Wild Beasts summon up the ghosts of that decade’s [1980s] brainier, more flamboyant indie bands.

Yo La Tengo's 12th album finds them operating well within their comfort zone but it's no less delightful for the absence of envelopes being pushed. [Oct 2009, p.123]

Ignoring the misstep--'O Mensageiro'--this is a pleasure. [Oct 2009, p.106]

Everything Goes Wrong is almost sickeningly good: songs are tight, short and fun, none outstay their welcome, all leave something behind in your brain as they rush to completion on a wave of multi-layered vocals, euphoric guitars and wall-of-chrome production. [Oct 2009, p.119]

Fusing dub, psychedelic funk, prog, art rock and roots reggae with their native mbaqanga and township blues, they've fashioned a fresh (Afro) funky debut, politicized not sollely by colour, but also by their genre-bending vision. [Dec 2009, p. 87]

Still short on humanity, true, but possessed with an alien sort of beauty. [Oct 2009, p.98]

Puny production and fey, knowing, songwriting provide little to hook the attention. [Nov 2009, p.88]

As ever, the combination of sincerity and sentimentality is overpowering. [Oct 2009, p.89]

The results are gorgeous. [Oct 2009, p.112]

TMBG's nagging pop tunes are useful mnemonics, albeit irritating ones. But there is no reason why anybody over the age of eight should listen to this. [Jun 2010, p.100]

Something dignified and yearning arises from the mass of programmed details. [Sep 2009, p.88]

The pulse never rises above a heartbeat, but as the nine songs clock in at 34 minutes, the absence of tempo changes is barely noticed. [Oct 2009, p.112]

For the most part this is classic fuzzy heavy rock, bordering on self-parody but all done in good spirit. [Nov 2009, p.96]

Good fun. [July 2009, p.84]

For the Black Crowes, this is an inspired move, maximising their virtues (virtuosity, passion, guilelessness) and minimising their principal flaw (the fact that it all starts to feel a bit silly if you stop to think about it).

His blurry lullabies, full of crimson moons and devils' wings, carry a Biblical sense of foreboding and disquiet, somewhere between J Tillman and a more whiskery Neal Casal. [Dec 2009, p. 106]

"George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" "The Great Car Dealer War", and covers of Tom Petty's "Rebels" and Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" are among highlights of an album that many of the DBTs' peers would cheerfully claim as a career peak. [Jan 2010, p. 106]

It's a sincere but over-comfortable trawl-lovers of the man's rockin' fire will be disappointed. [Dec 2009, p. 92]

A rich, rowdy and mostly rewarding listen.

It's the skeletal accompaniment that lends the sound real brawn--primitive and intuitive, yet sophisticated at the same time. [Jun 2009, p.113]

Arctic Monkeys were never comfortable as the ‘voice of a generation’. Humbug subtly shrugs off that unwanted mantle, and in the same deft movement, promises a much more interesting future.

Fiendishly clever, but not easy to love. [Oct 2009, p.104]

Light is a dog's breakfast of weedy vocals, preachy platitudes and banal melodies that makes Sting sound like The Last Poets. [Jul 2010, p.112]

Jet's third album has the Guns N' Roses references to the fore, but is worryingly lacking in pizzazz. [Aug 2009, p.94]

Caillat has a sweet, clear voice and the songs are crisply tasteful ("Fallin' For You" is all hook) but rarely go beyond formula. [Nov 2009, p. 83]

It's grisly. [Sep 2009, p.90]

If the initial effect is underwhelming, after several plays you find the tunes have buried themselves in your head and layers of intriguing subtlety are revealed. [Aug 2009, p.98]