It's frequently infuriating and sometimes amateurish, but nevertheless adds up to the most succinct introduction yet to the wonderul warped world of the Friedbergers. [Oct 2008, p.86]

This cosmic suite evokes a steamy union between Vangelis and Santana, and is Lindstrom's strongest work by far. [Oct 2008, p.96]

Wainwright’s vocals imbue the material with a mixture of world-weariness, compassion and delight, qualities that didn’t loom large in the emotional lexicon of his younger self.

A Beautifu;l record. [Feb 2009, p.88]

It contains some amusing satires, some witty observations about the degeneration of rap and some why-oh-why philosophising. Some beats are a little dated. [Dec 2008, p.94]

If you've already worn out your copy of "Stay Positive," this is surely your next stop. [Jan 2008, p.94]

Her creamy voice canters over deft fingerpicked guitars and celtic violin throughout the rest of the album, and although the heights of the aforementioned song are barely hinted at elsewhere, Marling’s promise--she’s just 17 years old--is as clear as spring water.

While he doesn't quite kick like he used to, Weaver's lugubrious voice and ear for the creepiness inherent in old-time folk make for an engrossing listen. [Sep 2008, p.98]

For all their faults, The Levellers will happily go where other feat to tread. [Sep 2008, p.92]

It’s proof that, when he escapes from awkward, self-conscious navel-gazing, Oberst can be a songwriter of some note.

Newman is at his most affecting when he plays it mercilessly straight: his flickers of sincerity all the more beguiling for only appearing rarely.

A blend of delicate, hypnotic electr-folk and pulsating prog--a tantalizing treat. [Sep 2008, p.99]

TATE's debut touches on Stooges garage rock, sultry blues, Strokesian pop, all swaddled in opulent Americana. [Mar 2009, p.87]

Vandervelde's second album only really hits its stride in the six-minute centerpiece 'Someone Like You.' [Oct 2008, p.114]

Toth's chimeric qualities are still evident. [Oct 2008, p.113]

Alice delivers his best album in decades. [Oct 2008, p.83]

Oh! Mighty Engine is typically whimsical, low key and surprisingly touching (when you can make out what he is singing). [Oct 2008, p.90]

The chilly disco-noir aesthetic of early 1980s synth-pop provides the musical hinterland, all monophonic squelch and analogue modernism. [Aug 2008, p.85]

Occasionally they break from formula, but the tired beats and repetitive rhymes ensure Double Bubble would have even a Full Moon Party shaking their heads. [Sep 2008, p.104]

This long-awaited follow-ups sees them improvising live as a quintet, with a few overdubs. [Sep 2008, p.100]

Subtract [a couple of stinkers] and you have something of a minor masterpiece--and easily Weller’s finest solo album to date.

Life Processes sounds like mice playing Hundred Reasons covers. [May 2008, p.95]

There's some interesting things going on here.... Sadly, Bernard Butler's production often feels thin and tinny, which isn't just sad, but avoidable, too. [Aug 2008, p.92]

Two years of constant touring, countless festivals, a loss of a member (bassplayer Ira) and the addition of Gwen Stefani's producer, and something's gone awry.

Dr. Dog have stepped up to the plate for the fifth album and hits a homer. [Sep 2008, p.88]

Canning's default setting is a distorted, drone-laden, melodic indie rock that recalls My Bloody Valentine or Sonic Youth, but he also goes off on some interesting tangents. [Oct 2008, p.81]

It’s too blunt, messy and reverent to be up there with their best, but you hope that it also serves a secondary function: to clear the decks for one last magnificent tilt at rock deification on album number ten.

Staggeringly good.

Their first album without guitarist Bruce Gilbert draws on their strength as writers of nuanced pop, producing, in the mellow rumble of 'One Of Us,' 'Mekon Headman' and Perspex Icon,' a few more for the next Best Of.

Bleak but brilliant. [Nov 2008, p.109]

Most compelling are the variety of vocals--some spoken, some hollered, some sung in spinetingling harmonies. [Sep 2008, p.98]

This fourth offering crams 14 tracks into half an hour and sounds like a sketchbook of ideas rather than a fully formed expression of any kind. [Nov 2008, p.128]

So Beck is finally fun again, and you suspect the person most surprised by how well Modern Guilt turned out is the guy who made it.

None of it is in any sense inspired, and Hammond tries his hand at that Swiss-finishing-school skank once too often, but many tracks here could comfortably make it onto First Impressions of Earth.

Willie's laidback voice is on top form, and for once, Wynton's garrulous trumpet takes a back seat, leaving space for some smart interjections from Mickey Rafael's harmonica and Walter Blanding's tenor sax. [Aug 2008, p.100]

The new LP gradually casts a powerful spell. [Aug 2008, p.106]

The result is strangely enervating. [Aug 2008, p.103]

Nude with Boots follows their last album, 2006's "(A) Senile Animal," in being one of the most straightforward, epically rawk albums of the Melvins' career. [Aug 2008, p.99]

It's a stunning performance, drawing fire from Smith's stentorian performance, providing the ballast for the voyage of her Rimbaudian drunken boat. [Aug 2008, p.104]

Aside from the roistering music, what makes this ultimately so appealing is they way McCaughey and Wynn universalise their subject.

Her rapping/singing is insightful, stroppy and hilarious. [Oct 2008, p.96]

Blood, Looms, And Blooms finds the much-missed producer back on track after personal tragedy, peddling her strongest work to date. [Aug 2008, p.96]

Skeleton romps along at a joyful gait peppered with breathless harmonies and squalls of noise and subverts some familiar tools along the way. [Nov 2008, p.87]

Without recourse to crossover tricks, it's arguably more consistent than 50's last outing, although topics--guns, beef, money--may leave you wondering what rap has become. [Oct 2008, p.90]

Dig beneath the murky punk riffs (“Chinese Dogs”) and difficult time signatures (“Buzzards And Crows”) however, and you uncover a lyricist of rare promise, at his best when he’s on home turf.

This is inventive harkening, not witless revivalism. [Apr 2008, p.90]

Often stunning, but arguably also a little too knowing and shallow. [Aug 2008, p.108]

Sadly the album’s latter stages revert to type, as Jónsi Birgisson’s quavering choirboy falsetto illuminates glacially paced piano and strings. All achingly lovely in a Coldplay-meets-Clannad way, of course, but Sigur Ros play too safe when they clearly have much more to offer than misty-eyed Celtic abstraction.

With strong ensemble backing Escovedo alternates gentle, reflective lullabies with incendiary Mott-styled rockers, to marvellous effect. [Aug 2008, p.93]

Their wispy, diaphanous reworking of The Cure’s 'Just Like Heaven' suggests the Watson formula could travel far.

Their resolutely adolescent outlook is set to the usual thunderous drums, fiddly-widdly guitars and fist-pumping choruses, though none possessing the magnificent dumb charm of '89's 'Kickstart My Heart.' [Oct 2008, p.101]

This serves notice that the recent Wu-Tang renaissance may now be at an end. [Sep 2008, p.100]

Catchy as hell. [Oct 2008, p.90]

Ultimately, Workout Holiday is a party record for thinking people, and it’s a smart time to join them.

From there [after the title track and 'Out of Dreams'], though, the tunes disappear into a black hole of generic Liverpudlian guitar pop. [July 2008, p.100]

However unappetizing it may first appear, this is grimly funny food for thought.

When it's not straining for Significance, though, Viva La Vida is often rather lovely.

The Devil, You + Me is no milestone of experimentation, but The Notwist win extra points with their emotional restraint, lyrical maturity and elegantly complex arrangements. [Aug 2008, p.101]

Lyrically, there's little to cling onto, but it's not inconceivable a song like 'Soldier's Grin' could see them follow labelmates The Shins into indie ubiquity. [Sep 2008, p.115]

In terms of breath-snatching bravura, Worden shines very brightly indeed. [July 2008, p.105]

Gwen Stefani should be nervous. [Oct 2008, p.105]

Five years in gestation, these revved-up anthems are fuctional enough, but none have the catchy ska-punk bounce of the band's late 1990s commercial peak. [Sep 2008, p.99]

Unavailability has also played its part in pumping up the myth – so much so that you wonder if, heard in 2008, these songs stand to disappoint. In fact, key moments of Pacific Ocean Blue square dramatically up to your loftiest expectations.

Their third LP reveal a sweary rock toughness that suits them (surprisingly) well. [Nov 2008, p.120]

Even when they slow up, the quality doesn't let up. [Sep 2008, p.100]

This is where the kid really comes into his own.

Nicholas clearly isn't finished with us yet, judging by Silent Cry's pint-in-the-air riffing, chiming playlist-pop and brooding social commentary. [Aug 2008, p.93]

'Fire' and 'Drugs' certainly boasts the head-in-the-speakers mania of old, but it's the more meditative 'Vision' that suggests a future beyond Rizla conventions. [July 2008, p.104]

Veering between faux-soul and Hoxton hipness, Adele simply hasn't found her own voice yet.

Apply megawatt tunes and career-best performances and you’ve got an album to top even 2002’s criminally neglected "Life On Other Planets."

It's a concept album about vengeance and contempt, and reminds that they're one of the only UK bands of their era still worth following. [June 2008, p.86]

Wainwright is newly hitched herself (to producer Brad Albetta) and I Know... is for the most part a decidedly mature singer-songwriter album.

If 2005's "Z" flirted with cautiously with funk synths and a more direct pop sound, Evil Urges makes it a full-blown, messy tryst.

Pollard fleshes out his vaguely familiar melodies with inventive, unpredictably expansive arrangements. [July 2008, p.108]

It's the no-frills productions like 'Not As We' which stand out, although these are marred by the lyrics--a mess of self-help-manual platitudes and environmentally minded bollocks. [July 2008, p.104]

Harris is as proud, painful, and plaintive as ever here, dripping with life and dealing in dire certainties. But she never gets heavy about it, and in places sounds lighter than air.

In which the prince of hip hop get a blessing from the king. [Sep 2008, p.110]

Not for everyone, but quite a party. [July 2008, p.94]

Together [Dylan and Rick Rubin] have made an austere acoustic album that could've been titled "American Recordings VI." [June 2008, p.87]

Voice and piano are to the fore, but Wasser's orchestrations pulse and ebb like living things. [July 2008, p.102]

A partnership with Cologne's minimal techno doyens Kompakt hasn't quite posited the outfit back at the cutting edge, but The Dream steps with a new vitality. [Mar 2008, p.96]

The follow-up--featuring a mere 13 songs--is solid and functional, but lacks that inspired edge. [Aug 2008, p.106]

She reinvents the standards songbook in her image, using her deep, husky, Malboro-burnished voice to breathe life intro hackneyed old showtunes. [July 2008, p.115]

It is, like LA itself, heavy on style. [Sep 2008, p.88]

Mostly sounds like a weary retread of 2005's superb Loneliness. [Jul 2006, p.95]

Sadly, though, nothing on The Ting Tings debut album quite lives up to that promise [of 'That's Not My Name']. [June 2008, p.94]

Much of it is overly polite, with Ilhan taming the hurt in PJ Harvey's 'Oh My Lover,' but he also teases mourful hidden nuances from Breeders, Smashing Pumkins and Tortoise tracks. [June 2008, p.83]

There are fewer surprises here than on previous offerings, but enough ideas to cement their position as this generation's most creative guitar band. [June 2008, p.90]

It's perhaps inevitable Ladytron sound as if they're going through the motion on this solid fourth album. [July 2008, p.102]

Starting with irresistible lead single 'Pork and Beans', a chunk of Weezer’s sixth album delivers the band’s trademark combo of crushing power chords, pop-culture references and a healthy dose of ironic self-ridicule.

Her decision to forgo electric guitars on @#%&*! Smilers results in the aural equivalent of watercolour washes, lovely and tasteful but lacking presence. [July 2008, p.102]

The New York threesome have just about enough tunes to pull it off. [Jun 2009, p.93]

Like the equally rapturous "Sun Giant" EP which preceded it, Fleet Foxes' debut album is a fastidious, sometimes overwhelmingly pretty evocation of the American wilderness; a dreamy companion piece to last month's superb Bon Iver album.

From clanging rock songs to eerie ambient pieces to sensual acoustic reveries, it's all highly detailed and perfectly weighted. [Aug 2008, p.98]

Growls and blast-beats come decorated with guitar work that explores scale after scale of diabolical pleasures. [Aug 2008, p.101]

This is too timid for modern R&B, too bland to rival Blige, and won't halt the sharp decline since 2003's "Rock Wit U." [Sep 2008, p.110]

It's appealing stuff--Lil Wayne is a fan--while the pair's wit suggests they'll continue to stay ahead of the critical curve. [Sep 2008, p.85]

While they are at their most comfortable when laying down the ZZ Top meets Black Flag hardcore boogie of 'Skull Socks and Rope Shoes,' it's difficult not to be charmed by their wit, style and salute to Southern rock. [Sep 2008, p.89]