If it sounds suspiciously of coffee table, it is. But the coffee is freshly grounded, and thr table an elegant modernist sculpture. [Nov 2008, p.119]

The music on this debut is nutritionally meager powerpop. [Nov 2008, p.120]

Peer behind the pose, owever, and you'll find a sparky outfit whose towering tunes, such as 'Sun comes Up,' match their lofty ideas. [Sep 2008, p.115]

Folds' third solo album is filled with songs about breakups, laced with some low-key experimentalism and, of course, a lot of keyboard pounding. [Nov 2008, p.94]

There are flashes of thrilling chaos but all too often they are contained and subdued by fussy programming.

Constantly questing without ever becoming indulgent, 4 is intoxicating. [Nov 2008, p.94]

It proves a diverting tour round Seeger's perennial concerns. [Jan 2008, p.111]

There's a sense that he's doing little more than cobbling together offcuts from his recent stream of projects. [Dec 2008, p.105]

Out Of My Window shimmers like a heat haze. [Nov 2008, p.105]

Absentee's Dan Michaelson proves he could give Lee Hazlewood and Mark Lanegan a run for their money, but its not just his voice that plumbs depths. [Oct 2008, p.81]

A triptych of gauzy electro-country duests show what they can do when they shake off some of their self-conscious wackiness. [Dec 2008, p.92]

The only danger of such an exercise being the risk of tarnishing the legend. But there's no problem here. [dec 2008, p.100]

Pleasant, but utterly inessential. [Mar 2009, p.104]

As a studio album it's dull and rather pointless. [Dec 2008, p.116]

When ever Gordon Anderson admits to being "lost inside the chasms of my mind," therre seems little hope for the rest of us. [Nov 2008, p.87]

It all proves that Seasick Steve is at his strongest when he’s playing solo.

Sadly, Feed The Animals blends commercial US rap with rock classics with so little charm or skll, that even Jive Bunny is slightly annoyed you've used his name in vain. [Nov 2008, p.96]

Their debut reveals a band bristling with ideas who've taken the time to streamline their influences into a syrupy white funk. [Nov 2008, p.98]

Fine, but no surprises. [Oct 2008, p.101]

The four players are able to design the tracks in architectural detail, each part locking into the rest with unerring precission, and this tautness keeps the album from sagging through its most challenging stretch. [Oct 2008, p.78]

All are very good indeed.

The skeletal bluesy shuffles are easy to follow, but the likes of 'Avalanch In B' suggest a band lyrically happy to keep the unpleasantness in their woodshed under wraps. [Oct 2008, p.81]

Like most big pop groups, they're great at singles--Rodney Jerkins' 'When I Grow Up' fashionably disses fame-- but fail when it comes to albums. [Dec 2008, p.115]

Acid Tongue is imperfect, but nevertheless slightly more than halfway to astounding.

It is not hard to make fun of this band, even if you’re broadly sympathetic to their beliefs. But the atmosphere they create in their music is so heady, so insidious, so rooted in their environment and their Utopian ideals, that the whole package becomes compelling.

This is a much more laid-back collection of strangely alien desert music written in Hagerty's adopted home state of New Mexico and recorded in Texas. [Oct 2008, p.92]

Tennessee Pusher is comfortably up to standard, the demented Dylan pastiche, 'Alabama High-Test' a particular highlight. [Oct 2008, p.101]

It probably made for a more interesting theatrical experience than it does standalone album, but if the form--expressive, exaggerated musical drama--is a bit unfamiliar, then Albarn's insidious tunes are not. [Oct 2008, p.101]