Audioslave is weighed down by Cornell's po-faced bellow, and it goes on 20 minutes too long. [Feb 203, p.79]

Thomas' lyrics are too frequently overwraught. [Mar 2003, p.98]

An album that, on first listen, glides by doing nothing wrong. Second time around, you realise that, more accurately, it's doing everything right, and you're spellbound. [Jun 2003, p.92]

A couple of songs could do with more melody and less of Mike McCready's spidery guitar breaks. [Dec 2002, p.132]

Collins... sounds dated with his glossy production, precision session-playing and radio-friendly songs all done by numbers with a great big hole where a heart should be. [Dec 2002, p.129]

When she's raised the stakes so high, anything less than the reinvention of music comes as a disappointment. [Jan 2003, p.122]

We've heard too much of this before. [Jan 2003, p.119]

The four tracks involving [Lopes] are superb.... Elsewhere, they audibly struggle. [Jan 2003, p.119]

Occup[ies] the same sonic territory as The Dandy Warhols' underrated Come Down. [Aug 2003, p.108]

A dozen vivid and deeply personal songs.... Gray has made a record that anybody who cares about great songwriting should hear. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Her best record yet. [Jun 2002, p.107]

May be the most consistent of the four albums to date. [Jan 2003, p.122]

Arguably, not since early Costello has a British solo artist combined such bare-arsed soulfulness with such corrosively perceptive humour. Quite something. [Album of the Month, Nov 2002, p.112]

Incompetent satire. [Apr 2003, p.106]

Much of the album is like 1980 revisited and updated. [Jan 2003, p.115]

Uplifting but ultimately lightweight. [Dec 2002, p.132]

Innovations are few.... Still, when these nocturnes, crescendos and intimations of apocalypse remain so musically rich and emotionally powerful, it seems churlish to demand more. [Dec 2002, p.130]

The music here is intimate yet remote. [Dec 2002, p.140]

This is audaciously modern in its textural absorption of outre sounds from the 21st-century dance underground. [Dec 2002, p.136]

A frighteningly powerful record. [Jan 2003, p.124]

Despite the lacerating electro-glam of "Total All Out Water" and "Sheez Minie," it's melodic as hell. [Nov 2002, p.121]

One of Amos' most deeply felt, spiritually astute and finest albums. [Dec 2002, p.138]

Finally finding a palatable singing voice, too, the musical acuity shown here still places him very much in front of guitar-hero peers like John Squire and Bernard Butler. [Dec 2002, p.129]

The guests are more intriguing than the material. [Dec 2002, p.152]

Saint Etienne's most far-reaching album since Fox Base Alpha. [Nov 2002, p.124]

The arrangements are banal, but the tunes are exquisite, and his voice, more worn now, is recorded intimately. [Dec 2002, p.148]

He sounds like a man lost amid his own vast record collection. [June 2003, p.109]

The joyous hooks and choruses remain, but they're tempered by a welcome moodiness. [Dec 2002, p.129]