It's effective, but the lyrics and the slightly mannered vocals never really rise above the level of jokey pastiche. [Sep 2011, p.91]

Biblical parable and bumptious force-of-nature feminism, ensure Better Day fulfills its upbeat mission. [Sep 2011, p.93]

Nothing US wrong reminds you of early Jackson Browne or Jimmy Webb, albeit with a tougher, rootsier swagger. And it's a worthy addition to that fine Californian bloodline. [Sep 2011, p.94]

Excellent and indispensable. [Sep 2011, p.94]

Nashville's elite session men construct an intimate acoustic framework for Souther to cast himself as crooning confidant, but it all feels a little polished and polite. [Sep 2011, p.95]

There is an occasional excess of histrionics, particularly on "Boat Yard," but her teenage talent has found a convincing adult path. [Sep 2011, p.96]

This traverses dancehall, lovers rock and jungle, and adds in more UK-centric bass styles, with some success. [Sep 2011, p.96]

Chops-wise, all is unimpeachable--but one ends up craving novelty. [Sep 2011, p.98]

Famous First Words passes by amiably enough, like a TV clip-show but is eerily without a sense of place, time or even quirk to make you believe in it. [Sep 2011, p.98]

More rock music should be this reduced and addictive--but they'll have to think long and hard about self-parody some time soon. [Sep 2011, p.105]

The first half's schmaltzy flight-themed concept and the cliche-stewn acoustic second half mean that take-off, to labour an already laboured concept, proves indefinitely delayed. [Sep 2011, p.105]

Beefy but unremarkable debut album. [Sep 2011, p.105]

The lyrics are occasionally hackneyed, but overall 4 is a very strong record indeed. [Sep 2011, p.79]

Basically Big Talk is how The Killers might sound if, rather than combining Bruce Springsteen and the Pet Shop Boys, they settle for blending Kings of Leon with ELO. [Sep 2011, p.79]

Their 1993 debut, remastered by Bob Weston with b-sides and rarities, treads similar--of less self-consciously clever--ground to Crooked rain-era Pavement, with dissonant, spiky guitars piercing surprisingly melodic college radio favorites. [Sep 2011, p.79]

It's lush, detailed, frequently over-rich, but Fabricius' bright, perky voice and some generically kooky lyrics can't really carry the weight of the whole production. [Aug 2011, p.94]

If corralling the chaos is their new MO, they made a smart move. [Aug 2011, p.81]

Gaye's music was on the move, but it never moved quite like What's Going On: still seraphic, still turbulent. [Aug 2011, p.95]

The slow stuff exposes Dex's limited vocals, and his deliberately artless approach feels threadbare--but at least he doesn't take himself that seriously. [Aug 2011, p.97]

It sounds more like sketchbook of snippets rather than fully formed tracks. Even so, it still tickles the pleasure zones with its goodtime swing and verve. [Aug 2011, p98]

When co-leader Marshall LaCount takes vocals the band teeter on the brink of woe-is-me self-parody, but overall this is like a statelier Mazzy Star, dark in all the right places. [May 2011, p.82]

A 25-track bonus disc of rarities makes this a feast for Barlow heads. [May 2011, p.94]

Tobin's virtuoso collaging of alien sounds is bracingly vivid in small doses, but a little chilly and disorienting over the long haul. [Jun 2011, p.96]

Not bad for four young men barely out of their teens playing rowdy, undiluted hardcore. That has a lot to do with the excellence of their debut album. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Lyrically, the fare wavers from the unspectacularly anecdotal to the spinelessly soppy. [Jul 2011, p.121]

Friday shamelessly rekindles the Eno/Lannois unforgettable shimmer, croons against the dying of the light and somehow emerges defiantly alive. [Jun 2011, p.85]

With guests including trumpeter Terry Edwards and The Clientele's Alasdair MacLean, theses pure, poetic songs advance their euphoric yet melancholy quest for improbable romance. [Jun 2011, p.79]

Nikolaj Manuel Vonslid's choirboy vibrato lends a ghostly quality to these 10 pretty synth tunes, all of which fuse north European wistfulness and vaguely Oriental motifs in soothing manner. [Jul 2011, p.103]

While his unique but resolutely unchanging styles of slap bass shards and cut-up vocal syllables works well in a balanced DJ set, it wears quickly over 22 tracks. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Nothing on Take The High Road isn't impeccable, but equally little is surprising. [Jul 2011, p.79]

The 19 tracks revisited here constitute a mixed bag, ranging from imaginative reinventions to faithful recreations. [Aug 2011, p.100]

This time they've come armed with an acoustic guitar to counterpoint their love of reverb--something that works well with their generally playful attitude. [Aug 2011, p.100]

The pleasant surprise on their 15th album is how proficient they've become, without surrendering their innocence along the way. [Aug 2011, p.98]

Exec producer JR Hutson's scratch beats and jazzy interpolations give a spark to velvet soul confessionals where he aching but pliant, octave-scaling vocal colours across the emotional spectrum. [Aug 2011, p.98]

There's an earworm-like lure in every track. [Aug 2011, p.98]

This album essentially serves as a showcase for rising Brit soul singers Sampha and Jessie Ware, who add just the right quantities of sugar and grit. [Aug 2011, p.98]

The 23-year-old deals in the kind of one-take, reverb-drenched, sugary psych-pop that mostly sounds effortless and might occasionally be genius. [Aug 2011, p.98]

It's relentlessly repetitive in style and mood, but Lindsey's howling hormonal rage still feels exhilarating. [Aug 2011, p.97]

It remains a somewhat foreboding listen, but one compelling in the intensity of its vision. [Aug 2011, p.97]

Murphy muddles through the workmanlike art-rock of openers "Velocity Bird" and "See Saw Sway" before hitting confident stride on "I Spit Roses" And "Never Fall out." [Aug 2011, p.94]

For this fifth album, she changes tack again, gaining in clarity what she loses in originality. [Aug 2011, p.94]

Ritual Union makes it three alums without a remotely duff--or dull--moment. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Production-wise, his hallmark arrhythmic snares are now sounding a little rote nearly a decade after their inception. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Guitarist Dave W and company gather up Krautrock, Loop, Acid Mothers Temple, Cul De Sac and a host of other materials with radioactive long life to create a fusion intended as toxic blowback in the faces of right-wing America. It's a face-melting combination. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Africa's new axe hero marches on. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Jeremy Earl's endearing falsetto and excellent songwriting holds it all together. Aug 2011, p.107]

Virtually every song repeats the same trick, as the fervent but tuneless bark of singer Ellery Robert begins to grate. {Aug 2011, p.107]

Youngs' atonal yelpings and the bizarre tangents his big guitar shapes take won't be to the tastes of those who like their music a tad less askew--but acclimatise yourself to Young's off-kilter take and there are some rewards here. [Aug 2011, p.107]

His tools may be blunt, and too many tracks sound like unfinished sketches, but Zomby manages to summon a uniquely unsettling atmosphere. [Aug 2011, p.107]

R.E.M. were already walking head and shoulders taller than most by now, but Life's Rich Pageant was nevertheless a startlingly great leap forward. [Aug 2011, p.102]

Hawk's followup hints at a talent that will outlive hipster buzz, drawing not just from hazy '80s nostalgia, but from the artists who populated his own youth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Fun, if inessential. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Arcade Fire producer Craig Silvey and a slick session band sculpt an impressively spacey sound, but LaVere's self-conscious, bored voice strangles everything at birth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Much of it is a coffee-table approximation of the producer duo's more irreverent work. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Within And Without charts a familiar shimmery beachscape between Julee Cruise and Lynchpop, early OMD and Slowdive. A couple tracks emerge from the haze. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Pressure & Time is short enough to fit on two sides of vinyl and, quaintly, leaves you wanting much more. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Pretty electro-pop with jagged edges, and a lingering mood of sumptuous disorientation. [Aug 2011, p.87]

That old adage about the quiet ones hold true for Elanor, whose debut capitalizes on I'm Going Away's fleeting ease. [Aug 2011, p.87]

It's far from original, but nonetheless highly effective, and the sweaty, lad-friendly nature of the title betrays its inherent good humour. [Aug 2011, p.82]

[Guy Berryman's] radio-friendly approach adds depth without sacrificing detail. [Jun 2011, p.93]

Mick Barr's guitar work is hugely impressive, apparently concerned with documenting an infinite number of riffs, but the length of the compositions--often around 12 minutes--rather test the limits of endurance. [Aug 2011, p.90]

The tracka are overlong and the ubiquitous fuzz pedal makes "Sedatives" and "King Of Kings" sound like a narcoleptic Screwdriver, but it's hard to knock Jesu's dedication to the sad, slow and contemplative. [Aug 2011, p.90]

Here, the 35-year -old is once again joined by co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who provides settings that ate mostly empty, the better to allow Holland's mystical persona to fully inhabit them, as she sings in an elongated East Texas Drawl that curls like smoke rings. [Aug 2011, p.90]

For all their poppy ambition, the highlights are probably "Chemtrails," a wicked fuzz of gospel narco-bliss, and "Sunday Morning," a smacked-up take on "Penny Lane." [Aug 2011, p.89]

"Ishadlak Ya Khey," featuring Doueh's son Hamdan Bamaar on full drum kit, and pops busting out some flange-soaked solos, is a pleasingly noisy, impolite fusion. [Aug 2011, p.87]

The characters we meet in many of the album's other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. [Aug 2011, p.86]

Finn seems more at home with the melancholy Paul Simon-isms of "Little Words" than with "The Struggle," a strained attempt to get weird and wired. [Aug 2011, p.84]

It's a well-judged mix; safe enough to satisfy the easy-listening end of Peyroux's following, but bold enough to show that among the jazzy, post-Norah crowd, the wayward Maddy stands apart. [Aug 2011, p.83]

There's nothing particularly jaw-dropping about it, and at times it's too cute and wimpy, but it's a decent change in direction from diskJokke's cosmic house sides. [Aug 2011, p.82]

Their equally unexpected return sees them back on full-tilt, pivot-on0a-penny form, with their own label and--judging from that title--hardened professional resolve. [Aug 2011, p.81]

The weakness is the music. [Aug 2011, p.79]

Their sixth sees Mark Ronson step in as producer on all but two tracks, and although he;s resisted the temptation to slather on Stax horns and apply his slick finish, he's given this tough, roughly energetic band focus and finesse. [Aug 2011, p.79]

Skying, The Horrors' third, again brilliantly confounds expectations. [Aug 2011, p.76]

Ironic jape or not, Shangri-La captures the DFA label aesthetic perfectly, blending electro post-punk, disco and art-pop with conceptual elan, and icing the cake with dance-friendly production. [Jul 2011, p.103]

Rare Bird Alert, recorded with the Steep Canyon Rangers, is a more rounded than 2009's mostly instrumental The Crow. [Jul 2011, p.92]

You can not fault the passion of the songs or the tasteful nature of the playing, but it's difficult to see what of himself, besides an admiration for Bob or Bruce, he's actually serving up here. [Oct 20101, p.101]

Anyone who's enjoyed a fruitful encounter with Ariel Pink's home-recorded oeuvre should also find plenty to love about John Maus. [Jul 2011, p.91]

Opening with the dolorous drones of "They Being Dead Yet Speaketh," Johannsson slowly builds to the rousing "The Cause Of Labour Is The Hope Of The World," a transcendent fanfare for the common man. [Jul 2011, p.88]

Such a see-what-sticks approach means Native To clunks in places, but when they get it right their enthusiasm is infectious. [Jul 2011, p.87]

Dig deeper into This Is The Computers, recorded at the San Diego home of former Rocket From The Crypt man John Reis, and it's clear they have a pop heart. [Jul 2011, p.86]

Despite stuffing their saddle bags full of choice musical cuts old and new, The Middle East somehow contrive to sound like nobody but their own sweet selves. [Jul 2011, p.86]

Emeralds and Oneohtrix may do this kind of hypnotic synth drone stuff better, but Blanck Mass is still a fairly potent concoction. [Jul 2011, p.77]

For what keeps Field Songs on the right side of unyielding darkness, what keeps it ringing with an affirming note of beauty, is the certain knowledge that however black it gets, "the sun's about to rise."

No shocks here, perhaps, but their fractal Technicolor pop is always a joy. [Jul 2011, p.87]

Superior, though, is Heavy Rocks, the group's second release to go by that name. [Jul 2011, p.79]

Attention Please sits at the softer end of the spectrum, a melodic set showcasing the sultry vocals of guitarist Wata. [Jul 2011, p.79]

The Harrow and the Harvest is kin to not dissimilar works by Uncle Earl, Crooked Still, Kate Fagan, even Steve Earle's rumbustious bluegrass outing with Del McCoury--and blessed by the insuperable advantage of Welch's voice. [Jul 2011, p.74]

Your cider-drinking soundtrack for this summer is here. [Jul 2011, p.100]

Warts, ugly cousins, blazes of greatness and all, however, A Treasure makes a perfect snapshot of this ornery, shapeshifting moment. [Jul 2011, p.98]

His more emphatic, aggressive muse is unique and subtly disquieting. [Jul 2011, p.96]

I Love You, Go easy represents a minor stumble. [Jul 2011, p.96]

The contrast between Adele Bethel's sassy snap and Scott Paterson's rousing holler is expertly deployed, resulting in a stirring record, packed full of ideas, from a band who seem to have rediscovered their spirit of adventure. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Even if you can't understand the radical message, you can at least revel in the kind of freewheeling summer backpacking soundtrack at which Chao excels. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Laswell provides an accomplished, opulent dub setting. But it's at blandish odds with the lo-tech wildness of Perry's own original Black Ark recordings. [Jul 2011, p.93]

These four compositions are not without precedent, but all push at conventions of melody, space, tonality, rhythm and timbre. [Jul 2011, p.90]

A couple of tame moments should have hit the cutting room floor, but this is otherwise flawless. [Jul 2011, p.88]

Channel Pressure asks some complex questions about pop's obsession with nostalgia, although the likes of "Joey Rogers" and "The Voices"--with hints of Daft Punk's "Digital Love"--also functions as irresistible pop tunes on a more basic level. [Jul 2011, p.82]

They're marching to a '90s beat, like the internet never happened and fresh tools were never invented. [Jul 2011, p.77]