Fun, but unless you're seven, not essential. [Mar 2011, p.93]

Ringo Deathstarr here reveal their maxi-cranked, MBV/Jesus and Mary Chain adoration in full. [March 2011, p. 99]

Living With Yourself showcases McGuire's playing with minimal adornment. [Nov 2010, p.94]

This, assembled by Menahan Street Band guitarist Tom Brenneck, painstakingly recreates the tropes of classic '60s Southern soul--impassioned vocals, shimmering guitars and fruity horns. [Mar 2010, p.85]

Johns eliminates the melodramatic slow builds and punches up the groove quotient, much as he did for Ryan Adams on the similarly melancholy Heartbreaker. [Mar 2011, p.85]

It finds her singing in an appealing vibrato somewhere between Dolly Parton and Stevie Nicks. Her Aesthetic, though, is a million miles from the lacquered gloss of either as she delivers her lyrics of desperate melancholia over a raw, all-hope-is-gone sound which conjures the emotional brutality of Tonight's The Night. [Feb 2011, p.99]

They've been an oddly schizophrenic beast, vacillating between sparse dronescapes and percussive rock jams conducted with primitive intensity. Peer Amid sits in the latter camp, although it constitutes both a sharpening offocus and a step up in ambition. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Something Dirty captures guitarist Jean Herve Peron and drummer Werner"Zappi" Diermaier plus Bad Seeds James Johnston and the artist Geraldine Swayne-- continually to shape-shift around the margins of rock. [Feb 2011, p.84]

This 2Cd singles set shows them to be capable of more mainstream, dreamy pop. [Feb 2011, p.96]

Blessed is a powerful, vivid, highly emotive record. [Mar 2011, p.92]

It does still summon some of the spirit and occasionally the joyfulness that should attend a first record. [Mar 2011, p.90]

These are brilliant songs; but they simply reminds us of too many others who got there first. [Mar 2011, p.100]

Marked by lovely, unobtrusive backing by various Lambchop alumni, the overriding impression is of Wagner and Tidwell serving the songs rather than playing out lingering Conway & Loretta Fetish. [Nov 2010, p.92]

The fall and Dead Kennedys are the key influences here. [Dec 2010, p.109]

They strain for transcendent, neo-religious euphoria; sometimes they get there. [Feb 2011, p.99]

It's a subtly affecting record, hushed, austere, grasping for simple peace of mind with gorgeously rendered standards. [Feb 2011, p.93]

Uneven it may be, The Palace Guards s just as often sublime. [Feb 2011, p.90]

With Ring, Mesirow concocts a fractured pop that accentuates the layers of electronic composition, though her voice is the guiding instrument. [Dec 2010, p.104]

The pervading mood of ennui and desolation begs for some light relief, but the title track speaks volumes for her poise. [Dec 2010, p.104]

The sound is rather dry, and James Murphy's vocals have sounded stronger, but the different nuances audible in "Us V Them" and "Drunk Girls" make this if not a bang, certainly very far from a whimper. [Jan 2011, p.93]

If Geldof had been able to restrain his instinct toward baffling over-production, he might have come up with something that fulfilled the promise of its title. [Mar 2011, p.91]

They've wrangled a tougher, just weird-enough synthesis, with "Trails" borrowing Yeah Yeah Yeahs' brio and "Perfectly Crystal" likely to impress fans of both Pet Shop Boys and Flaming Lips. [Mar 2011, p.83]

After tinkering with their lineup for this fourth album, Baltimore's Arbouretum have emerged heavier, moodier and better than ever. [Mar 2011, p.83]

With Lanegan, Nick McCabe and Ani DeFranco along for the ride, Dulli's roiling, captivatingly haunted songs detonate with incandescent splendor. [Mar 2011, p.

Lurching from inspired to confounding, it's ragged, erratic, but never boring. [Mar 2011, p.94]

His long awaited debut sees him adding endless waves of muzzy kosmische, softly burred guitar loops, Fripp-like trippiness and heavy psych/space-rock grooves to his arsenal. [Mar 2011, p.83]

The sounds on Smart Flesh may be muted, but there is power and daring in its pursuit of stillness. File under: a quiet Storm. [Mar 2011, p.84]

While no less intense, Ashore--a collection of 13 songs each connected to the sea--is both warm and alluring. [Feb 2011, p.99]

It feels like a step up in terms of songwriting. [Feb 2011, p.96]

An artfully dishevelled, emphatically Gallic racket. [Feb 2011, p.95]

It's a heavy trip, with the exotic/erotic minimal techno of Ricardo Villalobos overlaid to intoxicating effect with the eerie hauntological manoeuvers of The Focus group. [Feb 2011, p.82]

There is beauty aplenty in these 10 songs, but anyone yearning for the delicious ache of old will find it only fleetingly. [Feb 2011, p.92]

Sahel Folk pushes no boundaries, but it's a charming, lo-fi set from northern Mali, delivered by a man who has been a quiet force for some years. [Feb 2011, p.103]

The Broken Wave, her debut album, is refreshing folk-pop bursting with beautiful melodies and a production carefully designed to emphasise her memorably pristine vocals. [Feb 2011, p.95]

It's a stylish dark, literate affair. [Feb 2011, p.94]

This is a hugely varied set: the title track starts with a barrage of Missy Elliott-style clapping, "New Myth" sounds like a mournful colliery band anthem, while the gorgeous "Daphene" sounds like a folk-rock Fleetwood Mac. [Feb 2011, p.89]

Blue Songs journeys as great LPS should do. [Feb 2011, p.89]

Sharing lead vocals with the immaculately Hardy-esque Darcy Conroy, Alary concocts wistful chansons and widescreen waltzes with an elegance and deadpan humour that evokes Sebastien Tellier, Stereolab and Matthew Herbert. [Feb 2011, p.84]

It sounds more like a busk than a serious recording session, and that briskness is its strength. [Feb 2011, p.83]

While he's got enough pure country in him to for convincing Merle Haggard-style balladry, he's best on rabble-rousers like the rightly pissed populism of "Stomp And Holler" and the de facto title song, a doomed soldier's outrageous, funny surreal travelogue grafted onto a grungy mutation of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." [Mar 2011, p.85]

Exactly a year since the release of his dreamy debut Causers Of This, South Carolina's Chaz Bundick is back with a very different and impressively cultured second album. [Mar 2011, p.105]

The fifth and final Streets albums suffers as a result of his self-imposed exile from the hubbub he once chronicled with such verve. [Mar 2011, p.101]

His is a paradoxical, somewhat clean version of grime, pushing every commercial button to boost his product. [Mar 2011, p.101]

Hardcore contains some of their most affecting tunes since the early singles, instrumental parts coiling around each other in graceful, liquid polyphony. [Mar 2011, p.97]

If I'm New Here was a triumph for Russell and Scott-Heron, We're New Here reveals a maverick production talent in Jamie Smith that his band's records have only hinted at. [Mar 2011, p.95]

Their take on electric jazz can seem airless: the sax leads are worthy but venture nowhere near the outer limits chartered by Ayler and Coltrane. [Mar 2011, p.93]

City of Refuge finds her back in Appalachian mode though, the songs shaded with fiddle, banjo and dulcimer and borne aloft by Washburn's airy voice. [Mar 2011, p.92]

Ejimiwe's lyrics are often vague, but the music has echoes of Tricky, Roots Manuva, and the minimal end of dubstep. [Mar 2011, p.91]

Abstract, but curiously engaging. [Mar 2011, p.83]

Allo Darlin' aren't the latest in post-Kate Nash mockney complaint pop, but instead makers of music that's unapologetically twee. [July 2010, p.101]

Let England Shake is the sound of someone as maddened as they are enthralled, aglow with anger and passion.

It's a faintly sparkling, wistful listen, where from her vocal monotone, you wonder if she's mocking those sexually stereotypical longings. Perhaps that's optimistic, but either way, it's satisfying that she's taken a different tack. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Like fellow minimalists The xx, Blake takes from dubstep an awareness of space and silence; he appreciates the power of a perfectly weighted pause. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Hotel Shampoo is a fragrant little side-project but it's a bit too sudsy to be the main event. [Mar 2010, p.96]

The results are dark, dangerous and utterly compelling. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Angels is spacier than previous outings, nowhere more so than the semi-improvised 20-minute title track. [Mar 2011, p.88]

It's a rich, invigorating and mischievous affair and, for older fans, possibly their best since 2004's The Dirty South. [Mar 2011, p.87]

Problematically for a singer-songwriter, Oberst drops personal feelings, wry asides and hip references equally lightly--ultimately, you're disinclined to believe anything he says at all. [Mar 2011, p.85]

The problem here is Beans himself, whose verbosity too often resembles a limerick writer who tries to cram, as many syllables into the last line as he possibly can. [Mar 2011, p.83]

Phil Manley's first solo album presents as a homage to the spirit and sound of mid-'70s German Electronic rock. [Feb 2011, p.90]

The Atmosphere is intimidating and nervy--a far cry from cosy campfire kumbayas. [Feb 2011, p.94]

This is a finely paced album, mirroring the rhythm of the calendar and getting choppier as it moves toward the midway point. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Under the bluster, though, frontman Ritzy Bryan adds a consistent emotional intensity best heard on "Cradle," reminiscent ofg Lush at their most bruised and bruising. [Mar 2011, p.93]

The crashing waves of "O-OnOne" immediately align the new-look Seefeel with the aggressive ambiance of Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds, while "Airless," Peacock's serene vocals are assailed by coarse filter sweeps and the squeals of busted circuitry. [Mar 2011, p.99]

Tracks like "Georgia" and "Holing Out" tear by with sandpaper efficiency and no little impact. Yet they have more than one idea. [Mar 2011, p.107]

It's a fearless rejection of current pop trends, fashioning a benchmark of intensity and originality that the rest of this year's albums will struggle to match. [Fed 2010, p.94]

They stand out because they combine some very familiar elements with more style and grace than their peers. [Feb 2011, p.94]

As a reminder of his consummate talent, and a place to start George's comeback, it's hard to beat. [Feb 2011, p.93]

This Brooklyn-based trio make hedonistic dance-pop with brainy-sexy lyrics informed by gender politics, third-wave feminism and Queer Theory. [Feb 2011, p.90]

Rolling Blackouts is as invigorating as their debut. [Feb 2011, p.87]

Reinterpreting these sample-and-synth-laden originals for guitar is quite an achievement, and the results are certainly fascinating. [Feb 2011, p.82]

[A] slim, but enjoyable album. [Jan 2011, p.88]

The prolific five-piece's cosmic space programme occasionally fails to launch, but at their transcendent best they harness the ragged glory of mid-'70s Neil Young with the epic fluidity of Popol Vuh and the blazing guitars of Spacemen 3. [Dec 2010, p.85]

His latest, Bella, is laden with sumptuous melodies and mordant wit. [Feb 2011, p.103]

The World Is Yours contains repetition aplenty: but no hesitation or deviation. [Feb 2011, p.93]

The collection is a little frontloaded, petering out with some tracks of solo guitar, bass and drums. [Feb 2011, p.82]

Adele is repeatedly cast as the heartbroken survivor. That role serves to foreground her mighty impressive vocals, but also encourage the showboating overkill that is a staple of the X Factor generation. [Feb 2011, p.79]

Arcade Dynamics is marginally more developed than previous releases. [Mar 2011, p.88]

There are traces of Rio's fantastic lipglossed silliness, but overall the arty party pop of All You Need IS now feels like an attempt to rescue a venerable British band long damaged by poor decisions. [Mar 2011, p.88]

It's a sequel of sorts to Democrazy, but sounds infinitely more accomplished--undoubtedly part of the technological point that he's making here. [Mar 2011, p.91]

The music is pure old-time country though, their pressed-linen harmonies already hailed by Exec Producer T Bone Burnett--on whose label this mostly covers record is released--as among the purest he's ever heard. [Mar 2011, p.92]

The downhome strum of "Stuck Like Glue" has a certain charm--at least until its horrific cod-dancehall break down--but fails to redeem a depressingly calculated record. [Mar 2011, p.101]

In places it's impressively monolithic. [Feb 2011, p.82]

The tunes remain no more exotic than a British cottage pie, and all the meat and potatoes that entails. [Feb 2011, p.79]

Mine Is Yours is the sound of a band itching to make their breakthrough. [Feb 2011, p.81]

Red Barked Tree is the most successful product to date of this examination. [Feb 2011, p.86]

It's a grim assemblage of cliche from the title downwards. [Feb 2011, p.90]

The trio still favour widescreen grandeur, epic choruses and portentous keyboards, but they've exorcised their Duran Duran and Billy idol tendencies. [Feb 2011, p.105]

Ness' songs tackle his experiences with hard, unforgiving honesty. [Feb 2011, p.99]

While there's not any unity of occasion to speak of, the cover of "Arms Aloft" by Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros is an impressively galvanising opener, new material sitting comfortably alongside older, more diffuse cuts. [Feb 2011, p.95]

There's a whole gamut of compressed pop guitar stylings; some leap out, others don't. [Feb 2011, p.95]

Like the opener, ["Rolling Stone"] promises more than it delivers, but pretty much everything in between rings the bell. [Feb 2011, p.80]

The Decemberists' most immediate and outgoing album. [Feb 2011, p.76]

Bits and pieces, even within the album's successful tracks, are overcooked and threatens to capsize the project into mere camp or noodly instrumental preening. [Feb 2011, p.91]

Content's fiery funk will have you bouncing around and beaming at the return of this inspiring, influential unit. [Feb 2011, p.87]

This fourth album is straining toward a more commercial sound, but pop crossover needs hit songs and F&M's best moments are still driven by ace rhythm section Matt Hainsby and Lee Adams. [Feb 2011, p.87]

Deerhoof are close to knocking the Flaming Lips off their exalted perch. [Feb 2011, p.82]

Sadly, Blunt's warbling renders most of them unpalatable. [Jan 2011, p.83]