His most towering achievement to date. [Aug 2003, p.114]

This is turgid, formulaic guff. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Things degenerate into a dreary stream of self-pitying/self-mythologising ballads. [Sep 2003, p.106]

An extremely moving and potentially radical record. [Sep 2003, p.99]

A mixed offering, then, from a band still searching, albeit interestingly, for their own centre. [Oct 2002, p.102]

While nothing new, a hypnotic hum and gently insistent melody sees them through. [Aug 2003, p.102]

13 avant-pop gems evocative of Pere Ubu and Talking Heads. [Jun 2003, p.96]

Refines their grandiose panoramics via electronic gurgles and glitches. [Jul 2003, p.111]

Saloon's light touch makes a strong impact. Wonderful. [Aug 2003 p.104]

There's much to admire in the fretwork of [Darren] Rademaker and Ben Knight, too, joining the dots between Johnny Marr, Roger McGuinn and Felt's Maurice Deebank to underpin the hooks with sun-blonde crispness. [Jul 2003, p.116]

Very much string-drenched business as usual: sometimes lovely, sometimes perilously close to self-parody. [Jul 2003, p.129]

Deeply disappointing. [Jul 2003, p.114]

Subtlety with Skynyrd chops. [Dec 2003, p.117]

There's a slight tiredness about the new album. It's too laid back to grab the attention, which must scan closer for clues. [Jul 2003, p.116]

They're diminished by trying to touch too many bases, often lapsing into sub-Oasis stodge. [Oct 2003, p.114]

It's a compelling psychological study set to lovely tunes. [Jul 2003, p.114]

She's still a class act. [Jul 2003, p.118]

For all its muddied textures and sideways lurches, it is a magnificently engaging and expansive work. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Against all odds, St. Anger constitutes the cutting edge of commercial yet aggressive heavy rock in 2003. [Aug 2003, p.106]

His folky, cello-soaked songs will appeal to David Gray devotees. [Oct 2003, p.116]

If--as you should be--you're in love with Luna... you'll come over all swoonalicious to this subtly sparkling spin-off. [Dec 2003, p.130]

Spare, beautiful, outstanding. [Jul 2003, p.128]

A highly satisfying bridge between the log-cabin museum pieces of Revival and Hell Among The Yearlings and a more rockin', Basement Tapes-ish Americana. [Album of the Month, Aug 2003, p.96]

Gahan's lyrical moochings are inevitably less assured without his umbilical cord to [Martin] Gore, at times bordering on moon-in-June banality. [Jun 2003, p.108]

The tunes are stunning, her voice has never sounded better and she makes serious points few others would dare in a pop context. [Oct 2003, p.114]

Their brutal beats are married to fabulous pop songs. [May 2003, p.106]

A 21st-century alienated soul album that slips the Eels back into your heart. [Jul 2003, p.120]

Inpressive stuff, but like the Beastie Boys' tinnitus-inducing whines, Northern State's gonzoid yelps suffer from diminishing returns. [Jun 2003, p.110]

The greatest album ZTT never released. [Oct 2003, p.134]

If you really want to hear folk-blues played with rock'n'roll attitude then go back to Boomer's Story or Into The Purple Valley. [Oct 2003, p.111]

Aside from [Interpol]... the Yes groups sound just as narrow and constricted as their scuzzy East Village forebears. [Aug 2003, p.120]

Jaw-dropping. [Jul 2003, p.136]

Songwriting of the highest calibre. [Sep 2003, p.104]

At times this album seems interminable. [Aug 2003, p.116]

Repeated plays reveal little charm and less real humour. [Aug 2003, p.97]

It's a long time since we heard three-part harmonies as good as this from anyone. [Jun 2003, p.104]

From Every Sphere is the ultimate grower, which moves, in your mind, from quite nice to utterly compelling and addictive over a matter of days, or better, nights. [Album of the Month, March 2003, p.94]

An LP of spooked delicacy and wheezy, wayward charm. [Jun 2003, p.104]

Seems to be his regular melange of jackboot glam and electro-metal spiced up with those endearingly juvenile stabs at pretension and subversion. [Jun 2003, p.94]

All that is good in hip hop is here. [Jul 2003, p.111]

Something of a let-down. [May 2003, p.98]

Beth Ditto's remarkable gospel holler and fervent anti-sexist agenda deserves--no, demands--to be heard by a much bigger audience. [Aug 2003, p.106]

The best album McCulloch's had a hand in since 1984's Ocean Rain. [May 2003, p.96]

It's the freshest, most exciting and far-reaching left-field album in years. [Jun 2003, p.102]

Doesn't quite make it into the Thompson solo Top 10.... But it's good to have him back. [Mar 2003, p.102]

His twittering creations... use hip hop as their base but defy all attempts at categorisation and recall artists as diverse as Keith Jarrett, DoseOne and Smog. [Jun 2003, p.104]

There's nothing profound about Electric Version. But classic pop has seldom sounded so much fun. [Jun 2003, p.98]

An endlessly fascinating maze of sound.... This decade's Endtroducing..., possibly. [Jun 2003, p.98]

I doubt there'll be many better albums released this year. [Jun 2003, p.98]

Gibb's mixture of gay and Christian imagery is potent, and his vision of music as a grand communal experience is backed up by some memorable tunes. [Apr 2003, p.112]

The sharpest, most imaginative and downright listenable album of Blur's career to date.... A grown-up alt.rock album of breathtaking potency and invention. [Album of the Month, June 2003, p.90]

Gore's brittle choirboy voice lacks the depth and grandeur of Gahan's, but he still gamely takes on some adventurous choices. [Jun 2003, p.108]

Fever To Tell is, quite simply, magnificent.... This is as revitalising a debut as could be hoped for. [May 2003, p.92]

Send is pure gristle, a vicious statement of musical intent. [Jul 2003, p.129]

It's almost disturbingly accomplished. [Jul 2002, p.103]

Packed with big, epic pop. [Jun 2003, p.102]

There are a handful of stunning instrumentals, but the revelations here are Lanois' singing and songwriting. [May 2003, p.102]

Though attempts at Amy Rigby territory ring hollow, a couple of country weepies bear redemptive powers. [May 2003, p.102]

Skewed hip hop soundscapes with hints of slinky R&B that could even be described as DJ-friendly. [Jul 2003, p.124]

Musically more diverse, and lyrically as vulnerable as it is vitriolic. [Jun 2003, p.91]

While Baby I'm Bored is way too modest to be a masterpiece, it's far more than a join-the-dots account of a life on the rocks, and grows brighter, and more optimistic, with every play. [Apr 2003, p.102]

It wouldn't be wildly inappropriate to identify American Life as an early 21st-century update of Love's Forever Changes, effecting as it does a similarly eerie ambivalence with its fusion of mind-altering sonics and mellow acoustics. [Jun 2003, p.94]

He name-drops so many famous folks he's obviously banking on his connections. [Sep 2003, p.97]

She still refuses to knock up any memorable tunes, but arthouse divas thus obsessed with ghosts and personal (if ill-described) demons are always fascinating. [Jun 2003, p.109]

It's an abrasive sound. [Aug 2003, p.99]

Tusk this isn't, but Tusk it doesn't need to be. In an age of off-the-shelf LInda Perry pop, the Mac keep the mainstream interesting. [May 2003, p.98]

By the time we reach "Surripere" we could be listening to a toughened-up Aphex Twin, poignant harmonies battling against oblique but splintering beats. [May 2003, p.92]

Based around some laughably accurate and truly entertaining pastiches of artists including Bjork, Bowie and the Pixies, the rest of the album is pure filler. [Aug 2003, p.100]

It's all acoustic guitars, rich jangling melodies and heavenly harmonies. [May 2003, p.102]

Adult. deserve respect if only for making an almost overwhelmingly vicious album that succeeds on its own unreasonable terms. [May 2003, p.102]

Draws heavily on such masters of six-string cinematics as The Church, The Jesus & Mary Chain and Spacemen 3. [Apr 2003, p.121]

From the edge of the sea, back to the fringes of sleep, Summer Sun is uncommonly lovely. [May 2003, p.104]

It's the most extraordinary smorgasbord of styles, moods, modes, a far more daring, jolting record than 2001's Essence. [Album of the Month, May 2003, p.88]

Both adventurous and accessible, a record in love with the obliterating power of sound. [Apr 2003, p.120]

Laced with enough blue-eyed longing to make the most diehard Gram Parsons fan weep with wonder and the sort of verbal acuity that would give even Dylanologists pause for thought, Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record. [May 2003, p.94]

The duo's liking for repetitive Royal Trux-style riffage forms the core of their debut but they frequently explore more sparse territories. [Apr 2003, p.110]

Electro-guru Jim Abbiss... can't salvage much from the band's often tedious three-chord bustlings or Molko's lamely repetitious lyrics. [May 2003, p.90]

The album doesn't just bludgeon. There is an attention to detail, an appreciation of dynamics at work. [May 2003, p.108]

A fierce, defiant record. [Apr 2003, p.108]

His obvious poetic and melodic gifts have seldom sounded so compelling. [May 2003, p.108]

It's melodically sharper... occupying Stereolab's old ground with a surprising commercial edge. [May 2003, p.106]

Signals a striking reawakening for a too often overlooked talent. [May 2003, p.96]

Sadly, nothing on Meteora comes close to the piano-laced pathos of previous hit "In The End." [Jun 2003, p.110]

The Remote Part is Idlewild Mark II--sleeker, bolder, better. [Oct 2002, p.107]

At his best he sounds spontaneous, fresh and unexpected. Yet at other times his quirky ideas can sound half-baked and his songs undeveloped. [May 2003, p.102]

Not for the faint-hearted, Damien Jurado is a habit which won't necessarily bring joy to the listener. But once acquired, you will find it hard to kick. [Apr 2003, p.106]

The second solo album still sounds like a wilful jukebox stocked on the disparate taste of someone attempting vinyl hari-kari. [Apr 2003, p.116]

It's their dirty, lowdown rock pastiches that truly score.... A bona fide blast of ageless, pretension-free rock'n'roll. [Mar 2003, p.98]

Her country warble may be a little too trad. honey for eclectic tastes. [May 2003, p.91]

Their love batteries have all but corroded and instead we've hangovers and metropolitan psychosis over the kind of guttural guitars you'd expect from their bastard American offspring. [May 2003, p.89]

This is one glorious murk. [May 2003, p.91]

Poppily uplifting, Us is an album with drowning depths. [Apr 2003, p.114]

Antenna compresses the formula further, fetching up crisp, anthemic crunch-rock several notches above the inexplicably popular likes of Bush or Papa Roach. [May 2003, p.96]

Another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. [Jun 2003, p.93]

Seems an innocuous exercise in regurgitation rather than innovation. [Dec 2002, p.131]

Is so patently wrong in so many ways that it exhibits a peculiar strain of genius. [Jun 2003, p.92]

It's hard to think of a UK R&B album that sounds as formidably ready for the world as A Little Deeper. [Jul 2002, p.114]

The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999's Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. [May 2003, p.108]