Romy Vager's vocals are raw, earnest, and Tambourine is Brain Worms distilled, a taut memoir of remote mourning. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Allen provides a genre-defining pulse. [Sep 2023, p.81]

A triumph. [Dec 2023, p.76]

Effortless virtuosity and timeless idiosyncratic tropes elevate nine tracks recorded at Sam Phillips Studio in Memphis (except for the live Got My Mojo Workin'). [Jul 2024, p.83]

Most touching is the full-circle thrill of hearing P.P. belt out her 1968 standard, Angel Of The Morning. [Dec 2024, p.77]

Gabbard played all the instruments himself, which is admirable but limiting. He needs a band to break up the somewhat metronomic feel. And a producer who can bring a radio-friendly flourish. [Jan 2025, p.82]

Buzz is in full-on demented rock-god mode (Victory Of The Pyramids), a full-throttle sludge trash that out-Hawkwinds even the mighty Hawkwind themselves. [Jun 2025, p.71]

On sturdy, soulful vocals, Richard Watts is again Trower's mouthpiece for these well-observed songs (his concerns include culture wars and the clock's now-deafening tick). But the truest expression comes from the guitarist's extended freeform solos. [Jun 2025, p.77]

Their impressive fourth album punches like a clenched claw. [Jun 2025, p.71]

They're clearly having a blast, in every sense - there's enough noirish sarcasm to make that clear - but there's also a punk nihilism at play that makes this debut album a compellingly unsettling listen. [Sep 2025, p.77]

The pace of Duets Special is slow and steady, so inevitably there are moments where it drags a little, but to hear one of the great rock voices of her era in her element, sharing the music she loves with musicians she respects and complements, is a quiet, low-key joy to behold. [Nov 2025, p.80]

It all makes for a varied, sophisticated and somewhat restrained listen, as the Wakefield trio's bawling attack is tempered to allow subtler flavours to seep through. [Apr 2026, p.75]

This is a record to cherish, driven by bright acoustics, gently overdriven electrics, the occasional pedal steel and fiddle, and, above it all, Taylor's voice and exceptional songwriting nous. [Jun 2026, p.73]

[The band] sound like they’re grabbing at big choruses like an alcoholic scrabbling for a bedside breakfast whisky. But on The Feelers, the motoric Spices and Me & Magdalena, Craig Finn’s sneered diatribe about a manipulative rock junkie, they nonetheless stumble across a rich, National-like lustre of dark grooves and opiated euphoria.

Thunder, bottled. [Feb 2014, p.95]

On the evidence of Painkillers, Fallon doesn’t really need the backup of a regular band. With this debut he’s placed his stake as an American singer-songwriter of style and substance.

Two plays in, as with this utterly endearing tenth, you will overlook its flaws and follies and fall for their gentle angst massages and relentless power pop melodies. [Nov 2019, p.84]

Six inessential demos added to the original album hardly warrant the ‘deluxe edition’ tag. But as a document of a musical sea change, Ultramega OK is indispensable.

Their best record since the last one you liked. [Jun 2020, p.88]

At last, a Mew album as essential as it is deeply odd. [Jun 2015, p.97]

Employing rhythmic sideswipes, jarring guitar clangour and dub bass frequencies through a production filter marked 'Mud'. [Summer 2025, p.79]

While nothing quite matches the brutalist stomps of your youth, there’s a savage intensity at work here.

A twelfth album that comes off the ropes swinging. ... His vocals are gleeful and feline, and these 11 songs are full of purpose. [Apr 2020, p.82]

A good chunk of this Comet is heaven-bound. [Summer 2018, p.92]

It's Tripp's devotion to short, snappy expression that lends this album mist character. [Apr 2026, p.77]

Hard Light works so well because rather than cling on to relevance during the wilderness years, Drop Nineteen have simply waited and let the world catch up with them. [Dec 2023, p.77]

A spectacular squall of uber-MBV sungaze dream-pop propels indigenous Swinowish/Inupiaq woman Katherine Paul's jouney. [Apr 2023, p.79]

Even in the late autumn of his career, Neil Young can still turn in something as vital and musically catholic as Worl Record. [Jan 2023, p.78]