Like Blue Velvet, Forget is a lurid fever dream--and a magnificent hymn to suburban teenage romance. [Jan 2011, p.98]

One new track, "universal Child," fails to lighten the mood. [Jan 2011, p.94]

Huey's gruffy mannered vocals predominate--apparently the aim is to steer listeners to the originals, in which case, job done. [Jan 2011, p.94]

As poetry alone, it's interesting, but the music's elegance make it something more. [Jan 2011, p.93]

These 18 collaborations are a fascinating voyage through the classier end of pop, country and R&B over the past decade, and also add much needed focus to Jones (sometime insipid) mix of country and smooth jazz. [Jan 2011, p.93]

He's a man who cleary thrives on company, his stringy voice bolstered by the presence of Jolie Holland, Neal Casel, an on "No time To live Without Her," Vashti Bunyan. [Jan 2011, p.92]

Persist though, and there are countless fascinating poly-rhythms and concealed melodies in the sub-strata. [Jan 2011, p.91]

There are lots of martial bust-ups and squalls of fretboard fury that show that Buddy may be old but he's still wild. [Jan 2011, p.88]

An audacious, risk-taking tour de force, it locates itself in the upper reaches of Steve Wynn's increasingly daunting canon. [Jan 2011, p.87]

Although it's hardly Green's fault, Mark Ronson's retro-soul ubiquity makes this record sound less fresh than it otherwise might have. [Jan 2011, p.86]

Luckily, the music, a tapestry of harmonica, bass clarinets and bamboo flutes, is a florid, textured joy. [Jan 2011, p.86]

For once they look to be towing the line rather than drawing it a new. [Jan 2011, p.85]

On its own merits, rather a hoot. [Jan 2011, p.83]

"My Foolish Heart" is delivered with some delicacy, "Sunny Side Of The Street" is playful, and "Fly Me To the Moon: floats Rod's voice over synth strings and a lazy piano. Otherwise, stick with Sinatra. [Jan 2011, p.103]

Collecting from 10 years of album offcuts, Death To False Metal will be a treasure chest for the disenchanted. [Jan 2011, p.106]

The performances outshine the material. [Dec 2010, p.119]

Imagine John Fahey channelling the pulse minimalism of Steve Reich or Hendrix jamming African highlife on a digital drive pedal. [Dec 2010, p.119]

Occasional similarities to Placebo may be unfortunate, but they are countered by the record's bracing directness and infectious vitality. [Dec 2010, p.109]

Though this showcases the group;'s customary modular wit, it doesn't give Laetitia Sadier much to work with tune-wise. [Dec 2010, p.106]

Impressively artful forgeries all round--but unlikely to appeal beyond their diehard following. [Dec 2010, p.105]

Telephantasm, their latest, breaks a good deal more wind than it does ground. {Dec 2010, p.105]

This collection does him justice by featuring cuts from all seven albums in the Smith catalogue. [Dec 2010, p.105]

As he mostly prefers to copy the sound of the original guitarists rather than stamp his own unique style on these over-familiar songs, you have to ask what's the point? [Dec 2010, p.105]

Even if Rose is short on killer tunes or delivery, her oversupply of nostalgia charm is ultimately no bad thing. [Dec 2010, p.105]

It's a pleasant enough listen, but the feeling of overwhelming pointlessness is hard to shake. [Dec 2010, p.98]

Just when you think you've got the measure of Pierce's winsome tropicalia, he pitches another delightful curveball: a curiously faithful cover of The Lemonheads' "Mallo Cup." [Dec 2010, p.98]

Boasts and breakbeats are in short supply here. Instead, over gloomy strings, and pounding martial drums, Cudi rails against celebrity culture, confesses to coke-fuelled rages and even contemplates suicide. [Dec 2010, p.97]

All round, the party vibe oozes self-confidence. [Dec 2010, p.90]

Rarely has emotional repression sounded so coy, or so appealing. [Dec 2010, p.86]

Evam Caminiti and Jon Porras' third album lumbers slow as Earth's stoner rock, but throws its arms open, in a slow-burning ritual, to the infinite, star-flecked space above the Californian wilderness. [Dec 2001, p.85]

The material is designed to showcase the principals' piano playing, and skilled engineer Mike Piersante has set up the mic'ing and mix by putting Russell's piano on one side of the stereo spectrum, Elton's on the other, making the record a particular kick under headphones. [Nov 2010, p.98]

A gooey, iffaintly sickly, treat. [Nov 2010, p.101]

Drowsily beautiful. [Oct 2010, p.94]

Suffice to say that Blurry Blue Mountain is a lovely, oddly charming record. And in the unlikely event that it doesn't move you, there's a whole heap of past glories just waiting to be discovered.

This new project--fronting a five-piece band made up of mystery members who apparently contacted him on spec--has reined in his more wayward tendencies with positive results. [Dec 2010, p.105]

The album can become a little too sweet--this, however, is a moment that never cloys. [Dec 2010, p.94]

Though recorded during the same extended sessions, this archival LP is the polar opposite of its fraternal twin: big, bold, vibrantly coloured and laced with sweeping chorus hooks and towering middle eights. In a word, spectacular.

Cool and clever without being contrived, this is sharp, commercially astute pop music that ebbs and flows to the rhythm of a very human pulse. [Jan 2011, p.84]

Sinister lyrics flit by almost unnoticed across the music's glistening sheen as Elbrecht hides in plain sight--an impressive conjuring trick that may nevertheless leave you a little cold. [Dec 2010, p.110]

Sensibly, Sumner steers clear of Caucasian reggae on her surprisingly strong debut, opting instead for polished, sullen synth-pop with husky, La Roux-style vocals. [Nov 2010, p.93]

With Lisa Milberg sounding like a cross between Nico, Bjork and Yoko Ono, WYWH is one deep, dark, sexy reinvention. [Dec 2010, p.87]

Their The Fool traces out similar shapes as east coast cousins Effi Briest: dreamy, faintly pagan psychedelia, their tumbling vocal harmonies, undercut by inexorable, tidal bass. Their softly-softly approach does breed some earworms, though. [Dec 2010, p.104]

The result is a promising record that's much closer in tone and sentiment to an act like Hurts than they'd presumably be comfortable with. [Dec 2010, p.88]

All this makes the album sound like an arid conservatoire experiment, but it's more than that. Many of its tracks, like Morricone-feeling "Written, Forgotten," are designed to drift into the background--upmarket mood music, if you will--but others demand your attention. [Dec 2010, p.89]

A resounding power chord marks the confident introduction to this fine debut album. [Nov 2010, p.113]

With flurries of old-time whimsy, The Beatles gone gothic and vaudevillian storytelling, it's dense and sometimes obscure. [Nov 2010, p.84]

Down There reveals a lyrical quality to Dave Avey Tare Portner's songwriting that's not always apparent amid the radiant clatter of the full band. [Nov 2010, p.81]

Most of the tracks were written on the piano and jettison guitars for chamber orchestrations. There are Brechtian oom-pah songs, elegant tangos, and two bruise-coloured ballads that might be the best Barat has written. [Nov 2010, p.81]

Olympia could do with a little more of that future-facing yearning, the contemporary spirit that crackled through the remixes, to remind us of times when Ferry seemed as much a figure from our future as from our recent past. [Nov 2010, p.85]

The resultant music is quite compelling. [Oct 2010, p.101]

It's still excruciatingly fey in places, but then you know what to expect by now. [Nov 2010, p.81]

It's never indulgent, always exciting. [Oct 2010, p.114]

It bubbles with conviction, the mock-fearsome, statuesque diva loading her lyrics with Prince-like panche. [Nov 2008, p.105]

The London-based trio of Matt Parker, Chris Amlion and Ayu Okakita reinvent the [trip-hop] genre on their terrific debut, a futuristsic sonic collage of dreamy glitch-folk, shimmering electronica and weapons-grade dubstep percussion. [Mar 2010, p.90]

You're willing him to succeed, but ultimately it's hard to listen to a lot of this album without cringing. [Aug 2010, p.78]

Losing Sleep is a great record, period. [Oct 2010, p.102]

The 21-year-old with the bell-clear vocals scarcely puts a foot wrong, sliding easily between solemn country balladry and snappy country rock. [Sep 2010, p.90]

Lights feels like the product of a distinctive personality, following a peculiar vision rather than ticking genre boxes. [Apr 2010, p.90]

Vito Deluca indulges himself on his outstanding debut. [Oct 2010, p.104]

The Ghosts Within typifies the uniqueness of Wyatt's oeuvre, though on this occasion it's not just his. [Nov 2010, p.95]

This time out, the band wants you to have an experience, and that's what you get, on a record that's over the top, wildly inventive and satisfying in the ever-deepening way of landmark longplayers from the last century. [Nov 2010, p.89]

In the jigsaw puzzle that is Bob Dylan, The Whitmark Demos are crucial pieces, and it's easy to get lost in the depths, the sheer audacity and beauty, of this music. [Nov 2010, p.107]

The downside of Stevens' inward journey is that it seems to have eroded his confidence, leading to a maddening tendency to sabotage his best tunes. [Nov 2010, p.82]

All the elements of old are there--his voice, those lyrical hankerings to melt away from the limits of life. [Oct 2010, p.85]

Pitched as the first part of a trilogy, this is a batch of effortlessly lovely tunes, warmly intimate and muzzy with reverb. [Nov 2010, p.81]

It's likable enough, but pretty much interchangeable with the seven studio albums that preceded it. [Nov 2010, p.94]

What most surprising is the diversity here--the sense of direction is not pressing, but ultimately there's plenty to revisit. [Nov 2010, p.94]

Sketchy beginnings, but lots of promise. [Nov 2010, p.100]

Kelley Stoltz is one of the millennium's great unsung auteurs. To Dreamers is frustrating though. [Nov 2010, p.102]

At its best, Margins is unobtrusively impressive. [Nov 2010, p.101]

She's full of ideas on this sonically, adventurous effort. [Oct 2010, p.108]

Tricky has a frustrating tendency to lurk behind his collaborators, and one has to fight the feeling that ideas rarely gel. [Oct 2010, p.106]

So aesthetically perfect was the formula that Clinic displayed on their earliest singles, an acidic blend of The Velvet Underground, '60s garage and The Monks delivered with frenetic intensity, that subsequent attempts to branch out have felt strangely limited. Bubblegum, however, succeeds quite neatly in making some distance. [Nov 2010, p.83]

Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia, produced much of Easy Wonderful, which is distinguished by impeccably crafted contours, sharp lyrics, buoyant grooves and swelling choruses. [Nov 2010, p.90]

Wreckorder;s main virtues--decent songs, solidly played--are also its downfall, and you end up wondering why Healy bothered taking a vacation only to stay at home. [Nov 2010, p.90]

Presumably bucketloads of fun live, the novelty wear thin on record. [Nov 2010, p.101]

The Place We Ran From is bloody and dense and dark, and not in the least like a pastiche. [Aug 2010, p.85]

As his vocals wobble theatrically over synths, seasick sequencers and squelchy early-'80s sonics, Crush's component parts conspire to pack a considerable emotional punch. [Oct 2010, p.85]

A rather lovely record...Fully audible at last, Cox's downcast lyrics invest these hazy tunes with gripping poignancy. [Oct 2010, p.90]

It's yielded his best solo album in years. Rather than home, it's actually a close-knit kind of jam session. [Oct 2010, p.96]

Cleverer and more talented people--say Clive James and Pete Atkin--have tried to make such collaborations work, and failed. Folds and Hornby join the line, a faint whiff of misogyny trailing behind them. [Oct 2010, p.97]

How to cope [with increasing adulation and greater expectations]? It seems, by softly imploding--further muffling their already oddly diffuse abrasiveness and by replacing pummelling noise with woozily reflective loops. [Oct 2010, p.98]

Elastic raps from Q-Tip and Spank Rock, plus some ballsy vocals at last from Rose Elinir Dougall, save the venture from total ignominy. [Oct 2010, p.105]

The results will probably not prove a tremendous cash cow, but theirs is a commendably original aesthetic, and theirs is an enigma you resolve to crack. [Oct 2010, p.114]

Played loud, King Night is a widescreen hallucinogen. [Oct 2010, p.104]

The guitar sounds engineered here by Young and Lanois are astonishing, almost terrifying at times in their elemental beauty. [Nov 2010, p.78]

For anyone else, Going Back is a heartfelt but pointless exercise in ersatz soul. [Nov 2010, p.84]

Maximum Balloon isn't intended to carry the emotional and cultural weight of a TV On The Radio release, but it's a charming diversion that bodes well for Dear Science's follow-up, not to mention whichever artist is smart enough to hire Sitek as their producer next. [Sep 2010, p.98]

Taking its musical cues from Dennis Wilson and Echo And The Bunnymen, the band remain human underneath the strum and bang and always make sure that, in among the fire and thunder, there are songs, and emotion and, as ever, extraordinary lyrics. [Oct 2010, p.93]

Those who felt that LCD's This IS Happening was too downbeat will find From Cradle To The Rave a perfect remedy, fashioning an obviously derivative but irresistible transatlantic electro-pop. [Oct 2010, p.105]

Dig deeper, though, and what we have here is a record more in line with the excellent, vengeful Americana of frontman Michael Gira's latter-day Angels Of Light fare. [Oct 2010, p.106]

The result is Roots Manuva's most purely pleasurable long-player. [Oct 2010, p.105]

It's halfway between Kim Wilde and truly wild, and, as such, hugely entertaining. [Oct 2010, p.97]

A solid if formulaic record. [Nov 2010, p.94]

Sadier's intonation can be awkward, but her compassionate yet detached voice remains as affecting as ever. [Nov 2010, p.97]

It's the sound of a man confronting his own inevitable end with humour and dignity. Let's hope he doesn't move on any time soon. As band OF Joy proves, this particular wellspring is far from dry. [Oct 2010, p.82]

Some sound like strange nursery rhymes; some like surreal Eurovision entries. All are very good indeed. [Oct 2010, p.85]

The blues remain a touchstone--the album's first line is "Woke up this Morning"--but Grinderman 2 prefers to prowl rock's perimeter with Amon Duul II, Suicide and contemporary drone practitioners like Wooden Shjips. [Oct 2010, p.86]