Bob Rock's big production ladles on the reverb, merely emphasizing hollowness at the core. [Dec 2011, p.81]

The best moments [from The King Is Dead] are woefully unlucky not to have made the cut.

This is a vital reimagining, not a retro homage. [Dec 2011, p.81]

Just when you thought Bjork had plumbed and conquered every depth and summit of her range, Dirty Projectors have shepherded her to newer pastures. [Dec 2011, p.81]

The Less you know is a rather ponderous return to form. [Dec 2011, p.81]

This is a dark and heartfelt affair. [Dec 2011, p.82]

Shadowed by a might past, in Ersatz GB, this is a strictly prefabricated Fall. [Dec 2011, p.82]

New collaborations from Noah & The Whale to Conor O'Brien, are worth the price of admission. [Dec 2011, p.82]

While his lyrics crackle, the music seems like an afterthought. [Dec 2011, p.84]

Harding here ups the comeback ante with a baker dozen of frothy, breezily melodic gems. [Dec 2011, p.84]

Primal yet precise, these obliques beats and blocky grooves loom out of the lush ambient foliage like the crown of a Mayan temple in the Yucatan jungle. [Dec 2011, p.87]

This US trio make a more than decent fist of their upbeat retro-music without ever quite shaking off the scent of pastiche. [Dec 2011, p.87]

The Vision unveils a colorful, sensualist take on the dubstep sound, flexing basslines set into relief by twinkling R&B melodies and a host of guest vocalists. [Dec 2011, p.87]

Soul Time! is another thrilling homage to the glory days of Motown and Stax. [Dec 2011, p.87]

The lo-fi production means it can all sound a bit shrill. [Dec 2011, p.88]

If is deeply lovely music, born of a tenderly weighted sensibility. [Dec 2011, p.88]

Overall, the album feels insular and stultifying introspective, despite the undeniable earnestness of Lee's intent and the passion fueling his ambition. [Dec 2011, p.89]

Keene's career-best album. [Dec 2011, p.89]

The band strike a neat balance between chunky Pavement guitar scrawl and sombre orchestrals. [Dec 2011, p.89]

Solid, competent stuff, but it's difficult, but it's difficult to imagine anyone wanting to listen to this in isolation. [Dec 2011, p.89]

The whole oddball exercise is almost rescued by "Pinky's Dream." [Dec 2011, p.89]

Still one of America's most unique and affecting songwriters. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Howard Devoto's arch art-rockers deliver a fresh set of oddball studies. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Some old punk hands (notably erstwhile Black Flag guitarist Dez Caden) conjure up some acceptable punk bubblegum. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Replica feels less dreamy, more disquieting. [Dec 2011, p.92]

The result is rather tiring. [Dec 2011, p.95]

The end result is a rich, luxurious take on bass music that could probably have only been made by outsiders. [Dec 2011, p.96]

This is a colorful mix of styles, filled with feedback, mangled solos and manic vocals, and rocking like The Cramps on a good night. [Dec 2011, p.100]

From austere, absurd materials, the cumulative effect is remarkable. [Dec 2011, p.76]

There are echoes of Jenny Lewis or perhaps the Swedish pop of Hello Saferide, but the mix of sass and vulnerability adds a melancholy air to the understated twang of "It's Our Time." [Nov 2011, p.94]

This, their sole album, is a curious beast, reminiscent of The Lounge Lizards or Devo, but defiantly its own thing. [Nov 2011, p.98]

Icy washes and brittle synth clanks complement the pair's wintery vocals. [Nov 2011, p.107]

Banjos, acoustic guitar, pedal steel and piano arrangements honour the songs' origins and add lilting texture to an album that will charm those who hear it, irrespective of their age. [Dec 2011, p.104]

He still produces beautiful albums of impeccable tone and fine songs. [Dec 2011, p.96]

The quartet are once again playing it safe with their crowd-pleasing formula of surging riffs, queasily memorable choruses and lyrics which, like Mystic Meg horoscopes burn with portent while saying nothing. [Dec 2011, p.96]

These are great songs, but Believers is all about the whole: a beautifully paced and structural album, with a powerfully singular mood. [Dec 2011, p.91]

The result is exhausting, an album of songs that all want to be showstoppers. [Dec 2011, p.86]

The Strange Boys have added some muscle to the general mix. [Dec 2011, p.83]

While nothing else here is quiet as astonishing, ["Junior Dad" is] a perfect ending to the most extraordinary, passionate and just plain brilliant record either participant has made for a long while. [Dec 2011, p.80]

Glass Swords places him squarely out there on his own, programming the kind of computer-game fluoro-rave crunk that's easy to admire but hard to love. [Nov 2011, p.97]

The mechanised backbeat rarely strays too far from the dancefloor, but the ever-shifting textures keep it interesting. [Nov 2011, p.91]

The faux-naif schtick still grates somewhat, but there's also real substance, wit and heart here. [Nov 2011, p.91]

ADD is death mental headache. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Ice cool and white hot by turns, Emika is a singular and significant new voice at the interface between pop and dubstep. [Nov 2011, p.83]

This vaguely "concept" album comeback mostly consists of polished jazz-pop and coffee-table Americana with faint echoes of Steely Dan, Tom Waits and Prefab Sprout. [Nov 2011, p.83]

The results are impressive enough, though never totally successful in effecting seamless rapprochement between cultures. [Nov 2011, p.92]

The inclusio0n of a live concert DVD from 2005 add some roughness but no reason not to just go out and buy whichever Sting albums you already like. [Nov 2011, p.98]

Two decades on, it remains U2's brightest, darkest, finest hour. [Nov 2011, p.100]

The Smile Sessions fits into no present-day category, context or franchise. [Nov 2011, p.105]

Coracle is more about a kind of glittering ambiance, one forged in a liminal space between drone, electronic Krautrock and the heady shoegaze of Ulrich Schnauss. [Nov 2011, p.107]

This is one of those brakes-off country records you wish more people would have the guts to make. [Oct 2011, p.94]

It's all served with such a knowing grin that you can't help but love it. [Nov 2011, p.96]

This is a seriously dense and elaborate album. [Nov 2011, p.94]

Like all the best of heavy metal, effortless dumb good fun. [Nov 2011, p.89]

Odd missteps apart You Are All I see turns out to be one of the year's boldest, most beautiful debuts. [Nov 2011, p.81]

Compelling in its way, but a bit Isobel Campbell when it should be Joni Mitchell. [Nov 2011, p.81

An LP that's uncharacteristically respectful of the traditional country and hushed folk idioms that make it up. [Nov 2011, p.81]

It suggests that, far from being a cynical piece of auto-karaoke, the bulk of this album is motivated more by art than nostalgia. [Nov 2011, p.82]

Lenses Alien harnesses the singular vision of singer and guitarist Joseph D'Agostino to finely nuanced, feedback-soused art-rock. [Nov 2011, p.83]

It almost works. [Nov 2011, p.84]

The country double Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town, is the best and it's not un-experimental. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Magnificent. [Nov 2011, p.84]

The Trio's third album is similarly, unconventionally earnest, often doing for the New Romantics when Gayngs did for 10cc. [Nov 2011, p.84]

[It] sees her expanding her horizons with out scrimping on nuance or emotion. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Working In Tennessee resonates with much of the cool, complicated clarity of his very best work. [Nov 2011, p.85]

As you'd expect, his 12th album sounds wonderful. [Nov 2011, p.86]

The harmonies remain pretty, but the smoothness of those Nashville sidemen exposes the thinness of the songs. [Nov 2011, p.86]

His first album in 14 years sounds more like a Ronnie Barker pastiche, constantly playing for laughs and often reworking the calypso rhythms of "Annie I'm Not Your Daddy." [Nov 2011, p.89]

The music is tight and telepathic. [Nov 2011, p.90]

Small, but near-perfectly formed. [Nov 2011, p.90]

The results are pleasant enough but ultimately feel rather disjointed, as though this band has yet to settle into its own skin. [Nov 2011, p.91]

His songwriting style is pitched somewhere between Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach and early Roddy Frame, displaying a knack for heart-tugging chord changes and delicately deployed Brazilian rhythms. [Nov 2011, p.91]

The result is a seductively melancholy and unashamedly serious album that claws insistently at the heartstrings. [Nov 2011, p.91]

The Hunter feels purposely immediate. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Get Lost marks him out as descendant of Manuel Gottsching and Vini Reilly, stringing pretty guitar motifs and quiet, whispered vocals into ringing loops. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Yorke aside, the attractions are few in Monkeytown. [Nov 2011, p.93]

A three-part instrumental piece, named "Heart: Attach," brings a pleasant filmic quality to an album that elsewhere trades a little too heavily on nostalgia. [Nov 2011, p.94]

It makes for a rambunctious rock'n'roll record. [Nov 2011, p.94]

It's this insistence on resolutely following her instincts that makes this record so lustily appealing from top to bottom. [Nov 2011, p.95]

It's essentially Clark in all his acoustic finery. [Nov 2011, p.96]

Ashes & Fire is an understated gem. [Nov 2011, p.96]

Self awareness and self-loss are finally balanced, especially on Portaling. [Nov 2011, p.97]

"SuperRandom" might be a better name. [Nov 2011, p.98]

High profile fans like Jeff Beck, Kid Rock and Warren Haynes help trombone shorty create what he calling "supafunk rock," a decidedly unsexy, sub-Chili Peppers amalgam with pointless horn riffs. [Nov 2011, p.98]

What's most intriguing is the way each artist gets in character. [Nov 2011, p.104]

It all sounds intensely personal and pleasingly remote. [Nov 2011, p.104]

These 19 tracks feel designed to float in a space between clear genre boundaries, somewhere purposefully undefined. [Nov 2011, p.106]

It's fiercer and denser than their 2009 debut. [Nov 2011, p.107]

More than a specific era, Real Estate conjure a sense of place and experience as vividly as any US indie film of the past five years. [Nov 2011, p.97]

It's stylistically impressive, but Worden only connects emotionally when she goes for simplicity. [Nov 2011, p.93]

After a moment of comparative restraint he returns with a double album so spectacularly grandiose you have to wear 3D specs to hear it properly. [Nov 2011, p.91]

That [the innocence of an idyllic childhood] was suddenly shattered when Lynne's father shot her mother and then himself, referenced with unsettling dispassion in "Heaven's Only Days Down The Road," renders the album's surrounding tender moments all the more heart-wrenching. [Nov 2011, p.91]

Too much of this lacks the urgent life of previous outings. [Nov 2011, p.89]

The cumulative effect of all this mid-tempo moodiness is that High Flying Birds feels awfully plodding. [Nov 2011, p.88]

There's no shortage of decent tunes. [Nov 2011, p.83]

A return to the coffee shops beckons. [Nov 2011, p.83]

Bad As Me is the sound of a supremely confident artist convening a raucous celebration of his own myth, and is multifariously marvellous. [Nov 2011, p.78]

It's far from perfect, but still one hell of a trip. [Oct 2011, p.89]