It is not only Wild Beats' finest album to date, but one of the best you're likely to hear all year. [Jun 2011, p.90]

Like Ill Communication, it's a superbly paced album, its felicitous stylistic juxtapositions the product of judicious cut-and-paste. [Jun 2011, p.89]

It's an album inspired by Camus that's never less than intense. It;s also overwrought, as the taciturn voice and glum lyrics wrestle for space with manically busy strings and an unfortunate folk feel. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Four vocal tracks serve to make the LP more than a masterclass in groove-ology. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Let Them Talk is competent and heartfelt but far from necessary. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Black Sun is subdued and ruminative: snaking around dancehall, grime, hip hop, but holding fast to its own uniqueness. [Jun 2011, p.87]

It's solid stuff. But he's got a way to go to rise above his influences. [Jun 2011, p.86]

Too many songs like "Spiral" lapse into mere pleasantness, but the clockwork body music of tracks like "Middle" and "Lady Luck" is compelling. [Jun 2011, p.86]

Sincere but Hokey homilies test the patience, but she brings imaginative vocal skills and real life experiences to "White Room," which displays a certain determined character. [Jun 2011, p.86]

They rise to each other's challenges surprisingly well, with sinuous lo-fi beats brushing against saxes, woodwinds and vintage synths. [Jun 2011, p.96]

Unquestionably, it is beautifully done. [Jun 2011, p.80]

Somewhat Gothic, but for all its dark corners, this debut gleams with a pop lustre. [Jun 2011, p.77]

Jaar, the son of conceptual artist Alfredo Jaar, can weave a heady spell, presenting himself somewhere between David Byrne and Ricardo Villalobos. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Inspired by the memory of departed friends, it sits midway between Cave's grand guignol, and the sweet hurt of Robert Forster. [Jun 2011, p.85]

The snarling Creedence-style rock is typical, but Golightly also does beautifully as a balladeer on "River Of Tears." [Jun 2011, p.85]

Eye Contact works because its bolshie drum patterns and metallic synth stabs, influenced by Jamaican dancehall and UK bass music, anchor it firmly in the near future, while Lizzie Bougastsos' strong and inventive melodies help make light work of what could come across like a pretentious muddle. [Jun 2011, p.85]

It's largely composed of pretty humdrum strum and twang, defining The Feelies less as the missing link between The Modern Lovers and Vampire Weekend, more as the founders of '80s college rock ordinaire. [Jun 2011, p.82]

They have come remarkably close to achieving the contoured crispness and in-your-face immediacy of their greatest achievement. [Jun 2011, p.79]

This still-teenage quartet writes heady songs that luxuriate in bubbling electronics, lagoon-diving reverb and layered harmonies. [Jun 2011, p.79]

The noise they make is thrilling. [Jun 2011, p.78]

Sickly aspiring novelist turned singer-songwriter Mikel Jollett can knock out a powerful anthem, but his relentless yearning choruses and chiming guitar harmonies ring rather hollow as signifiers of emotion. [Jun 2011, p.77]

Raw in texture but ambitious in scope. [May 2011, p.86]

This follow-up is chillier though no less stately, informed as it is by the recent death of her father. [May 2011, p.96]

It's hard to imagine a less workable hybrid than antifolk and disco pop--respect to Deez, then, for not simply avoiding disaster but also making music of a dangerously infectious nature. [May 201, p.86]

Black Noise was the most seductive techno album of last year, and it probably deserves better than this somewhat perfunctory remix comp. [May 2011, p.93]

The stand-out, though, is the epic "The Little Death (In Five Parts)" which mixes AC/DC pyrotechnics with a sexually charged rhythm section. [May 2011, p.80]

It is, at 78 tracks, quite a meal. But fine work lies within. [May 2011, p.96]

Throughout, his instrument is recorded so close, it practically lassos your ear with its strings. [May 2011, p.94]