An epic study of sand and celluloid. [Oct 2011, p.98]

His strong, unfussy voice is endlessly empathetic and his guitar playing lithe and expressive. [Oct 2011, p.98]

They've really only got one trick. But it's a treat, all the same. [Oct 2011, p.98]

The wonder of it all lies not so much on the amount of ground she covers but the way she inhabits her material so convincingly. [Oct 2011, p.94]

There's little evidence [of reinvention] on a collection of soul-pop ballad s that sound like Jay Kay singing the James Blunt songbook. [Oct 2011, p.93]

This is folk music given the widescreen treatment and a crisp, modern sheen. [Oct 2011, p.91]

Although RTR are more than copyists, they cleave to a proven hybrid of speed metal, grungecore and emo. [Oct 2011, p.86]

Another triumph for the post-classical scene. [Oct 2011, p.81]

You may not be whistling these songs or dancing to them, but Biophilia's unsettling visions are compelling art. Oct 2011, p.92]

[It is] an eclectic patchwork of cinematic techno-rock and beat-heavy vocal tunes featuring stray members of the Chili Peppers, Warpaint and more. [Oct 2011, p.81]

Anderson's songs still find him leading a herd of misunderstood waifs but offer little to tempt the uninitiated. [Oct 2011, p.81]

Alas, too much of this heavily glossed and processed album lacks wit or passion. [Oct 2011, p.86]

Work is less dramatically monochrome than HTRK's debut, the Coil-like angst replaced with a more subtle existential uncertainty. [Oct 2011, p.89]

In their own way and in their own time, it's progress. [Oct 2011, p.95]

It's immaculately produced and performed, full of gorgeous vocal harmonies, extravagantly wafting flutes and often arresting melodies. But for some listeners it might be wither lacking in rawness or uncomfortably in thrall to the past. [Oct 2011, p.100]

When Nevermind rocks, it does so extremely. [Oct 2011, p.101]

It works best when her vocal is minimally adorned. [Oct 2011, p.105]

The sonic darings of his own recordings has clearly fueled the imaginations of The Cure's Robert Smith and Beck, although the likes of Snow Patrol and Beth Orton stay closer to the originals. [Oct 2011, p.102]

By attempting chillwave haze, Scando-Balearic sunlight, shoegaze and taut inoffensive grooves, Twin Sister are certainly en vogue, but also utterly inept. [Oct 2011, p.100]

As a whole, 4everevolution lacks the decisive sonic focus his fierce and funny lyrical barbs deserve. [Oct 2011, p.98]

While something could have been made of the contrast between Francis's keening howl and Paley's guttural slur, proceedings are let down by the songs. [Oct 2011, p.95]

He may not quite be the roaring pistolero of old, but mid-tempo songs like "Mockingbird Hill" and "The Highway Is My Home" are beautiful, time-ruffled distillations of border music, Tex-mex and desert rock. [Oct 2011, p.94]

It's familiar territory for the mercurial Jon Langford and company, perhaps punk's most persistent ideologues. [Oct 2011, p.93]

The primary revelation of Elsie is Fallon's voice. [Oct 2011, p.90]

A continuation of a grand tradition rather than a feeble descendant, Jones' custom tunings strike sourly sweet notes, occasionally--as on the title track--touching on raga modes. [Oct 2011, p.89]

The result is state-of-the-art pop played by a meat-and-potatoes indie band, and sounds a bit like the Stereo MCs. [Oct 2011, p.89]

Theirs remains a stubbornly extreme sound, although Celestial Lineage finds new ways to combine heaviness with solemn beauty. [Oct 2011, p.86]

On Heritage, [they're] jettisoning practically all trace of heavy whatsoever. [Oct 2011, p.86

Cropper stays fairly faithful to the originals. [Oct 2011, p.83]

Funky, funny, stately, strange, soulful and sensual, Floreat is a unique and unequivocal triumph. [Oct 2011, p.83]

While the album is packed with inventive moments, there's no more lacerating skronk, for a very good reason: the emotions the band is mirroring don't call for it. [Oct 2011, p.82]

For the most part, this is a bleak musical fable as disquieting as it is utterly compelling, as it races inexorably to its bloody conclusion. [Oct 2011, p.94]

If the aim was to out-bonkers Joanna Newsom and Kate Bush while creating a compelling album, Amos has more than succeeded. [Oct 2011, p.81]

Rock rears its head on "speed demon," but by that point, the riffs are drowned out by the sound of a joke having fatally gone too far. [Oct 2011, p.81]

After Ready For The Flood, Mockingbird time feels dense, and somewhat cluttered. [Oct 2011, p.85]

Velociraptor! makes good on the pair's loud-mouthed claims by stripping away previous excess. [Oct 2011, p.91]

While there is some noodling with electronica, it's the understated melodies that linger. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Stuffed full of prospective hits, Wretch's desire to rank beside Kanye and Jay-Z may not be that far fetched. [Sep 2011]

Lyrically, it's business as usual. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Their excellent debut album is a neat mix of somnambulant balladry and ragged high drama. [Oct 2011, p.105]

It's all rather tasteful and familiar, though, and a few jagged edges might snare passers-by. [Oct 2011, p.98]

Sprawling, impassioned and mostly terrific. [Oct 2011, p.98]

They are less successful when they step beyond these templates--the trippy "Surface" doesn't quite come off-- but this is a strong set. [Oct 2011, p.95]

Though not quite the full Finn, nonetheless Pajama Club is fresh and fun. [Oct 2011, p.95]

The duo delivers all the exuberance of the Ting Tings, channeling the joys of domesticity, parenthood and conjugal intimacy with an infectious giddiness. [Oct 2011, p.93]

The Old Magic won't do his reputation any harm. [Oct 2011, p.91]

It represents Lauderdale travelling full circle, coming 30 years after his first recordings with bluegrass legend Roland white, but with a few of the flourishes he brought to Elvis Costello's recent touring outfit The Sugarcanes. [Oct 2011, p.91]

There are plenty of moments where everything clicks, with Sun Araw's dayglo-acid guitar skirling over motorik rhythms and hubble-bubble analogica. But these don't on their own justify its existence, alas. [Oct 2011, p.84]

Just about every songs clicks. [Oct 2011, p.84]

In the transition from imitator to originator, the old boy has made one of his best albums ever. [Oct 2011, p.83]

After a fair-to-middling second album they took a self-imposed break before returning with this excellent effort. [Oct 2011, p.83]

Rather precious in places, but often enchanting. [Oct 2011, p.81]

Though his songbook, like theirs [Jagger and Richards], is already abundant, Seeds We Sow suggests that there's plenty more to come. [Oct 2011, p.88]

The writing is strong and Pisano's wracked vocals have pleasing echoes of Justin Vernon, but neither quality is best served by a creative aesthetic which often subjects perfectly good songs to the aural equivalent of waterboarding. [Oct 2011, p.95]

The Rapture have picked themselves up with a third album packed with ragged romps every bit as joyous as "house Of Jealous Lovers," their 2002 breakthrough. [Oct 2011, p.95]

They've perfected a kind of free-wheeling, self-conscious pop classicism with immediate surface appeal but little emotional depth, a disappointingly familiar amalgam of Coldplay, Cast, Arctic Monkeys and The verve. [Oct 2011, p.91]

For a while, it seemed like they'd never leave the hipster ghetto, but this is a convincing exit. [Oct 2011, p.90]

A 1980s vibe predominates, at times in a most agreeable Japan-like kind of way; at times a disagreeably Phil Collinsy one. [Oct 2011, p.90]

"Die" is generic glam riffage, and "Magic" is a tedious Britpop stomp, but there are many successes. [Oct 2011, p.86]

They only really have one kin do f song and tempo, rollicking yet melancholy, but they write them very, very well. [Oct 2011, p.84]

Their thing is Troubadour-era rootsy rocking rather than harmonic rapture, but American Goldwing's free-wheeling charms are still hard to resist. [Oct 2011, p.81]

For now, we should simply savour the sound of an artist setting herself new targets and hitting each one with real panache. [Oct 2011, p.78]

Rigidity is a hallmark of electropop, from Numan to Miss Kittin, but Ladytron's plodding rhythms and banal melodies straightjacket their songs. [Sep 2011, p.88]

Wildlife rocks like rock still truly matter and isn't just so much mp3 content.

This linear, orderly chronicle i s a faithful overview of the studio career nevertheless. [Sep 2011, p.100]

Olive doesn't have the strongest voice, but songs like "Traveling" and the choolin' "Strange Attractor" have a pure pop heart that blends beautifully with Auerbach's retro-rock aesthetic. [Sep 2011, p.93]

Comparisons are inevitable, but take nothing away from Asa's own character. [Apr 2011, p.75]

The key to the understated triumph of Sarah Nixey's second solo album is her recognition that there's nothing wrong with sounding like Black Box Recorder. [Jul 2011]

Songs such as "Bad Timing" and "Leave It" sound pleasingly full as a result, although it's at the expense of some of the intimacy that was arguably the band's best quality. [Sep 2011, p.81]

Kleyn's songs sung to a rugged, vaguely Celtic harp accompaniment with electric piano, bridge the gap between Judy Collins and Joanna Newsom. [Sep 2011, p.88]

If there's a whiff of C86-styled whimsy in this debut, then its savvy more than compensates. [Sep 2011, p.89]

It's a delicate balance, but the obvious sincerity of Campbell's performance overcomes any qualms about what could be an exploitative concept. [Sep 2011, p.90]

Both fierce and mellow, this is smooth-jazz with an alluringly punky heart. [Sep 2011, p.96]

Terrific, genre-flipping from Seattle collective. [Jun 2011, p.92]

This collection further substantiates Newman's rarefied status as a songwriter. [Jun 2011, p.93]

The ferocious cauldron of funk guitars, stinging horns, simmering grooves and incendiary, politicized lyrics departs little from Fela's trademark style, but is delivered with a spiky aggression that entirely justifies the album's title. [May 2011, p.94]

Ganglians take care to lace everything with bright, primary colour melodies, suggesting they might yet follow the likes of MGMT and Yeasayer into the mainstream. [Sep 2011, p.87]

No boundaries are breached, but this is a loose, engaging record. [Sep 2011, p.96]

It's reliably hypnotic stuff, although the final two seemingly interminable tracks d o expose Stallones' rather rudimentary chops. [Sep 2011, p.96]

Consistently entertaining beautifully recorded, enough lyrical Malkmusing to occupy a generation of decoders, plus it rocks. [Sep 2011, p.92]

there's a little too much here that's predictable or worse still, forgettable. [Sep 2011, p.91]

It only really comes alive with an alternate version of "Take Ecstasy With Me," which reminds us that original Magnetic Fields singer Susan Anway is still his definitive interpreter, the Ella to his Cole. [Sep 2011, p.91]

A promising opening gambit. [Sep 2011, p.89]

Amid this poor material, the Chili Peppers still manage t deliver a handful of very very good songs. [Sep 2011, p.86]

The sparkier La Liberacion goes some way to restoring their reputation as festival favourites. [Sep 2011, p.81]

A collection of balmy disco that call to mind some tropical union between Arthur Russell and Prince. [Sep 2011, p.81]

Tinariwen have created an entire genre of desert blues, as young bands like Tamikrest and Terakaft attest, but they remain peerless. [Sep 2011, p.76]

It's an intense, at times crazed live-in-studio session. [Aug 2011, p.104]

The rest is country-tinged "roots-rock" fare, dispatched with an irritatingly blokeish. [Aug 2011, p.100]

His debut illustrates a more prosaic act of creation, in which fastidious study is transformed into compelling new music. [Aug 2011, p.92]

Drums Between The Bells captures Eno in versatile and intricate mode. [Aug 2011, p.82]

Something's happening wherever you turn on tracks that are dense with detail and brilliant accumulations of incident, but never overwrought or too busy, sheer grace their common link. [Sep 2011, p.80]

An austere beauty. [Aug 2011, p.81]

Here, as always, he turns out to be a natural. [Sep 2011, p.81]

The Riptide glides by satisfyingly. [Sep 2011, p.83]

These 10 supple, radiant songs blur the boundaries between African pop an funky American new wave with the same glorious ease as Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues. [Sep 2011, p.84]

FoW's impeccably assembled works rarely stir little more than fond memories of their obvious influences. This is largely true of Sky Full Of Holes, though there are moments of irresistible sticky sweetness. [Sep 2011, p.84]

The rest of Tripper rises to the challenge with nonchalant ease. [Sep 2011, p.87]