Phantom Limb have refined their sound further to more clearly occupy the kind of country-soul territory once inhabited by the likes of Dobie Gray and The Staple Singers.

"Moonlit Car Chase" and "Base 64 Love" come perilously close to generic technopop.

Some of the better songs lack that adhesive zeitgeist quality that used to be the group's stock-in-trade. But at its best, there's enough variety and invention to recall The Beatles, sometimes directly. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

[Wrecking Ball is] unquestionably his most potent album so far this century.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea marks a return to The Magnetic Fields' abrasive electropop, which isn't always to the songs' advantage.

When it all comes together, with the sinuous, haunting grace of "Near Death Experience Experience" or the jaunty élan of "Danse Carribe", the results more than justify the sometimes obtuse methods.

There are a few too many tracks on which the hook outclasses the actual rap.

The impression is of someone picking obsessively at an emotional scab, which is effectively what The Wall is all about.

It has a winning blend of respect, technique and humour.

Meat Loaf's latest, which covers much the same territory [as The Wall] but without any depth or desire to understand.

These 10 tracks are a masterclass in modern pop creation, pinballing from style to style without endangering their essential "TingTingness".

[The] debut album sparkles with invention and throbs with emotion.

White's albums have tendrils that imperceptibly wrap themselves around one's attention; and such is the case here.

It's Wagner's mix of the enigmatic and the demotic that dominates, his songs fill of understated apothegms and startling lines.

[Shows a] lack of development involved in either the music or the creators' worldview.

It's pleasant enough ... but somehow lacks the cutting edge.

Her best album in about a decade.

An engaging blend of slinky Tropicalia, soulful Bacharachia, and enigmatic Euro-thriller themes.

[It is] possibly the band's best album.

The arrangements on Barry Adamson's latest album seem more restrained than usual, his jazz-noir ambitions trimmed to a blues-funk palette of bass and drum grooves carrying Hammond organ or piano parts, with just the occasional solo horn part.

Speech Debelle shows some welcome signs of maturity on this follow-up.

There's an awful lot of music crammed into Plumb's 35 minutes, but it's rarely organized into the most attractive shapes - and on the few occasions it is, they alter course within seconds and head off in some less appealing direction.

Has the dense, occasionally cluttered manner of the obsessive bedroom producer.

The loss of its uplifting chorus harmonies deprives "Map Ref" of its sunny appeal, but "Two People In a Room" bowls along briskly with dissonant monochord tension.

The lite-jazz treatment of standards on Kisses on the Bottom seems like a misstep.

Taken as a whole, it's a marvellous piece of work, boasting a rare congruence between lyrical themes and musical evocations, and fronted by one of the most broodingly characterful voices in rock music.

Pleasingly, it's all comically cosmic, as befits the host movie.

Mindset is short by Necks standards--just two tracks of 22 minutes each--but it is typically involving.