This is a galvanising return. [Apr 2013, p.96]

Their easy familiarity is evident throughout The Siren's Song, with its beautiful mix of of Kacy's crystalline vocals and Clayton's inventive, deep-groove country guitar. [Jun 2018, p.91]

Hopelessness sees Anohni take a harder radical line--her rich, red velvet voice set not in the pastoral piano landscapes of lauded past albums, but in the contemporary electronic stylings of two producers: Glasgow DJ Hundson Mohawke and his Warp label contemporary, Brooklyn's Daniel Lopatin aka Oneohtrix Point Never. [Jun 2016, p.89]

A fine writer who is really finding her voice. [Jun 2019, p.94]

Red Barked Tree compares favorably with the very best of the definitive Wire. [Feb. 2011, p. 98]

It's essentially a particularly dark MSP bravely attempting to go a bit ABBA, failing miserably but in the process creating a skewed but alluring new pop persona. ... A hit. [Oct 2021, p.97]

Expand their ragged country-rock sound, the strings, horns and choral backing vocals investing in Wriggins' frayed ruminations and road-weary baritone with a necessary blue-collar grandeur. [Sep 2025, p.80]

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

Even those wearied by Oldham's avalanche of releases should investigate. [May 2012, p.87]

The effect is a bit like pleasantly nodding off to a Mazzy Star record and, like the smoke off the titular post-coital gaspers, the intoxicating atmosphere lingers long after the tracks have played out. [Sep 2017, p.88]

Some of the lyrics that should sound like cliche feel more legit as we hear Segall wade earnestly into the aches and joys of existence. [Sep 2019, p.90]

A band who aim foolishly high but always return, wings intact. [Sep 2004, p.92]

Glenn Jones's repeated trips to the well of John Fahey's American Primitive legacy seem to yield even more refreshing results. [Sep 2018, p.90]

Interesting as the Wallace mixes are, the band is most compelling thrashing through Talent Show and I Won't, live in Milwaukee. [Nov 2019, p.102]

The Cardiff-LA pairing might be creatively equal, but the sound they make is beautifully out of balance. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Carla Dal Forno's newest release sounds strangely fragile and vulnerable. ... Interspersed with exquisitely forlorn Eno-esque instrumenetals. [Nov 2019, p.95]

This is easily Battles' best album to date, the one you've always hoped they would make. [Oct 2015, p.95]

Beautiful and potent stuff. [Oct 2020, p.89]

Kwabs' effortless ability to glide through genres and attract ungrudging royal endorsements will, one suspects, give his moving debut serious legs. [Oct 2015, p.96]

Five solo LPs in, The Mighty Several vouches for his continued worth, fostering unity and empathy in divided times. [Nov 2024, p.88]

High Noon Hymns is possibly the Ryders' most directly activistic LP of all, from the title itself through to the anti-Trump sentiments of Four Winters Away and the T. Rex-powered Stand A Little Further In The Fire. [May 2026, p.87]

Consistently engaging. [Nov 2012, p.87]

Studded with sardonic, Pavement-y wit. [Dec 2017, p.96]

This eponymous offering once again demonstrates his effortless, and seemingly innate, ability to make the familiar feel fresh and enticing. [Feb 2017, p.90]

What's new, though, is how Taylor has pushed his music's most rousing dimensions to the fore. [Oct 2023, p.84]

It's a giant leap forward for one of the most original voices around. [Mar 2020, p.84]

Not every number here reaches its perfection, but 'twas ever thus with the works of Raymond Douglas Davies; warts and all, and even the warts are interesting. [Dec 2007, p.109]

With an occasional propensity for mindless wigouts slightly curbed, it's windswept anthems a-go-go on their best album for years. [May 2017, p.96]

Rave Tapes does not find Mogwai colonising new territory, but that seems fair when their own stretch of land is still giving up such gold. [Feb 2014, p.89]

The title track, inspired by views of County Antrim's scenic Rathin Island, is an exercise in crepuscular melancholy that inexorably yields to uplifting chordal beauty - shafts of sunlight dispelling the Gloom. The four tracks that comprise The Liquid Hour, meanwhile, evince Tiersen's skill as an electronic orchestrator. [May 2025, p.91]

Highlights include Richard Youngs' wistful Summer's Edge, with Sugden deadpan amid a splashing keyboard fountain. [May 2018, p.97]

The results are largely persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Diviner came out of post-band convalescence and a spell of recalibration, yet for all the intense, cocooning introspection in these songs, Thorpe is obviously more than ready to face the world alone. [Jun 2019, p.93]

The 62-year-old Bradley, meanwhile, has all the marks of the soul greats who have gone before him; the testifying smart Syl Johnson, the grit and gusto of Otis Redding, the raw power of James Brown, the smoulder and shudder of James Carr. Together they make an intoxicating sound, one that would have fit in perfectly at Twilight in the late-'60s.

Do It Afraid doesn't sound quite as home-made and fingerprint-smudged as Bey's lo-fi previous recordings, there's still no-one who sounds like her, no-one chronicling the agony and ecstasy with her unguarded and resonant vision. [Aug 2025, p.81]

Parish underscores his composing skills wit these uneasy instrumentals and tight-wound songs. [Jul 2018, p.98]

Evoking the ramshackle psychedelia of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Cryk nonetheless shows Le Bon following her own path. [May 2012, p.88]

If these tracks often sound like bejewelled, undiscovered relics then much of that is down to the tough musical palimpsest on which Bratten worked. [Aug 2019, p.93]

Remarkably, the bold, full-on cheese works, because this is an album of classic pop. [Apr 2010, p.93]

The album ebbs and flows with a winning fluidity. [Sep 2017, p.86]

With its children's choir,s its nods to Tears For Fears circa Songs From The Big Chair, and its Kanye and Kendrick Lamar-inspired production tics, the rest of Ellipsis also brings a fresh twist to Biffy's rampant stop-start riffage. [Aug 2016, p.98]

Skin takes in soul, jazz and trip-hop, and more than fulfils her early promise. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Love Your Dum And Mad [is] a piercingly direct seduction of the senses. [Aug 2013, p.88]

Plenty of smokey psychedelia, country-rockin' fun and damn fine tunes. [Oct 2003, p.122]

[A] stunning musical response to Lord of the Flies author William Golding's daring novelistic excursion into prehistoric anthropology. [Jul 2013, p.85]

Tyler and band lean deeper into kosmische country rock. [Jul 2023, p.92]

The set pivots around its experimental jazz title track, where warming Rhodes are counterpointed by fractured beats, fidgety bleeps and trills. [Dec 2016, p.93]

Molly Hamilton's languorous, seductive vocals further elevate simple Velvets-meets-The-Cowboy-Junkies arrangements, guitar foil Robert Earl Thomas entices with wobbly curlicue riffs and minimalist twang and psych-flute motifs on While You Wait keep things fresh. [Apr 2022, p.87]

Mehldau is never bereft of imagination, using his source material as a vehicle for sublime musical storytelling that results in some of the most beautiful piano playing you'll ever hear. [Dec 2015, p.87]

It's a subtly sophisticated piece, but it also creates space for Sanders to showcase his tender, measured, lyrical phrasing, abstracted scatting and, 34 minutes into this 46-minute marvel a brief sputtering blast of free saxophone energy that proves, at 80, his fire remains potent. [May 2021, p.87]

The Cumbrian art-rockers go out on this crisp, thoroughly engaging high: a live in the studio, Boy King-heavy stroll through some of their big-hitters recorded at RAK in London over two days last summer. [Mar 2018, p.96]

Hutchings has suggested his Ancestors work is an update of the griot tradition - weaving social commentary into seemingly harmless party pieces. We Are Sent Here By History achieves more: transforming impending doom into an affirmation of life. [Apr 2020, p.92]

Autumn of the Seraphs is some of their punchiest work, packed with euphoric melodies, wry lyricism and subtly enhanced grooves. [Oct 2007, p.99]

Les Savy Fav hunker down to return to what they do best: a masterful combination of post-hardcore energy, tight white funk and playful art-school abstractions. [Oct 2010, p.104]

Fetch finds the band a newly slimline two-piece in pursuit of fresh territory. [Jan 2014, p.102]

What she shows via sweetly understated arrangements, are beautifully simple love songs delivered with a summer-scented voice that echoes Karen Carpenter one minute, Linda Ronstadt or Peggy Lee the next. [Aug 2008, p.102]

This is Mastodon rediscovering both their edge and their emotional resonance. [May 2017, p.96]

Their cover of Got Love If You Want It is a raw, gritty highlight. [Apr 2020, p.96]

The foundations--the Latin rhythm section--remain solid, and wandering freely around is saxophonist Issa Cissoko, who, spiritually and musically, is to Baobab what Keith is to the Stones and Bez to the Mondays. Still a bit special. [May 2017, p.95]

File under deserving of proper attention. [Feb 2013, p.92]

The overall mood is one of muted, minor-key sadness, Sakamoto's clear, simple piano lines eroded and blurred by the melancholy atmospherics of Fennesz. [Feb 2012, p.97

More moments of delicate beauty than before. [Aug 2021, p.90]

San Francisco art-rockers deliver the perfect prog-pop hit. [Feb. 2011, p. 100]

Their onslaught harbours moments of intense, unlikely beauty, while theirs surface attack is a testament to hardcore's enduring power to shock and thrill. [Sep 2025, p.82]

S, no watersports this time, but a wee triumph nonetheless. [Dec 2009, p. 100]

An album packed with thoughtful adventure and mischief. A true gem. [May 2012, p.83]

The case is made for this wilful outfit's prog-jazz with a hardcore punk heart. [Aug 2019, p.90]

Breakthroughs can never be predicted with certainty, but Kinder Versions is Mammut's convincing international calling card. [Aug 2017, p.90]

Grizzly Bear sound enchanted with the pure pleasure of texture; hooks take their time to emerge, but Morning Sound and Sky Took Hold are the best entry points to this stately, meticulous music. [Sep 2017, p.90]

With songs about Slits frontierswoman Ari Up and their inspired use of carnivalesque steel pans and soaring Bollywood-styled strings, it also marches to its own beat. [Jun 2014, p.92]

Nothing remotely insipid here; rather anger as an energy and top tunes. [Dec 2021, p.84]

Another exquisite recording documenting the near-telepathic connection between guitarist Oren Ambarci, bassists Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin. [Oct 2025, p.86]

This is vaulting, widescreen soundscaping of the first water. [Oct 2017, p.92]

Idles are finding new directions home: the hallmark of a great band. [Dec 2021, p.85]

As musical hybrids go, it's a fascinating and highly addictive one. [May 2012, p.93]

Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, Raymond's staggering second album, leaves no doubt that she is among the most vital, dynamic voices within the still-teeming solo guitar orbit. [Dec 2020, p.82]

Rarely can the lute have sounded quite as threatening as it does here. [Nov 2016, p.93]

It's the limpid slow tunes - Opal, Night Shade and more - that stand out. Only Storyville overstays its welcome, spinning off into a free-form scrabble, but the lovely Something More restores harmony. [Mar 2026, p.86]

The Londoner's high soul voice shines through on astral-themed second album. . [Dec 2018, p.94]

A record of jarring juxtapositions, a bunch of cool tunes that could[n't] care less about how they fit together. [Apr 2006, p.86]

Inside The Ships is one of their most entertaining yet confounding albums. [Oct 2011, p.101]

Crooked Tree is a bountiful harvest, fruit of more dedicated application. [May 2022, p.91]

All told: a mighty uplifting wheeze. [Feb 2018, p.97]

Endless Rooms presents a tightly-knit ensemble creatively, thrilling ablaze. [Jun 2022, p.90]

It's been worth the wait. [Oct 2010, p.103]

Disillusion and disappointment have become fuel for creation, not self-immolation; second-guessing has been replaced by first-hand emotion. ... For the first time in a while -- that The Strokes shouldn't be gearing up for goodbye. [May 2020, p.86]

A compelling consistency of mood makes Metal Illness easy to get lost in. [May 2017, p.94]

Decamping to Mexico with a gang of musician friends and collaborating in songwriting as well as performance has made for Conor Oberst's most colourful, upbeat record so far. [Jun 2009, p.100]

Seb Rochford's drumming gives songs such as Kouma an unavoidably non-traditional kick, and the guitars (primarily by the singer herself) have a crunch missing from her early recordings. [May 2013, p.85]

Young, smart, pissed-off, ultra-basic, but also competent and powerful, these youngsters fire off brisk, bubblegum tunes in proud thrall to Da Brudders, and, by extension, girl-groups of the '60s. [Dec 2009, p.96]

Generous handclaps and a beautifully thrumming guitar buoy The Loneliness & The Scream. Living In Coulour, meanwhile, is a statement of intent, chiming pianos and a reeling rhythm pushing things along, typifying an album made by a band happily at the peak of its powers. [mar 2010, p.90]

Tremendous fun throughout. [Sep 2017, p.87]

This intimate 2013 show at Los Angeles' storied Wiltern Theatre--beautifully shot for Blu-ray--is proof, revisiting tracks from throughout their catalogue, opening with a searing, gloriously sludgy grind through Incessant Mace. From there, they showcase their many facets. [Sep 2019, p.107]

Once again Tucker demonstrates his knack of creating simple, incantatory, almost folky vocal lines, which pivot around a few telling chord changes and lodge in the memory long after the music stops. [Sep 2019, p.91]

Her songs are beautifully, tentatively constructed, the arch quirkiness of her early albums now replaced by the lush writing of songs. [Nov 2020, p.88]

Flight b741 feels like the doozy Primal Scream aspired to circa Give Out But Don’t Give Up. Turns out you don’t have to fly to Memphis to shine. [Sep 2024, p.88]

A triumphant second solo chapter. [Oct 2015, p.98]

Lovely instrumental set. [Dec 2020, p.89]