Come Down With Me seems slightly out of step in 2010, harking back to a time at the turn of the millennium where Tortoise and Tarwater were still the names to drop, but you can nonetheless appreciate its glistening geometry. [Mar 2010, p.84]

In danger of becoming a Loose Tubes for the ATp generation, this once fleetfooted group have blundered into a vat of fudge. [Feb 2010, p.89]

By the time the 11-minute whalesong finale "Cease To Know" creeps to its overdue conclusion, the prevailing mood of impeccably tasteful introspection is choking. [May 2010, p.88]

Some tracks sail a little too far into MOR but Meiburg takes care to balance these out with more robust moments. [Mar 2010, p.95]

Ronson fatigue will probably prove his undoing, but this is a very good album. [May 2009, p.87]

The resultant mash-up of Noughties Brooklyn cool and Flaming Lips grand folly can exhilarare, but there is also a worrying tendency for Magic Chairs to strain for significance like Coldplay. [Mar 2010, p.84]

Their latest was recorded in Berlin and Iceland, with whichever musicians were around at the time, lending Newcombe's whacked-out psychedelia cum space/drone rock a stoned-jam feel that doesn't always work to the songs' advanatge. [Apr 2010, p.83]

While never denying the quavering fragility of his voice, these arrangements, sympathetic, spartan, largely acoustic, frame what remains so it's only the strength--Cash's abiding defining characteristic--that you hear. [Apr 2010, p.89]

Happily, the music Stewart's art rock collective make on their seventh studio LP tells a more playful and diverse story, incorporating vivid punktronica, delicate ambient moodscapes and icy chamber-pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to "Ys," and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. [Apr 2010, p.82]

Now bolstered by Joanna Bolme of The Jicks on bass, American Gong feels like a calculated attempt to juice up thier smart, literate rock. [Apr 2010, p.97]

If Matt Pike's current group High On Fire are a little less singular than Om, in thrall to the dark trash of Slayer and Celtic Frost, five albums have semn them chisel out their own grizzled, imposing image. [May 2010, p.90]

Plenty of musicians have subsequently tried to channel that weirdness. Rose, though, always seemed to explore ancient territory with vigour and good humour on his records - and Luck In The Valley, his last, is one of the best.

Fears that Sitek's heavy hand will smother Miranda's songs, though, are largely dispelled. [Mar 2010, p.88]

Fine fully fledged songs share space with fragmentary 'interludes,' creepy half-songs, found sounds and noodlings. It could be irritatingly incomplete , but there's much to recommend it. [Mar 2010, p.107]

It's pleasantly winsome, sweetly aranged, but Anna Persson lacks the lugubrious voal presence of Traceyanne Campbell, and you long for sme of the sauce r spirit that inspires a group to name themselves in honour of a Serge Gainsbourg song. [Apr 2010, p.97]

Despite the laudable ambitions of the arrangements, Fray's mundane eye-witness vignettes become wearying. [Mar 2010, p.82]

Their accomplished bluegrass, folk and country hybrid expresses the heartache familiar to fans of Will Oldham and Damien Rice. [Nov 2009, p.94]

So, no startling change of pace, direction or feel, then. Instead, what Tindersticks sound like on this subtly strong album is a band with restored self-belief, again loving doing what they do better than anyone else.

He couches this misery in beautiful arrangements, writing on the piano, orchestrating with strings, and pitching his ambition somewhere between Serge Gainsbourg and Todd Rundgren. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Musically it's toytown folk, like Jonathan Richman with out the complicated buts, but Green's narrative lyrics grow increasingly weird and witty, recalling early '70s Lou Reed. [Feb 2010, p.86]

While Efrim Menuck will never be a technically great singer, his fiery, hopeful delivery here marks a career best. [Mar 2010, p.96]

The Brewis brothers may be at odds with the modern world, but in this stunningly realised double album, they've created the ultimate sanctuary.

Insular, claustrophobic, projecting a brittle vulnerability, Peace & Love requires some listner patience. [Mar 2010, p.86]

They're not quite as cerebral as Vampire Weekend, but Camera Talk and Cards & Quarters are studded with synapse-snapping shifts in tempo and tone, making this record the place to be as the year ends. [Dec 2009, p.119]

Arch novelty rather than post-modern profundity, then, but it's a damn sight smarter than the Barron Knights ever were. [Feb 2010, p.84]

Odd Blood comes a cropper at times, but mostly this is an involving album of vivid weirdo pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

It isn't a coincidence that this, Hot Chip's most focused album, is also their finest--more ruthless editing in future will doubtless yield even more spectacular results.