Thirty years, 170 shows, a repertoire of 400 songs in 3,509 performances: from that motherlode we have 48 nuggets chronicling the live career of the South's Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

Every inch of tape had emotional or melodic purpose. [Nov 2011, p.109]

The stark beats are the best Hugo and Williams have built in years. But its themes--dealing, girls--require more lyrical innovation to compel. [Feb 2007, p.105]

Barnett doesn't quite equal this deadpan reportage [as Avant Gardener on 2013's A Sea of Split Peas] but navigates similar terrain in charming style. [Apr 2015, p.88]

Twigs plants words with tenacious deliberation and care, but sometimes the result is over-studied, a gentle industrial emo. [Dec 2019, p.93]

She repeatedly refers to her inability to express her emotions fully--which is exactly how Dirty Computer leaves you feeling. [Jul 2018, p.88]

New Adventures In Hi-Fi holds up well now. ... CD2 consists of all previously released material. Fun of you've never hears R.E.M. saunter through Wichita Lineman, but completists will see this one as a massive opportunity missed. [Dec 2021, p.98]

If you can get past the redundancy--and what a redundancy it is. [Jan 2016, p.106]

What is missing is that impish, dangerous side, the famous contorted grin and all that it suggests: humour and horror, surprise and confrontation. [Nov 2014, p.89]

The inventiveness on display is undeniably impressive, but the process sometimes hides a little too much of the artist behind it. [Nov 2022, p.86]

Some of the vocal processing, though pushed to the extreme, will be a little familiar to Bon Iver fans/sceptics. Persevere, though, and yet more classic Low songs emerge from the post-apocalyptic murk. [Oct 2018, p.87]

The Shaggs couldn't play, they could barely sing and their songs are rudimentary, but you won't hear many records with such heartfelt authenticity of feeling. [Oct 2016, p.107]

Side by side in this unfamiliar setting, well-known songs become unsettling. [Oct 2017, p.104]

Some might find the work's almost wilful-seeming opacity and slight whiff of academia off-putting. Judged on purely musical terms, however, it's a ting of great beauty. [Apr 2017, p.90]

Awesome in scope and execution, it's an album that's ultimately easier to admire than it is to love. [Jun 2009, p.108]

Images both earthy and heavenly make repeated showings, but case's vexing concern is troubled humans. [Jul 2018, p.88]

American indie cult heroes get a little noisier, a little more obscure [June 2010, p. 104]

It's this continued need to feed her multi-platinum beast that stops the album from being the post-modern wheeze it could have been. [Mar 2014, p.94]

He reinterprets key moments from his back catalogue. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Their initial torrid confluence of My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division here shapeshifts more towards "synth-assisted stadium nu-gaze," with odd Kraut-y hints of early Simple Minds, and frequent echoes of their new found patron: fune-real The Arbor is pure Disintegration, while shimmering Keep It All To Yourself has Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!'s hi-tech dazzle. [Feb 2019, p.88]

It can be vague on the details, but Baker's songwriting is smart and serious enough to keep Little Oblivions from burning out entirely. [Apr 2021, p.86]

Familiar elements (Nancy Wang's cheerleading vocals, sparse instrumentation colliding, lyrical misanthropy) are present and correct, but everything is bolder and deeper. [June 2010, p. 93]

Constant Bop is even more eclectic [than White Denim's music]. [Jun 2015, p.87]

For Carry Fire, Plant has written Lion In Winter love songs. [Nov 2017, p.96]

Negro Swan is more consolidation than the ext great leap forwards. [Oct 2018, p.91]

Songs draws itself into clearer focus through Lenker's sweet, freshly-cut voice. [Nov 2020, p.83]

Great in places, but somehow not quite Ron. [Dec 2002, p.122]

[The E Street Band] are barely present. Despite the sterile production, it's a vivid portrayal of personal torment, with great songs. ... Human Touch and Lucky Town make sense: the work of a man focused on changing nappies or seeing his therapist. ... In Concert/MTV Plugged confirms, the sacred texts were better served by E Street's idiosyncrasies. [Jul 2018, p.105]

Sometimes futuristic, at others surprisingly formulaic, it’s another stepping stone on Sinephro’s path to greatness but one where the parts are worth more than the whole. [Oct 2024, p.87]

Never sounds less than game. [Nov 2021, p.87]

It's all so sad, and surrounded by 80-plus minutes of restless, questing uncertainty. [Nov 2018, p.90]

The delivery is folk emo. [Dec 2017, p.92]

The warm glow that they engender is palpable, but you do wonder what may happen if The Field broke free from the constraints of the loop. [Jan 2012, p.99]

This soaring album defines emotional shoegazing. [Dec 2009, p. 101]

Tucker has created an album that should endear her to those who still raise the outlaw flag while also appealing to hard-edged pop-tinged rock believers. [Oct 2019, p.83]

A more tasteful affair [than Leave Home], tapping into the 1980s underground's collegiate, powerpop end... plus straight-ahead rock-n-roll holler. [May 2012, p.82]

The absence of between-song chat makes the experience unnecessarily remote. [Mar 2020, p.106]

If the alcoholic's lament Death Came teeters close to parody, then the bare-boned country pop of Place In My Heart and Bitter Memory offer some much needed respite. [Feb 2016, p.90]

At times you'd think she's finally stepped around her natural sophistication and freed her true nature. But then her rooted unwillingness to share, via comprehensible diction, the lyrics she's carefully crafted does step between the different intimacies of sound and sense. [Jun 2014, p.88]

It's often a mess, but to witness he process is genuinely exhilarating. [Jun 2018, p.88]

He stomps or sways along in the nu Seattle folk/rockabilly grave-fun way displaying a sing-the-phonebook grace. [Jun 2012, p.93]

Thankfully, frequent shards of light lift the gloom and raise the spirits. [Mar 2014, p.95]

While all but a handful of the songs from the 13 track Angels & Queens have already been drip-fed via a series of singles, EPs and last year's seven-track mini-album, Gabriels' desire to take their time with the making of their long-awaited debut album has certainly paid off. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Unlike the four prior archival editions, Joni’s Jazz gives listeners very little that’s new. .... It is tempting to see it, then, as a chaotic but mostly coherent and sometimes very compelling streaming playlist, given deluxe physical form. [Oct 2025, p.46]

The first half of the album is techno-pop, finely balancing euphoria and heartache. .... The subsequent ballads' more fragile. [May 2022, p.89]

The joy of Steely Dan's early albums was that their superior playing, production and craftsmanship was vibrantly energetic, spiced with rollercoaster twists and turns, and deeply sardonic lyrics... Fagen now lacks those vital extra elements, leaving just craftsmanship with no spark. [Apr 2006, p.104]

It's disappointing that there aren't one or two more inspiring moments, especially when there's a roughly equivalent number of duds. [Jan 2017, p.92]

Teen Dream is a lovely album, but there's more to admire here than to actually love. Oddly, that may not be a problem. [Feb. 2010, p. 94]

The confrontational quintet dare to seek out melody and explore a new-found subtlety on an otherwise exhaustingly visceral ride. [May 2010, p. 95]

Initial listens may suggest contrived incongruity. Further spins reveal the affectionate smarts behind these acts of desecration. [Jul 2014, p.87]

You need to pick through the later albums to find some occasional moments of brilliance. although if you unconditionally love well-executed '70s funky-soul, it's all good! [Mar 2020, p.105]

Utopia feels like a diversion, not a destination. A nice place to visit--beautiful, even--but you wouldn't want to live there. [Jan 2018, p.89]

This time around, the radio programmers will be listening harder, but taken as a 68-minute whole, The Electric Lady is quite a trip. [Dec 2013, p.84]

A little loosening up might help those serotonin levels. [Jul 2014, p.96]

A first strike of the match before they burn their own path forward. [Sep 2019, p.94]

Unsurprisingly, it flies the Wire and Minutemen flags high. More surprising are the occasional nods to funk and '60s bubblegum. [Jun 2018, p.95]

There was potential for so much more. [Jun 2009, p.98]

A gloriously unviable alternative to dullard R&B/X Factorism. [Jun 2012, p.92]

Evocative rather than vivid in a way that evokes Faith-era Cure's greyscale atmospheres, Everything IS Alive is the sound of Slowdive still holding their impressive earthly form. [Oct 2023, p.85]

[Album opener Civil Servant is] sonically inventive, with vocoder interludes and a rousing final call of "Refuse! Refuse!," but its on-the-nose swipes at "Bus-fulls of meat...staring at phone-screens" can't avoid the patronising tone of 95 per cent of all songs about "the workers," written by those otherwise employed. ... Far better are songs where Dawson locates the misery and mystery of life in smaller worlds and stranger vignettes. [Nov 2019, p.90]

The bass-fuzz stomp and chain-gang holler of 'Grounds for Divorce' couldn't be more immediate, Guy Garvey refusing to let emotional intelligence blackball a decnt tune. [Apr 2008, p.106]

Pale Green Ghosts is both novel and familiar. [Apr 2013, p.86]

Though inconsistent, the quartet have siphoned the best of punk and '90s slacker pop to create an album that couldn't be any more Rough Trade if it tried. [May 2016, p.94]

Few other bands could provide properly sympathetic backing for a singer who delivers his roiling emotions in such sad, sleepy tones. [Oct 2004, p.112]

The awe fades quickly as this album progresses. [Jun 2003, p.100]

The London trio founded by drummer Yussef Dayes and Keyboardist Kamaal Williams give it an urban twist , factoring grime and broken beat influences into their unpredictable improvised jams. [Jan 2017, p.99]

Songs feel shy of messing with the familiar. [Sep 2018, p.94]

The main feeling it provokes is sincere admiration at a job well done, but a raised pulse, unfortunately, is something Spoon can't craft from scratch. [Apr 2017, p.96]

They remain a magical band still searching for a commensurate album, arriving at a record whose thrills are real but fleeting. [Nov 2022, p.92]

Celebrating both Big Bill and the Alvins' shared boyhood, this genial collaboration throws a warm light on both. [Jul 2014, p.89]

Dana Margolin isn't just reckoning with a break-up, but a near-total collapse in its wake. ... Yet the prettiness somehow makes listening feel more voyeuristic. [Jul 2022, p.92]

Over time, however, it can feel like Clarke has excised the excitement along with the Extraneous matter, his balefully lovelorn tenor, now right out front without distracting clutter, often too reedy to carry the show. [Sep 2023, p.84]

Ultimately, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they’ve scaled greater heights with more time and pre-writing. [Aug 2024, p.91]

When the approach works, the results are bracingly exploratory; when it doesn't they're frustratingly half-formed. [Jul 2005, p.94]

Marnie Stern is a strong statement from a musician whose confidence is soaring. [Dec 2010, p.97]

All lovely throwbacks have an instant familiarity. [Oct 2015, p.93]

Slightly mannered vocals; odd but good. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Indie-folk lifers tackle the Prairie Home Companion canon, also bringing their ethereal close harmonies to Kanye West. [Apr 2020, p.96]

Midway, things meander, after Adrianne Lenker's pellucid vocals twists and turns. [Jul 2017, p.96]

Produced with Dave Fridmann and Joe Chiccarelli, the album benefits from the former's spacey soundscapes and the latter's commercial sensibility. [Sep 2014, p.96]

Konoyo is subtly emotive, its soundscapes cool and tranquil then swallowed up by blossoms of cryptic drama. [Dec 2018, p.93]

It's on those songs that strike a chord with Elliot personally that he's most convincing. [May 2009, p.103]

These are precarious songs, Oberst's voice as fragile as an egg, yet when it comes to songwriting, Bright Eyes remain a safe pair of hands. [Oct 2020, p.84]

Occasionally it feels a little too theatrical--as on Willie O' Winsbury--but its roots are in the right place. [Aug 2017, p.95]

Not so much the future of hip hop as a giant leap sideways. [Aug 2014, p.86]

A teeming sonic bricolage of absurd/disturbing found vocals, bizarre musical fragments and their own art-funk chops, it suggests kinship with Robert Ashley, Aphex Twin and Eno & Byrne. [Sep 2010, p.97]

Everybody scream is both a re-statement of what made her so beguiling and a gentle step forwards. [Jan 2026, p.85]

FM! initially feels slighter, not least because of a brisk 22-minute duration. The breeziness is deceptive, though, as Staples and producer Kenny Beats construct a minimalist update of G-funk where the jams are always freighted with an awareness of potential violence. [Feb 2019, p;.84]

'Easy Does It' is pleasant and clever rather than emotive and memorable, like so much of this album. [Aug 2008, p.114]

Attention wanders as the album slips into a lazy mid-pace skunk groove and Robinson falls back on 'one love' lyrics, but when the duo are joined, on three tracks, by the spider-baby vocals of Kiki Hitomi the effect is unnerving, like modern urban folk tales whispered by a disembodied duo of night bus wraiths. [Jan 2010, p. 96]

It's a little hard to take in one sitting, though downcast fans of Saint Etienne and The Magnetic Fields will find much to adore. [Sep 2005, p.92]

A decent album, but perhaps not the one some of us were hoping for. [Nov 2019, p.95]

A provocative, anti-establishment critique of the blind idolatry received by the British monarchy and finds each of the nine tracks paying homage to Hutchings' list of notable women that he believes are worthy alternative monarchs. [Apr 2018, p.87]

It's a mess of ambition and avant overload, and often too much, but you can't help but admire The New Sound's Stevie Chick wild abandon. And while the whirlwind of concepts and sonic right-turns ultimately fails to cohere, its thrills are many. [Nov 2024, p.84]

Though the results are not always easy to take.... The sense of folk and country pervades each and every performance, saving the day. [Sep 2015, p.90]

Lyrics are vital, and here they often clunk where they should pierce, deadening some of her undeniable power. [Jun 2020, p.86]

When Robert Smith guests on the strident How Not to Drown it's a perfect retro storm. Yet the opening Asking For A Friend has a very 2021 clatter, while Violent Delights evokes a sugar-free Ellie Goulding. [Oct 2021, p.98]

Metals is the product of a stock-taking pause, it's clear the former Canadian indie scenester had rediscovered her bearings. [Oct 2011, p.106]