Humanely crafted, with a warmth unusual in the avant-garde. [Jun 2004, p.96]

Everything they do is infused with an undeniable, albeit sometimes unfathomable, psychedelic spirit. [Mar 2004, p.92]

The instrumental palette is more wide-ranging in a subtler, more subversive manner. [Apr 2004, p.96]

Stevens' strumming often has an unworldly quality that transcends folk archetypes. [Apr 2004, p.92]

Deerhoof's skittish collages always, miraculously, have a pop logic to them, and their desire to show that experimental music can be playful rather than forbidding is often heroic. [Jul 2004, p.102]

As wilfully indulgent as it is breathtakingly advanced. [Apr 2004, p.101]

NIO seem more intent on gazing at shoes than stars. [Apr 2004, p.92]

Where on 2001's Lack of Communication their cranked-up Stoogeisms were adorably desperate, here they're glibly glamorous, energised by a Pixies-like concision. [Mar 2004, p.87]

What's most frightening is that, mighty as Desperate Youth... is, their real stone killer is probably yet to come. [Jul 2004, p.100]

An acquired taste. [Jan 2005, p.124]

Think swoonsome pop at its most non-cynical but with a left-field twist. [Aug 2004, p.98]

For all the influences, their voice is uniquely, gently mad. [Mar 2004, p.88]

Liars' aim is to challenge the listener with their gruelling strangeness. [Apr 2004, p.101]

Casts them as confident modern classicists. [Dec 2003, p.126]

Arguably slight at first, it rewards repeat listening as its seductive, heartfelt stories unfurl. [Mar 2004, p.90]

Tough, funky and proud, she sounds like she could have been the new Aretha. [Feb 2004, p.87]

Full of surprising songs with some cracking tunes that step far outside the punk-funk-grunge-metal formula of the Chili Peppers. [Mar 2004, p.99]

The combination of tinkling pianos, gutsy strum and homespun wisdom places this very much in the middle of the road. [Apr 2004, p.92]

Delivered via rolling, thunderous rhythms--part Can, part Black Sabbath--moody synths and mournfully melodic guitar, using the slow-build-to-explosion method. [Apr 2004, p.91]

Yoshimi's ebullience is inescapable on Kila Kila Kila, from the gymnastic drumming to her ecstatic, Bjorkesian yelps. [Apr 2004, p.106]

Draws intelligently on its sources, revealing itself as more than mere pastiche. [Nov 2004, p.108]

In ditching the band ethic, they've tapped into the finest folk gothic traditions of death, suffering, misery and hardship and fashioned a paradoxically uplifting, transformative record of extraordinary power. [Album of the Month, Jul 2003, p.110]

It's a calmer, less ambitious album than 2001's All This Sounds Gas, but no less beguiling. [Mar 2004, p.92]

Wagner has achieved a fusion of the outgoing, string-driven country-soul heard on 2000's Nixon... and the reluctant intimacy of 2002's low-key Is A Woman. [combined review of both discs; Feb 2004, p. 68]

It's not hard to work out that these two albums really do function as a double, and certainly represent the group's most complete work to date. [combined review of both discs; Feb 2004, p. 68]

A functional selection of unspectacular power pop with the odd pastoral bit. [Mar 2004, p.102]

Yes, it's an unchallenging and even deeply conservative record. But its class is positively aristocratic. [Mar 2004, p.99]

Think Randy Newman crooned in a voice like Peggy Lee and delivered with the panache of Rufus Wainwright. [Sep 2004, p.96]