Cornershop’s cult is one you’ve either already signed over your seventh-born to or will watch pass you by with a fascinated bemusement.

Easy Pain proves hard to like; and with little more than aimless aggression to cling onto for eight songs, you realise it’s all muscle.

It’s another tension that helps to define ‘Girl With Fish’ — a sense that nothing holds so much weight that it can’t be taken elsewhere in the next moment. While that idea perhaps keeps these songs from being as memorable as they could be, it does occasionally work, shaping the album into a really nice cut of slacker-noise.

Over length of 12 tracks, the soul/G-funk stuff becomes a little one-note, while the Disney-fied material lacks the charm that makes Prass such an engaging, idiosyncratic performer.

This is a folk-gospel tribute album with harmony and backing vocals so powerful you'd think it was the population of New Jersey marching in Technicolor over the grey, polluted Hudson singing along. [22 Apr 2006, p.39]

It's music for downhearted cattle rustlers to mournfully skin steers to. [9 Apr 2005, p.58]

It doesn’t always work, not least in ‘Shotgun’’s iffy mix of Nashville-ready instrumentals and a chugging house beat. On the flipside, ‘Do I Have To Talk You Into It’ sticks so stubbornly to the Spoon template it could be a discarded number from any of their previous records.

Overall, SY fail to get into their groove between twisted, brutalised melody and spastic six-string experimentalism.

There's two sides to Nedry. One is given to taking faintly voguish reference points, lopping off the sharp edges and smoothing out the kinks. It's pretty, but weirdly bloodless....The other is less polite....Message to the band: ignore your nicer side in future.

This LP could have injected some creativity back into 4/4, instead it settles for quaintness.

Had the stronger songs been contained to an EP it could well have rivalled the extraordinary consistency and thrill of its predecessor – but frustratingly, it falls short.

If Christopher Nolan ever does one of his gritty makeovers on Twilight, the soundtrack’s as good as sewn up.

It’s uneven, with flashes of brilliance. Blood is a record that builds slow and steady, as it continually keeps you on your toes with its experimental and exploratory nature.

‘Volcano’ certainly isn’t overstuffed with ideas. Often, the uniformity in this approach – muddy vocal line that could be a chopped-up classic, and a minimal but effective bassline – mean that several of the songs meld together, struggling to stand out. .... But when they get it right, it’s hard to deny how hard it hits.

If there’s a criticism of Broken Politics, it perhaps that the record doesn’t broadcast this voice often enough.

True Meanings tends to blend into a lilting mush over the course of 14 tracks that rarely stray from the beige end of the sonic palette.

Justice? Talent to spare, but that doesn't stop '†' being just another frustrating dance music album.

The result is an intriguing, if disorientating, sprawl of sound.

Resembles the Arcade Fire if they were from the Renaissance era and rubbish. [23 Jul 2005, p.50]

The more experimental side of the record is where things get really challenging.

There are a few moments of elegant sensuality--like the tumbling, androgynous voices of 'He She'--but by and large it's like one of Jeff Koons' uber-kitsch sculptures: gleaming, opulent, but kinda hard to love.

'The Private Press' isn't a remarkable record - it lacks that startling and instinctive excitement capable of pushing music into the realm of the era-defining.

Ultimately Blake isn't yet the singer-songwriter to pull this album off.

The little dude is a poet. Still, at a relatively lean 30 minutes, it’s hard to argue this is a heavyweight album.

Ultimately, this is tinkering around the edges of a formula rather than a bold stylistic shift--and while this makes Kannon an easy disc to recommend to newcomers, ultimately it goes nowhere SunnO))) haven’t gone before.

The Money Store offers a glimpse of sonic dystopia that's utterly convincing.

Smith’s made the grade on this serviceable first record Lost & Found, and the path to her becoming Britain’s next global export is looking pretty clear. If only it was made to feel less of a drag.

Even more subdued than usual. [12 Aug 2006, p.32]