Maas isn't confident enough to strike out in any single direction, and the LP feels too consciously aimed at crossing over to the pop charts. [May 2002, p.98]

Mind you, you're still left wondering why they made a covers album. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Beneath the opulent layers and studio tweaks, however, lie some very orthodox, very average Eighties indie songs. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Occasionally, N*E*R*D edge a little closer to staccato nu-metal than fans fo their inventive music might appreciate. [May 2002, p.105]

Both sublime and ridiculous. [Jun 2002, p.114]

Much of this flaccid digi-guitar funk sounds like rough ideas Daft Punk rejected for Discovery. [Jun 2002, p.122]

This is surprisingly, refreshingly, "modern" music. [Mar 2002, p.104]

It successfully pins down black American sources, though it's occasionally marred by dated production. [Mar 2002, p.97]

The album runs out of steam halfway through as the songs become over-reliant on the production and Nat veers off into Dido territory. [Dec 2001, p.106]

Three or four songs short of a really strong album. [Oct 2002, p.107]

After a sequence of fierce, squelching avant-R&B, Jerkins makes his excuses and leaves Brandy with some old hacks and their dispiriting, saccharine ballads. [May 2002, p.89]

A cleaner operation than their previous LP, but no less unorthodox. [Apr 2002, p.95]

An album that proves he's worthy of the legacy he cherishes. [Apr 2002, p.102]

Even the core audience may find this somewhere between a gee whizz and gee swizz. [Jun 2002, p.110]

Humour takes too firm a hold as the band play on, creating the probably unfair feeling that this is just a light tribute to old, inspired sounds. [May 2002, p.108]

Chiefly consists of lumpen and joyless AOR rock, with a few rhythm loops to give an illusion of modernity. [Apr 2002, p.104]

Compared to so many noisemongers, TOD understand that restraint enables unleashed firepower to be exhilarating and awesome. [Apr 2002, p.111]

At its most ascetic, Fog sees Broder kicking down the same fence post of convention as Tortoise, the Beta Band and latter-day Radiohead. [Mar 2002, p.111]

Under Cold Blue Stars is a towering achievement. [Apr 2002, p.108]

T&C are more approachable than most, replacing numbing virtuosity with a kind of meditative warmth. [May 2002, p.110]

A bit hard to deal with in one sitting. [Apr 2002, p.93]

Another mature masterpiece from America's finest. [Album Of The Month, March 2002, p.94]

A wicked, weathered stream of sinewy, shadowy songs. [Mar 2002, p.102]

Lost In Revelry's trump cards are its sudden, exhilarating turns of weather, its restless--sometimes uncomfortable--soul-searching, and its knack of throwing up instantly-hummable pocket classics. [Dec 2002, p.131]

More of the same, only more so. [Apr 2002, p.94]

An album of tough-edged, passion-fuelled songs full of real emotion. [Jun 2002, p.109]

A divine marriage of disco with discord that, while blatantly indebted to the mutant guitar funk of PiL, ACR, The Pop Group, Gang of Four, et al, enjoys the best of both disciplines. [Nov 2002, p.116]

An auspicious introduction. [March 2002, p.96]

Too often, all it offers is the rumble of starting engines. [Feb 2002, p.124]

Rather fine. [Mar 2002, p.95]

Point is a quietly beautiful, low-slung beach house record, a chill-out soundtrack to the distant sunrise over Tokyo bay. [Feb 2002, p. 120]

Undeniably the work of a modern underground pop maestro. [Apr 2002, p.113]

[A] moody, edgy album. [Mar 2002, p.104]

It frequently sounds terrific. [Apr 2002, p.104]

The rhymes are gangsta shit at its laziest and most drearily noxious. [Mar 2002, p.111]

His music often lags behind in inspiration. [Mar 2002, p.106]

Brash and enjoyable. [Apr 2002, p.106]

De La still think and sound like no one else. [Feb 2002, p.114]

The shock is that Goddess In The Doorway is really rather good. [Dec 2001, p.114]

Some great moments, but too much filler and too few anthems. [Mar 2002, p.99]

This merely draws attention to the fact that the old songs are better than the new ones. [Jan 2002, p.146]

The music, though lithe and limber in a jazz-fusion-funk bag, lacks melodic distinction, while the vocals are delivered in a variety of electronically treated styles that are irritating at first and increasingly so on repeated exposures. [Feb 2002, p.125]

This is adventurous modern music which uses old rock and singer-songwriter traditions as the raw material to be manipulated. [Album Of The Month, Feb 2002, p.110]

Busta stampedes through a survey of current rap styles with boundless wit, energy and quality rhymes. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Natalie Merchant has made an album of elemental beauty... she's never sounded better. [Jan 2002, p.140]

A vague air of missed opportunity hangs over this frustratingly short snapshot. [Dec 2001, p.124]

Knowing what she's capable of, it's impossible not to feel disappointed. [Feb 2002, p.120]

A hypnotic dream-map of astral drift and spac-age chamber music, textured jazztronica and technoid pulse. [Dec 2001, p.106]

Possibly a grower, this album is certainly better than anything Macca's done for some while. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Air and Zero 7 are perhaps the nearest reference points. [Dec 2001, p.106]

These cuts are fresh'n'funky with a strong Seventies soul influence. [Feb 2002, p.113]

A sublime suite of semi-ambient glitch-pop. [Dec 2001, p.106]

This eponymous effort does little to dispel the notion that he's a bit of a swaggering caricature. [Jan 2002, p.142]

Starts badly and gets worse for a very long time (77 minutes). [Jan 2002, p.146]

A far more ambitious affair as producers Black Dog and Custom Blue underpin her crystalline vocals with subtly pattering lite beats, clever jazz inflections and humming electronic textures. [Dec 2001, p.102]

The music remains a potent mix of stuttering party anthems and post-Biggie street sermons. [Feb 2002, p.114]

Slower than slow, softer than soft, the songs acquire an accumulative resonance. [Dec 2001, p.116]

Occasionally tentative songs and wonky arrangements mar them here. [Dec 2001, p.117]

If you thought they didn't make 'em like this anymore, here's the exception that proves the rule. [Feb 2002, p.112]

He still sounds like a blue-collar phoney trying to be a poor man's Springsteen. [May 2002, p.104]

The Argument showcases a band of uncommon power grappling with subtler shades as well as their quiet/loud, dub-influenced trademark sound. [Dec 2001, p.102]

The catchiest lesson in sexual politics you're likely to hear this season. [Dec 2001, p.111]

An American oddball, for sure, but one to treasure. [Jan 2002, p.146]

You have to adjust to its lack of ornamentation and let it settle, seep, uncurl like smoke or love. And there are songs here to equal his best. [Album Of The Month, Dec 2001, p.100]

Rule's raw, worn vocal recalls 2Pac, a style perfect for the title track's state-of-the-nation address but wasted on fodder like "Smokin' And Ridin.'" [Jan 2002, p.140]

Like Disney on methadone scored by Jack Nitzsche with a gun against his own head, trying to remember this soundtrack he once wanted to make, which teamed Judy Garland and Neil Young. [Album Of The Month] [Sept 2001, p.86]

Almost every tune sounds like a hit. [Dec 2001, p.108]

The DIY production can smother their delicate melodicism, and those parping horns can sound distinctly cheap and shrill. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Toxicity is virtually unlistenable: thrash metal splintered into a million pieces by unnecessary time changes, topped off with excruciatingly theatrical vocals. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Exceptional in its melodic prosperity and calculated grandeur. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Humorous, pithy and downright ballsy. [Sep 2001, p.106]

The acid-daze reveries are rich in detail, thought the baleful undertow and samey melodies lose momentum over the 22 tracks. [Apr 2002, p.113]

She uses her voice as well as she ever has, giving the moods light and shade. [Sep 2001, p.104]

It's mind-expanding, punk psychedelia. [Sep 2001, p.96]

Self-consciously odd, but entertaining. [Sep 2001, p.98]

Continues their quest to reunite as many of the myriad splinters of pop music on each track as possible. [Sep 2001, p.87]

This year's 'Stankonia.' [Sep 2001, p.96] [Review of UK version]

He's very much the equal of Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood in terms of versatility and sheer invention. [Sep 2001, p.90]

On first hearing, it's a record to admire rather than love, but its insidious appeal soon gets under your skin. [Sep 2002, p.112]

John McCrea's sense of subversion skates on the thin ice of their self-belittling grooves without ever quite toppling. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Sonically exhilarating, yet the lyrical content remains as alluring as vomit on a Sunday morning pavement. [Sep 2001, p.104]

Few other performers have electrified country blues to such plaintive and non-parodic effect since the heyday of Led Zeppelin. [Sep 2001, p.100]

There are still enough awkwardly anthemic choruses to unsettle their detractors. [Sep 2001, p.92]

Remarkable less for the tunes than the sheer, punchy exuberance on show. [Dec 2001, p.120]

One Lupine Howl is already too much, thanks. [Feb 2002, p.111]

A near-masterpiece.... It's hip and urgent, formal and exhilarated, everything guitar pop aspires to today. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Signals a further burst of creativity, suggesting there are still great things to come from the Australian Lennon & McCartney. [Jul 2002, p.123]