A murky return to the denim'n'leather heartlands of 2000's Thirteen Tales. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Feels timid and trite. [Oct 2005, p.98]

With Calexico's sensitive muting of colour, Beam is clearly thriving throughout. [Nov 2005, p.112]

The band's blend of psychedelia and angular guitar menace is invigorating. [Jan 2006, p.112]

These are McCartney's most arresting songs for a long, long while. [Oct 2005, p.94]

Some fascinating music but... you suspect Parish's talents are best utilised as a collaborator. [Oct 2005, p.111]

Sigur Ros' alien beauty prescribes its own definition. [Oct 2005, p.112]

Rather desperately impersonates The Killers. [Mar 2006, p.94]

Super Furry Animals have just made perhaps the defining record of their career. [Sep 2005, p.100]

Rammed with stinging hooks and ringing harmonies. [Oct 2005, p.112]

Once you've digested the background information, tracks that seem slightly twee and aloof spring into focus. [Sep 2005, p.100]

A joyous, uninhibited and painlessly adventurous ride. [Oct 2005, p.124]

An understated, often truly lovely debut. [Apr 2006, p.106]

The success rate is variable. [Oct 2005, p.94]

Hawley resurrects ghosts of music past and breathes new, poignant life into their forms. [Oct 2005, p.110]

It's not their reworkings of songs by Charley Patton, Fred McDowell and RL Burnside that impress most here, but rather their own compositions. [Apr 2006, p.114]

There are some outstanding songs here, and Jagger turns in a series of performances that are their match, full of much defiant flouncing, strutting bitchiness, preening arrogance, snarling haughtiness and a typically provocative misogyny. [Album of the Month, Oct 2005, p.92]

The funk-noir backing means that Dulli is able to purr lyrics about "sexy ladies", debilitating cocaine habits and your standard-issue emotionally violent love affairs without sounding as trite as he perhaps should. [Mar 2006, p.104]

They sizzle with verve and invention. [Jun 2005, p.98]

Their failure to shift pace from a relentlessly wistful chug makes for an oddly exhausting listening experience. [Oct 2005, p.98]

A dozen songs of unremitting blandness by a man with absolutely nothing left to say. [Oct 2005, p.96]

The record feels lifeless. [Apr 2006, p.112]

Mostly brilliant. [Aug 2005, p.88]

A charming composite of Damon Gough's homespun insight and Edith Piaf's anguish. [May 2005, p.106]

Sparse, literate... and full of killer tunes. [Sep 2005, p.105]

There's emotional violence, spiritual leaps and supernatural powers lurking in the shadows. [Nov 2005, p.96]

By turns darker and more challenging than 2003's dazzling Electric Version. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Prove[s] Haas has more to offer than ear-crunching cacophony. [Sep 2005, p.105]

The only consistent thing about Infiniheart is its inconsistency. [Sep 2005, p.116]

Year Of Meteors is no flat-out masterpiece.... Still, Veirs is clearly moving in the right direction. [Sep 2005, p.102]

[The Warlocks] have replaced The Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3 with The Jesus And Mary Chain and Spiritualized as the objects of their affections, and Surgery is significantly less interesting as a result. [Oct 2005, p.110]

Bjork's vocals are a hypnotic midnight whisper, a continuation of Medulla's vocal layering techniques. [Sep 2005, p.117]

Warnings/Promises was written on acoustic guitar and fleshed out in the studiio--a tactic that bears mixed results. [Apr 2005, p.97]

Even as a covers band, Madness remain one step beyond. [Aug 2005, p.90]

The Outsider is delivered with the forthrightness, jive and firepower of a hip Southern Baptist preacher. [Aug 2005, p.102]

With just two original compositions, it looks as if they may be running out of steam. [Sep 2005, p.108]

Everything here roars. [May 2006, p.108]

A startling album. [Aug 2005, p.98]

Demonstrates... pastoral grace, sweetness and warmth. [Aug 2005, p.106]

The Repulsion Box ushers in a strikingly individual talent. [Jul 2005, p.89]

May just be the most concise and potent distillation of Thompson's art to date. [Album of the Month, Sep 2005, p.98]

Buck's monotone and his lack of truly cutting statements make this a dour experience. [Sep 2005, p.100]

Tighter and woodier-sounding than 2003's Mouthfuls. [Oct 2005, p.102]

It was the anger and angst of a jilted 20-year-old that gave the original songs their edge--something entirely absent from these blandly matured acoustic versions. [Aug 2005, p.90]

Much of it seems to bluster without delivering. [Aug 2005, p.87]

While he lacks a killer song here, Mraz is cute enough to keep his Lemonheads-lite ballads bubbling along. [Feb 2006, p.74]

Full of hooks as stubborn as burrs. [Aug 2005, p.94]

It all suggests a sea change in attitude. [Sep 2005, p.114]

A quietly remarkable record. [Aug 2005, p.92]

Will massage the shoulders of fans of Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, Neil Young and Kevin Shields.

This controlled bedlam is just the thing for fans of the similarly explosive, experimental and exploratory sounds of Comets On Fire, Oneida and Black Mountain. [Aug 2005, p.97]

The tunes are so fragmentary, it resembles a '60s hi-fi demonstration disc. [Jul 2005, p.89]

More conservative than 2001's Melody AM, with little of the twinkling, yodelling mania that distinguished them from their late-night-friendly peers. [Aug 2005, p.103]

For every inspired turn, there's an insubstantial one, while some merely appear sluggish. [Aug 2005, p.96]

TMSR are a bit more focused and less shaggily psychedelic than [Broken Social Scene], but certainly never short on ideas. [Mar 2006, p.91]

The production lacks [Timbaland's] invention and intricacy. [Aug 2005, p.87]

A gleaming set of R&B, pop, bedroom soul and even reggae. [Sep 2005, p.112]

An extraordinary achievement. [Album of the Month, Aug 2005, p.86]

Wilderness take the clang of post-punk and invest it with an elatory fervour. [Sep 2005, p.111]

As satisfying as it is stylish. [Jul 2004, p.95]

Multiply marks the full flowering of a singular talent. [Jul 2005, p.99]

It's the vocals that will seal this deal for you--or break it. [Feb 2006, p.79]

Shows Lali Puna's more adventurous side. [Aug 2005, p.110]

Many of FoW's reserves outclass others' first team. [Aug 2005, p.115]

Pajo is not, and will never be, a great singer.... His guitar playing, though, is as quietly inventive as ever. [Jul 2005, p.96]

Alongside the sexually explicit likes of "Pull My Hair" and "Wait" sit conscious soul and creamy R&B. [Nov 2005, p.94]

Barrie Cadogan is a guitar phenomenon. [Mar 2005, p.102]

Never quite rises above the mundane. [Aug 2005, p.98]

The melodies and brittle guitars burrow into your cerebrum. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Not hopeless, but hopelessly self-indulgent. [Jul 2005, p.94]

As challenging as it is comforting. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Their 2002 debut was a surprising success, but Haunted Cities struggles to repeat the trick. [Sep 2005, p.100]

[A] sturdy ensemble record. [Jul 2005, p.104]

A band slowly escaping the weight of their still-obvious influences. [Aug 2005, p.104]

With Chavez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community. [Jul 2005, p.90]

A second cousin to New Pornographers' Electric Version. [Jul 2005, p.103]

Exceedingly pleasant, if hardly groundbreaking. [Aug 2005, p.104]

Unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled. [Jul 2005, p.92]

At times it resembles a dream playlist from some forgotten '70s FM station. [Jul 2005, p.94]

There's an edge that's been absent in recent years. [Jul 2005, p.99]

Well; it could've been worse.

It's an awkward, not entirely likeable mix. [Jul 2005, p.106]

It excels at that classic pop trick of combining the euphoric with the melancholy. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Make no mistake, X&Y is an exceptional pop record. [Jul 2005, p.98]

If anything, though, this pop machine is too tightly drilled. [Jul 2005, p.94]

A slate-cleaning exercise that positively radiates contentment. [Jun 2005, p.102]

Hardly an alienating, experimental listen... White hasn't written such an accessible set of songs since 2000's De Stijl. [Album of the Month, Jul 2005, p.88]

Minimum Maximum is the sound of Kraftwerk shedding all previous skins and staking their claim on the now. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Though often pretty rather than memorable, there's enough vibrancy here to outlast the summer. [Jul 2005, p.90]

Captures their Tex-Mex boogie at full tilt. [Aug 2005, p.105]

It's not a disaster, by any means.... It's just that, over 13 songs, it's abundantly clear that whatever the potency of this partnership, there's an old lack of range. [Jul 2005, p.89]

Finds Muller reviving a lush disco spirit he once discretely discarded. [Jul 2005, p.92]

The musical settings are crisp, spare, folksy, recalling '96's The Doctor Came At Dawn and allowing Callahan to play one of his best roles: a campfire-friendly Leonard Cohen. [Jun 2005, p.97]

The lack of urgency makes it feel like we're eavesdropping on a well-heeled Britpop Survivors Group rather than the site of fresh rock'n'roll alchemy. [Jun 2005, p.98]

Four Tet's epiphany is concerned entirely with the properties of sound itself. [Jun 2005, p.117]

Tosca is now... a band proper as well as a studio concern, and the change shows. [Jul 2005, p.106]

At times it's hard to see the point of such a meticulous homage to motorik.... Nevertheless, [it's] DIV's most aesthetically satisfying album. [Dec 2004, p.145]

A dazzlingly clever record--great beats, brilliant production, top tunes and some of Albarn's best singing. [Jun 2005, p.106]