The diversity isn't as effortless, but the pushier, poppier beats dislodge A&M from their polite safety zone. [Apr 2009, p.58]

The outfit dispels any virtuoso vibe with their joyous absurdism. [Jun 2007, p.104]

This album is luxuriously, fantastically gay, a nod to the origins of disco, when the music was known for its queer fan base as much as anything else. [July 2008, p.73]

Folding in lean funk, tender arias and as many catchy tunes as West Side Story, Ze makes his cryptic polemic perfectly enticing. [Jul 2006, p.105]

The hooks come off-kilter and all killer.

Sounds like the best bar band in the world. [May 2005, p.122]

British Sea Power's vision makes most independent rock seem callow and weak-minded. [Sep 2003, p. 119]

This is really a missing Greatest Hits in disguise. [Jul 2005, p.118]

It sounds so damn joyous. [Nov 2005, p.134]

A nearly flawless collection of hummable overtures. [#17, p.138]

Murphy pushes the near-immaculate music into the realm of genius with witty lyrics and wonderfully tetchy vocals. [Mar 2005, p.141]

Not all connect, but a bonus disc, the soon-vanished 2002 full-length Nothing to Fear, compensates. Buy this before it vanishes, too.

The proceedings get a little bit samey, but the band's fearless optimism and knack for a bookish groove are hard to deny. [Dec 2004, p.140]

This is Newman’s most unwound album.

It's not so much what Zevon says as how he says it: with an air of ragged, nothing-to-lose spontaneity. [Sep 2003, p.133]

Where his pals Outkast seem like genuine freaks of nature, he sometimes seems apologetically weird.

The eighth volume of the erractic and fancinating Bootleg Series, exhumes his unreleased music. [Nov 2008, p.80]

An album of languid grooves and slowly descending melodies. [#16, p.117]

Any collection that encompasses A Guy Called Gerald's peerless dance anthem "Voodoo Ray" and Joy Division's exquisite "Atmosphere" is "double double good," as the Happy Mondays' drug-addled singer Shaun Ryder used to quip. [#9, p.158]

[Meiburg] applies this Audubon-ish enthusiasm to his songs, too, crafting a rich, occasionally macabre, fantasy world populated by starlings, gulls and solitary falconers.

On this sublime set, Case's own sweeping, backwoods melodies and bloodstained Southern Gothic lyrics finally match the drama of her wails. [Apr 2006, p.111]

Despite all the lonely missives and political outrage, Oberst comes off more like a troubadour of hope. [Mar 2005, p.132]

Is it uneven? Yes. Self-indulgent? Unbearably, at times. But that's what makes West one of hip-hop's most exciting, funny, and human stars. He's unafraid to make a big, fat mess. [Sep 2005, p.130]

Finn has been sharper and funnier before, and their fast-and-down-the-middle rock has gotten more experimental, which isn't the same as better. But it's still a pretty good way to spend 45 minutes. [Aug 2008, p.86]

It's Twin Cinema's relative melancholy that makes it the band's best album yet. [Sep 2005, p.134]

New Moon sounds less like a pile of outtakes than an official album released in a parallel universe.

The Drift is like a nightmare you look forward to repeating. [Jun 2006, p.148]

Another assault of angular, Sonic Youth-style guitar and earnest anger that's more leftfield than most punk, and more engaging than many of their post-rock peers. [Feb/Mar 2002, p.110]