Squire's voice is awful, while his music and lyrics are those of a busker. [Nov 2002, p.113]

An adventurous solo outing. [Oct 2002, p.112]

If Doe intended to create an interlocked set of pieces that sustained a mood of pensive reverie, he succeeded, though there's a marked shortage of ear-grabbing, individual songs. [Mar 2003, p.95]

This kind of hackneyed loungecore grammar sometimes sounds timeless and inspired, of course, but Adamson has a tendency to crowd routine melodies with superfluous guitars and clumsy beats. [Oct 2002, p.102]

The perfect soundtrack to summer in the city. [Oct 2002, p.111]

A magnificently rich and confident debut.... This is how Fischerspooner should have sounded. [Dec 2002, p.142]

Her simple, repeitious music is predominantly listless and washed out. [Jun 2003, p.102]

Seven tracks, 31 minutes, and not a duff second in sight. [Oct 2002, p.104]

Very pretty but as predictable as Haven's guaranteed elevation to the Indie Premiership before the summer's through. [Feb 2002, p.118]

[A] breathtaking, virtually flawless album. [Sep 2002, p.104]

May well come to be regarded as the best British rock album since OK Computer. [Sep 2002, p.118]

Textured and complex. [Oct 2002, p.108]

The most original debut by a Manchester band since Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Paty People..., maybe even Unknown Pleasures. [Sep 2002, p.116]

Recalls the more amusing moments of Momus and Stereolab. [Nov 2002, p.116]

Their mischievousness is still palpable, but it's shot through with purpose, gumption and spectacular riff-raunch action. [Sep 2002, p.114]

A candidate for country album of the year. [Nov 2002, p.130]

A refinement of the country/folk/reggae/rock amalgam The Mekons have pursued for years. [Oct 2002, p.108]

One of the most adrenalising albums you'll hear this year. [Sep 2002, p.110]

The album's eight supple, textured tunes suggest Cornelius stripped of his art-jazz awkwardness, or even the molten sugar rush of My Bloody Valentine slowed to a beatific calm. [Nov 2002, p.128]

Spoon's secret is that this tension is never quite released, the martial beat never breaks down, full rock music never quite kicks in. [Oct 2002, p.120]

Basically, it wants to be the Stones but ends up a bit Tom Petty. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Brisk playing compensates for some unremarkable songs. [Sep 2002, p.103]

There's exhilaration amid the despondency, as powerful songs and a light, shoegazey sheen means they frequently soar. [Sep 2002, p.111]

The collection not only shows the unexpected range of Gano's songwriting ability, but leaves you humming and wanting more. [Oct 2002, p.104]

Bright, socially and emotionally engaged, justifiably righteous in places, and not quite the right sort of fun for the New York scenesters. [Oct 2002, p.104]

The melodic facility and phrasing are as elegant as we have come to expect. [Sep 2002, p.118]

What continually redeems this acid flashback to a more well-meaning era is its endlessly metamorphosing soundscape, its kaleidoscope washes of virtual psychedelia. [Oct 2002, p.101]

This chiming indie-folk LP is uncluttered and cohesive. [July 2002, p.118]

As a cross-generational experiment, Kissin' Time works. [Apr 2002, p.110]

Heap has a breathtaking voice, somewhere between the languid tones of Beth Orton and the pop sweetness of Dido. [Oct 2002, p.104]

Spewing more words per inch than an IRS vault, the effect is like primal scream therapy set to incidental music. [Oct 2002, p.101]

Reaffirms their status as masters of white heat smoulder, turning down the amps but heightening the ravaged intensity.... A career high. [Oct 2002, p.119]

Miss Fortune is her least mainstream album to date and finds her moving delightfully nearer the terrain occupied by sister Shelby Lynne. [Sep 2002, p.114]

Will prove a delight to punters pursuing a Best Madchester Compilation Ever! as long as they forget The Stone Roses ever existed, and assume Morrissey came from another planet. [May 2002, p.116]

At their best, Orton's songs do achieve what Daybreaker sets out to achieve--a sense of watching the dawn rise, all hyper and half awake from having been up all night arguing, making love or simply conversing intensely. [Sep 2002, p.108]

A brave and beautiful album of humanity, hurt and hope from the songwriter best qualified to speak to and for his country.... A towering achievement. [Album of the Month, Sep 2002, p.102]

A return that is as warmly welcome as it is wholly unexpected. [Oct 2002, p.122]

The entire album sounds as if it was made to be heard on a Fifties jukebox rather than a state-of-the-art super-audio digital system. [Sep 2002, p.112]

Revolverlution is part-skewed retrospective and part-flawed experiment. [Jan 2003, p.126]

A fine collection and a lesson in dignified maturity from which all former rock gods could learn. [Aug 2002, p.115]

The Vines' place in the rock gene pool is shaped by elements of controlled guitar thrash, often complex harmony, bubblegum psychedelia and polished piano-driven ballads with an early Seventies whiff. [Aug 2002, p.116]

Even by their standards, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is astonishing.... Plainly, this is music abnormally alive with possibilities. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.96]

The entire album is a beauty.... The most adventurous album of their career. [Aug 2002, p.110]

Some of her best singing in years. [Sep 2002, p.114]

Like recent Tindersticks albums, these ballads need time and attention before sounding tailor-made for misery. [July 2002, p.103]

Every one of these 15 songs is a perfectly-crafted masterclass in great American songwriting. [Aug 2002, p.99]

By The Way presents a band who have mellowed and matured with unusual benefits to their music. [Sep 2002, p.118]

The new material, with some exceptions, lacks spark and flair, having a sense of anti-climax about it. [Aug 2002, p.106]

This album will appeal equally to hard house and handbag crowds alike. [May 2002, p.113]

In Wedding Present terms, Torino is Cinerama's Seamonsters. [Aug 2002, p.99]

These sparse, string-based scores straddle the line between wannabe ethereal and grainily earthy. [Jul 2002, p.106]

An unusually exciting attempt to revitalise past glories. [Oct 2002, p.111]

Murray Street contains some of the best music Sonic Youth have recorded since the landmark Daydream Nation in 1988. [Jul 2002, p.122]

Really rather magnificent, in its way. [Jul 2002, p.107]

Padded out with too much of the Europap that has blotted Perfecto's scoresheet over the years. [Jul 2002, p.116]

The man is as affecting as ever on this most traditional of collections. [Feb 2003, p.77]

The sing-along antics of the home crowd can be a little irritating. [Aug 2002, p.107]

None of the 12 tracks on Heathen displays anything memorable in the way of melody or chorus, their phrasing short-breathed and tired, their sequences energyless. [Jul 2002, p.108]

Long on rhetoric, short on melodic structure, it's hard going. [Dec 2002, p.150]

While this album is furnished by post-rock's brittle, metallic sound, Prewitt's songs are full of chamber pop's gilded warmth.... A fine, if overlong, album. [Jul 2002, p.118]

What makes B&S great is conspicuous by its absence.... For completists only. [Jul 2002, p.101]

Doves have delivered, with honesty and affection. All other guitar bands this year will seem like a scratchy sideshow. [Jun 2002, p.110]

This is much more than the usual retro-action.... DJ Shadow remains elusive to the end. [Jun 2002, p.127]

Enon inhabit a multi-coloured Seventies soaring pop universe but with... emphasis on crunching guitar breaks, electronic textures and skewed lyrics. [Sep 2002, p.118]

This sees David finally jettisoning his twee heritage for a filmic kitsch. [Jun 2002, p.116]

The first six tracks of pared-down techno loops give way to the ambient sound-and-speech collage of "InterZil" before the metallic funk jackhammers of frenzied current single "Krekc." [Jul 2002, p.106]

Behind the hype and the swagger, he's still baring enough of his soul for The Eminem Show to be compelling theatre. [Aug 2002, p.118]

Terrific stuff. [Aug 2002, p.122]

Another fiercely fashionable and languidly ambitious collective. [Apr 2002, p.108]

Frantic is packed with potential singles, as if he's decided it's not crime to enjoy himself, to embrace foolish things earthier than Avalon. This is classic Ferry, but full of surprises. [May 2002, p.92]

Sounds like the product of a sloppy but inspired band enjoying the straightforward art of making a noise. [Jun 2002, p.114]

A weird and wonderful record. [Jul 2002, p.120]

A mostly thin and needlessly morose album. [Jun 2002, p.108]

They mix wistful, hook-laden rock songs in the vein of Counting Crows, Five For Fighting, The Gin Blossoms, The Posies and Pete Yorn with the proto-emo sound of Sunny Day Real Estate. [Aug 2002, p.104]

The album's undisputed highlights are "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)" and "Genius." [Album of the Month, July 2002, p.100]

Waits does nothing predictable here, and the structure of even the most forlorn tear-jerker is ambitious and avant-something-or-other. [Co-Album Of The Month, June 2002, p.106]

Waits -- now in complete mastery of his unique art -- knows what he's doing, and the stark, unforgiving brutality is leavened, or granted grace, by passages of purple pathos. [Co-Album Of The Month, June 2002, p.106]

This is inventive and witty stuff. [June 2002, p.126]

If it all seems a bit contrived, the end result is harmonious and -- remarkably -- never kitsch. [Aug 2002, p.99]

Gomez's clattering eclecticism has won endless plaudits, but now seems like a red herring when their exploratory approach remains fixated on Dixieland, Seventies soul and hip hop. [Apr 2002, p.100]

Light and airy, pretty in parts, but devoid of muscle, grit or originality. [May 2002, p.96]

With a bit of self-pruning, a bit MORE risk and space in the production, he might have TRULY self-reinvented. [May 2002, p.90]

Eitzel makes the songs his own, re-working them with a degree of affection and passion usually lacking from the covers-album genre. [Jul 2002, p.104]

Six albums on and Luna have never sounded better. [Jul 2002, p.112]

A record that grows on you slowly but surely. [May 2002, p.104]

The most common description of this much-discussed album over the past few months is that YHF is Americana's Kid A. In truth, it's more successful than that. [May 2002, p.112]

The gentle spectres of Sparklehorse and Elliott Smith are always near, but [Davey] Von Bohlen's mix of bleary wonder and self-deprecation is charming, and his grasp of melody sure. [Jun 2002, p.122]

As with Daft Punk's Discovery and Playgrou's eponymous 2001 debut LP, Handcream For A Generation puts fun back on the agenda, offering a blurry picture of marathon socialising and the frazzled warmth of the morning after the night before. [Album of the Month, May 2002, p.88]

The album stands or falls by the seductiveness of its atmospheres and the memorability of its hooks--and here, it must be said, Release fails to imprint itself, leaving an impression mainly of dejected weariness. [May 2002, p.95]

Musically, it predictably alternates between relentless, driving guitars and agonisingly slow dirges, but Bazan's gift lies in lyrics. [Oct 2002, p.112]

It is really his unsurpassed ability to access tracks that time forgot that makes this album so great. [May 2002, p.96]

Crow sounds as if she's trying too hard to show us that all she still wants to do is have some fun. [May 2002, p.91]

Where there was once ragged glory there is now only a sort of bludgeoning earnestness which, as in the nine-minute "Goin' Home," blusters a lot to little effect. [May 2002, p.108]

Silver Lining finds her on top form as guitarist, writer and interpreter. [May 2002, p.108]

Either annoyingly sweet or refereshingly well-adjusted, depending on your mood. [Oct 2002, p.107]

Goes back to basics with a blinding mix of anthemic post-punk rockers and pretty mid-tempo ballads. [Jul 2002, p.107]

It's a rootsy affair that evokes the spirit of the MC5. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Isn't quite the show-them-who's-boss return that JSBX should have come up with. [May 2002, p.110]