So while it's hard to quote a single memorable line, Yo Majesty's attitude is infectious. [Oct 2008, p.94]

A bargin it might be, but the triumphs of yore tend to expose the new album's low-fi rockabilly and country strums. [Jul 2009, p.95]

The Living And The Dead finds her broadening her palette, enlisting Tom Waits guitarist Marc Ribot to bring a miore rock flavour. It's only partially successful. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of his staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible, re-takes not merely the occasion for refinement, the honing of a song into static finality, but serial re-imaginings.

Pleasingly, the most difficult thing about the album is its name. [Dec 2008, p.116]

On Un Dia with her insistent, looped and latered frooves to the fore, her seductively dreamy voice is used as both rhythmic counter and complement. [Nov 2008, p.109]

The sextet's second effort is both an expression of their anarcho-punk fury and a declarartion of straight-edge commitment, but it's also a radical redrawing of hardcore's boundaries, that reanimates the genre with an aggressively intelligent jolt. [Nov 2008, p.96]

If you had Yamagata bagged as "winsome singer-songwriter," the breadth and ambition of this double-disc will knock you sideways. [Apr 2009, p.105]

Rosen and Nicolaus stride forth as songsmiths of a much more assured vintage, harp, piano, brass and chocolatey harmonies coming together in vividly orchestrated numbers. [Nov 2008, p.94]

Smart, cocksure and as cosmopolitan as New York itself, Live At Shea Stadium deserves a place amongst the greats.

This album is overflowing with ideas that the band don't have the means--or, indeed, the patience--to explore fully. [Feb 2009, p.85]

If it sounds suspiciously of coffee table, it is. But the coffee is freshly grounded, and thr table an elegant modernist sculpture. [Nov 2008, p.119]

The music on this debut is nutritionally meager powerpop. [Nov 2008, p.120]

Peer behind the pose, owever, and you'll find a sparky outfit whose towering tunes, such as 'Sun comes Up,' match their lofty ideas. [Sep 2008, p.115]

Folds' third solo album is filled with songs about breakups, laced with some low-key experimentalism and, of course, a lot of keyboard pounding. [Nov 2008, p.94]

There are flashes of thrilling chaos but all too often they are contained and subdued by fussy programming.

Constantly questing without ever becoming indulgent, 4 is intoxicating. [Nov 2008, p.94]

It proves a diverting tour round Seeger's perennial concerns. [Jan 2008, p.111]

There's a sense that he's doing little more than cobbling together offcuts from his recent stream of projects. [Dec 2008, p.105]

Out Of My Window shimmers like a heat haze. [Nov 2008, p.105]

Absentee's Dan Michaelson proves he could give Lee Hazlewood and Mark Lanegan a run for their money, but its not just his voice that plumbs depths. [Oct 2008, p.81]

A triptych of gauzy electro-country duests show what they can do when they shake off some of their self-conscious wackiness. [Dec 2008, p.92]

The only danger of such an exercise being the risk of tarnishing the legend. But there's no problem here. [dec 2008, p.100]

Pleasant, but utterly inessential. [Mar 2009, p.104]

As a studio album it's dull and rather pointless. [Dec 2008, p.116]

When ever Gordon Anderson admits to being "lost inside the chasms of my mind," therre seems little hope for the rest of us. [Nov 2008, p.87]

It all proves that Seasick Steve is at his strongest when he’s playing solo.

Sadly, Feed The Animals blends commercial US rap with rock classics with so little charm or skll, that even Jive Bunny is slightly annoyed you've used his name in vain. [Nov 2008, p.96]

Their debut reveals a band bristling with ideas who've taken the time to streamline their influences into a syrupy white funk. [Nov 2008, p.98]

Fine, but no surprises. [Oct 2008, p.101]

The four players are able to design the tracks in architectural detail, each part locking into the rest with unerring precission, and this tautness keeps the album from sagging through its most challenging stretch. [Oct 2008, p.78]

All are very good indeed.

The skeletal bluesy shuffles are easy to follow, but the likes of 'Avalanch In B' suggest a band lyrically happy to keep the unpleasantness in their woodshed under wraps. [Oct 2008, p.81]

Like most big pop groups, they're great at singles--Rodney Jerkins' 'When I Grow Up' fashionably disses fame-- but fail when it comes to albums. [Dec 2008, p.115]

Acid Tongue is imperfect, but nevertheless slightly more than halfway to astounding.

It is not hard to make fun of this band, even if you’re broadly sympathetic to their beliefs. But the atmosphere they create in their music is so heady, so insidious, so rooted in their environment and their Utopian ideals, that the whole package becomes compelling.

This is a much more laid-back collection of strangely alien desert music written in Hagerty's adopted home state of New Mexico and recorded in Texas. [Oct 2008, p.92]

Tennessee Pusher is comfortably up to standard, the demented Dylan pastiche, 'Alabama High-Test' a particular highlight. [Oct 2008, p.101]

It probably made for a more interesting theatrical experience than it does standalone album, but if the form--expressive, exaggerated musical drama--is a bit unfamiliar, then Albarn's insidious tunes are not. [Oct 2008, p.101]

They've come up with a non-vocal album that surprises and delights. [Nov 2008, p.112]

The pinnacle is the tidal rhythms of 'Sickness, Bury,' but there's plenty more here to admire and absorb. [Nov 2008, p.98]

The title song contains some lovely imagery enwrapped in one of Browne’s signature ribbons of melody, while the following 'Off Of Wonderland' is a wistful look back on the early days, but both are presented in arrangements so bland it’s shocking they passed muster.

It's all craftily entertaining, but loopy lead single 'Paris Is Burning' is the one track that escapes pastiche. [Oct 2008, p.94]

Tindersticks have returned refreshed, but some of the old dissolute glamour is gone.

Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Fnk's cracked baritone is brown sugar-sweet, '5 Years Time' is a hit, and the album's Jonathan Richman-esque gawkiness makes it double endearing. [Oct 2008, p.94]

Their rather timid approximation of prog lacks the charisma or gravitas required to persuade listeners that theirs is a cosmic expedition worth joining. [Sep 2008, p.100]

There's still an organic, soaring bluster to the music, too, though a shortage of obvious anthems this time. [May 2008, p.100]

The most initially striking thing about Gift Of Screws is that, despite its brevity, it’s actually quite varied.

But this band has no interest in putting everything in plain view; you have to meet them halfway, and that entails traversing bleak terrain on the way to sharing in their hard-earned sense of release. [Dec 2009, p. 98]

It's Saadiq's fine songs--notably the showstopping slow-jam 'Oh Girl'--that makes The Way I See It less a homage, more a timelessly enjoyable 42 minutes. [May 2009, p.97]

All are by turns playful, impassioned, and intelligent. [Oct 2008, p.118]

The languid vocal delivery does little to dispel the Dido comparisions of old, the polite and impassionate tones irking the listener even in the smallest does. [Mar 2009, p.89]

The pace is laidback and determinedly downtempo compared to some of their more rebarbative free rock releases. [Jan 2009, p.96]

This is music that was manufactured to be played everywhere except those places to which people go when they want to hear music. [Oct 2008, p.105]

Given a few spins, their hilarious, loopy, layered approach sinks in deep. [Dec 2008, p.124]

Like all the best heavy rock albums, it suspends your disbelief, demands your attention and connects directly with your inner adolescent.

Even at times it's over-polished, at the very least, it's super-sized. [July 2008, p.113]

Tricky is back with his best album in at least a decade.

Calexico are back, but this time they’re travelling all over the map. Carried to Dust is a quietly persuasive record.

Baez's worn voice retains its majesty, and also the sanctimony that has set so many teeth on edge over the years. [Oct 2008, p.81]

Tracks like 'Knickerbocker' or 'Pussyfooting' are complemented by David Best's whispering voice intoning gibberish lyrics and rhythmic vocal tics over maddeningly catchy riffs. [Oct 2008, p.90]

The Stand Ins stands out on its own merits, a trove of dazzlingly wittty songcraft. [Nov 2008, p.112]

A collection of nursery rhymes aimed at toddlers, it should prove nauseating to anyone over the age of three. [Nov 2008, p.92]

All elements are delivered with an easy, effortless roll--you suspect The Donkeys may turn out to be lions. [Oct 2008, p.83]

It's all very well intended, but seldom rises above the superficial. [Dec 2008, p.108]

There's plenty to fall for here, but the anguished, bongo-driven 'Love All Of' is especially irresitable. [Feb 2009, p.93]

A delicious pathos has sustained Jurado through seven albums. It's still intact but it's just possible to detect a lightning of his mood around rthe edges. [Nov 2008, p.105]

This album subtly expands her metrical, folksy songcraft to the point where songs like 'Heard It All Before' and 'Fireheads' are just one spoonfed breakbeat from being charttoppers. [Oct 2008, p.113]

The approach is scattershot, but the pace of his productivity means that you're never far from a great song. [Nov 2008, p.124]

The glossy production on this Montreal-based singer songwriter's second album makes it easy to overlook, but beneath the pedal-steel sheen of songs like 'Other Side' lies a real talent. [Sep 2008, p.88]

Joseph Mount and co have tried to narrow their focus, with 'My Heart Rate Rapid' and 'A Thing For Me' the most obvious benificaries of a new streamlined approach. elsewhere, however, an off-putting manic surrealism remains, which somehow feels like an act of self-sabotage. [Oct 2008, p.p.101]

It's the personal element that underpins this record's appeal. [Oct 2008, p.92]

There are very few other albums this year with as much force, verve, and sheer musical imagination as That Lucky Old Sun. [Sep 2008, p.84]

A mish-mash of tracks from or intended for film soundtracks, is mearly more of the same with added strings. [Sep 2008, p.109]

Joe Henry coaxes out his pithy, hard-bitten wisdom with unfussy production. [Oct 2008, p.98]

Now, at 52, Gelb’s music seems to have found a renewed vigour, a sharper focus. ProVISIONS not only has some lean 'n' lovely boy-girl ballads, wild mood swings and a frequent groove, but also a sense of intent.

Ploughing through the second disc's "Electronic Battle Weapons" techno jams is a stifling experience, punctuated by rushes of euphoria.

Smith sounds urgent, fresh and revitalised. [Sep 2008, p.100]

A hazy, boozy affair that threatens to collapse at any time but is buoyed by good-times psychedelic pub-rock chuugers. [Oct 2008, p.105]

Ten years on, that Britpop hangover won't shift. [Oct 2008, p.81]

Forth certainly makes it seem like they’ve never been away, the stench of those woeful Ashcroft solo albums extinguished.

Their ragged eclecticism is a winning one, taking detours into Ry Cooder slide-country, beat-up folk and starry desert ballads. [Sep 2008, p.98]

Brewis constructs songs with architectural scale and precision--in its own prim, nostalgic, English way, it’s pretty dazzling stuff.

Occasional, more straightforwardly anthemic moments approach the mawkishness of Nickelback, but Slipknot remain showmen at heart. [Oct 2008, p.108]

It's gratifying to hear this veteran crew sounding so scrappy. [Oct 2008, p.113]

A grandiose power metal pomposity that marshals such gusts of keyboard and flowery, Yngwie Malmsteen guitar duelling it basically feels like a climax strung out over 60 minutes; epic in short bursts, slightly tiring in the long haul. [Nov 2008, p.92]

Loose, raw, a bit funky, it illustrates the band's knack for creating new-but-classic-sounding songs and getting them down on disc with a sizzling live feel. [Aopr 2009, p.87]

Lemmy's chief inspiration is war, and this leads to some lyrically sticky moments. Generally, though, high spirits prevail. [Nov 2008, p.109]

The result is a rich, easy-rolling album that finds King's fingers still nimble and his megaphone voice barely creaking. [Dec 2008, p.100]

Fed is beautifully excessive, ornamented with dazzling soul/pop arrangements. [Sep 2008, p.114]

"We return to find a pile of broken kitten bits" they trill on 'GOOJFC,' which may be as succinct an image of their fractured whimsydelia as you'll get. [Sep 2008, p.85]

Youth Novels attampts to repeat the trick [the single 'Little Bit'] 13 more times, with varying degrees of sucess. [July 2008, p.103]

Their combination of new wave rhythms, with such conspicuous use if strings is impressive, but it falls a little short of grandeur. [Oct 2008, p.105]

With a new album of the less pop material from these same sessions due later this year, let's hope for some new mutations.

Johnny Whitney's helium-pumped, Brian Molko-meets-Freddie Mercury squeal is very much an acquired taste--perhaps for some it will prove insufficuently offset by his bandmates' post-punk adventurism. [Sep 2008, p.92]

Guitars still sound like they were recorded in an igloo, while the singer's Dylan obsession only really pays off on woozy waltz 'Red Moon,' assisted by Matt Barrick's skeletal drum accompaniment. [Nov 2008, p.128]

[They've delivered] a spawling 70-minute opus devoid of drive or inspiration. [Oct 2008, p.83]