The main strength of this album is how the guitar playing, which is superb throughout, feels inextricably bound to the structure and shape of the melodies. [Jul 2016, p.95]

The Return could do with some editing as it's unwieldy 78 minutes risk losing the audience before its finest songs: the epic, autobiographical title track, and the redemptive, gospel-soaked closer Made Us better. But Too much of a good thing is nothing to hold a grudge over. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Songs to keep returning to with no hope of ever exhausting their meaning. [Apr 2020, p.84]

Shine[s] a light on forgotten corners of the influential '70s label's past. [Jun 2021, p.94]

Garvey's lyricism is elevated by the subtle complexity of the music, clarinets, choral voices and churchy keyboards whispering through the vents of these sons, causing a quiet stir. [Dec 2021, p.86]

Welshpool Frillies maintains the high standard GBV since he reunited them six years ago. [Sep 2023, p.82]

The delicious, Moroder breakbeat thump of Birth4000 and squealing garagey rave of Vocoder (Club Mix) have the swagger and heft to leave club soundsystems wobbling, but also need good headphones for home enjoyment. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Opener Anybody’s declaration of fresh love duly builds with electrifying presence. There follow bare-wire examinations of audience dependency (Lavender, Raspberries) and resurgent desire (In A Dream I’m A Painting), before Sick Of The Blues provides a heartburstingly triumphant ‘choose life’ finale. [Nov 2024, p.84]

An ambitious and unclassifiable album. [Feb 2018, p.88]

Swedish chanteuse returns with guns blazing. [March 2011, p. 96]

Blending machine rhythms and subterranean beats with ghostly atmospherics, world music chants and groaning analogue disquiet they create a rich, unnerving sound that feels both modern and ancient. [Mar 2011, p.114]

A record whose maker has poured his life into it. [Apr 2018, p.95]

Packed with songs that tug imperceptibly at the heartstrings, Odyssey runs the gamut from introspection and melancholy to hope and deep joy. It will take some beating. [Nov 2024, p.90]

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

They've grown and blossomed without sacrificing an ounce of what made them exciting in the first place. [Feb 2018, p.93]

A shoegazing-inclined Zombies sums it up. [May 2022, p.92]

A beautiful, fragile, record that demands your full attention, then pays back dividends.

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

Songs feel untethered, then crystallise in Sharon Von Etten-levels of devastation. [Apr 2019, p.96]

L.A. Witch is brief, ultra-basic, not particularly varied and all the better for it. [Nov 2017, p.97]

There are shorter tracks, but the longer songs (averaging seven minutes apiece) are the real gems. [Dec 2021, p.89]

Relationships with uncomfortable endings, uneasy attractions, and deep personal loss pepper Fullbrook's songs, but her Tiny Ruins bandmates consistently lift her into the light, creating warmth and depth rather than leaving the listener in endless gloom. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Accompanied by electronic and acoustic instruments, Brett's baritone sounds less sombre on this album, more rich, relaxed, even crooning on Strawberry Moon - a perfect foil ro Rennie's vision of a world full of blood and ghosts. [Oct 2023, p.83]

With this fluid, free-raging music, Raymond is in a world of her own - one with several moons and its own intoxicating atmosphere. [Oct 2025, p.85]

A whirl of young Tina Turner energy and powerful, expressive vintage soul vocals. [Dec. 2011 p. 98]

The album's blend of '70s Euro-flick iciness, shag-pile funk and dark lyricism make for an intriguing and sophisticated treat. [May 2016, p.86]

A compelling, grimy darkness ripples throughout. [Nov 2020, p.82]

The resulting 12 songs return the group to their earlier sound, a chaotic bundle of charm and romance, realism and poppy experiment. [Dec 2020, p.83]

Over 50 years on, it remains a remarkable achievement, not just for its ambition but its execution. [Nov 2022, p.96]

A Dirty Three, free-folk weirdness takes Sophie Harris's vocal theatrics somewhere darker. [Jul 2026, p.93]

Centralia's seven lengthy essays proffer the duo's boldest, most immersive statements to date. [Mar 2013, p.88]

Her balance of mesmerising, confessional intensity with sculpted pop instincts remains an unfailing pleasure throughout. [Mar 2022, p.85]

Fine follow-up. ... McBryde's charisma remains centre-stage. [May 2020, p.90]

The Truckers have always been a direct band but this time there's a kind of foreplay, where each song gives the other time and consideration. [Mar 2008, p.100]

It's an immersive, and inevitably cinematic, ambient gem. [Oct 2011, p.105]

This is taut, Blondie-cool guitar-pop with a finger on the self-destruct tab. [Oct 2018, p.90]

A succinct record about wisdom accrued through adversity, its layered arrangements packing subtle psych tropes and world-weary vocal-harmony. [Aug 2024, p.88]

Their debut exists in a musical moment, conjuring a freedom and thrilling abandonment in its hypnotic shuffle boogie and punky blues rock riffs. [Mar 2015, p.93]

Self-produced and tracked with manifest passion and finesse. [Apr 2016, p.94]

Parlay music that while irrefutably folk, gleefully shoves aside traditionalist tropes in favour of a buoyant, full-bodied combo sound, that, passingly, recalls prime Fairport Convention while proffering a beguilingly mellifluous identity of its own. [Apr 2017, p.98]

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

Alongside the adolescent energy, they also give vent to decidedly adult passions. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Dan Snaith goes liquid disco on his fifth album. [May 2010, p. 96]

The dozen self-penned songs blend traditional genres rather than rewriting the style guide, but that weight of musical and emotional heritage only adds to the compelling effect of the whole. [Jan 2004, p.99]

It doesn't matter whether we're spying through his windows when he's so clearly spying through ours, his peculiarly stilted narratives and ageless music fusing into universal images of loneliness. [Feb 2003, p.94]

An album ragged with last-ditch lunges of fuzz-noise and burnished vocals. [Feb 2004, p.99]

Invigorating and intriguing, as hummable as it is inventive... it's also possibly the best thing Blur have done. [May 2003, p.88]

His previous album Midnight At The Movies was good, perhaps not Americana Music Award-winning good, but I'm not in charge. This one, However is way better, an album I wanted to play again as soon as it was done. [Oct 200, p.101]

For the most part Migratory is music for reflection and meditation, held together by Fujita’s unique lightness of touch. [Oct 2024, p.84]

Every generation needs an Art Brut. [Jun 2005, p.100]

There's a sense of going too far, of antic hilarity tipping into something more revealing. [Apr 2007, p.104]

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]

The result is one of her most wide-ranging and satisfying collections. [Nov 2014, p.93]

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

This is the desert-blues album for fans of Can and Pink Floyd to sink their teeth into. [Nov 2013, p.91]

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

Some of the catchiest Deadbeats tunes to date. [Jan 2019, p.92]

Short but definitely sweet. [Aug 2024, p.94]

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

It’s brilliant, moving stuff, and if this were to be David Gilmour’s final record, it’s certainly the best of his solo career. [Oct 2024, p.80]

Booker has relocated to a more contemporary - and sonically speaking, far more interesting - place here. [Feb 2025, p.82]

This time, the quieter moments are more keenly affecting. [Jan 2020, p.89]

Beautiful stuff. More, please. [Apr 2020, p.89]

The vigorous, often zippy arrangements finessed at guitarist Jonathan Pearce's Auckland home studio offer chipper contrast to the subject matter, Stokes a thoughtful, knowing presence. [Oct 2022, p.89]

It's an irresistibly modern mix. [Dec 2018, p.89]

A brilliant second album unembarrassed about building on the strengths of the first, delivering 13 knockout tunes betraying not an ounce of flab or self-indulgence. [Nov 2005, p.94]

It's numinous stuff. [Jun 2020, p.95]

Epic, lyrical, and as ultimately old-fashioned as those words suggest. [Oct 2003, p.106]

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]

It's an artful and lyrically dense synth-pop LP. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Infectious, propulsive, unselfconscious, The Dodos are good enough to keep such company [as Brian Eno or David Byrne]. [Aug 2008, p.106]

It was uniquely visionary--primordially rockin', yet titled defiantly at the stars. [Dec 2012, p.101]

Their anarchic spirit is captured over the original LP's 11 tracks. [Sep 2015, p.92]

Sets a high bar. But she clears it, with soulful, oddball, Jersey-girl-in-Nashville aplomb. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Woodland Echoes is an unhurried album full of paeans to passion and nature. [Sep 2017, p.94]

A second album that's brimming with pop hooks and instantly memorable choruses. [Apr 2018, p.96]

Here If You Listen is never less than gorgeously meditative, and in its cloudy, impressionistic swell bobs flotsam of unusual beauty. [Dec 2018, p.88]

Less electronic in feel than its predecessor, this is music on a truly human scale in terms of its inspiration, delivery and undeniable emotional punch. [Mar 2019, p.97]

In 2019 terms, then, it's a Village Green Preservation Society for people whose village is on the banks of the (alarmingly diminished) Niger River. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Hot Chip remain ruthlessly consistent and relentlessly reliable. [Jul 2019, p.86]

All combine to make this the year's first old school soul triumph. [Jun 2020, p.87]

If you've been waiting 11 years for this, you'll be relieved to know it won't disappoint. [Jun 2022, p.87]

An often challenging, always thrilling triumph that rewards deep listening and re-listening. [May 2023, p.92]

Meek may wander but he can't help but drift back to idiosyncratic introspection which gives the album an entrancing sense of dream logic. [Apr 2026, p.85]

For an artist who is often too much, however, it is just enough. [Jul 2018, p.89]

The young seven-piece have since progressed at warp-speed, here passing the full-length test with confidence. [Mar 2021, p.90]

Hip-hop originator meets Mercury-winning button-pusher du jour. [MArch 2011, p. 108]

The most energised performance Costello has committed to record in a long time and - despite his protestations that The Imposters are an entirely different band - his most classic Attractions-like album since 1994's Brutal Youth. [Feb 2022, p.83]

Not exactly a comfortable listen, but Darnielle's candour can't be faulted. [Jun 2005, p.109]

Forever Howlong is a remarkably unified - and gloriously intriguing - piece of work. [May 2025, p.84]

A more contemplative tUnE-yArDs? No bad thing when the goose-bumping post-punk gloaming of Time Of Dark is among the unexpected bonus. [Jun 2014, p.88]

Burke's prodigious talent and larger-than-life presence ensures the big name cameos don't steal his thunder. [Nov 2006, p.102]

Harmonious stuff, in every sense. [Jul 2023, p.86]

There's no escaping Steen's brutal vision, guitarists Eddie Green and Sean Coyle-Smith and Edge-like chimes to Concrete's verses, before the terrace chorus tilts the mood back to belligerent. No Brit band is better equipped to set 2018 alight. [Feb 2018, p.91]

All in all, less immediate and traditionally melodic than A Light…, Wall Of Eyes is one for the heads, revealing its many charms and details only upon repeated listens. [Mar 2024, p.83]

A powerful mix of dramatic, slow-moving sound and Walker melodies and narratives. [Nov 2014, p.99]

As one MOJO staffer commented, "This sounds like I'm trapped inside a damaged mechanical brain." Yes, it's that good. [May 2001, p.116]

Songs decay, disappear, swell, mutate, Dalt's seductive, lonesome voice investing them with a sinuous, alien romanticism. [Feb 2023, p.87]