A fascinating document... Only select morsels, though... will make your GBV mix tape. [Jan 2006, p.120]

The Gris Gris are a challenging, intense proposition. [Jan 2006, p.113]

The best you can say is that it's a great marketing ploy. [Dec 2005, p.112]

It seems something of a hollow exercise. [Feb 2006, p.72]

An outstanding record which you'd be unwise to miss. [Aug 2004, p.91]

What little humanity Colder once possessed has been erased. [Jul 2005, p.96]

Lookaftering is some kind of miracle. [Nov 2005, p.100]

If last year's engrossing, infuriating Blueberry Boat revealed the Friedbergers as a uniquely strange and perversely ambitious proposition, Rehearsing My Choir, remarkably, trumps it, striking a chord of real feeling alongside the pell-mell fabulation. [Dec 2005, p.110]

What elevates Rogue Wave above the pale massed ranks of the wispy and fey, though, are melodies with real muscle, and a muscial ambition that flirts with the experimental, but remains joyously within reach of the FM dial. [Dec 2005, p.112]

The songs often seem over-anxious to build to show-stopping choruses. [Nov 2005, p.94]

Feels depends on a balancing act between brilliance and whimsy, and some may need convincing that a purposely childlike band... is not twee. [Nov 2005, p.110]

Occasionally, they lapse into their own shuffling comfort zone, but there's always a pixel-level attention to detail here. [Nov 2005, p.102]

A pleasant surprise: engaging, exciting, and a much better album than most bands can muster after 25 years together. [Nov 2005, p.106]

A moody and restrained affair. [Oct 2005, p.108]

Their heaviest to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

A surreal, tender, revealing record. [Nov 2005, p.104]

Good enough that you barely notice Macca, Prince and the other obligatory guests. [Dec 2005, p.100]

In general, the album's too bare, reserved and repetitive to be easily loved by many. But it is brave, from a man still in motion. [Oct 2005, p.104]

A curiously anemic listen. [Feb 2006, p.78]

Beguiling. [Oct 2005, p.107]

The world is certainly overdue proper acquaintance with The Constantines. [Nov 2005, p.98]

This is MF Doom's most accessible moment to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

The Runners Four displays intuitive melody and a childlike disregard for convention that's captivating enough to overcome any saccharine tendencies. [Dec 2005, p.116]

The album's meandering latter stages drag a little, but overall Cinder provides a grand musical landscape. [Nov 2005, p.114]

Neither embarrassing nor unenjoyable, then, but still an exercise bearing a cautionary sting. [Nov 2005, p.98]

Keys hasn't the charisma to indulge in the inter-song banter here, which breaks up any soulful flow that might develop despite her sharp, hectoring vocals. [Jan 2006, p.108]

A work of rejuvenating power on which Weller and his long-serving band attain a new sense of purpose and focus. [Nov 2005, p.94]

Starts powerfully... [but] fizzles out with corny ballads. [Nov 2005, p.111]