A collection of tangible emotional snapshots, brief but telling entries in a musical journal.

What diminishes War Room Stories is the songs themselves, which can feel a little ordinary. Rappak’s vocal is a bit sub-Yannis Philippakis, a monotone half-mumble that doesn’t make the most of his intriguing lyrics.

Album two features some catchy and classy electronic dance music.... Unfortunately though, ‘Broken Record’ sounds like a Eurovision-endorsed soundtrack to Cassack dancing and ‘Satellites’ is a limp version of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light.’

Uncomplicated, Spinto Band-ish jangles like 'Second Look', 'Tallboy' and 'Everything I Know' plough casually and happily along without a care in the world, very much like the band themselves.

It’s not original, but you’ll love it for the summer at least.

On their third release Asobi Seksu have toned down the fuzz’n’raunch of old and come over all Cocteau Twins-y and mature--not necessarily a bad thing, just quite a bit less visceral.

Every album is a chapter in Frank’s on-going aural autobiography, and Positive Songs is his Getting Over It dispatch.

Ultimately it feels short on substance, with the sort of atmosphere that can drain through your fingers.

Yes, they write pretty and moving songs, but it’s reasonable to expect more from a band with a history of writing such sophisticated pop.

This album is a huge leap forward for Baoi. The record teams with hope, which couldn’t be more apt for a moment in which a new political era dawns and light, albeit slowly, finds its way through the darkness.

Paying tribute to the music that they love while staking their place in rock’s future. For a young band to think of their career in those terms takes a lot of confidence, but it pays off on this debut. It’s one to last.

Noel's still got it. Only a fool would write him off.

Individually the tracks have a removed piquancy, but an hour's solid exposure leaves you yearning for a crackle, some fuzz, or any human intervention.

Mainly, Halcyon sees Goulding's quirky-as-usual vocals lazily spliced into factory-standard chart dance.

They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.

Good moments include the drama-packed ‘Just Another Night’ and the fun pop of ‘On A Roll’, but neither resembles the formulaic trash cluttering the rest of the record.

At times it sounds like pastiche but when they're themselves... the 'Couture...' club are amazing. [6 Nov 2004, p.59]

A twinkling set of songs that benefits from Wild Beasts soundman Richard Formby’s gossamer production touch.

$o$ sounds like the most half-baked efforts of Hadouken!, LMFAO and Eugene Hutz.

From the bouncy 'Same Mistake' (this album's 'Is This Love?'), to the darkly nostalgic ballad to years past, 'Misspent Youth', it's a comeback as irrationally happy-inducing as its title suggests.

They wisely avoid toying with any Darkness-style irony, but the Keys' insistence on authenticity does leave the album a little flat and humourless. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]

Still not Friday night material, then, but a moving display of one man's myriad sorrows nonetheless. Bless.

Mojave 3's Great Leap Forward. [17 Jun 2006, p.39]

Is this the best we can do? Desperate-to-be-authentic, carbohydrate-stodgy white blues, played by an elderly man pretending to be a tramp? Really, you deserve better.

This album is an almighty slog, one where the vibrant new is weighed down with a lot of the same old tricks. For all glimpses of bold musical and lyrical steps forward, they remain largely the same band they’ve always been with ‘Return Of The Dream Canteen’ offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that often feels overwhelming.

At times, a lack of crescendo leaves his songs teetering on the precipice of drama. The money shot, though, comes with the title track--an epic, swirling conclusion to his debut.

Momentary Masters is his most satisfying, cohesive record yet, and, in many ways, his most personal.

Not quite double thumbs aloft then, but way fabber than it has any right to be.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

Brilliant band then, not so brilliant boxset.

As a sort of lyrical sermon from the mount with uptempo beats to crush the weak-hearted, 'The Sneak Attack' raises the stakes on the microphone skills front as KRS-One lectures, hectors, drops streetwise politics, and laments the state of the world.

Understated, ramshackle garage-pop treats. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

Shelter From The Ash is a more sedate affair, full of ghostly baroque folk stories that feel disappointingly ethereal.

Dananan’s first album proper suffers from the same problems as Los Campesinos!’ flawed debut; ‘Black Wax’ and ‘Pink Sabbath’ are both thrilling, if wonky, pop songs, but they could be appreciated more fully as singles rather than back to back.

But from supposedly passionate Vonnegut fans we could do without ‘Sons Of Privilege’ and its student union pop at Uncle Sam (chief findings: U.S.A.=B.A.D.), while much of the rest slips into shouty default mode.

Just as you're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, you realise that there's another five-track EP by these self-absorbed, boring, aesthetically bankrupt bellends still to go. Double bummer.

It's a timely refresh of rosy-cheeked indie-pop mores.

Sadly, Wave 1 is a more disjointed, disorienting listen.

Exploratory, intense and without a kickflip or kingskin in sight.

Aside from the vocoder-enhanced cosmic disco that features midway, this is an introverted offering--though much too good to fall asleep to.

‘It Won’t Always Be Like This’ is teeming with nervous energy over trying to find balance in a world turned inside out, while flashes of more mature reflections on saints, sinners, kings and dreams are also promising.

He has regularly crept back to the light of the charts and 4:13 Dream is such an occasion. And one which, given the ’80s revival, is timed to perfection.

It remains a 1980s Johnny Cash album and it wasn’t until Rick Rubin got hold of him 10 years later that he came in from the cold.

The main problem with '...Thunder Canyon' though is it's long - 72 minutes long - which suggests when Banhart let his muse fly free, he forgot to keep a check on his ego, too. At its best, this is subtle, touching, beautiful. At its worst, it's meandering and smug. You're entertained, but unsettled.

It's a hit and miss affair.

The moments of imperfection that let the album down come on ‘Two Of Us On The Run’ (as basic as acoustic songwriting gets) and ‘Until We Get There’ (just sounds like a Cults offcut), but there’s promise here.

There’s been a hope that he’d one day return to his dream-pop roots. Stars Are Our Home isn’t that, but there are shades of his past on the twinkling, self-titled opening track and ‘(I Don’t Mean To) Wonder.'

Like Sabbath in a washing machine during a power surge. [16 Jul 2005, p.50]

After singing about so much Americana for the past decade, it seems that he’s now had to cross the Atlantic in search of fresh geography to mine.

'Light' is let down by anaemic sound. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]

The Uglysuit, whose country-prog-post-rock-indie-orchestral ramblings recall, variously, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Elbow, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket and the soundtrack for every emotionally self-indulgent US drama ever made. Yet, hearing the warm country musings of ‘Chicago’ or the aching two-note piano motif of 'And We Became Sunshine’, it’s hard not to settle into the seduction.

Tellingly, ‘Be Brave’ is back-loaded with easily the strongest and most diverse cuts, and by the time the final acoustic plucks of ‘You Can’t Only Love When You Want’ fade out, The Strange Boys have done almost a sonic 180.

If San Diego's Crocodiles sound flawless on paper, they damn well prove it on record.

So listener-unfriendly that it's almost amusing. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]

On this evidence, SMD aren't quite there and the result is, sadly, a bit boring.

The record isn’t weighed down by its ideas--it could just do with a filter, a producer with more sway, or even someone in the process to say: “Actually Jaden, mate--most trees are green.”

If it doesn't quite scale the dizzy heights of 'The Holy Bible' or 'Everything Must Go', it certainly comes close and is, in many ways, the quintessential Manics album - the cathartic regeneration that the band really needed in order to become relevant again.

Modeselektor bridge the gap between manual-memorising electronics and brick-subtle, MDMA-peppered bouncy abandon.

It’s no radical reinvention, sure, but the singer captures these songs in their most up-close-and-personal state, with instrumentation stripped back to nearly zero.

Their first record is good; their next could be mega.

The rattling drums and broad, ambient synths on closer ‘Beams’ represent a rare foray into a fuller sound, but, for the most part, Dark Red plays out like the soundtrack to a creepy sci-fi-horror flick.

This is an album that can and should be enjoyed without over-thinking.

It’s a tender passing of the torch.

Warm and welcoming, Alphaville sounds a great place to lose yourself.

When The Wytches employ a lighter ‘Suck It And See’-era Arctic Monkeys touch they’re capable of ‘Wire Frame Mattress’ and ‘Track 13’, exceptional songs full of both melody and menace.

The 1975 have somehow put out an album made for introspection and headphone listening and dancing around your living room, something deep and sprawling and occasionally silly to dig deep into over many listens, during which your favourite track will shift on a daily basis. Something that requires time and attention – something just right for now.

It all adds up to a cerebral and entertaining tribute to the many and varied incarnations of dance.


None of [the guest producers] manage to shift the band far from their roots--an intense punk Elvis growl that's impossible to replicate. [16 Oct 2004, p.49]

An impressive consolidation rather than a startling revelation.

Semisonic are the lambswool jumper pulled over the eyes of people who have an irresistible soft spot for 'classic' songwriting. Fail to give their songs full attention - and God knows, that's easy enough - you could almost believe this is literate radio-friendly pop; just the thing for those blustery rides through an imaginary Santa Monica freeway.

Better moments appear when they get a bit ballsier: 'On The Radio' and 'As Four' are jingly upbeat numbers that show they haven't spent all their in-between album down time crying into their pillows. [4 Mar 2006, p.29]

It’s not a perfect ride.... Cosentino’s honeyed vocal is the only true constant. It’s a radiating sunbeam.

Retaining your sprightly playfulness while making a mature comeback isn't easy, but Sky Larkin straddle the two with ease.

While it's an impressive document, it can’t quite recapture the nocturnal intimacy of ‘Nothing Else But This’ and ‘Dream’.

With so many influences laid bare, it does take until seven-minute-long crescendoing closer ‘Saintless’ to truly showcase what they can achieve musically.

The result is joyous electropop with depth--dance beats, '80s-ish synths and Caila's soulful, voluminous vocals fanning out into gorgeous harmonies.

Whenever Mr Rager sets off on his next adventure we're ready, musical machetes in hand, to follow him into the undergrowth…

The good news is that lyrically, Nas is pretty much back on form.

We Are The Ocean's third is a record full of lean, muscular rock and sees a band who were once regarded as sub-You Me At Six also-rans, deliver an undeniably stonking LP full of catchy choruses and chunky riffs.

To the ears of their detractors, Courteeners will always sound unexceptional, but in the eyes of the faithful, Mapping the Rendezvous will only make them more irreplaceable.

It hasn’t completely reinvented the wheel for Hurts, nor has it allowed them to rest on old habits. Instead, it presents them at their most open – and in age of isolation, there’s much to admire in that.

Overall, Painting With is a dizzying, lurid treat, almost too much to take in, craving its natural habitat. And it’ll really come alive out in the wild.

Spins a web of eerie jazz-junglist percussion. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

There's no escaping it: Foster The People are a great pop band, and Torches pop production accentuates every handclap and harmony for maximum effect.

The Brooklyn duo's fifth album is less pan-pipe chill-out and more a brooding and oppressive morass of sound akin to a shamanistic Zola Jesus.

It's only rock'n'roll but you'll probably like it.

In their relentless slavery to the groove, the songs fall hopelessly flat. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]

They've set themselves up nicely here, already nipping on the heels of fellow slacker extraordinaires Surfer Blood and Yuck.

A stern but playful combination of caustic menace and bright hooks.

An utterly charming album.

the promised sense of youth and experimentation rarely surfaces. If anything, Feel Good goes too far the other way, sounding insipid and polished in comparison to The Internet’s debut.

It's blissful, soulful proof that although SMD might have stopped chasing the hit parade, they haven't stopped making hits.

His attempts to revolutionise, strip bare and stretch the borders of R&B with all manner of glitches, gollums and glaciers are admirable, but it’s only when he tranquilizes his inner Usher for the downbeat piano throb of ‘See You Fall’, the spectral orchestration of ‘Pour Cyril’ and the acoustic minimalism of ‘2 Years On (Shame Dream)’ that he achieves the subtlety and invention of, say, Sufjan Stevens.

Butler’s done well to harness the fuller ideas first explored on "Smokey" but, in doing so, has sacrified raw Devendra for something just a bit too, well, Bees-y.

You'll be comfy, you might spot some pretty things on the hard shoulder, but ultimately it doesn't get you anywhere.

The album is beautifully structured, leading from spare and shimmery beginnings into harder, weirder and more varied territories, all those snippets and elements and personalities crafted into a shifting, subtle whole that quietly captures your attention from start to end.

We’re unlikely to be totally rid of guitars on a Kings Of Leon album any time soon, but there are more daring rhythms and more sophisticated production here.

A solo charm assault with mixed results.