It sees them adapt while retaining their street credibility. [Nov 2008, p.117]

It feels like one of the landmark American albums of the century so far. [Jan 2008, p.86]

The Crying Light shows Antony boldly, indefatigably following his own eccentric star.

The songs here reveal their author's love of The Beattles, Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Elton John et al, and confirm Newman's growing status as college rock's most tasteful magpie. [Apr 2009, p.91]

There’s a sense throughout that Bird’s head is engaged in a battle with his heart, as if aware that there’s a pop masterpiece squatting on the far horizons of his intuition.

The pair sometimes get slow and mellow, but the dominant tone is better expressed by the brattish beat explosion of 'Daylight,' the madly bleeping 'Don't Slow Down' or the clatteringly chaotic 'Cutdown.' [Sep 2009, p.86]

A solo album that sounds like a series of song sketches. [Feb 2009, p.89]

This is one of the heavier and more accessible entries in their labyrinthine discography. [Jan 2009, p.102]

His debut as a solo artist is no grand break from past form, while confirming that age shall not wither him. [Feb 2009, p.101]

RTZ helpfully collects together a bunch of Chasny's rare early jams, proving that his eldritch guitar studies--at once intense, devotional and not a little creepy--have remained consistent for a decade now. [Mar 2009, p.103]

Deliberately daft, but also bold and adventurous, Late Of The Pier are a hyperactive British answer to MGMT. [Sep 2008, p.90]

Mike Mattison's gritty lead vocals are fully functional, but it's Trucks' consistently mesmerising guitar and dobro that draw the ear. [Feb 2009, p.99]

Fine writing, then, and there’s musical variety, too.

If you’re simply after retro thrills, though, these boozy anthems will provide you with one very happy hour.

Exultant opener 'Country Love' and Cajun rumbler 'Shreveport,' like most of Haymaker!, just sparkle. [Feb 2009, p.82]

Some tracks feel throwaway, but goodtime vibes prevail. [Apr 2009, p.80]

Tough and determinedly sexed-up, here you'll find talk of beefs, booty and bitches, rather than brotherhood. Producers Neptunes and OutKast's Mr DJ oversee this exercise in alluringly moderne hip hop. [Oct 2008, p.83]

Anyone still reeling from Chan Marshall's sultry and imperious covers collection, "Jukebox," will find further thrills on this six track mini-album.

This slice of weird-rock from a more contented American decade is playful and preposterous in equal measure. [Feb 2009, p.89]

Every track here is interchangeable, not only with each other, but with anything from his back catalogue. [Feb 2009, p.76]

Glasvegas still strike the heart-strings, even without noisy guitars. [Jan 2008, p.94]

It's mostly beautiful, and very civilised. [Oct 2008, p.81]

It's every bit as good as their debut. [Nov 2008, p.109]

Depending on which Paul McCartney you like the most, you may or may not like what he’s done. But the best thing about Electric Arguments is that it sounds like the work of someone who doesn’t give a stuff what people are going to think. About time, too.

The lo-fi production makes everything sound like an unfinished demo, the songs are largely forgettable and the AutoTune’d vocals become a little tedious.

This is a "Talk Of the Town" of the mind, and he is clearly in his elemnt. [Dec 2008, p.100

Here Scott Weiland lets off steam in grand style. [Feb 2009, p.101]

It's an impeccably tatsteful tribute to their record collections, though mystifying they can find no room for anything by The Cure. [Jan 2009, p.114]

Even when the songs feel light, when the stylistic havoc and production is almost absurd, you have to admire the glorious gall. [Dec 2008]

On 'The Colour Of Three' and 'Glide,' Fennesz once again proves himself a match for the Kevin Shields of 'To Here Knows When' or "The Coral Sea." [Feb 2009, p.80]

Certainly enough to impress the judges. [Jan 2008, p.93]

The result is a twilight world where Robert Wyatt and John Coltrane rub shoulders with Why? and Vernon Elliott. Mad, but quite magical. [Dec 2008, p.81]

Soundwise, Chinese Democracy is all over the place.

Sugar Mountain is a fascinating snapshot of Neil Young at a transitory moment in his long career, for which it also provides an indelible template.

Ramshackle, out of tune, fey and frail, not yet tightened by Trevor Horn, these tracks capture the essence of this band's particular genius. [Dec 2008, p.83]

Sunday At Devil Dirt inhabits the same scorched earth, but is a more confident record. Ironically, this confidence manifests itself in an understated vocal performance from Campbell, leaving the spotlight on Lanegan’s dusty baritone.

As the lounge-like 'Will Get Fooled Again' segues into the glitch-funk of 'Orphaned,' you'd have to concede it's a fine idea. [Nov 2008, p.120]

This is different (from his last studio album) again, the rhythms of Afrobeat now cleved to an ambitious jazziness. [Dec 2008, p.100]

As with their third album, Can and Silver Apples are referenced, but there are additional moments here to please fans of both Terry Riley and Battles alike. [Dec 2008, p.94]

The music is classifed as country, but it's really clinical pop, enlivened by Swift's confessional lyrics. [Apr 2009, p.101]

Larry Klein places the vocals disconcertingly high in the mix, but it effectively emphasises Chapman's poetic sensibility. [Dec 2008, p.86]

If nothing can quite replicate the excitement of hearing these songs for the first time, the first disc of this double-CD set makes a good job of restating the importance of The Smiths as a singles band.

For some of the mercifully brief 33 minutes and 43 seconds of this album there is some merit in the messiness of this L.A. four-piece's palette of punk powerchords and sustained hoarseness. [Jan 2008, p.88]

Here childrren's voices, crazed yelping, psych-surrealism and Jesus freakouts combine to create a phantasmagoria that is fun, disturbing, inspired and childlike all at the same time. [Jan 2008, p.90]

It's a perfect match with producer Richard Hawley, who here channels his love of epic reverb pop to more interesting ends than on his solo albums. [Dex 2008, p.86]

All round, this is filled wiith pleasant rather than memorable tunes. [Oct 2008, p.113]

The Renaissance offers a compromise between the rootsy East Coast rap he helped to define and the LP you imagine the label wanted. [Jan 2008, p.111]

It's nimble stuff, but the most moving contribution comes from the late Buck Ownes. [Jan 2008, p.104]

Ambitions here, you feel, do not extend far beyond ‘a good time, all the time’-–it’s probably telling that the band name derives from a cocktail lounge on Sunset Boulevard-–but then, Moretti probably wouldn’t want it any other way.

Hayden Norman Thorpe's falsetto squawk is the controversial focal point but his lust for language is equally extraordinary.

It's good stuff, but also strangely nostalgic. [Nov 2008, p.117]

However dry or highbrow it may sound on paper, Johannsson's melodious symphony of strings, electronics and choral elements is totally accessible and, for most of its 60-plus minutes, achingly lovely. [Jan 2008, p.101]

What's more surprising is just how good it all is, the tunes great, the mood fun, the album infectious. [Mar 2009, p.92]

For all his experimentalism, Adamson never once loses sight of the song. [Dec 2008, p.94]

Visceral thrills for those who like thier punk served piping hot. [Jan 2008, p.104]

In truth, though, there's not too much here to alarm the undergraduate population.

This ill-fitting rebirth, fronted by the defiantly ungay, unIndian and uneccentric Paul Rodgers, can be seen as an attempt to ditch the Mercury-inspired absurdity and bolster Queen’s hard 'rawkin’credentials.

This is regal, majestic pop music played with a roundheaded bluntness. Off with their heads indeed.

All round, a party atmosphere prevails--and undoubtedly a good time is had by all.

This is the first Cure album in a long time that’s more than just another Cure album.

Really, though, the whole--say, the bracing rock of 'Take Back The City'--is more than the sum of these parts, and underlines this album as a success in its field.

Much of this album sounds like its been stitched together from 4AD's finest moments. [Dec 2008, p.88]

The hipster-redneck rhetoric could grate, but O'Death are too good to be dismised as a novelty act. [Dec 2008, p.105]

Ultimately, Cardinology serves as another minor indictment of Adams’ famously lackadaisical internal editor. Neveretheless, it is still, almost infuriatingly, a stretch better than most people at their best.

The dreary emotional content and the sub-MBV soundscapes set out to gaze enigmatically at their shoes. Sadly, they don't get past the navel. [dec 2008, p.115]

Eventually Brad Hargett's depressive baritone voice will get you down, but not before it has demanded your attention. [Apr 2009, p.87]

It features tracks recorded with rock outfits like The Flying Hearts which recall Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed; minimal, folksy miniatures that sound a ltttle like John Martyn or James Taylor; and a string of delicious, whimsical synth-pop songs that are as good as anything in the early-'80s canon. [Dec 2008, p.115]

The result is a confusing confection that plays out like "Anti-Capitalism: The Musical." [Jan 2009, p.96]

Odds and sods, then, but not without appeal. [Jan 2008, p.101]

Skeletal Lamping follows the latter path, fleshing out the polymorphous persona of Georgie Fruit via brilliantly executed attention-deficit funk. [Dec 2008, p.105]

The Sea And The Cake's refusal to budge from their original MO for the last 14 years seems like an admirable show of restraint. [Nov 2008, p.119]

The eclectism is exhilarating. [Nov 2008, p.96]

There are epic power ballads, which just manage to avoid faling into Keane/Coldplay territory; there are terriffic, drone-laden stomp-rockers....The use of saxophone, however, is ill-advised, and Lightburn's voice can get a little ponderous. [Dec 2008, p.88]

'Little Ones' is insanely jaunty, like somthing out of "Sesame Street" and one of the most enjoyable songs of the year. The rest of Receivers is equally buoyant. [Dec 20008, p.108]

His debut for Thurston Moore's label is another walk in the forest of heavy psych rock and avant folk, that blurs the boundaries between the timeless and traditional and the tres moderne. [Nov 2008, p.100]

While it frequently feels like a particularly inspired "Mighty Boosh" number, the absurd ambition, chutzpah and execution of it all is perfectly awesome. [Nov 2008, p.89]

Grainger's first solo outing swaps the lascivious intensity of his former outfit for a rakish new wave ramalam somewhere between Cheap Trick and The Strokes' "First Impression of Earth." [Apr 2009, p.86]

If Black Ice has a weakness, it’s that it betrays an anxiety. As if AC/DC really might be uncharacteristically worried that their grasp on the planet is in danger of slipping. As if they’ve tried to discreetly update their sound, while hoping that their rebarbative old fans won’t notice what they’ve done. Invincibility suits AC/DC. Self-doubt, even a microscopic hint of it, does not.

For newcomers, Is It The Sea? offers a neat summation of Oldham’s quiet industry, while it may just mark the turning point from his darker years.

It's ambitious, triumphantly executed stuff--melodically, lyrically, Tim Oxley-Rice is a vastly superior songsmith to Chris Martin--and will doubtless shortly be inescapable. But you can't shake the dispiriting feeling it might have all been expressly commissioned by Dave Cameron for the opening night of London 2012.

Little Honey is a heartening and humble album, sufficiently smart and aware to be an expression of thanks for the journey as well as the destination.

While ['You Are The Best Thing'] gets the LP off to a rousing start, the song also serves a thematic purpose by celebrating the pleasures and synergy of a smoothly functioning conjugal unit--an ideal that stands in stark contrast to the romantic torment that follows.

The material on what's intended to be her big breakthrough is however unispired. [Mar 2009, p.80]

Songs remain huge, sitting just the right side of overblown, ornate but never delicate, as if hewn from stainless steel. [Feb 2009, p.93]

For his last couple of albums, cowpunk songster Snider has pitched himself in the sort of satiracally confrontational and liberal-minded territory occuupied by Randy Newman or Steve Earle. Peace Queer follows that pattern. [Jan 2008, p.113]

The resulting hazy acoustic soundscapes are only a soft-shoe shuffle away from Caribou's neo-pyschedelia. [Dec 2008, p.108]

Her own songs are more intriguing, however; poetic mediations on love and its destructive powers, sung in a tremulous but intense voice. [Feb 2009, p.76]

It's Religious Knives' proto-PiL, art-punk minimalism and addiction to the motorik groove that mark them out as different. [Nov 2008, p.117]

This dispiriting posthumous EP suggests there was little life left or love lost. [Dec 2008, p.108]

The complete recording reveals many (until-now) hidden delights that we can enjoy in full. [Nov 2008, p.89]

This collaboration with Athens lo-fi specialists Elf Power isn't his most immediatly appealing set, but it's worth it just for 'Bilocating Dog,' a lovely shambles of a song with an absurd chorus. [Jan 2008, p.88]

Never self indulgent, this is enquiring music that's frequently beautiful. [Dec 2008, p.81]

Fucked Up Friends isn't that great of a departure from this year's "Eating Us." [Aug 2009, p.105]

Headhunter's laboratory productions are probably just a bit too clinical to transcend their genre. [Jn 2008, p.96]

Sounds alarmingly authentic to boot. [Nov 2008, p.102]

This is a hugely infectious debut. [Oct 2008, p.81]

The devil is in the detail--and Skinner's devilish side is his most appealing.[Oct 2008, p.108]

It's an uninspiring ending to a record that it's best faces up to some pretty downbeat truths and thus seems to fit right into the current national mood.