Confirms Doves as the country's most innovative rock group. [Mar 2005, p.94]

Frances The Mute smells like another concept album, is far too long and so pretentious as to be farcial. Amazingly, it's also mighty entertaining. [Mar 2005, p.91]

By no means a rebirth, but feistier and more fun than last year's Destiny's Child record, for sure. [May 2005, p.95]

These languid strums would sound suitably fine and mellow stoned on a beach at sunset. [May 2005, p.95]

[An] eloquent set of songs about absence and change. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Crammed with pulse-racing panto-metal par excellence. [Apr 2005, p.97]

Sole's fast and fluid rhymes deal with a wide range of socio-political concerns, but are saved from sounding like diatribes by his sly wit. [Apr 2005, p.114]

There's a lurking suspicion of contrivance here, as opposed to the spontaneity that characterised Don't Give Up On Me. [Apr 2005, p.102]

An album which has nothing to do with 2005 and everything to do with 1988. [Mar 2005, p.109]

He falls well short thanks to a dated, home-cooked sound and and the earth-bound mundanity of his collaborators. [Nov 2004, p.119]

Nothing more than the uncomfortable sound of a band escaping their svengali. [Dec 2004, p.142]

They exhale the kind of swirling 'perfect pop' that was the default setting of late '80s Creation releases, leaning into the crosswinds of Fairport-era folk-rock. [May 2005, p.100]

The strident approach... doesn't quite work. [Jul 2005, p.100]

Amos has never been in rangier voice. [Mar 2005, p.102]

This is uncluttered, radiant music with the lightest touch and muggiest of voices. [Mar 2005, p.102]

His quirks often overwhelm him, and his shock tactics are more infantile than transgressive. [Feb 2005, p.76]

Still shambles too freely but features stellar moments. [Jun 2005, p.108]

An absorbing listen. [Mar 2005, p.102]

Doesn't pack enough hooks to make it memorable. [Apr 2005, p.105]

More than another coaster on the coffee-table circuit. [Mar 2005, p.108]

Luminously beautiful music. [Apr 2005, p.106]

A tough job hitting both funny and funky bone at once, but they mostly pull it off. [Apr 2005, p.102]

There's nothing here to surprise anyone familiar with Mogwai's chiefly instrumental, epic soundscaping. [Mar 2005, p.120]

The fact that Feathers never really goes anywhere is beside the point. [May 2005, p.106]

If you liked 1972 in 1972, or liked '1972' in 2003, you'll find yourself swimming with this. [Album of the Month, Mar 2005, p.90]

Further evidence of his dazzling wordplay. [May 2005, p.103]

It's like the best music of the '70s compressed under '80s new wave dynamics. [Feb 2005, p.74]

Gedge hasn't sounded this belligerently broken-hearted since 1987's "My Favourite Dress." [Mar 2005, p.100]

Surging volume is still far outweighed by wispy melancholy, but the contrast is rewarding. [Mar 2005, p.104]

Cements his reputation for fast, witty, lyrically dense politico-personal rhymes. [Mar 2005, p.99]

A peculiar take on neo-baroque folk with an utterly contemporary twist. [Apr 2005, p.100]

Folk songs given a rarefied air by his elegant wordplay and multi-tracked chamber strings. [Mar 2005, p.108]

A fashionably unruly racket. [Mar 2005, p.100]

His voice must be heard to be believed. [Apr 2005, p.105]

This promising debut proves they're proficient at penning ragged Buzzcocks-ish pop... but also exposes the limitations of [Masters]. [Feb 2005, p.79]

Pushing The Senses is by no means soppy, but Feeder's young fanbase might need some convincing. [Feb 2005, p.76]

His most accessible work since Parklife. [Sep 2004, p.101]

Probably the most potent album she's made since Broken English. [Nov 2004, p.102]

No less viscerally thrilling [than its predecessor] but pursues a number of ear-bogglingly unlikely paths. [Feb 2005, p.73]

He delivers 14 sweetly sombre neo-folk tunes that reveal just how subtly pervasive the man's influence really is. [Mar 2005, p.108]

The songs are neither dogmatic nor whacked out. Like fine pop writers before him, Oberst's simply wrestling with something troubling he feels thick in the air. [Feb 2005, p.72]

Where Ryan Adams replicates old records, this is something new. [Album of the Month, Feb 2005, p.72]

Cleaner and crisper... their first [album] for half a decade where great noises... outshine august guest vocalists. [Feb 2005, p.73]

DiFranco remains an utterly singular performer. [Mar 2005, p.91]

Seems dated. [Feb 2005, p.73]

Generally, the album has a frantic, acidic, raggedly glorious feel. [Feb 2005, p.85]

Grandiose, overwhelming, pretentious and absurd, Before The Dawn Heals Us is one of the first great albums of 2005. [Feb 2005, p.79]

His gentle voice sits amid occasionally baroque arrangements, the simplicity of which ensure his more complex songwriting skills remain accessible. [Feb 2005, p.76]

The tone is less whimsical, occasionally ecstatic, and at times reminiscent of big beat. [Mar 2005, p.91]

In this lunar setting, Oldham's visionary, spooked words are lit up with renewed clarity. [Feb 2005, p.78]

The mournful tone is seductive, but at times the femme melodrama teeters into All About Eve territory. [Feb 2005, p.83]

Tobin delivers fiercely programmed, seriously dark material. [Mar 2005, p.104]

Simple acoustic music lined with occasional piano and an inglenook voice owing much to early Joni Mitchell or Carole King. [Aug 2006, p.93]

Inessential, but huge fun nevertheless. [Mar 2005, p.91]

Addictive pop kitsch. [Apr 2005, p.99]

Languid without being lazy. [Mar 2005, p.93]

So charged it crackles. [Feb 2005, p.82]

A mostly rich and involving experience. [Apr 2005, p.98]

Too often there's a pileup of overwrought, over-long ballads that struggle to make headway. [Jan 2005, p.121]

A record nobody could fail to love. [Feb 2005, p.84]

One of the finest Americana albums of 2004. [Jan 2005, p.128]

Even at their most glibly bombastic, there's a melancholy undertow that they can't shake. [Album of the Month, Dec 2004, p.136]

When LAMB is good, it's very good indeed.... It's one of the most audacioius pop albums of the year. [Jan 2005, p.120]

A hardcore fan's wildest dreams fulfilled. [Jan 2005, p.134]

Feels for the most part like a vanity side project from Beyonce's solo career. [Jan 2005, p.115]

Another superb venture. [Jan 2005, p.121]

More, and even better, of the same--one of the dead-cert Albums Of The Year. [Album of the Month, Apr 2005, p.96]

The standard is so consistently high, sides so conclusively split, even after six years' familiarity with his schtick, that genius is the word. [Jan 2005, p.116]

Superior adult-contemporary rock. [Dec 2004, p.152]

The humourless skits drag... but somehow the Handsome Boy charm still wins through. [Dec 2004, p.137]

A gig of the year, no question. You should have been there. Now you can be. [Dec 2004, p.150]

Varies immensely in quality. [Dec 2004, p.137]

As inventive and well-meaning as these bastard pop blasts are, they're still not a patch on the originals. [Dec 2004, p.153]

Unexpectedly impressive. [Dec 2004, p.138]

It's hard to find fault with this uplifting debut. [Feb 2005, p.78]

Lifeblood seems closest in tone to Everything Must Go, although the sound is lighter, less bombastic, more soothing. [Dec 2004, p.148]

Dear Heather is Cohen's highest tide yet, his most exquisite marriage of song and poetry and ambiguous grace. [Nov 2004, p.114]

Channels sledgehammer power into 11 tunes with a filthy, deeply groovy core. [Mar 2005, p.104]

A lush but unthrilling album. [Nov 2003, p.122]

It moseys a little too languidly. [Nov 2004, p.114]

They may be shamelessly role-playing their Joan Jett schtick, but The Donnas still out-rock earnest retro-bores like Jet and Kings Of Leon. [Dec 2004, p.157]

With less hyperbole and gutter-visionary pretension, Borrell's competent if hygienised NYC punk knock-offs might be more palatable. [Aug 2004, p.104]

Explores themes of mental derailment and the black arts against a backdrop of the heaviest psychobilly, grunge-metal and stoner rock. [Nov 2004, p.106]

Power pop without the escapism. [Apr 2005, p.105]

A kind of Joshua Tree for the heavily pierced and mildly upset. [Dec 2004, p.140]

Too much here is self-congratulatory sloganeering. [Nov 2004, p.110]

Here, Beans returns to his roots. [Nov 2004, p.106]

From A Basement... returns us to the more unfiltered, denuded sound of his earlier [albums]. [Nov 2004, p.106]

It's sleek, groomed and genetically engineered to within an inch of sonic perfection, but there's very little that's memorable. [Nov 2004, p.120]

In short, it needs a rigorous editor. [Feb 2005, p.94]

Too eclectic for his own good, perhaps? [Sep 2005, p.100]

Without DFA tricknology to enliven their mix, they struggle with monotony over the course of an album. [Mar 2005, p.94]

Occasionally, the sunniness and repetition of the songs can be exhausting, despite the provocative semiotic games Gibb is playing. [Aug 2004, p.100]

It's the inclusion of [Disc 2] that makes this essential. [Dec 2004, p.140]

An experimental and melancholic set. [Dec 2004, p.157]

The band's trademark cracked songcraft... is here in spades. [Nov 2004, p.99]

For all their deft intricacies, they're somewhat characterless. [Dec 2004, p.140]

This is seriously literate stuff, and all the better for it. [Nov 2004, p.120]