The season's most deliriously funky beats. [Jun 2003, p.113]

The Uzi/Live Skull/Come veteran conveys the therapeutic power of bleak yet lovely music. [Sep 2016, p.99]

Nash and long-time CSNY associate Joel Bernstein have produced the set with reportorial faithfulness, arranging the songs to mirror a typical marathon night and leaving the scars intact.... You also hear the group's genuine power and competitive fury at its height as the four rotate the spotlight through their individual songbooks. [Aug 2014, p.103]

An unapologetic blast of tough breakbeats, deep bass, roots consciousness and with guest appearances from veteran MCs like Tenor Fly, General Levey and Tippa Irie, history lessons of how jungle grew from reggae and raving and influenced later forms including garage and grime. [Aug 2913, p.96]

Exquisitely sung, swept over with stormy emotions, Wild Dog's autumnal mysteries are alluring indeed. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Wright has unequivocally delivered her best album yet. [Oct 2015, p.94]

Frisell's braided guitar work creates a complex, nocturnal mood, while Parks' weeping accordion and sweeping string arrangements heighten the inherent drama. [May 2005, p.104]

Twelve of the songs here are vintage, unheeded warnings plucked from Ono's catalogue. The finale is Imagine--which now rightly bears a Yoko co-credit. All is transformed by the sparse new arrangements, mostly piano-led with strings, which bring the horrors--and occasionally the hope--closer to home. [Nov 2018, p.94]

Vince Mendoza's symphonic orchestral arrangements ooze romantic grandeur, combined with Porter's magnificently soulful vocals, resulting in a thrillingly transcendent experience. [Dec 2017, p.93]

Drunk Tank Pink is the sound of a band pushing themselves to discover new sonic and emotional terrain. [Feb 2021, p.82]

A debut both thrillingly volatile and touchingly melancholic. [Jan 2017, p.104]

At times, the tracks seem almost overburdened with poignancy - typically, the tectonic major to minor chordal shifts of Gold push Birgisson’s ululations into ever more heartrending melodic shapes – and everywhere a kind of voluptuous awestruck sublimity pervades. [Sep 2023, p.84]

Mostly Highway Prayers is a thrillingly modern bluegrass album for people who don’t even like bluegrass. [Jan 2025, p.88]

These are top space-jams. [Feb 2017, p.90]

The Con rockets beyond even their own high standards. [Mar 2008, p.103]

The twilit fug of Warpaint is hypnotic, exotic, and rewards the close listening its hushed grooves and harmonies invite. [Feb 2014, p.94]

They confidently harness the emotion-sapping melodramas of the '60s girl group. [Oct 2008, p.108]

At the heart of Continuum and Incurably innocent are untamed pop melodies that writhe like snapped power-lines, while berserk closer Hostage Stamps is a glorious collision of Jane's Addiction, Minor Threat and Mahavishnu Orchestra. [Jun 2017, p.91]

Talkin To The Trees is one of these simple pleasures, a port in the storm in these troubled times. [Jul 2025, p.83]

Rowe's gravelly baritone is as suited to the shimmering surf plucks of Downwind, or the percussive pummel of Horses as it is to his sombre ballads. [May 2013, p.96]

There is a strange and gripping transport to be had in these imaginative flights concerning climbing Mount Everest, the Luftwaffe-bashing Spitfire, and in the Kraftwerk-in-a-garden-shed bango clap-along ROYGIV.[May 2013, p.85]

Doherty's songwriting rises to the occasion. [Apr 2024, p.88]

Ex-Wallflower's second solo reveals a chilly, magnetic power growing songer. [June 2010, p. 104]

But once you settle into its desolate vista – and, believe me, it’ll take a few plays – 10,000 Hz Legend becomes just as addictive as its ancestor.

Plangent retro charm. [Jul 2015, p.89]

This suprise follow-up to May's A Bit Of Previous smacks of pressure-off invention, the sense that they know how to do this by now - and have fun doing it - cemented by Late Developers' title. [Mar 2023, p.84]

Springtime has two approaches, one more methodical, like the intense needling Will To Power. ... The other is rooted in improv. [Jan 2022, p.84]

[Godrich's original tracklisting] play to what Malkmus saw as the album's "psychedelic, trippy" strengths. .... A deep dive of the box set's bonuses turns up further treasures. [May 2022, p.98]

Fogerty remains a force of nature who matches Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney in his commitment to energising nostalgia, his shows less living jukebox than soul-stirring communion. [Feb 2020, p.86]

Vital and vibrant. [Jan 2025, p.88]

It is a little heavier on the electric-piano than the louche post-punkers' previous outings, with Diaphanous, Map Of The Night Sky and Out Sweet Sould reaching out toward the baroque, Coral-style musical theatre that defined Bid's records as Scarlet's Well. [May 2026, p.89]

This lively Welshman isn't rolling over just yet. [May 2021, p.78]

Rhys excels at holding anxiety and unease up to the light without becoming harsh; Seeking New Gods keeps that balance beautifully. [Jun 2021, p.83]

The story arc LeBlanc has stitched into the songs never get in the way of sheer enjoyment of the tunes he's created. Grand concepts are a tricky move for any artist, but LaBlanc pulls it off with plomb. [Dec 2023, p.91]

This one's a real keeper. [Apr 2025, p.87]

Rather than being derivative, this album is a perfect pop balance of cliche and rawness, with mythic ambition and songs that make you a three-minute hero. [Feb 2014, p.95]

Dacus finds the pages of her diary she just can't shake, turning them into songs that are destined to stay with you, too. [Jul 2021, p.78]

The skill that always made him singular--his ability to shape perfect pop melodies--still shines. [Mar 2016, p.92]

Josh's melodic intelligence and structural wit keeps things neat. [Apr 2009, p.110]

It finds the Seattle quintet making a convincing case for being The Last Rock Band To Believe In. [Feb 2011, p.96]

It's astonishing how lyrical just two guitars can be. [May 2014, p.94]

Singer-songwriter Ala.ni's debut story of doomed love is a hazy mix of innocence and experience. ... A pearl. [Jul 2016, p.97]

Anderson's playing is simultaneously muscular and relaxed, defiant and heartfelt, a new nomadic American music for her own troubled times. [Jul 2018, p.91]

Bon Iver's musical palette is a far broader, full blown band affair. [Jul 2011, p.98]

Here's a quiet rhapsody of twining acoustic guitars, cherry-sad reeds and songs that feel solid for a bit then slip away into dying-fall bluenotes and the kind of lines that provoke romantic poetic recollection. [Jul 2014, p.88]

If not every experiment works, Brown's twinkling hook-up with Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt on Really Doe totally surpasses its billing. [Nov 2016, p.89]

His wunderkind status is underlined by an obvious passion for Brian Wilson: stacked harmonies, deft chordal shifts. In Butterflies From Monaco, that Wilson influence comes laced with sturdier fragments of rock and funk a la Prince. [Dec 2019, p.93]

You emerge rooting for Nicholson on every count. [Sep 2024, p.91]

Sonic hexes that feel simultaneously cursed and curative. [Oct 2020, p.91]

After the past 12 months, you might feel you want and need more escapism than Spare Ribs really offers. Yet if everyone's been made to gaze into the abyss this year, it's a relief, a comfort--maybe even a pleasure--to find Sleaford Mods in there, gazing right back at you. [Feb 2021, p.80]

The single-disc edition offers a streamlined look at Cornell's career, cherry-picking some of his finest moments and complementing them with rarities. ... For a totalising retrospective, the 7-LP, 4-CD, 1-DVD box set is essential. [Jan 2019, p.104]

These dozen songs are a prime distillation of their essential pantheism. [Aug 2023, p.84]

Highlights include the Earth, Wind & Fire-esque horns and harmonies of The Lewis Connection's Got To Be Something Here and tracks by Flyte Tyme, whose singer Cynthia Johnson left for Lipps Inc and Funkytown one-hit-wonderdom, but who on this evidence clearly deserved much better, [Jan 2014. p.108]

Simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, it moves from stuttering rhythms of ghost vocals and music loops to immersive multi-layered waves of digital polyphony. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

Yet even at its most downbeat and damaged, this music gleams with a steely determination to be heard. [May 2020, p.87]

Amok Achieves a seductive unity of purpose which is all the more impressive for stemming from the advent of additional personnel. [Mar 2013, p.84]

Mellencamp croaks a sequence of raw, all but nihilistic yet far from self-pitying first-person tales about, well, death mainly, leavened by the odd rather forlorn reference to the life, love and freedom elements of the title. [Nov 2008, p.111]

Where his breakthrough LPS deftly shaped improvisations into compositions, In These Times reverses the trick - adding textural depth and layer upon layer of intrigue to McCraven's emotionally-charged meditations on life and identity. [Oct 2022, p.80]

A remarkable accomplishment, confirming that Williams has already built a world all of her own. [Aug 2020, p.84]

Hellswinter refrains from overdosing on distortion before the title track's 20 minutes of funereal beauty. [Mar 2011, p.99]

This is potent, frequently explosive stuff. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Lean arrangements, never predictable melodic ticks and some of Byrne's most deliciously quirky lyrics ensure an event-packed listen. [Apr 2004, p.99]

A second album of devilishly delicate songs. [Sep 2020, p.82]

Clinic just aren't as sinister as they first seem. They're damaged, but friendly and worth visiting. [Mar 2002, p.105]

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

Not every moment is transcendent.... But otherwise, this is that rare thing, an album that shares new pleasures each time you hear it, made by someone who's still excited by music. [Nov 2005, p.102]

As in life, variety spices this highly entertaining tribute compilation. One for the stocking and beyond. [Jan 2020, p.86

Delivers on the melodic promise of 2001's Rock Action, teetering between art-bruised fragility during its slower, gentler moments and flashes of stereo-buckling metal. [Mar 2006, p.93]

The keening askance of his voice, celestial choirs and brittle hesitation of his guitar all speak of terrible demons exorcised, and when that all comes together on Brother or opener Part One: The End, maybe only Josh T. Pearson can touch his pain. [Aug 2012, p.84]

Despite a surfeit of guests and some over-embellished kitchen sink production, the hit rate is remarkably high, reminding just how far Killer Mike's unflinching, candid style has evolved since he debuted on Outkast's Stankonia. [Aug 2023, p.84]

Warble Womb offers those addled young whipper-snappers a timely masterclass in how to keep the right balance between relentlessness and variation. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Concise, understated alt rock with cryptic, literate lyrics. [Mar 2016, p.100]

Reflective, yet joyful, it's an absolute triumph. [Apr 2025, p.79]

There are some surprising nuances in the set. [May 2016, p.91]

This may not be the '70s cosmic cowboy of Nelson in his prime, but wise old grandpa Willie is as sage and poignant now as he has ever been. [Aug 2020, p.85]

If beauty and ambition be the defining values of that album title concept, they're served up here in spades.

Protest songs can be dour, but Bradfield dresses lyrics adapted from the poems of Patrick Jones in his most ornately uplifting arrangements. [Sep 2020, p.85]

Years of sideman work have given Smith a certain world-weariness; that grit makes this newfound joy ring clear as a bell. [Aug 2017, p.93]

There's some beautiful songs about the road. .... Opening track Everything Burns has a dark mood and some great guitar - Tuttle's guitar playing is more up-front on this album. [Sep 2025, p.81]

The result is a funk-filled bundle of fun populated by a polyphony of farcical political figures, where anger is tempered by something more potent: satire. [Sep 2019, p.88]

The Talkies is a scarifying, perverse noise-rock treat. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Another songwriting masterclass. Again. [Dec 2025, p.78]

Low have made one of the most impressive albums of their career and it still feels like their best work is ahead of them rather than stuck back in the past. [Oct 2015, p.92]

Backed by an ace band... he's back in familiar territory. [May 2005, p.109]

The rage and weight of 2014's Blank Project has lifted but the explorations of life at every level--refugees in Calais; exhausted living under patriarchy; missing your parents--continue. [Nov 2018, p.89]

Demos have emerged from 1965-66, 1968 and 1973, but these 13 are the best yet. [Jan 2017, p.110]

44 minutes of scourging song broken up by ambient drone, terrifying din and choral interludes - is both uncompromising and brilliant. [Aug 2023, p.85]

Augustine's fourth is celestially good, his own fevered vision. [Aug 2023, p.78]

It takes its time luring listeners in. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Surely Relentless is how Chrissie Hynde always wanted the Pretenders to sound. [Oct 2023, p.79]

The Night Sweats' woozy, loose grooves are hypnotising and are perfect accompaniment to Rateliff's gravel-worn rasp. [Apr 2018, p.94]

He sounds shyer and less relaxed at the onset than on the 1968 archive At Canterbury House. [Jan 2014, p.112]

For all the grown-up entanglements and era-specific worries, it's championship-winning stuff. [Jul 2021, p.85]

Wildly imaginative music. [Jun 2017, p.92]

Loose Future positions Andrews between Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen, a triumvirate of singer-songwriters finding new alleyways in and out of familiar territory. These 10 absorbing songs, likewise, are testaments to remaining in motion. [Nov 2022, p.88]

The San Francisco pair Sic Alps present 22 concise numbers and commendably few lo-fi cliches. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Vibrates with a thrilling energy. [Jul 2019, p.94]

A modern soundtrack for city life--an aural survival pack that pulls out moments of delicate beauty from all the shit and cacophony. [Dec 2003, p.122]