Incredibly, No More Shall We Part is as urgent and vital as Cave has ever been.... Raging and delicate, complex as faith and simple as a goodnight kiss, it is an incredible summation of a singular career.

All BRMC really have in common with The Strokes is hype and haircuts, but their music lives up to both. [Feb 2002, p.92]

As a singer, the South Dakota-born, Ontario and Illinois-raised Colvin occupies a niche between pensive Sheryl Crow and pre-jazz Joni Mitchell: no histrionics but a telling, often moving restraint.

Though "French Rock'n'Roll" is somewhat lacking in zest (quelle surprise), the care afforded to the rest of this record's conception and execution is obvious.

An eminently listenable collage of jittery grooves, lop-sided beats and wayward electronica.

It's hard to envisage anything this parochial moving beyond cult status.

The pair's lack of ambition might eventually grate but listen to this on your own on a rainy Sunday, with the thermostat set on 25 and its hallucinatory qualities might well invade your being.

If rock'n'roll is supposed to be dying, then these are exactly the guys we want manning the emergency room. [Aug 2001, p.98]

Despite a shared Giorgio Moroder influence, they are more DAF meets Soft Cell and early Detroit techno than a 21st century Human League.

Measuring out grief and resilience with a steady hand, these are the best songs of Low's quiet career. [Feb 2001, p.98]

Their groovy, meditative parlaying consistently elevates Live! Beyond the realm of optional for-diehards-only purchase. [Feb 2001, p.94]

On a couple of tracks neither hard-working studio team nor visiting vocalist get it right, but the impression is of all ego finally set aside in favour of engaging musical honesty.

There is an inflammatory urgency here that reminds you of why Kurt Cobain considered Black an almost saintly figure. [Feb. 2001, p.88]

Godhead take this '80's obsession one step further, crafting a sound so hypnotically synthetic it makes Heaven 17 sound like Robert Johnson. [Feb 2001, p.94]

Sadly, their steadfast refusal to engage the emotions is irritating and alienating. [Feb 2001, p.95]

Equal parts tantalising, frustrating, and riveting. [Jan 2001, p.106]

This crisp, Rick Rubin-produced outing packs away a machine that was well-oiled to the last. [Jan. 2001, p.107]

[Richard] Warren still makes great pop music--free of formula but full of character.

Her sinuous, Lady Dayish voice sets her apart. Unfortunately, it's not to be heard in full effect until about a third of the way through Mama's Gun... [Jan 2001, p.104]

It's all pretty essential stuff.

As ever, this is a very knowing and authentic nod to retro chic, but one which occasionally crosses the line between infectious and neve-jangling pop, with just a little more style than content. [Jan 2001, p.94]

For those new to Sylvian's work or for those who tuned out after Tin Drum, this welcome career cherry-picker serves as a perfect portal to discover some of the most haunting and beautiful music of the last two decades.

The use of computers and electronic SFX here emphasises their dark, distorting, disturbing qualities...

Cook has attempted to vary the Fatboy formula here but it's all gone a bit "mature".

The playing is terrific throughout... [Jan 2001, p.98]

Crafting a sound that incorporates stinky Funkadelic psych with Prince harmonics and Rick James' pimp disco, this is hip hop with the power to convert even the most reactionary nonbelievers. [Jan 2001, p.107]

If Swingle Singers melodies and mind-numbing repetition is your bag, you're on a winner here; basically, it's easy listening with a bit of electronica.

The solo J. has all the heartfelt keening of Where You Been-era Dinosaur, but with a fresh approach to his trademark blending of powerchords and melodies.

Stories is a leaner, less experimental-sounding record than 1998's Is This Desire, its chips stacked on visceral power and vitalising vocals.

Slimmer, leaner, more disciplined than its predecessor.

The higher production values simply water down R.L.'s natural vigour. [Jan 2001, p. 103]

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

The Parisian has lost his cool, let rip, taken his metaphorical shirt off, and it sounds liberating.

Though Black Jesus and Graves To Dig weld slow-burning hip-hop beats to politically astute lyrics, elsewhere the abundance of self-conscious singing and menopausal guitar noodling sees the album shuffle, uninterestingly, towards the middle of the road.

Nothing here will change your life, but rest assured that there's also little in the way of filler. (Oct 2000, p.104)

Breach is a dull affair of humdrum tunes, mundane performance, and lyrics which lose themselves in vague imagery as if Dylan were actually evading the chance to express himself.

The quality of both performances and recordings is exceptional for the time, with elegant versions of Starman and Oh! You Pretty Things affirming the confident new direction of Bowie's pop sensibility, and muscular renditions of Suffragette City, Queen Bitch and Changes.

This is undoubtedly his best record...

The results are engaging without quite reaching flashover.

Kid A is intriguing, eccentric, obviously a grower, but by Radiohead's standards it can't help but disappoint.

Warning is the sound of three men growing old far too gracefully.

Ultimately The Sea And Cake are just making timeless, faultless pop music.

Paul Simon still has it.

Hiatt's misfortune is your guaranteed entertainment.

There are glimpses of Curt's former shambling genius; I Quit and Pieces Of Me are both mournfully melodic, while Tarantula has the nimble bluegrass pickings of Up On The Sun-era Meats, but elsewhere rap-metal stupidity (Hercules) and over-polished rock plodding (Batwing) sour the beans.

Twelve years after the band split, it's immensely reassuring to hear Forster deliver lines only he could have written in his bruised, laconic, declamatory tone...

Misconceived is the polite word.

Music is fitful and its charms aren't all immediate, but Madonna is still doing what she does best--giving a lick of pop genius to the unlikely genre of experimental dance music.

An album of supreme control, Solaris proves that not all Zeitgeist tickling beats are necessarily bound for the coffee table.

In a nutshell, if you liked the previous stuff, you'll like this... it has as much right to a place in the world as Huey Lewis and the News ever did.

A fairly routine batch of middling-to-turgid funk numbers about lurrve performed with rather more duty than excitement.

Jones admits a queasy air of self-congratulation to her third album of jazzified covers.

Her songs, paradoxically both epic and intimate, shimmer and pulsate as their kaleidoscopic images and mysterious characters drift in and out of focus.

Godspeed have taken their by-now familiar elements and rearranged them in often beautiful or surprising ways.

The big tunes--Push Upstairs, King of Snake, Born Slippy--are brasher and more powerful, and while the studio subtleties evaporate, they are replaced by thundering rock-n-roll energy and even wilder streams of lyrical consciousness.

They deliver breathless, urgent rifferama, elements of which can be traced to RATM, The Stooges and Placebo.

The results can, surprisingly, prove as musically rewarding as they are entertaining.

As with all Stephin Merritt productions, the real stars are Stephin Merritt's wonderful songs, and the 14 love songs on Hyacinths And Thistles are as sweet and prickly as the title suggests.

While it still whispers, this third endeavour works its way into your soul.

Damon and Naomi haven't so much altered what they do as augmented it, often beautifully. The results are occasionally breathtaking.... A rare and graceful record. (Oct 2000, p.92)

Unlike many of dance culture's dedicated dilettantes, theirs is a smooth and millifluous whole, underpinned by the gentle pulsing of liquid bass lines.... Delightful. [Sep 2000, p.94]

The Menace is a far more varied and ambitious LP than the first and, one suspects, than the Elastica album we'd have got four or three years ago. A very pleasant surprise.

Highly listenable and equally danceable, a kind of Pet Shop Boys meet Gary Numan at the gates of Georgio Moroder. (Sep 2000, p.95)

The synth-laden tunes are relentlessly upbeat--sort of New Order on Prozac--with a Lightning Seeds blitheness.... Though no groundbreaker, 'Monaco' is catchy as flu.

An endearingly petulant collection of nasty hardcore guitar tunes.

Often he sings with a richness, depth and conviction worthy of Johnny Cash. [Jan 2001, p.98]

An earthy, beat-oriented album... It ain't '3 Feet High'--or even 'De La Soul Is Dead'-- but it ain't half bad. (Sep 2000, p.96)

A stoner's paradise from start to finish. Most pleasurable.

Neither great nor golden, then, but not bad either.

The rehearsal-room feel of Mwng succeeds in capturing the organic, woody, mystical atmosphere that was sometimes missing from its highly-polished, heavily-digitised predecessors.

The production... is appropriately lush and celebratory, brimming over with strings, synthesizers and layered, sensuous vocals. [July 2000, p.111]

Often, Sinead's words are infected with the pernicious post-therapy psychobabble that blights the contemporary female singer/songwriter...

The Moon's musical and thematic diversity is glued together by Brooks' ability to instill even the most desolate musical climes with warmth and emotion.... One of the year's most oddly endearing records so far.

There's still a warm heart beating under all this newly-assembled machinery.

This is a truly freeflowing masterpiece that stands shoulder to shoulder with Mos Def's 'Black On Both Sides.'

Earle has let the spook out of the closet, so he can bare his spiritual chest (as it were) with a Lennonesque honesty and a vocal delivery that increasingly resembles Tom Petty's sub-Dylan sneer.

Given time, fans will warm to Peasant, but ultimately the inconsistency of it's songwriting is a tad disappointing.

And if nothing on Killing Puritans has quite the commercial potential of last year's You Don't Know Me (a UK Number 1), it does have the same cheekily opportunistic spirit, Van Helden's sticky fingers busily probing all kinds of forgotten pop cultural corners.

The emotion flows as true as the music.

The 'Lab's fondness for Latin exotica pushes the music well clear of egghead tedium.

In the end, it's surprisingly worth it for the few great, strange tracks.

Gentle, reflective, angsty girl'n'guitar fodder that's often more worthy than interesting. [July 2000, p.104]

Sadly sterile...

Echoboy nonchalantly pits twittering electronica and filmic ambiences against garage guitar riffing and sugary Europop: the result is an unpredictable 45-minute journey in sound. And it's an alluring trip for the most part.

Wiggs and Trimble do a fantastic job recreating the feel of classic soundtracks of the '60s and '70s... The only shame is that it runs out of steam a little towards the end.

A souffle-light concoction of tape loops, odd samples, and fey vocals. [July 2000, p.118]

With simple surf beats and a lyrical bent that takes in everything from ladymen to male models, All Hands... is mostly playful (You're No Rock & Roll Fun) with a touch of pathos (Was It A Lie), but not a bad one in sight.

Choosing favourites is almost futile with so much scintillating brilliance on offer.

Top-notch whiteboy radio rock with an eerie inner glow of Manson family sunshine...

If there's one complaint about Exterminator, apart from Bobby's rubbish rapping on Pills, it's that much of it feels like reworked outtakes from Vanishing Point.

A mellow, tender, easy album...

Though the shadows of Wilson and Lennon/McCartney loom large over this latest psyche-pop platter, the Apples tap into a tradition of classic pop songwriting rather than merely plagiarising their ancestors.

Imagine the Bronte sisters trying to play Yo La Tengo music on Air's instruments with Joe Meek producing.

This relentlessly engaging album hangs together even better than its illustrious predecessor.

Though the production isn't listener-friendly and the lyrics can be lovelorn in excelsis, Arthur's strong melodies and arresting imagery always win through.

Ecstasy is definitely a Lou Reed record for Lou Reed fans. If you're a happy regular shopper at Lou's Boutique, this one'll fit nicely on the shelf alongside all the others.

Smith's third album since her mid-'90s comeback, might be a more orderly affair than one might have hoped for, but she's still capable of wreaking a little havoc.

Here, backed only by guitar or piano, she inhabits other singers' material (including Smog's "Red Apples") with a fierce conviction that's often startling.