Like 1999's The West, The Civil War negotiates a fragile entente between Americana and electronica, but does so on a bigger, constantly astonishing scale. [Oct 2003, p.122]

This is the pop album of 2003 which everyone else will have to beat. [Jul 2003, p.124]

This year's 'Stankonia.' [Sep 2001, p.96] [Review of UK version]

Dear Heather is Cohen's highest tide yet, his most exquisite marriage of song and poetry and ambiguous grace. [Nov 2004, p.114]

It's hard to believe there will be a better record than Last Exit released this year. [Jul 2004, p.102]

It's the freshest, most exciting and far-reaching left-field album in years. [Jun 2003, p.102]

A Ghost Is Born feels like a band learning to be spontaneous and unencumbered, and coming up with their most engaging album yet. [Album of the Month, Jul 2004, p.94]

Laced with enough blue-eyed longing to make the most diehard Gram Parsons fan weep with wonder and the sort of verbal acuity that would give even Dylanologists pause for thought, Elephant is where the tabloid phenomenon of summer 2001 prove they are no flash in the pan by making a truly phenomenal record. [May 2003, p.94]

[A] breathtaking, virtually flawless album. [Sep 2002, p.104]

So wild and stripped-down it makes The White Stripes sound like Yes. [Jan 2004, p.102]

Doves have delivered, with honesty and affection. All other guitar bands this year will seem like a scratchy sideshow. [Jun 2002, p.110]

You won't hear a more humane, moving or mysterious record all year. [Album of the Month, Oct 2003, p.110]

In ditching the band ethic, they've tapped into the finest folk gothic traditions of death, suffering, misery and hardship and fashioned a paradoxically uplifting, transformative record of extraordinary power. [Album of the Month, Jul 2003, p.110]

Another mature masterpiece from America's finest. [Album Of The Month, March 2002, p.94]

It's a record of passion and richness, with a hoard of memorable songs, that demands to be treated the equal of its inspirations. [Sep 2003, p.102]

All that is good in hip hop is here. [Jul 2003, p.111]

In just over 35 minutes, the Bonnie Prince's mastery of form, blend of gentle awe and trembling sweetness are distilled to their essence. [Album of the Month, Feb 2003, p.74]

The whole thing tingles: you're in the presence of diamond-hard greatness. [Nov 2004, p.110]

Under the direst circumstances, he has painted his masterpiece. [Album of the Month, Sep 2003, p.96]

It's the most extraordinary smorgasbord of styles, moods, modes, a far more daring, jolting record than 2001's Essence. [Album of the Month, May 2003, p.88]

Arguably, not since early Costello has a British solo artist combined such bare-arsed soulfulness with such corrosively perceptive humour. Quite something. [Album of the Month, Nov 2002, p.112]

The Fine Art of Self Destruction is one of those amazing records that appear seemingly out of nowhere... that within a couple of plays sound already like something you've been listening to for years. [Album of the Month, Dec 2002, p.128]

Whereas the fucked-up, punk attitude [Ryan] Adams feigned on Rock'n'Roll was based on little more than pique, The Heat is all genuine passion, brimming with energy, anger and great tunes sandwiched between the dense guitars. [Jul 2004, p.114]

A brave and beautiful album of humanity, hurt and hope from the songwriter best qualified to speak to and for his country.... A towering achievement. [Album of the Month, Sep 2002, p.102]

Fever To Tell is, quite simply, magnificent.... This is as revitalising a debut as could be hoped for. [May 2003, p.92]

Almost every tune sounds like a hit. [Dec 2001, p.108]

May well come to be regarded as the best British rock album since OK Computer. [Sep 2002, p.118]

By far the strongest collection of songs the band have ever assembled. [Nov 2003, p.114]

Much of Suicaine Gratifaction sounded like it had been written in a mood of morose introspection, but Come Feel Me Tremble is brazenly exclamatory. [Jan 2004, p.102]

I doubt there'll be many better albums released this year. [Jun 2003, p.98]

Streetcore negotiates a resolution between the ethnocentric beats that hallmarked the two previous Mescaleros albums and the classic Clash sound that remained pivotal to Joe's live performances. [Nov 2003, p.110]

Fly Or Die has more in common with 10cc and XTC than it does Common.... Prog-pop album of the year. [Jun 2004, p.91]

Waits does nothing predictable here, and the structure of even the most forlorn tear-jerker is ambitious and avant-something-or-other. [Co-Album Of The Month, June 2002, p.106]

It is music whose scope, erudition and vitriol makes everything else in this year of exceptional musical timidity seem puny. [Nov 2003, p.106]

More of the same, only more so. [Apr 2002, p.94]

Great by Smith's standards. Practically genius by everybody else's. [Feb 2004, p.74]

You have to adjust to its lack of ornamentation and let it settle, seep, uncurl like smoke or love. And there are songs here to equal his best. [Album Of The Month, Dec 2001, p.100]

Terrifically thorough. [Nov 2004, p.131]

The Libertines is a record of such raw autobiographical honesty that it carries a weight few others in 2004 can match. [Album of the Month, Sep 2004, p.94]

The sharpest, most imaginative and downright listenable album of Blur's career to date.... A grown-up alt.rock album of breathtaking potency and invention. [Album of the Month, June 2003, p.90]

The first record in a long while I've wanted to play again immediately after it's finished. [Album Of The Month, April 2002, p.92]

Even by their standards, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is astonishing.... Plainly, this is music abnormally alive with possibilities. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.96]

White's willfully basic approach is what gives Van Lear Rose its freshness.... If you thought Rick Rubin's Johnny Cash reinvention was impressive, wait 'til you grab a fistful of this. [Album of the Month, June 2004, p.84]

The best rapper this country's ever produced, period.... Next to Dizzee Rascal everybody looks pale, uninteresting and irrelevant. [Sep 2003, p.98]

Rarely has contrived weirdness sounded so utterly bewitching. [Jun 2004, p.85]

An essential listen for anyone interested in where music might take them. [Jun 2004, p.86]

For all the influences, their voice is uniquely, gently mad. [Mar 2004, p.88]

Sincerity of intent is one thing. But they've got the music to back it up.... This is Scissor Sisters' first Greatest Hits collection. [Feb 2004, p.70]

A unique and unlikely moment of retrieval, restoration and renaissance. [Nov 2004, p.98]

Makes you want to chain-smoke while swigging a quart of Jim by the neck and taking agreeable houswives to stud. [Aug 2003, p.110]

The most original debut by a Manchester band since Squirrel & G-Man Twenty Four Hour Paty People..., maybe even Unknown Pleasures. [Sep 2002, p.116]

A record nobody could fail to love. [Feb 2005, p.84]

It's like the best music of the '70s compressed under '80s new wave dynamics. [Feb 2005, p.74]

Confirms Doves as the country's most innovative rock group. [Mar 2005, p.94]

This album really is just too good to be true. [Apr 2005, p.114]

It's their first masterpiece. [Album of the Month, May 2005, p.94]

It excels at that classic pop trick of combining the euphoric with the melancholy. [Apr 2005, p.108]

An extraordinary achievement. [Album of the Month, Aug 2005, p.86]

May just be the most concise and potent distillation of Thompson's art to date. [Album of the Month, Sep 2005, p.98]

There are some outstanding songs here, and Jagger turns in a series of performances that are their match, full of much defiant flouncing, strutting bitchiness, preening arrogance, snarling haughtiness and a typically provocative misogyny. [Album of the Month, Oct 2005, p.92]

Deep, warm, fully rounded and with no slack, Prairie Wind is Neil at his best. [Oct 2005, p.101]

Lookaftering is some kind of miracle. [Nov 2005, p.100]

Nope, this is not easy listening, yet he's never made a more beautiful album. [Jan 2006, p.108]

A dozen remarkable tracks. [Feb 2006, p.78]

The thrill it provides will send a shiver of recognition through anyone who grew up with The Specials, The Smiths or Parklife. [Album of the Month, March 2006, p.86]

It would be fanciful, not to mention disrespectful, to say that Morrison has waited his whole career to make this album. But he makes it sound like he has. [Apr 2006, p.96]

Morph... sounds utterly of a piece with Aja. [Apr 2006, p.104]

Make no mistake, the Lips have done it: three astonishing LPs in a row. [May 2006, p.94]

The supersized culmination of the Chili Peppers' artistic journey. [Jun 2006, p.102]

Could very well be the best record of this restlessly self-critical career. [Jul 2006, p.90]

Love And Theft was quite unlike any other pop album--apart, that is, from Modern Times, its direct and audacious sequel. [Sep 2006, p.72]

Finn’s writing is sharper than ever, the various narratives driven less by the wordy exposition of yore than acute observation, devastating detail, by turns exclamatory, epigrammatic and grainily authentic.

He concocts a series of dazzling interior epics with just a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and his echo-drenched voice. [Nov 2006, p.101]

For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.

It's remarkable... how much of a piece the entire set is, reflecting how skilfully Waits has welded the various tributary styles of his art into a seamless whole. [Dec 2006, p.122]

Their scratchily rhythmic guitar music with dour, sardonic vocals has proved immensely influential. [Dec 2006, p.114]

While what was lost with Smith is immeasurable, what he left was amazing, and New Moon is an appropriately spectacular monument. [Jun 2007, p.112]

They continue to find some clever ways to do a pretty dumb thing. [Jul 2007, p.112]

Under The Blacklight is by far and away the most accessible album that Rilo Kiley have ever made.

La Radiolina reaches out beyond it's core audience to a universal constituency, not so much a world music record as a global-rock mission statement.

Street entirely avoids DIA’s flinty spectrality and staticky crackle and turns a bright light on the smart, compact and relentlessly exciting arrangements he’s here coaxed from the band.

The pairing of the wily old tomcat and the classy country thrush turns out as magically in reality as it seemed unlikely on paper.

This is a stunning album, bristling with astute and funny words, glorious tunes and delivered in performances all the more impressive for sounding so utterly effortless. [Mar 2008, p.80]

For Emma, Forever Ago is such a hermetically sealed, complete and satisfying album, the prospect of a follow-up--of a life for Vernon beyond the wilderness, even - seems merely extraneous.

Third is the most stunning, stark and superb Portishead album yet. [May 2008, p.84]

The Evangelist isn’t a Go-Betweens album, but it’s more cohesive than any of Forster’s other solo albums, and more moving.

Hailing from the wrong coast, the Charleston, South Carolina-based Explorers Club have done the near-impossible, turning an obsession with everything Beach Boys into an utterly beguiling pop album. [June 2008, p.88

Unavailability has also played its part in pumping up the myth – so much so that you wonder if, heard in 2008, these songs stand to disappoint. In fact, key moments of Pacific Ocean Blue square dramatically up to your loftiest expectations.

Staggeringly good.

Fed is beautifully excessive, ornamented with dazzling soul/pop arrangements. [Sep 2008, p.114]

Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of his staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible, re-takes not merely the occasion for refinement, the honing of a song into static finality, but serial re-imaginings.

Smart, cocksure and as cosmopolitan as New York itself, Live At Shea Stadium deserves a place amongst the greats.

It features tracks recorded with rock outfits like The Flying Hearts which recall Jonathan Richman and Lou Reed; minimal, folksy miniatures that sound a ltttle like John Martyn or James Taylor; and a string of delicious, whimsical synth-pop songs that are as good as anything in the early-'80s canon. [Dec 2008, p.115]

Where Manu Chao might have smoothed off some of the rough edges during his spell as co-producer, this album positively celebrates those grungier moments.

Sugar Mountain is a fascinating snapshot of Neil Young at a transitory moment in his long career, for which it also provides an indelible template.

This slice of weird-rock from a more contented American decade is playful and preposterous in equal measure. [Feb 2009, p.89]

It feels like one of the landmark American albums of the century so far. [Jan 2008, p.86]

There is much, meanwhile, to recommend the O’Brien remix, or “deconstruction” as he puts it. What O’Brien has mostly done is strip away the more ornate layers of the Palmer mix and cutting back on the album’s moments of more florid melodrama.