The result is mesmerising--one lone, moving meditation on love and England and murderous empire. [Jul 2019, p.86]

A remarkable comeback. [Jun 2004, p.106]

A best possible blend of odd and good. [Dec 2017, p.96]

Even though her dreamscapes are surreal, there are moments that jolt. [Sep 2019, p.90]

An uncomfortable listen, especially the Big Star's Third-esque When I Think Of You, but also an album imbued with acceptance and dignity. [Nov 2019, p.93]

[The new songs] have a compression and pop playfulness often lacking from his albums, yet still manages to address the complex "every feeling" emotions of high school students. [May 2020, p.91]

There's so much going on that each sitting reveals new nuances and added twists of slender wonder. [Jul 2020, p.82]

Like a wonderous and very clever piece of musical brain onomatopoeia. [Aug 2023, p.84]

Never less than fresh-sounding and curious. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Hval's most rounded missive to date unsettles. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Every bit as chaotically charming as its predecessor. [Nov 2005, p.108]

It's an absorbing listen. [Nov 2019, p.108

If the album has a fault, it's in sequencing, with some of stronger moments low in the pecking order. [May 2015, p.99]

Songs hang in the air, implying rather than asserting uncanny dimensions. Dylan’s voice, again, is quite beautiful, with a control and nuance so many thought he’d lost. [Jul 2023, p.97]

The musical and emotional ground covered here is remarkable, evidence of an artist who can locate joy inside pain, and whose adventurous, modernist, fearful funk can be movingly expressive. [May 2020, p.88]

Wyatt's keening, unaffected, peculiarly comforting voice is the uniquely compelling common denominator. [Dec 2014, p.110]

It's the garlanded ritual folk of Kan Me ("May Song"), however, that underlines this is a record of changing seasons and transitional states. Accept the offer of tea but prepare to lose days in the process. [Aug 2022, p.90]

This is an odyssey both emotional and educational. [Jan 2015, p.108]

A tear-stained, yet tasteful, requiem. [Feb 2006, p.93]

Bruce Springsteen began making this album in 2010--like golden reflections late in the day, it's been worth the wait. [Aug 2019, p.88]

The stated modus operandi--everybody is leading and following--results in some fascinating new angles and delicious surprises on familiar material. [Apr 2011, p.107]

Nasty, brutish, short, and wholly compelling, Yeezus begs only one question: where next? [Sep 2013, p.89]

It's as complete as any Floyd completist could hope for. [Apr 2012, p.101]

It's never morbid, but mortality is a running theme. [Jun 2018, p.91]

This primarily acoustic reimagining brings the artistry of the Niger-based quartet to the fore with aplomb. [Apr 2025, p.86]

A keeper. ... This is still a terrific entry point into a band who repay obsession. [Oct 2018, p.87]

They really do sound like a band more than a group. [Jun 2019, p.92]

It's the emotional, cathartic journey of the chief protagonist that captivates the most. [Oct 2023, p.86]

Ten is a classic of the grunge era, its super-sized anthems and introspective pieces powered by Eddie Vedder, a Jim Morrision for the plaid shirt brigade. [Apr 2009, p.116]

Instead of meeting fire with ire, there's an attempt to provide calm, clarity, a space to contemplate what really matters. [Feb 2020, p.93]

Ultimately, the record triumphs via Rolling Blackouts; deep inhabitation of their music, ans the space of its creation. [Jul 2018, p.92]

As ever, the sonic palette is richly clean, the harmonies stacked, and Jerry Douglas’s dobro an empathetic, keening presence in constant dialogue with the singers, now the dominant solo instrument in the ensemble. [May 2025, p.87]

Gibbons rises to the occasion. [May 2019, p.89]

Very sweet debut, a mostly acoustic affair. [Sep 2020, p.93]

Over and over again, Pratt hovers on the brink of revelation, yet Quiet Signs puts down a code, that, brilliantly, it's not quite possible to break. [Mar 2019, p.89]

Uninhibited where "()" felt constipated. [Oct 2005, p.99]

Cronin delvers timeless, classic pop that evades cliches. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Moisturizer shows, decisively, that while the metal gauntlets might be very much on, creatively, Wet leg's gloves are off. [Aug 2025, p.74]

Melt!, a twisted dancefloor lament for the polar ice caps, is a reminder of Owen's ability to mine techno gold. But the highlight is Corner Of My Sky, a memorable collaboration with compatriot John Cale. [Jun 2020, p.91]

Blood Money makes for an extravagant headphone experience if you're in the right frame of mind. If not, its clatter and blare and nihilism will genuinely jangle your nerves. [Co-Album Of The Month (with 'Alice'), May 2002, p.94]

A magnificent record. [Jan 2004, p.104]

A tremendous (and timely) distraction from the bad news from the desert this year. [May 2013, p.85]

Waking The Dreaming Body is both welcoming comfort and a surprising joy. [Apr 2021, p.82]

A new depth to her prickly but previously sometimes brattish lyrics, a grown-up album by a real grown-up who knows how to sugar-coat a pill for mass consumption. [Oct 2013, p.95]

[It] was mind-bending in its day and remains so now. [May 2006, p.122]

The debut solo album is as ornate as 2009's Veckatimest, with Rossen now playing almost all the buccaneering acoustic guitars, cascading piano lines, cellos and woodwinds himself. [May 2022, p.94]

[A] dark and glorious vision, reinterpreting Nashville country-soul hits from the '60s and '70s. [Jul 2016, p.97]

This superb second album does indeed make a dramatic leap forward. [Mar 2014, p.90]

A more intimate dimension to this incisive chronicler of beleaguered times. [May 2022, p.88]

Capturing his bad life choices, regrets and hopes at their most immediate. [Aug 2021, p.84]

A potpourri of country, rock, bluegrass and folk, the constant being top-shelf picking and soaring harmonies. [Nov 2022, p.93]

Meticulously constructed, yet with melodies and rhythms born out of improvisation, it's an album of two halves, moving from euphoric collapse to an uncertain contentment. [Jun 2018, p.89]

Halo digs deep into the unknown and bring back unexpected brilliance. [Jun 2017, p.93]

A lot happens on Eleven Eleven -- all of it good. [Sept. 2011, p. 106]

[Hank Cochran's] proven an inspirational figure for honky tonk star Johnson, who's managed to rope in half of Nashville for this revamp of Cochran's songbook. [Feb 2013, p.90]

[Sleep] have customarily not rushed into nailing The Sciences, nor departed from their rubric of burroughsian ganja mythspinning, set to eardrum-busting, down-tuned slo-mo jams. [Jul 2018, p.88]

Anima is his third solo album, outside of soundtracks, and it's his richest. [Sep 2019, p.87]

As well as blending linguistic elegance and musical levity, Sparkle Hard affirms Stephen Malkmus's increasingly contemplative approach. [Jun 2018, p.94]

A fine, off-beat listen. [Jan 2006, p.124]

It's sonically deeper and more emotionally engaging, from start to finish, than any previous SOK release. [Jun 2021, p.83]

Mimicking the band's whole existence, it flickers between light and shade, its clouds fast-moving, sunshine blotted out before it breaks through. [Apr 2018, p.88]

[A] disarming, relatable debut. [Mar 2017, p.97]

Stark, resolute songs. [Apr 2022, p.85]

Her insinuation of millennial angst-pop into pre-millennial alt-rock is so deft and affecting that Sometimes, Forever rewards the investment. Soccer Mommy feels like the real deal, [Jul 2022, p.92]

Hard to pin down, harder not to enjoy. [Jan 2026, p.90]

The packed tracklist suggests perfectly imperfect nuggets. ... The haunted, magical lies of Gonna Learn Too Crawl, meanwhile, invite close listening to his more muted, intimate moments, too. [Feb 2026, p.81]

The information exchange attains a near perfect equilibrium between sanctified melody and distress signals. [Oct 2021, p.91]

Audacious, hook-packed debut. [Nov 2014, p.102]

The most striking thing about Listening To Pictures is how effortlessly contemporary it sounds. [Jul 2018, p.94]

A fitting culmination of the run that began with Old Ideas in 2012. [Jan 2020, p.88]

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

One of the most compelling and stone-cold beautiful albums Simon has ever made. [Jul 2023, p.80]

Forget notions of old or new schools: this is an album that blends a kindergarten-level technique with styles that are strictly postgraduate. [Jun 2004, p.116]

Their pop peaks sound like an ecstatic communion of Mercury Rev, ELO and the cast of Hair. [Oct 2002, p.110]

If Yoshimi.... lacks the sheer shock value of Bulletin's panoramic delirium, its peak moments are enough to make it one of 2002's most rewarding releases. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.92]

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

Forsyth's own voice is used sparingly ... Mostly, though, he lets the fervid lyricism of his guitar be the focus. [May 2019, p.88]

You can't pin them down, but there lies the joy. [Jun 2025, p.84]

[Illuminates] Nash's own cosmic poetry, crunching guitars and swooning pedal steel. [Dec 2015, p.94]

It is Crosby's stubbornly enduring voice--the will to live and create in that gift after he came so close to throwing it away--that binds the wonder and mission on For Free. [Aug 2021, p.81]

[Kozelek] has never sounded more inspired, achieving a rich balance of haunting atmosphere and twangy grit. [Feb 2004, p.101]

Gruff Rhys returns from his sabbatical to release another crush of blissed-out psychedelia, crunching beats, sun-kissed harmonies and topsy-turvy rhythms. And what a blast it is, too. [May 2009, p.96]

A spare, transient, restrained thing. Yet it's that restraint that ultimately defines its brilliance; the sound of a more confident, assured artist realising that it might be better to travel slowly than to arrive. [Dec 2025, p.86]

Dizzying stuff. [Apr 2026, p.91]

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

Urgent, retro-futurist and profoundly absorbing. [Jul 2020, p.84]

The album captivates wen his bad keeps pulling Freeman and his florid drawl back down to earth, the tension creating a form of transportive rural psychedelia. [Sep 2025, p.79]

Vernon continues to deal in emotionally heavy music operating on the cutting edge of tech. Everything ID Peaceful Love is the standout. [Jun 2025, p.87]

If "Street Horrsing" was a bit of a lark, then Tarot Sport plays an altogether more serious game. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Fugazi's signature edge duly emerges. [May 2020, p.86]

A lyrically rich and musically colourful set of songs which is as emotionally exhilarating as it is often rawly painful. [Nov 2025, p.88]

It's a damn good listen, all of it. Generous and revelatory, to borrow Rosanne's words, and at times mind-blowing. [Dec 2019, p.100]

It was a scratchy and sassy sound, funky and fun.

[An] irresistibly immersive fourth album. [Nov 2014, p.89]

These sings might inhabit unsteady mental states, but each component could have been places with tweezers and a jeweller's loupe. [Aug 2015, p.86]

An album of dark beauty and unnerving enchantment. [May 2016, p.93]

Delivering a deliciously unsettling and artful listening experience. [Sep 2021, p.83]

Deceptively simple, the result is a lovely thing. [Feb 2022, p.86]