Human Conditions is the sound of Ashcroft searching for personal and spiritual connections and seeking higher truths in soaring pop choruses. All this existential meditation leaves us, like him, ultimately unfulfilled.

If the listener is patient, and wades through over an hour of mediocrity, there is brightness at the end of the tunnel.

The end product falls short of being synergistic. Neither contender in this sonic duel really lets loose; both Shipp and Anti-Pop Consortium seem too passive and deferential toward each other.

The result is somewhere between the Pet Shop Boys' meticulous dance pop and the driving keyboard rock of acts like Zero Zero.

Holy shite what a record.

The Datsuns' biggest problem isn't the style of music they're playing, though. It's the sub-standard quality of their songwriting, the uninspired performances on here and the fundamental lack of willingness to stretch beyond the safe confines of their older brothers' record collections.

One of their catchiest, most rewarding listening experiences to date.

This is a hard, focused album that should both piss off and impress the jazz and rock clientele in equal measures.

Life On Other Planets isn't quite as much fun as previous Supergrass releases; perhaps, a sign that the boys are growing up.

A far cry from the sequencing prowess evidenced on his 1998 release, Vorsprung Dyk Technik, and a dismally inadequate way of showcasing the music that he's unleashed on the trance scene, this Greatest Hits package is an exercise in frustration.

If Joy Division were to have formed in the last few years, they might sound similar to Calla.

Really, don't waste your time with this.

This is music that took out all of the adjectives.

It's all too much like a fumbling Pink Floyd tribute, continually reaching a point where the psychedelica fails to follow up with the required kick, allowing the whole fragile structure to collapse into self-indulgence and bathetic kitsch.

Repeated listening reveals Holopaw to be both a richly textured and profoundly moving record, one of the year's first truly mesmerizing folk albums.

Steal This Album is still not the perfect SOAD album, but it's by far their most realized yet.

He's proven that he can do some beautiful long players, but this just sounds like someone else's greatest hits. Which isn't to say it's not one of the top 20 albums of 2002, because it is. But it shoulda been Top Ten.

Hints at greatness, but never quite sustains it.

Ikara Colt deliver their rock with a boastful swagger but still fail to generate too much excitement.

He lets the technology overwhelm the proceedings and all too often it is used in service of forgettable, substandard melodies.

We Are Science is strikingly gorgeous and powerful. It's also just a little bit cheesy (but in a good way), as though you were watching Patsy Kensit star in Breaking The Waves.

Have You Fed the Fish? seems like a bit of a let down. A surprisingly catchy and listenable disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless.

A brave and inventive album that refuses to be held down by conventional barriers of genre or style.

One By One, the latest album from the Foo Fighters, rocks. Problem is, that is about all it does.

Moments of greater emotional color might have turned what is an exemplary post-breaks exploration by a master into something brilliant.

If pleasant melodies, electronics, ironic culture references, and played-out orchestration techniques could compensate for the lack of any discernable sense of expression, I could recommend Tahiti 80's Wallpaper For the Soul to you. I probably still wouldn't, but I could.

Like The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency and I, this seems to glide from one high-energy song to another, each one unique and fascinating by itself, echoing the sparse tones of The Police here and there, or INXS's Kick-era attention to beat in other places.

Bridging the gap between Trio and British pub rock, Stereo Total seem to possess an endless supply of minimalist studio creativity to complement the direct but infectious style of their melodies.