It's Buffalo, New York-born David Stith's turn now to fashion a brilliant, hermetically sealed world that makes unabashed emotional connection. [Apr 2009, p.109]

Reid offers up dreamlike meditations on pained experience possessed of a quiet rhythm and disarming lyrical beauty. [Apr 2017, p.91]

While the playful spirit and precise progressions of his previous albums linger, it's demonstrably darker entries that capture Gonzales's disarming craftsmanship best. [Oct 2018, p.91]

With every album, Jacklin is finding more of herself, strengthening her voice. It's complicated, but Pre Pleasure is a joy to hear. [Sep 2022, p.88]

Their anarchic cut'n'paste confections can baffle on first exposure, but with repeat listens the inventiveness of their compositions come to the fore, savvy hooks materialising from the seeming chaos of loops and samples. [Jul 2023, p.84]

Time Ain't Accidental has a blazing confidence. [Jul 2023, p.84]

High-end reference points for a record that spectacularly reconciles micro-detailed improv with deep-listening ambience. [Nov 2023, p.90]

The songs are often slow (Boise, Idaho and One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Night with You) are lovely), sometimes more upbeat (smile-inducing Tonight With The Dogs I'm Sleeping; waltz-time Guns Are For Cowards) occasionally Doomy (Is My Living In Vain?). and all backed by a rich ensemble of Nashville "cats". [Mar 2025, p.90]

The Great Bailout is a grand, artistic and political statement in an age when such vision is too rarely attempted. [Apr 2024, p.87]

A further suite of touching vignettes, choice observations and killer lines. [Dec 2003, p.122]

The heritage soul signposts multiply with almost hallucinatory rapidity. [Aug 2005, p.104]

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

Snaith is increasingly confident in his own voice. [Mar 2020, p.86]

This is straight-ahead folk-Americana, often gentle and slow (Lorelei; The Season) sometimes spirited (Ram-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong), with Lenker duetting or backing up his dusty cobweb voice. [Nov 2024, p.85]

It gets on the dancefloor to create some bona fide hits of its own. [Aug 2013, p.89]

Here and elsewhere, Vampire Weekend's growing self-assurance serves the needs of the song without playing to their perceived strengths. [Jun 2013, p.84]

Ounsworth's slurred vocals are a dealbreaker. [Feb 2006, p.92]

As a triple record, there are tracks that are less necessary than others, but remarkably it all flows as a cohesive whole, and never loses the listener's attention. [Nov 2025, p.80]

Gendron places her gorgeous songs on a far more uneasy footing, seeking out new, strange routes for these ancient folk roots, resulting in an album that us both comforting and confounding, and depthless in its strange beauty. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Musically, it's the richest record of Pulp's career.... We Love Life isn't perfect, but it is vital. [Nov 2001, p.96]

A phenomenal album.... As always, Wire embrace the technology of the day while always sounding somehow out of time. [May 2003, p.91]

Elbow... have let new-found bliss propel them to yet loftier heights. [Sep 2003, p.106]

It transcends gender and genre. [Apr 2003, p.98]

Focused, melancholy, modern ghost blues, these 10 rough-hued duets move from jeremiad to elegy, from love ballad to lament to scream. [Jan 2019, p.91]

Under~Between moves with a whisper from avant-garde chamber works to beguiling voice exercises and delicate percussion pieces, as if Hunt were creating ambient chamber scores for utopian landscapes, where birds chatter like computers, and passing cars sound like small sad jazz trios. [Apr 2021, p.85]

An auspicious new singer-songwriter, not afraid to broaden her Horizons. [Dec 2021, p.90]

These witches are still burning. [Jul 2023, p.88]

This is music of compelling intensity. [Jun 2015, p.92]

It's never just meat and potatoes. It's more like eating bone marrow in a fashionable restaurant - earthy, carnivorous but still beautifully designed and knowingly conceptualized. [Jan 2012, p.88]

Dream River may be Callahan's most beguiling album yet. [Oct 2013, p.89]

An exquisite, sometimes spectacular achievement rich with emotive resonance. [Jun 2025, p.80]

These songs convey a sense of the work put into them, a sense of the world outside, but that doesn't undermine Big Thief's ability to lock in on something profound. [Oct 2025, p.78]

A soaring, feverish conflagration of sense and sensuality. [Sep 2018, p.90]

This is hard rock as anthropology, administered like only this band can. [Dec 2014, p.88]

Johannsson's austere musical settings continue to conjure up a world in which the old trade union slogans which give these pieces their titles .. are not so much throwbacks to a lost ideal of altruism, as mantras that we all might still live by. [Aug. 2011, p. 93]

Two Sisters is arguably Davachi's finest work to date. [Nov 2022, p.87]

A profoundly satisfying album, unreservedly recommended. [Sep 2023, p.86]

These non-linear creations are vehicles for an incredible contralto that echoes Anohni, Diamanda Galas, Jarboe, even late-era Scott Walker. [Jun 2024, p.84]

There are straight-ahead, stripped down, old-style blues rockers. ... Also there just the blues - slow beauties that seem to be about depression and being lost, that feel more personal than political. [Jun 2020, p.88]

Hyper-melancholic, ultra-vivid, CrazyMad, For Me showcases Thompson's off-beam pop skills, a distinctive voice in every way. [Nov 2023, p.86]

[A] slower tempii dominate the first half of Emma Jean, leaving the lapel-grabbing soul struts until the second half of the record. [Jul 2014, p.89]

See-saws between manic joy and depressive darkness but never loses its sense of wit, grace or noise-dipped tunefulness. [Oct 2021, p.96]

An electrifying exercise in first thought as best thought, ... One Day is thrillingly direct. [Feb 2023, p.83]

This is a record that more frequently speaks and embodies the language of connection, of entwining and union, the clash between hard-edged politics and the beautiful fractals of their music less stringently juxtaposed than in earlier work. [Jul 2025, p.76]

For a man with a suspect hipster mustache and a vast lick of asymmetrical hair, Lewis' music has serious depth. [Dec 2010, p.106]

The sounds here do at times recall territories previously mapped by Brian and RD James, with or without MDMA, but Song For Alpha still makes for an electronic listening album of particular quality. [May 2018, p.93]

The Candy House's garbled distress flare or the My Bloody Neubauten of I Don't Miss My Mond confirm she is still picking up signals nobody else can, [Apr 2024, p.88]

An astonishing landmark, and great record, wherein the Mod once again becomes The Modernist. [May 2010, p.94]

If he wasn't there already, Freedom's Goblin puts Segall in the very top flight of late-'teens rock contenders. [Mar 2018, p.90]

The most fully realised Lambchop record, the most perfect blend yet of their alt country roots and their obsession with soul.

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

Godspeed have taken their by-now familiar elements and rearranged them in often beautiful or surprising ways.

Malin and Adams have managed to create a record whose fearless classicism is all part of the point. [Dec 2002, p.114]

Holmes's genius is to create a space in which these records are not only at home, but where they shine. [Apr 2002, p.128]

Some may bemoan the lack of scope in these hushed meditations.... But more will find comfort in the warm surrender of The Clientele's aesthetic. [Sep 2003, p.113]

This album makes good on the promise of earlier benchmarks like Ease Down The Road and Master And Everyone. [Oct 2006, p.102]

'Where to Here,' Slippery Slope (easier),' and 'In My Arms' are equally deadly writing, with gripping melodies and sing-out performances that seem to have benefited from listening to his pal Rufus Wainwright--and from arrangements by Wainwright's latest producer. [Sep 2008, p.112]

This newly winged Barn Owl glide on through celestial panoramas, a tempestuous sonic asteroid belt and heady, intergalactic drift. [Oct 2011]

Whether this is post rock, space rock or ad hoc it's hard to say, but who needs taxonomy when music feels this good? [Jan 2012, p.97]

This is beautiful music that appears to breathe independently of its creator. [Oct 2012, p.95]

The opening tracks' motorik rhythms--all Juno-G keyboards and Roland bass--suggest an M1 retread of Autobahn undone by the spectre of sleep, but later tracks like the howling Pennine drones of A Non-Place imply a final destination far from the shoulder; somewhere overgrown, primitive and ancient. [Jan 2013, p.100]

Every one [of the songs are] a solid treasure. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Their ability to create spellbinding instrumentals that blend high-calibre jazz improvisation with accessible melodies is evidenced by the wonderfully serene Reunion and the more febrile Finding Neamo. [Jul 2013, p.94]

A poetic, typically untethered set within bouzouki pecks and mellotron complement Roy's latest voyage into open-tuned land. [Oct 2013, p.90]

Niagara is a remarkable debut. [Nov 2014, p.93]

The Oakland outfit grasp the slippery concept of time with philosophical relish and an abundance of psychotropic imagery on this conceptual sixth album. [Dec 2014, p.93]

An exhilarating step beyond [the 2005 and 2007] albums' late-'60s foundations. [Feb 2015, p.93]

A Fool To Care has scarcely a weak note. [May 2015, p.90]

Fatima's Hand is like the titular middle eastern amulet, a thing of intricate protective beauty. [May 2015, p.97]

A record with a beauty and sense of emotional elevation to match the place where it was made. [Aug 2015, p.92]

Shirley Inspired and Unheard Songs both bear rich testament to the fact that posterity is barely getting started in these two. [Jul 2015, p.88]

Evocative songs of Cornish coastal contemplation. [Sep 2015, p.95]

More spacious acoustic currents entwine to create softer, calming reveries every bit as difficult to resist. [Jul 2015, p.90]

The gorgeous harmonies of Fran Foote add further engagement on a set rich in attitude and uncompromising intent. [Nov 2015, p.91]

For Use And Delight is by turns plaintive and rocking, a wistful rhythmic journey into a band's true beating heart. [Nov 2015, p.90]

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]

The deliciously daft Litter Love, all skronky synth and cavernous twang guitar, Stoltz comes on like The Wombles' nemesis--and dishes enough pop suss to brighten Mike Batt's eyes. Fans of Kelley's wonky back-pages gem You're Out Of This World will also lap-up Wobbly. [Dec 2015, p.89]

On The Move sounds like music made with drinks in hand and wide smiles on faces. [Feb 2016, p.95]

Collaboratively, spiritually and musically... it works superbly. [Mar 2016, p.99]

Lovers of their earlier electro-cumbia won't be disappointed, but nor will reggae fans or Garifuna aficionados. [Mar 2016, p.98]

Wintry, ethereal and strangely bewitching, it feels both ancient and modern, rooted in the raw Appalachian landscape of Leigh's childhood and the contemporary language of confessional memoir. [Apr 2016, p.91]

It began with 2013's minimalist Blindspot, harrowing on lost love; moved into 2014's Distance, trying to accept things; and here's reflection. [Jun 2016, p.94]

Blending bossa with trip-hop and samba with vintage synths, she creates an entirely contemporary blend. [Jul 2016, p.91]

Sublime stuff. [Jul 2016, p.92]

Ghost Stations is blithesome evidence of Marconi Union expanding on their ambient/downtempo tag. [Sep 2016, p.93]

His singing has improved beyond recognition and, while rooted very much in the vintage storytelling values of the folk tradition, Upcetera is very much a landmark album for our times. [Dec 2016, p.95]

From the moment she opens her mouth here: her gargley vocal, set to fortissimo, summons dusty trails, rattling trains and late-night boozing. [Jan 2017, p.99]

Black Star Riders have delivered a record befitting their pedigree. [Mar 2017, p.94]

A lively fusion of politically conscious Afro-beat electro pop. [Apr 2017, p.99]

The geo-political subtext only adds gravity to Foon's already compellingly brooding soundscapes. [Apr 2017, p.95]

This is reflective country pop with a Van Zandt-ish warmth and wisdom. [May 2017, p.98]

Modern Kosmology is every bit as good as its predecessor. [Jun 2017, p.90]

Super Natural is a wholly visceral experience, plugging into the same socket that animated Jerry Lee Lewis back in '57. [Jun 2017, p.92]

Resistance bubbles with zest and vitality. [Jul 2017, p.87]

Cathartic, rich and true. [Jul 2017, p.88]

Bluesman's solid soul and guitar chops fit snugly with Hi band. [Aug 2017, p.97]

A sleight of hand that transforms its low-key, elegiac ruminations into defiant affirmation of life. [Aug 2017, p.93]

Where Gunshot Lips fits in only adds to the intrigue of this exquisite dark jewel. [Nov 2017, p.102]