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]

Imagine a jam session between King Crimson, Fugazi and '70s Miles. Now imagine it working. That's the Mars Volta. [Aug 2003, p.98]

All told, a class act still in their prime. [Sep 2003, p.97]

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]