The Brutalist Bricks isn't quite the match of 2004's career highlight Shake The Streets. But "Gimmee The Wire" mixes punky, Mission Of Burma dynamics with a garrulous, troubadour storytelling, while "Bottles In Cork" unfolds as a bar-hopping travelogue as colorful as anything Craig Finn has put his pen to. [Jun 2010, p.92]

The music more than matches The Besnard Lakes' cinematic ambition. [Apr 2010, p.81]

All in all, San Patricio is something of an oddity. [Apr 2010, p.94]

This new 23-track compilation, cherry-picking the back catalogue from 1989's "Box Elder" through to 1999's "Terror Twilight," might help resolve the band's final enigma. [Apr 2010, p.102]

It's a facinating listen, one that feels like it could collapse at any time, but just about hangs together. [Apr 2010, p.90]

It's manically busy, demanding you strain to find the tune beneath layers of mellotrons, flutes and timpani. [Jul 2010, p.115]

The way the elements hang together effortlessly on "Cataract" is worthy of Bat for Lashes, or even Bjork. [Apr 2010, p.109]

As usual, Lewis' rocking material doesn't compare to his softer fare, but the likes of "pirates Declare War" and "Klutter" plot a fun that's infectious. [May 2010, p.85]

Little Boots emerges with a debut album that is disappointingly similar to the sound of 2001 or 2005. [Jul 2009, p.91]

There's a swaggering big-band reading of "Just One Of Those Things" and a clever soul-jazz recasting of Rhianna's "Don't Stop The Music", but otherwise Cullum has morphed into a kind of Britpop Randy Newman, which suits him well on the excellent "I'm All Over It". [Dec 2009, p. 87]

Difficult to pin down, Hidden is even harder to forget. [Feb 2010, p.104]

On the likes of "Said And Done" Frahm conjures up a mood of melancholic introspection that makes this accomplished, genuinely pretty set a serious (if rather less extravagant) rival to Gonzales and Andrew WK's recent piano excursions. [Feb 2010, p.84]

But perhaps the most effective retread is Talking Heads' "Listening Wind": Gabriel removes the funk, parks the dance, and leaves the words to do the work.

Though their frothy, soulless hits have rarely displayed originality or purpose, Groove Armada's sixth is a revelation. [Mar 2010, p.86]

Lovely, life-affirming stuff. [Apr 2010, p.97]

Ryan Sambol, with his nasal drawl and ready harmonica, is perhaps rather too into Dylan for comfort, but the title track is dispatched with skronky brio, and "The Unsent Letter" is a heartfelt piano ballad all cracked with emotion. [Apr 2010, p.100]

The stroke of genius was to persuade dreamer-for-hire Kelley Polar, Richard Davis and Paul Conboy to sing on this sparkling LP, resulting in a masterclass in soft synthetic soul. [Apr 2010, p.83]

The Open Road finds him rediscovering his form. This is Hiatt cutting loose, heading out on his own metaphor-filled highway of song. [Apr 2010, p.96]

The seariung guitars, walloping drums and emphatic double-tracked vocals have determined power and character. [Mar 2010, p.81]

Maybe the cycles of nostalgia may yet surprise us, but the group's puppyish enthusiasm can't redeem one of the less charming periods in pop history. [Apr 2010, p.81]

Come Down With Me seems slightly out of step in 2010, harking back to a time at the turn of the millennium where Tortoise and Tarwater were still the names to drop, but you can nonetheless appreciate its glistening geometry. [Mar 2010, p.84]

In danger of becoming a Loose Tubes for the ATp generation, this once fleetfooted group have blundered into a vat of fudge. [Feb 2010, p.89]

By the time the 11-minute whalesong finale "Cease To Know" creeps to its overdue conclusion, the prevailing mood of impeccably tasteful introspection is choking. [May 2010, p.88]

Some tracks sail a little too far into MOR but Meiburg takes care to balance these out with more robust moments. [Mar 2010, p.95]

Ronson fatigue will probably prove his undoing, but this is a very good album. [May 2009, p.87]

The resultant mash-up of Noughties Brooklyn cool and Flaming Lips grand folly can exhilarare, but there is also a worrying tendency for Magic Chairs to strain for significance like Coldplay. [Mar 2010, p.84]

Their latest was recorded in Berlin and Iceland, with whichever musicians were around at the time, lending Newcombe's whacked-out psychedelia cum space/drone rock a stoned-jam feel that doesn't always work to the songs' advanatge. [Apr 2010, p.83]

While never denying the quavering fragility of his voice, these arrangements, sympathetic, spartan, largely acoustic, frame what remains so it's only the strength--Cash's abiding defining characteristic--that you hear. [Apr 2010, p.89]

Happily, the music Stewart's art rock collective make on their seventh studio LP tells a more playful and diverse story, incorporating vivid punktronica, delicate ambient moodscapes and icy chamber-pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to "Ys," and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. [Apr 2010, p.82]

Now bolstered by Joanna Bolme of The Jicks on bass, American Gong feels like a calculated attempt to juice up thier smart, literate rock. [Apr 2010, p.97]

If Matt Pike's current group High On Fire are a little less singular than Om, in thrall to the dark trash of Slayer and Celtic Frost, five albums have semn them chisel out their own grizzled, imposing image. [May 2010, p.90]

Plenty of musicians have subsequently tried to channel that weirdness. Rose, though, always seemed to explore ancient territory with vigour and good humour on his records - and Luck In The Valley, his last, is one of the best.

Fears that Sitek's heavy hand will smother Miranda's songs, though, are largely dispelled. [Mar 2010, p.88]

Fine fully fledged songs share space with fragmentary 'interludes,' creepy half-songs, found sounds and noodlings. It could be irritatingly incomplete , but there's much to recommend it. [Mar 2010, p.107]

It's pleasantly winsome, sweetly aranged, but Anna Persson lacks the lugubrious voal presence of Traceyanne Campbell, and you long for sme of the sauce r spirit that inspires a group to name themselves in honour of a Serge Gainsbourg song. [Apr 2010, p.97]

Despite the laudable ambitions of the arrangements, Fray's mundane eye-witness vignettes become wearying. [Mar 2010, p.82]

Their accomplished bluegrass, folk and country hybrid expresses the heartache familiar to fans of Will Oldham and Damien Rice. [Nov 2009, p.94]

So, no startling change of pace, direction or feel, then. Instead, what Tindersticks sound like on this subtly strong album is a band with restored self-belief, again loving doing what they do better than anyone else.

He couches this misery in beautiful arrangements, writing on the piano, orchestrating with strings, and pitching his ambition somewhere between Serge Gainsbourg and Todd Rundgren. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Musically it's toytown folk, like Jonathan Richman with out the complicated buts, but Green's narrative lyrics grow increasingly weird and witty, recalling early '70s Lou Reed. [Feb 2010, p.86]

While Efrim Menuck will never be a technically great singer, his fiery, hopeful delivery here marks a career best. [Mar 2010, p.96]

The Brewis brothers may be at odds with the modern world, but in this stunningly realised double album, they've created the ultimate sanctuary.

Insular, claustrophobic, projecting a brittle vulnerability, Peace & Love requires some listner patience. [Mar 2010, p.86]

They're not quite as cerebral as Vampire Weekend, but Camera Talk and Cards & Quarters are studded with synapse-snapping shifts in tempo and tone, making this record the place to be as the year ends. [Dec 2009, p.119]

Arch novelty rather than post-modern profundity, then, but it's a damn sight smarter than the Barron Knights ever were. [Feb 2010, p.84]

Odd Blood comes a cropper at times, but mostly this is an involving album of vivid weirdo pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

It isn't a coincidence that this, Hot Chip's most focused album, is also their finest--more ruthless editing in future will doubtless yield even more spectacular results.

Not all of it works...But, as a radical overhaul of a career, it's a brave, brilliant and highly personal statement. [Mar 2010, p.83]

Listening to the array of styles, from the Jim O'Rourke-like folk of "Psyche", laced with Martina Topley-Bird's cosmic incantation, to "Splitting The Atom"'s opiated rocksteady or Hope Sandoval's dusky ballad, "Paradise Circus", it's conceivable Del Naja and Marshall needed every minute of those years to concoct such alluring material.

Sade Adu and co return with more snoozy, expensively produced, quiet-storm soul. [Mar 2010, p.95]

Having grabbed attention for their collaboration with Jenny Lewis on "Rabbit Fur Coat," then their own "Fire Songs," this takes a bold shift in direction. [Mar 2010, p.104]

Budget keyboard presets and filtered, treble-heavy production give the likes of "Lissoms" and :low Shoulder" an endearingly woozy, lo-fi feel. [Mar 2010, p.98]

Too much of it is lost in homogeneous country balladry more often associated with Trish Yearwood and all the other Nashville guff. A pity, because Moorer's voice is an expressive thing. [Mar 2010, p.94]

The use of reverberant instruments such as marima, bells and steel drums--as well as, on "Stick To My Side," the ethreal vocals of Noah 'Panda Beear" Lennox--give a real depth to his ambitious productions, and yet despite the elemental yearning, they retain a clubby toughness. Breth-taking stuff. [Mar 2010, p.90]

Galactic's Ya-Ka-May is a pungent musical fusion, adding hip-hop to mardi-gras funk, with help from a cast of local luminaries. [Apr 2010, p.86]

There's a dash of Yeah Yeah Yeahs about the opening scenes of this Brirtsh Columbia band's vivacious third album, which should have them gracing bigger indie dance-floors. [Jun 2010, p.109]

If Regan's Mercury Prize-nominated debut in 2006 attracted comparisons with Nick Drake, this belated follow-up ditches the finger-picking folksiness for full-on rock, and sees Regan mutate into a latterday Mike Soctt. {Feb 2010, p.96]

Drawing on every rhythmic tradition they can find and master, they corral impressive guests like Edan, Mr. Lif and Quantic to confound all expectations of contemporary funk LP. [Mar 2010, p.107]

Like ...Van Occupanther, The Courage Of Others is texturally rich and technically refined, elegantly capturing the ambience of the folk rock scene to which it pays fulsome tribute. But sadly, there's something cold and unwelcoming at its core.

At least it is in its worst moments the songs beome subservient to clunky genre experiment. [Apr 2010, p.92]

Snotty wit can be heard on the droll "Down On Loving" or the splenetic "Parasites," probably the best examples of the Ramones-via-Replacements sound that defines the album. [Apr 2010, p.90]

The band's plush indietronica is still in place, but there's greater warmth and imagination, and real consistency. [Mar 2010, p.79]

Only the sub-Marilyn Manson riff-slammer "Mars Needs Women" stand out in an otherwise generic batch of spoofy "Rocky Horror" lyrics and painful superfluous drum solos. [Mar 2010, p.107]

In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision. [Feb 2010, p.87]

For their second album proper, the band have beefed up their sound at the expense of their spindly charm. [Mar 2010, p.89]

Teen Dream finds the duo resolving to present their songs in somewhat firmer strokes. Nothing rocks, exactly, but organs coo in sharper focus, drum machines bear with added vigour, and an eerie disquiet occasionally linger. [Feb 2009, p.79]

Ten years ago this hand-stitched tapestry of astral-jazz harp, dusty acoustics, crackling breakbeats, music-box twinkles and twitchy "Intelligent Dance Music" might have seemed bravely genre-bending, but now it's as cosy a pair of favourite slippers. [Feb 2010, p.84]

Here are miasmic, dizzyingly gorgeous songs built on the grandest and most romantic, but steadied by the hand of hook-loving classicists. Bravo! [Mar 2010, p.90]

Realism is conceptually closer to "69 Love Songs" than anything he's done since, opting for a "variety folk" sound somewhere between Kurt Weill and Sufjan Stevens, but its ratio of heart-felt-to-hokey is out of whack. [Feb 2010, p.93]

It's a delicate, individual record, from the same neighbourhood as Paul Weller's recent excursions in rustic soul, but instead of Weller's creosotey vocals, the emotion is carried in a Minnie Riperton trill.

This wildly varied collection begins with their first release in 2002, "No Pasaran" about the Spanish Civil War, and include treats such as "Dream Come True," a self-released 7" given away at gigs, which sounds like Henry Rollins singing the "Grease "soundtrack while vomiting marbles. Yes, it's that good. [Feb 2010, p.84]

Long stretches of listless strumming may test your patience, but the reward is the gorgeous psychedelic folk reverie of 11-minute closer "Do Soto De Son," as hypnotically lovely as anything that they've laid down since. [Feb 2010, p.79]

The wildcard element comes in the shape of thier guitarist, who makes much of this album sound as if Brian May had been airlifted into a Devendra Banhart recording session. Disconcerting, but really rather good. [Feb 2010, p.81]

Pop's lightness doesn't much suit Bulat; she's at her best on the banjo-driven title track and gospel toned closer "If It Rains." [Feb 2010, p.79]

Steve Albini is admirably restrained here, preserving the raw power of Niblett's guitar, allowing it to throb and hum beneath--and sometimes above--her bell-like voice. [Apr 2010, p.95]

Five American Portraits, another collaboration with conceptual art group Art & Language, combines the two [awkward rock music and high conceptualism]: these simple, rough portraits of George W Bush, Wile E Coyote, etc, while each song musically quotes relevant tunes. [Mar 2010, p.93]

Enchanting arrangements, glistening instrumentation, and Griffin's hypnotic vocals carry the day. [Mar 2010, p.86]

Not easy listening, but a reminder that to evolve, we must first emerge from the slime. [Apr 2010, p.91]

Return To Form's one of their better efforts. [Mar 2010, p.90]

As the title suggests, No Hope, No Future is rather short on vim. The wiry, Wire-y dynamics are mostly presnt and correct. [Feb 2010, p.86]

It invokes countless familiar sources--The Byrds, Ennio Morricone, The La's, The Doors, Joe Meek--but reassembles them in such an unexpected way that 500-year-old songs sound utterly fresh. [Feb 2010, p.88]

Guitar band goes synth' isn't going to stop any presses, but this new phase perfectly suits Editors well. [Nov 2009, p. 84]

This is the challenging, take-no-prisoners result, an audacious fusion of the reliable and the experimental, as daniel and Eno continue into the new decade a musical conversation as lively and uncompromising as that of Jack and Meg White. [Feb 2010, p.99]

End Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, something with the anguished fury of Ryan Adam's "Heartbreaker," sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love." [Feb 2010, p.83]

Real Life... is a triumphant return to the dancefloor. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Coombes and Goffey undoubtedly had fun romping through "Queen Bitch," or tackling "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)" in the style of The Zombie, but you'll never play this album more than once. [Apr 2010, p.91]

This follow-up feels less homemade, but just as delicately adventurous. [Oct 2009, p.108]

The charms of this deceptively nifty record slowly revealed with each spin. [Feb 2010, p.107]

Guitarist Glenn Page appears to be channelling namesake Jimmy in his Yardbirds days, while the spot-on harmonies of "After You're Gone" suggest a live anthem in waiting. [Mar 2010, p.93]

When you live in Florida, it is summertime all the time, which might be why this Palm Beach quartet have developed such a seasonal vibe on their sun-spotted indie-pop debut. [Aug 2010, p.96]

Still present is a populist edge that, while occasionally somewhat saccharine, shakes out some great choruses. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it's an album by a band in complete control. [Feb 2010, p.77]

They clearly asked Dave Fridmann to produce for his MGMT work rather than his exploratory Mercury Rev backstory. It's well, OK. [Mar 2010, p.90]

Amid the cornball sentiments and bizarre arrangements elsewhere, here against the odds, a touching moment presents itself. [Mar 2010, p.96]

Pallett's pallid voice fails to dramatise the narrative or really engage the listener. As a calling card for future soundtrack commissions, however, it should succeed splendidly. [Feb 2010, p.84]

This is a vivid song cycle that's part ecstasy, part-sadness--but unfailingly lovely. [Jan 2010, p.119]