What results is an achingly brutal intensity given to each broken phrase, scream and sigh.

From a Basement on the Hill is a far better album than it has any right to be, with its bizarre sequencing and improbable ambitions.

One of the best and most refreshing albums released in a long time.

It’s easy to get over-eager about a decent album that appears after some significantly less magnificent efforts, and perhaps that’s precisely what I’ve just done. But I don’t especially care. What I hear throughout this release, and what I’m latching so strongly onto, is my own imagined version of what a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds record should be like.

As ever Wagner’s voice is rich and warm, the instrument of a faltering singer that just gets better with age, cracked and croaked and delivering lyrics with a strange phrasing that makes the most indecipherable and idiosyncratic observation take on a wealth of meanings for the listener depending how they first, or last, hear it. [combined review of both discs]

In Split the Difference, Gomez has not lived up to, but surpassed, their initial success.

A band as talented and enjoyable as Clinic should be allowed to distill and advance their sound without getting tarred with the brush of stagnancy.

Easily their most cohesive and satisfying full-length to date, Chapel shows that Weatherall still has a few tricks up his sleeve and isn’t afraid to use them.

Take the pop from Guns ‘N Roses, take the pomp from Van Halen and take the piss out of uber-serious nu-metal and you’ve got one of the most inventive metal outfits in recent history.

One of the best albums of 2003, one of his best albums post-Clash, and as the highest note Joe Strummer could have exited on.

It is a wonderful album that explores separation and endings and life’s journeys – and their inevitable end - in Zevon’s inimitable style.

With about twenty killer lines or couplets per song, unexpected hooks coming from everywhere and one of the most ingenious track sequences of the year, it’s not really so hard to imagine what The Wrens have been doing all this time.

This is an album that seems to effortlessly evoke the kind of lazy summer days that everyone claims only ever happened when they were kids.

One of the best debut albums of the last five years.

It’s the most lush, symphonic pop music since, well, Wilco’s Summerteeth.

It’s not the most subtle or nuanced album, you can’t really dance to it, and it’s not particular clever. What it is: brutal, full of hooks, rock solid and fucking loud.

With Change... The Dismemberment Plan feel little need to show off with self-conscious musical ostentation and excess, instead choosing to focus themselves on making a fantastic, understated and involving record.

Unlike cLOUDDEAD, every track on Oaklandazulasylum is, at least musically, accessible and inviting.

Perhaps the greatest expansion in Herren's sound is the range of emotion conveyed in One Word Extinguisher.

The record is very innocent on the surface, but it’s in the lyrics (again) of Alun Woodward and Emma Pollack that make it cold and dark, even though their vocals seem to make it all sound safe.

The energy the band packs into their songs is unbelievable.

Us has a dynamism and vastness that makes Loss cower in its shadow.

True, Think Tank is flawed. There are many, many things wrong with this album.... But the record’s peaks are extraordinary.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1514" TARGET="_blank">She&#146;s done it again, and the fact that we&#146;re not surprised shows just how valuable and talented she is.</A> [Score=91] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1515" TARGET="_blank">The new Missy album is terrific! Maybe even more terrific than her last one, and almost certainly better than the one before that.</A> [Score=84]

Nastasia&#146;s pen has sharpened greatly since The Blackened Air. No more does she scratch out mental images and feelings into terse songs, but builds upon those images and experiences -- placing the listener in her worn, ragged shoes -- instead of in our Gucci&#146;s, 20 feet away, behind a chained link fence.

Quite simply, Sunshine Hits Me is fantastic.

Though this album may not change the minds of the numerous naysayers, it does show an interesting development in the group&#146;s all-around craftsmanship.

Of course, as far as production goes, it would be nearly impossible to top Doggystyle. However, Paid the Cost tries as hard as it can.