A pale retread of Get Rich... fashioned by lesser talents. [Feb 2004, p.69]

Intelligent and addictive. [Nov 2003, p.110]

There are clever couplets and wry winks, but the melancholy is authentic. [Jan 2004, p.112]

The fact this collection of originals is inferior to 2001's Ultraglide In Black (a covers album) reveals [Mick Collins'] songwriting has never matched his energy. [Nov 2003, p.118]

An utterly gloomungous affair with barely a crack of light piercing the lowering clouds of misery. [Jan 2004, p.116]

A record where mature contemplation and a relative flexibility triumph over despondency and formula. [Mar 2004, p.94]

Perhaps the most inappropriately-titled album since The Best Of Sting. [Dec 2003, p.116]

Sure, it flags here and there, but Skull Ring is Iggy's most sustained assault since the Instinct/Brick By Brick double whammy. [Nov 2003, p.118]

A formidable demonstration of what can still be done with guitars. [Jan 2004, p.114]

This is the best childhood summer holiday you ever had, condensed into 45 minutes of delicately arranged, beautifully performed, big, bright, cheery music. [Jul 2003, p.118]

[Casablancas'] remarkable performance enlivens even the album's most underwhelming passages. [Nov 2003, p.108]

Over-the-top histrionics are nicely downplayed by the lo-fi indie faction. [Dec 2003, p.124]

So wild and stripped-down it makes The White Stripes sound like Yes. [Jan 2004, p.102]

A truly exhilarating 50 minutes of music. [Dec 2003, p.122]

Spookily smooth. [Dec 2003, p.122]

A beautiful record. [Mar 2003, p.100]

Much of Suicaine Gratifaction sounded like it had been written in a mood of morose introspection, but Come Feel Me Tremble is brazenly exclamatory. [Jan 2004, p.102]

Streetcore negotiates a resolution between the ethnocentric beats that hallmarked the two previous Mescaleros albums and the classic Clash sound that remained pivotal to Joe's live performances. [Nov 2003, p.110]

The schizophrenic tone changes recall the experimentation of Deerhoof, yet the overall sound is as natural as The Flaming Lips. [Jan 2005, p.132]

A record which transcends any scene's fleeting credibility. [Oct 2003, p.122]

You don't expect progression from such evident classicists, but there's a new clarity, poise and refinement. [Apr 2004, p.107]

At once punchy and overwrought, and blessed with some extremely good, if slightly monotonous, tunes. [Nov 2003, p.120]

The tunes, for all their airiness, just won't stick. [Nov 2003, p.107]

A sensual, sumptuous overload. [Jan 2004, p.116]

This is mostly acoustic guitars lovingly plucked, drums delicately brushed, fiddles softly sawn. [Oct 2003, p.113]

Mostly, familiarly sombre patterns of piano and string quartet dominate this lovely album. [Dec 2003, p.118]

A beautiful record. [Nov 2003, p.122]

It's saved from twee tedium by Campbell's sumptuous orchestrartions and sly wit. [Dec 2003, p.115]

A tangy taster for their album proper in 2004. [Dec 2003, p.126]

Inarguably easy on the ear, but short on real emotional pull. [Nov 2003, p.118]

By far the strongest collection of songs the band have ever assembled. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Her best in two decades. [Dec 2003, p.120]

Quietly devastating. [Dec 2002, p.131]

It's like Belle & Sebastian slopping sorbet with early Jonathan Richman. [Feb 2004, p.82]

An efficient if fairly joyless hybrid of the Stones, AC/DC and Oasis. [Nov 2003, p.109]

This is a record of rare beauty and poise. [Nov 2003, p.107]

The greatest interest lies in the lyrics--intriguing, charming, highly insightful and sometimes violently confessional, often on a par with the very best of Elliott Smith. [Dec 2003, p.118]

Like 1999's The West, The Civil War negotiates a fragile entente between Americana and electronica, but does so on a bigger, constantly astonishing scale. [Oct 2003, p.122]

Music at its most passionate. [Sep 2002, p.112]

As a rule, the more breakneck the pace of these instrumentals, the less effective they are. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Takes his lush, orchestrated pop to staggering new heights. [Nov 2003, p.124]

Fatherfucker pillages Missy Elliott, Suicide and "Justify My Love"-era Madonna, and even outfoxes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [Oct 2003, p.126]

You won't hear a more humane, moving or mysterious record all year. [Album of the Month, Oct 2003, p.110]

This may well be the most exhilarating debut of the year. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Arid and mannered. [Nov 2003, p.112]

Frequently utterly mesmerising. [Nov 2003, p.124]

It suggests there's far more to him than the anonymous middle-of-the-road college rock for which the Americans have such an insatiable appetite. [Dec 2003, p.118]

The Love Below... comprises the most sublime pop music heard on record this year. [Dec 2003, p.118]

Deviant, brainy re:teen angst, slightly arrogant, and they kick ass despite themselves. What's not to love? [Dec 2003, p.116]

An album that is as poignant as it is over the top. [Oct 2003, p.118]

This is the album Lynne should've made after I Am.... [Nov 2003, p.120]

Frequently intoxicating. [Jan 2004, p.103]

She has all the signifiers of deep soul experience: the husky, rich timbre; the confident testifying; the honeyed transitions. But the ruefulness, grime and pain... aren't there. [Feb 2004, p.73]

The Darkness are genuinely in thrall to the power of stadium rock in all its bombastic, unreconstructed glory. [Sep 2003, p.97]

While it's very much a rock album... it kicks in a very 'now' way (this ain't Tin Machine). [Oct 2003, p.112]

Shields' four contributions are everything you'd hope for. [Oct 2003, p.126]

Even the proficient production of Trevor Horn can do nothing to perk things up. [Nov 2003, p.114]

A riveting debut packed with ideas and invention. [Jul 2003, p.126]

Sincere and beautiful. [Nov 2003, p.116]

It's a record of passion and richness, with a hoard of memorable songs, that demands to be treated the equal of its inspirations. [Sep 2003, p.102]

Yasuda provides most of the brightest moments with a new wave/elecro style that wrings real delight from revelling in pop art/trash. [Oct 2003, p.116]

Another Spiritualized album. Another great Spiritualized album. [Oct 2003, p.120]

Songs, without exception, are well crafted but more often than not collapse into cloying jauntiness. [Dec 2004, p.153]

Ol' Frank hasn't had this much twisted fun since 1994's Teenager Of The Year. [Oct 2003, p.111]

Sees them attempt the same move The Charlatans made with their last LP, but less successfully. [Jul 2003, p.111]

As ever, BBR's absinthe-flavoured acid drops give you a great deal more to suck on than the rest of pop's confectionery selection. [Mar 2003, p.112]

Another wildly implausible Shaun Ryder comback. Just when we needed one. [Aug 2003, p.98]

They run out of steam completely towards the end.... But there's still plenty here to justify giving up your heart to that simple chord all over again. [Sep 2003, p.110]

The musicianship lifts Sad Songs... even further into the realm of the extraordinary. [Dec 2003, p.133]

While Chain Gang Of Love only lasts 33 minutes, it still outstays its welcome. [Sep 2003, p.100]

It's all done with such obvious love and affection and literate craft that Rouse has gone and made one of the albums of the year. Even if the year is 1972. [Oct 2003, p.114]

Under the direst circumstances, he has painted his masterpiece. [Album of the Month, Sep 2003, p.96]

Despite some inventive electronic tinkering, the pose wears a bit thin through repetition. [Sep 2003, p.98]

With strictly 1978 sleeve and clothes, and no new ideas, they just don't matter like their models did. [Sep 2003, p.97]

It's arrogantly risky. That's their best feature. [Jun 2003, p.100]

This is berserk, this is brilliant, this is now. [Nov 2003, p.107]

A slight disappointment. [Oct 2003, p.124]

Strange, though, that we yearned for Pollard to treat his songs properly when he tossed them off as lo-fi sketches, but now they arrive as crafted, completed stadium anthems, that faint whiff of underachievement remains. [Sep 2003, p.102]

"Never Too Late" sounds like an unhappy mix of Randy Newman and Arrested Development, and sometimes Franti sounds like a clap-happy Seal. [Jul 2003, p.130]

A sinewy mix of punk, dub, soul, good tunes and classic guy-rock. [Mar 2004, p.87]

The good news is Young has found himself a different kind of voice and some fresh inspiration. [Sep 2003, p.116]

Makes you want to chain-smoke while swigging a quart of Jim by the neck and taking agreeable houswives to stud. [Aug 2003, p.110]

In a world supersaturated with electronica, Broadcast are nonetheless bold, rare and crucial. [Sep 2003, p.97]

He's dispensed with the grittier elements and plumped for a straightforward US college rock backing, with dismal results. [Nov 2003, p.112]

Familiar, sure, but a highly potent blend of the ancient and modern nevertheless. [Sep 2003, p.98]

Their hedonistic sex-dance anthems go down a treat. [Apr 2003, p.103]

A triumph indeed. [Sep 2003, p.102]

With Ween, nothing is done by halves. [Nov 2003, p.126]

A sun-dappled, idiosyncratic delight, flooded with warmth and vitality, yet weighted by an undefinable sadness. [Aug 2003, p.108]

Nothing too shocking, then, but their old magic surges through: you won't be disappointed. [Sep 2003, p.112]

An album of hope and humour and beauty, Phantom Power is frequently as deep and mysterious as the title intimates. [Aug 2003, p.100]

Perhaps creative stasis might have proved more rewarding. [Aug 2003, p.99]

Sunny funk pours from most tracks, veiling the odd lyric about single moms, and the slowies are lit by noble torches. [Jun 2003, p.104]

An overload of genre hopping and exotic finery swamps whatever attracted all the heavyweight talent to her in the first place. [Aug 2003, p.108]

As instantly addictive as it is disposable. [Nov 2003, p.108]

This is surely one of the most magical pop albums of 2003. [Sep 2003, p.112]

The vast majority of it still sounds like what it was: cerebral, bloodless 'dance' music for junkies, the kind of posturing Gotham tripe we used to describe as "atonal" and "angular." [Aug 2003, p.120]

Strangely compelling. [Oct 2003, p.124]