The group allows O'Rourke to indulge his songwriter instincts and Tweedy to exert an often-suppressed experimental imperative. [Feb 2003, p.82]

Favours artifice over aptitude. [Apr 2003, p.122]

The results are risible but the joke is no longer funny. [Feb 2003, p.77]

The results sound as if Corgan plundered a few moves from Dave Grohl, since the songs keep one boot in heavy metal but mostly get straight to the point while piling on the hooks and harmonies. [Mar 2003, p.95]

All albums are vanity projects, but this vanity may be in vain. [Feb 2003, p.76]

In just over 35 minutes, the Bonnie Prince's mastery of form, blend of gentle awe and trembling sweetness are distilled to their essence. [Album of the Month, Feb 2003, p.74]

It all sounds like The Beta Band swapping confrontation for contentment. [Apr 2002, p.93]

The Fine Art of Self Destruction is one of those amazing records that appear seemingly out of nowhere... that within a couple of plays sound already like something you've been listening to for years. [Album of the Month, Dec 2002, p.128]

Slow-shifting movements and droning textures show McCombs choosing familiarity over fresh adventures. [Feb 2003, p.75]

A worthy West Coast counterpart to El-P's superb Fantastic Damage. [Apr 2003, p.108]

The Delgados have made a fine follow-up to 2000's The Great Eastern. Problem is, it's the same album, more or less. [Nov 2002, p.115]

It's very fine, glowing with an oblique, poppy sensibility that's theirs alone. [Jan 2003, p.127]

A stew of funk noir and mashed-up rhythms--a little too mashed-up at times. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Less obviously 'loops and samples' oriented than their previous work, Can You See The Music? neatly navigates an electronic/organic interface. [Feb 2003, p.82]

Illumination is already being described by the Weller massive as the best solo album of his career. You'll hear few arguments with that from this corner. [Oct 2002, p.118]

This is mostly a sombre affair. [Mar 2003, p.106]

To be filed alongside the Root's recent Phrenology. [Mar 2003, p.95]

With its innocently poignant synth melodies and fragile guitar arpeggios, You Win Again Gravity is redolent of the flashes of true beauty that the style's original practitioners sought back in the glory days. [Dec 2002, p.151]

Evil Heat doesn't exactly break new ground and often amounts to, strictly speaking, little more than pastiche. [Aug 2002, p.104]

As unoriginal as his previous five, yet still entertaining. [Mar 2003, p.106]

He treads a line between loving monogamy and club bangers, emphasising accessibility throughout. [Jan 2003, p.128]

Thankfully, Phrenology is more therapy than quack science. [Feb 2003, p.86]

This time around, Grammy-bagging mixer Tchad Blake has replace T-Bone Burnett as producer and brought added intimacy without sacrificing dreamy magnetism. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Although brass and strings add muscle, a certain monotony creeps in towards the end. And there aren't enough strong tunes from the least melodically facile Beatle. [Dec 2002, p.134]

Less startling than its predecessor Ft Lake, but it's still a brave departure for a 4AD band previously synonymous with ethereal whimsy. [Nov 2002, p.118]

As powerfully evocative as a French arthouse flick. [Sep 2002, p.116]

The arrangements... are ambitious and richly textured, producing work that rewards repeated listening. [Jan 2003, p.117]

A rockabilly Jesus And Mary Chain. [Mar 2003, p.114]

A brilliant fusion of no-wave disco, dub-punk, early Factory aesthetics and post-rock technique. [Dec 2002, p.134]

What a treat to discover another album that samples Toto's "Africa." [Feb 2003, p.75]

It's lyrically potent stuff. [Feb 2003, p.76]

Audioslave is weighed down by Cornell's po-faced bellow, and it goes on 20 minutes too long. [Feb 203, p.79]

Thomas' lyrics are too frequently overwraught. [Mar 2003, p.98]

An album that, on first listen, glides by doing nothing wrong. Second time around, you realise that, more accurately, it's doing everything right, and you're spellbound. [Jun 2003, p.92]

A couple of songs could do with more melody and less of Mike McCready's spidery guitar breaks. [Dec 2002, p.132]

Collins... sounds dated with his glossy production, precision session-playing and radio-friendly songs all done by numbers with a great big hole where a heart should be. [Dec 2002, p.129]

When she's raised the stakes so high, anything less than the reinvention of music comes as a disappointment. [Jan 2003, p.122]

We've heard too much of this before. [Jan 2003, p.119]

The four tracks involving [Lopes] are superb.... Elsewhere, they audibly struggle. [Jan 2003, p.119]

Occup[ies] the same sonic territory as The Dandy Warhols' underrated Come Down. [Aug 2003, p.108]

A dozen vivid and deeply personal songs.... Gray has made a record that anybody who cares about great songwriting should hear. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Her best record yet. [Jun 2002, p.107]

May be the most consistent of the four albums to date. [Jan 2003, p.122]

Arguably, not since early Costello has a British solo artist combined such bare-arsed soulfulness with such corrosively perceptive humour. Quite something. [Album of the Month, Nov 2002, p.112]

Incompetent satire. [Apr 2003, p.106]

Much of the album is like 1980 revisited and updated. [Jan 2003, p.115]

Uplifting but ultimately lightweight. [Dec 2002, p.132]

Innovations are few.... Still, when these nocturnes, crescendos and intimations of apocalypse remain so musically rich and emotionally powerful, it seems churlish to demand more. [Dec 2002, p.130]

The music here is intimate yet remote. [Dec 2002, p.140]

This is audaciously modern in its textural absorption of outre sounds from the 21st-century dance underground. [Dec 2002, p.136]

A frighteningly powerful record. [Jan 2003, p.124]

Despite the lacerating electro-glam of "Total All Out Water" and "Sheez Minie," it's melodic as hell. [Nov 2002, p.121]

One of Amos' most deeply felt, spiritually astute and finest albums. [Dec 2002, p.138]

Finally finding a palatable singing voice, too, the musical acuity shown here still places him very much in front of guitar-hero peers like John Squire and Bernard Butler. [Dec 2002, p.129]

The guests are more intriguing than the material. [Dec 2002, p.152]

Saint Etienne's most far-reaching album since Fox Base Alpha. [Nov 2002, p.124]

The arrangements are banal, but the tunes are exquisite, and his voice, more worn now, is recorded intimately. [Dec 2002, p.148]

He sounds like a man lost amid his own vast record collection. [June 2003, p.109]

The joyous hooks and choruses remain, but they're tempered by a welcome moodiness. [Dec 2002, p.129]

Spend The Night emerges as the dumb-riffed album Courtney Love tried to make with Celebrity Skin. [May 2003, p.94]

The first record in a long while I've wanted to play again immediately after it's finished. [Album Of The Month, April 2002, p.92]

There's little on OFOW that he hasn't done already. [Nov 2002, p.128]

These days her winning innocence has turned to mature craft, but she's lost none of her integrity or emotional honesty. [Dec 2002, p.129]

Exquisite. [Feb 2003, p.80]

LL's best album since 1987's Bigger and Deffer. [Jan 2003, p.122]

A hugely inventive collection. [Jan 2003, p.119]

The appealing immediacy evident on the debut is smothered by the overbearing production. [Nov 2002, p.118]

This is the pop album of 2003 which everyone else will have to beat. [Jul 2003, p.124]

The finest tracks here update the duo's attitude as well as their sound, dissecting anew cultural and emotional climate with a bittersweet detachment reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys. [Oct 2002, p.124]

Basic, sludge-grey power pop that makes Weezer sound as kaleidoscopic as The Flaming Lips. [Nov 2002, p.128]

This is Calexico on downers, Lee Hazlewood on jolly pills. [Dec 2002, p.131]

A sentimental indulgence destined for a theme-pub half-life. [Nov 2002, p.114]

Think early Air meets hip-hop, the West Coast harmonies and Ultramarine-style tech-fok eccentricities merging with euphoric yet becalmed moodscapes. [Nov 2002, p.113]

It's a snappy, catchy hybrid, though one that irritates pretty quickly. [Apr 2003, p.105]

It's hard to see how much satisfaction this laconic talent must gain from fiddling with a formula he perfected in 1987. [Nov 2002, p.114]

On paper it may sound like brittle Grand Royal retro-cool, but on record it simply belts along with a primal melodic simplicity and sexy nu-wave freshness. [January 2002, p.146]

His melancholic optimism is uplifting and his melodies surprisingly plush. [Dec 2002, p.140]

They haven't yet shown enough thrills in righteousness to challenge gangsta's dark, easy attraction. [Nov 2002, p.129]

Pale fire, but fire nonetheless. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Guests like Emiliana Torrini and Shinehead help make this that rarity: an electronic album with personality. [Dec 2002, p.133]

The lovely packaging far outshines the formless and dated rumblings within. [Nov 2002, p.113]

Iconoclastic and visceral, Squarepusher is punk rock 2002. [Nov 2002, p.132]

Producer Mike Mogis [gives] these delicate songs a sheen that was lacking on their 2001 debut. [Jul 2003, p.114]

A decent album of roots-tinged songs that showcases his terse guitar style and detached vocals to solid if unspectacular effect. [Nov 2002, p.122]

Whereas so much downtempo leans heavily on two-note, oceanic synth washes, Blue States are masters of detail. [Sep 2002, p.111]

Entertaining, largely forgettable. [Jan 2003, p.120]

For the most part, Anderson's cockernee affectations have gone, as have his references to drugs, gasoline and tube-bound alienation. Instead, we have the sci-fi romance of "Astro Girls" and the rabble-rousing rock of "Street Life." [Nov 2002, p.126]

Definitely a return to psyche splendour. [Oct 2002, p.122]

This is pretty gloomy going, not rendered much easier by the lugubrious baritone in which Beck delivers his emotional autopsies, or the vague, amorphous melodies. [Nov 2002, p.116]

After a couple of plays, you're struck by Up's sonic cleverness. Three or four listens and the lyrical complexity begins to bite. Finally, and insidiously, after perhaps six or seven plays, the melodies bury themselves in your head. [Oct 2002, p.112]

On her underwhelming second album, we realise how nu-sould would sound stripped of all sonic invention, mischief and sensuality. [Dec 2002, p.151]

This is a very fine album... even if it's surprisingly business as usual in many respects. [Oct 2002, p.108]

The effect is a kind of ghostly reconfiguration of classic rock, from a band blessed with unique presence and an unusually melodious minimalism. Outstanding. [Oct 2002, p.108]

He hasn't sounded this corrosive since Copperhead Road. [Nov 2002, p.115]

An irreverent and enjoyably silly listen. [Mar 2003, p.100]

Demolition is further proof that his creative instinct is still intact. [Album of the Month, Oct 2002, p.100]

She's a brilliant reinterpreter and sounds far happier in Raitt territory than she ever did as a Morissette clone. [Feb 2003, p.84]

A considerable advance on predecessor 604.... This is sublime, subtle, subversive stuff. [Dec 2002, p.150]