This 18-song miscellany reminds us that talent loves the company of talent, one-off duets with Ray Charles and Dolly Parton underlining Jones's seemingly effortless ascent to premier league status. [Jan. 2011, p. 97]

With its wealth of sonic adventure, its thoughtful merger of the personal and the political, and its four choice guest spots (Jack White; Kendrick Lamar; James Blake; Abel Makkonen Tesfaye AKA The Weeknd), Lemonade is a dazzling example of pooled talent coalescing around an iconic doyenne. There can be little doubt on whose head Prince’s crown should now sit.

Galvanising, jazzy embrace of call-and-response tradition. [Aug 2020, p.94]

For diehards, these takes [on the second disc] have an attractive live-in-the-studio-run-through feel, complete with informal chat and occasional sloppy edges. [Feb 2012, p.108]

If the lyrics deal with wavering states of mind and quiet struggles, though, the music is sharp and direct, echoing Belly or Tsunami but also keeping pace with Lucy Dacus or Phoebe Bridgers. [Oct 2025, p.88]

This is one explosive package no hip hop loving home should be without. [Aug 2004, p.92]

The focused, meander-free Ocean To Ocean is big on uplift, balm and musical adventure. [Dec 2021, p.84]

Forever Turned Around tows the if-it-ain't broke line, a choice justified by nuggets such as My Life Alone and Before I Know It. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Immersive and entrancing. [Jan 2022, p.90]

This largely autobiographical follow-up uses Guy's musician friends more wisely. [Oct 2015, p.91]

A lesson in ageless folk rock opulence. [Apr 2005, p.97]

An intriguing labyrinth of idiosyncrasies. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Sometimes great, often enchanting, and always disarmingly self-aware portrait of a doomed and wounded hero. [Oct 2013, p.87]

Foster's is an oddly moving, crepuscular and dream-like world to get happily lost in. [Jan 2018, p.91

Despite having some of Ritter's least introspective lyrics, there are some of his most emotionally affecting songs. [Apr 2006, p.98]

Best of all is Sleep Together: like Radiohead playing Kashmir, and brilliantly led by former Japan keyboard player Richard Barbieri. Yes, prog lives--and Porcupine Tree are its leading players. [July 2007]

With both McGovern's baritone soul-mining and Damien Tuit's mercurial six-string electrifying throughout, Blindness should rightly see these Irishmen advance to the Premier Division. [Apr 2025, p.83]

Multi-artist tributes are typically patchy by nature, but George Fest really works. [Apr 2016, p.86]

He calls his style 'slavishly copying,' we know it better as sweet soul. [July 2008, p.108]

Ain't nothing original, but it feels--and sounds--mighty fine. [Mar 2014, p.98]

Hearing the acoustic demo for In The Heat Of The Morning, you have to feel for Bowie. Without the fussy grooviness of the studio version, it finds him in revelatory, limbering-up-for-Ziggy mode. ... The most significant discovery is Goodbye 3d (Threepenny) Joe ... soft-voiced and 12-stringy, it's a tail-between-the-legs yarn with choruses sung with a hard-boiled intimacy worthy of John Lennon. [May 2019, p.103]

Long Island is alive and involving, creating a world of its own. [Mar 2013, p.87]

It's all propelled by an energy exclusive to debut albums, the five-piece pulsing with post-punk fervour. [May 2019, p.89]

Rich in sonic detail à la ’90s Outkast, ’00s Roots and present day Flying Lotus (whose fluid bassist Thundercat performs another star turn), Lamar undercuts his densely layered messages with acerbic ruminations on his newfound celebrity status that may prove polarising, but are never less than enthralling.

Ultimately, you suspect that their natural habitat are shoegazey guitarscapes like Everyone I Ever Met and Forever The Bridge, which marry controlled noise, atmospheric arrangements and subtly insidious melodies. Either way, it works. [Feb 2011, p.104]

Scott continues to ring changes elsewhere, hence the gung-ho title track channels Robert Parker's '60s Mod classic Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is), and Right Side of Heartbreak (Wrong Side Of Love) brings sweet soul hooks. [Jun 2019, p.91]

What they bring to the table is a living, breathing sence of the organic. [June 2009, p.109]

Jackson is in magnificent voice throughout. [Oct 2021, p.88]

Promise of Love's cyclical episodes unravel at an amenable mid-pace, each one allowed just enough time to establish a mood bfore halting as over-familiarity threatens. [Jul 2003, p.101]

Blk Jks's own voicee is utterly compelling. [Oct 2009, p.107]

While the music is a combination of old Smog and new... there's a freshness here, a sense of change, and most remarkable, a real empathy on display. [May 2003, p.89]

Featuring a previously recorded vocal by Davy Jones, who died in 2012, it’s a match for any of their ’60s hit 45s. It also features all four Monkees, the only song of the 13 here to do so. The remainder, penned by the group, musician fans and long time cohorts, feature Tork, Dolenz and Nesmith and for the most part recapture the enchantment of the original group.

[Evokes] sun-baked panoramas. [May 2012, p.89]

Sung with his steamrollered Mancunian vowels intact, Garvey's allusive, playful lyrics are as golden as those of your Bermans and Caves here, drawing on Wordsworth, but also name-checking Leo Sayer and The Jungle Book's affable bear, Baloo. [Apr 2024, p.82]

There's an engaging sense of uncertainty running through these songs. [Mar 2010, p.96]

Things can get twee--but this feels like a tiny church in that forest, sacred and touching. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Hayden's delicate little songs are potent, precious things indeed. [Oct 2004, p.110]

Here never becomes too cosy, there are also plenty of sparkling textural buzzes and blips to ensure that Teenage Fanclub's traditional consistency remains impressive rather than soporific. [Sep 2016, p.91]

[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]

If modern folk music needs its own OK Computer, its own The Dark Side Of The Moon, or indeed its own F#A#∞, this may well be it. [Apr 2023, p.80]

With its own low-key sparkle Archangel Hill stands testament to a musical third act every bit as engaging as anything that went before. [Jun 2023, p.91]

Defiantly mainstream. Still, it's certainly not weedy, relying on big Nashville arrangements filled with swelling strings and modulated Hammond organ. [Mar 2021, p.82]

When ghost-dub closer bathed In Grey plumbs its valedictory depths and suggests a young Matt Johnson, the loose-but-precise whole seems starkly impressive. [Oct 2013, p.87]

As with everything Morrissey does, ROTT's resonance will elude those not hitherto fascinated by its master's voice. A shame, for in terms of pure musicality, ROTT is possibly his most ecumenical solo album, his most welcoming and loveable. [Apr 2006, p.89]

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

With no weak link, you can drop the needle anywhere. [Jul 2006, p.106]

Straight and true, without a trace of rear-view-mirror sentimentality. [Nov 2014, p.92]

Franz Ferdinand's first album since 2018's Always Ascending finds them re-invigorated, if not wholly reborn. [Feb 2025, p.88]

One of those bracing, snarky, crafted and fun records that reminds you of a bunch of old favourites while simultaneously exerting its own personality. [Feb 2025, p.83]

Delightfully chewy collaboration. [Feb 2016, p.90]

Stylistic Easter eggs confound and delight. [Oct 2023, p.86]

The necessary and sustaining art-yin to their live knees-ups’ yang, with Theatre Of The Absurd… Madness have made an album that is among their absolute best. [Jan 2024, p.90]

It's Metheny, ever the mercurial magician, who's driving the band; his eloquent guitar etching a kaleidoscope f sonic hues. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Music ripe for reappraisal. [Nov 2022, p.98]

The album delivers on the promise. {Feb 2011, p.104]

There's a moving intimacy and improvisational feel to the wistful, late night, piano songs. [Apr 2003, p.108]

Its music whose provenance is the dance floor, but steeped in emotional warmth. [Jul 2016, p.95]

Pollack's velvety, diction-rich voice shines on the syncopated, a cappella intro of "The Loop," and her idiosyncratic, mostly cryptic lyrics can be striking. [Apr 2010, p.104]

The finale to an exemplary act of curation. [Jan 2023, p.102]

While Idles boast similar reserves of adrenalin and attitude, Italia 90 better deploy groove. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Hex isn’t really about individual tracks, though: it’s about mood and feel. Overwhelmingly, the feel is good. [Aug 2024, p.86]

The main deal here concerns a dozen new tracks, deliciously delivered in that soulful quaver of a voice. [Oct 2016, p.92]

Polizze's bubblegum melodies cut through the fuzz (Out The Door is a cracker), while Baby ups those '80s bona fides by echoing Pixies' Wave Of Mutilation. [Apr 2023, p.89]

The result is an atmospheric sound, refined without losing its feisty, sometimes bitter vitality. [Sep 2014, p.98]

A synth-heavy, sci-fi opus that hits its celestial climax on 10-minute standout Space Oddity. [Dec 2020, p.89]

A clutch of moving haikus. ... Knowing, experimental, hopeful, ironic, this could be Mary Margaret O'Hara--wringing your heart, engaging your brain. [Dec 2019, p.89]

A triumph of majestic American pop uplift over bleak real-life adversity. [Oct 2005, p.112]

A truly fine album. [Mar 2021, p.84]

A triumph of psychedelic melody, drone and eerie groove. [Jul 2006, p.104]

Hard to know if he's upbeat or down--at times it might be a break-up album--but enjoyable either way. [Nov 2014, p.92]

Inspiral Carpets sounds like the band did back in 1989 on their Dung 4 demo. [Nov 2014, p.92]

This is The Chemical Brothers at their crowd-pleasing, raucous best. [July 2010]

Such a bad idea. Such a stunning result. [Mar 2008, p.114]

It's been a long journey, but Spiral Stairs has finally found his voice. [Apr 2017, p.90]

There's almost too much to bask in. [Nov 2023, p.91]

He's made a dramatic leap between first and second album as profound and unexpected as that of John Grant. [Feb 2014, p.96]

All told, a spellbinding journey. [Mar 2014, p.100]

Reflective, lyrically and musically. [Aug 2021, p.84]

From the title track's monolithic defiance down, this one's an out-of-the-blue, anti-establishment classic. [Nov. 2010, p. 106]

A continuous mix of hedonism, virtuosity, scholarship and, as one of her disco antecedents would have it, Good Times. [Nov 2022, p.84]

The greatest thing about this tribute album is that ... the biggest names on it ... all bring their A game. [Apr 2012, p. 88]

Rich and radio-friendly pop. [Apr 2012, p.101]

Sublime stuff. [Jul 2016, p.92]

They impress with a neo-Romanticism rather than basic rabble-rousing. [Sep 2016, p.99]

Top-notch whiteboy radio rock with an eerie inner glow of Manson family sunshine...

Cerulean Salt's added electricity, rhythm section, variety and production clarity still retains the intimacy, the skeletal arrangements and the plaintive urgency in here delivery, from a yelp to a croon. [Aug 2013, p.93]

It's an intriguing new incarnation for Bauer: Om and pop. [Jul 2014, p.88]

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

From the title's Depression-era jokes onwards, Cooder protests like it's 1939. [Oct 2011, p.96]

It's late-night, it's autumnal and it's really rather lovely. [Jan 2026, p.82]

Packs ear-worms and dulcet vocal harmonies galore. [Mar 2021, p.86]

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

Add in lyrics that could make Brian Wilson weep and here is an album equally suitable for long winter nights and bright summer parties. [Jan 2025, p.89]

Throughout a refreshing spirit of old-school sonic exploration pervades. [Nov 2012, p.87]

Night Thoughts is the work of a band very much at home in the here and now, all the while looking forward. Still something else, still something wonderful. [Feb 2016, p.88]

The orchestral setting tempers the mannered vocal tics of some originals and proves transformative. [Dec 2012, p.96]

Nothing prehistoric about the latest Buffalo Tom: this is the golden sound of a band in their element. [Apr 2018, p.90]

The benchmark for 2008's best electronic record has been set. [July 2008, p.102]