly dynamic. [Nov 2006, p.106]

The sound of a group entering their prime, Silent Shout--strange, bold and tuneful--is textbook Euro-pop. [Apr 2006, p.110]

Much of it... sounds like the spiritual cousin of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush and Harvest, sharing the same back-to-nature rusticity. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Real-life dramas wrapped in uplifting tunes. [Aug 2006, p.86]

The overall effect is too solipsistic and immature to take you close to the title's imaginative world. [Aug 2006, p.96]

Minus the lovely, stoned air, Another Fine Day doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but there's plenty to admire. [Aug 2006, p.106]

A highly unoriginal record. [Mar 2007, p.86]

There's a gleeful, shonky exuberance to this debut all their own. [Aug 2006, p.88]

This is more than mere virtuoso performance. [Aug 2006, p.90]

Consolidates and amplifies everything they've done up to now. [Aug 2006, p.110]

Mov[es] through electronica, folk, folktronica, big beat, psychedelia and Krautrock, all guided by Kid Millions' astounding drumming. [Sep 2006, p.91]

It's dumber, filthier, sturdier and packed with more euphemisms than Viz's Profanisaurus. [Aug 2006, p.104]

Yet another work of widescreen beauty and magnificent ambition. [Aug 2006, p.86]

What makes The Eraser great is Yorke's singing. [Aug 2006, p.82]

The music... has become a too-clean version of their state's patented, tumbledown take on Stonesy power-pop. [Sep 2006, p.97]

The giddy rush of "I Citizen The Loathsome" and spectral funk ot "To" in particular begin a new page in electronica's tatty textbook. [Aug 2006, p.108]

Sergio Mendes meets Sparks then plunders Charles Mingus? Could be. [Aug 2006, p.95]

Unsurprisingly, American V is the most desolate of the series, bereft of the moments of playfulness that leavened its predecessors. [Aug 2006, p.92]

An astonishingly primal album. [Aug 2006, p.93]

Finds her plumbing new depths of pomposity. [Aug 2006, p.84]

Only the softer songs... display any of the heartbroken mystique that once made Carrabba compelling. [Sep 2006, p.79]

You wish Neil and Chris had hooked up with a younger, switched-on, even more sympathetic producer. [Jun 2006, p.110]

Time that could have been spent on cultivating studied cool, a la The Bravery, appears to have been wisely invested in memorable songs. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Keith's interaction with his producers is minimal, and his creative control so thin that vocal parts often sound like samples. [Sep 2006, p.79]

These tracks feel less like performances than private reveries on which the listener eavesdrops. [Aug 2006, p.108]

This is the most powerful, literate and just plain individual British debut album since The Streets' Original Pirate Material. [Jul 2006, p.94]

Much of it is endurance-defyingly dull. [Jul 2006, p.84]

It's her most enjoyable record yet. [Jul 2006, p.92]

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]