The true centerpiece is Tiny Wood's autobiographical 20-minute suite, Blue Remembered Hills. With pastoral inserts and thematic crescendos, it's evocative and emotionally raw. [Jan 2017, p.98]

These great songs live on through reinvention; Bonny Light Horseman have done them proud. [Feb 2020, p.87]

This is pure, unpolished ur-boogie, a foundation course in rock'n'roll. [Jul 2022, p.95]

An adroit demonstration of Power's aim to reflect today's festering political landscape. [Apr 2017, p.97]

[Navita] charts her course through destruction, indifference and the city sounds: doo wop, Lou Reed-y R&R, even indie rock. It's not until she stares clear-eyed at those closest to her that the way is clear: she's to honor her Latin and Caribbean roots in story and sound. [Apr 2017, p.96]

Street Horrrsing is a six-track, 50-minute melange of iridescent synths, psychedelic drone, distorted vocals and tribal rhythm, peaking with the deftly layered counter-melodies and blissed -out propulsion of epic single 'Bright Tomorrow.' [Mar 2008, p.113]

Smile finds them advancing that set melodic agenda and playful rearrangement of classic rock DNA. [June 2008, p.109]

The Worlocks remain a superior alloy of Velvets cool and narcotic Spaceman 3/MBV tropes. [Feb 2014, p.98]

Taylor's balm-like burr delivers a blissful moment of healing. [Aug 2021, p.81]

Altogether, with added depth and melody, it’s Maries’ best yet. [Jun 2025, p.88]

These songs engage on intimate, interior level. [Sep 2021, p.95]

Malody might be uneasy listening but it's as brave as it is completely unexpected. [Jul 2016, p.90]

The resulting platter is overflowing with dense slabs of aromatic unrefined funk, peppered with scattershot stupid-dope old school rhymes. [June 2011, p. 92]

Act as an instrumental coda to 2018's superb There's A Riot Going On. [Oct 2020, p.94]

Reveals a confident desert punk classicism. [Sep 2020, p.94]

A craftsman-tough album about decision times. [May 2011, p.106]

It's always good when, after 30 years as a music critic, the hairs on your arms stand on end. [Sep 2018, p.89]

JBM has concocted a glorious half-dream of a third album. [Aug 2013, p.93]

I Was a Cat from a Book is as warm as an all-enveloping blanket by the hearth. [Sep 2012, p.89]

Joyful and, at times, unpredictably good fun. [Nov 2019, p.90]

It's an engrossing set with nine reflective soundscapes. [Nov 2019, p.89]

You don't dip into this music--it fully engulfs you. [Oct 2015, p.95]

Ultimately, this album stands in euphoric, unrepentant denial of its own title. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Lux Æterna [is] a prime example of 72 Seasons' astonishing vigour. ... Metallica are worthy again. [Jul 2023, p.82]

Those who thought White Ladder would stand as Gray's crowning achievement may now have to think again. [Oct 2005, p.104]

Total fun for your brain. [Dec 2019, p.107]

It's not flawless, though it's damn good, and consistently engrossing. [Feb 2006, p.94]

Trouble... is thrillingly fresh. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Forgoing cynicism, she looks out on the world with unbound curiosity and zeal, every coruscant melody and glowing harmony another discovery. [Nov 2024, p.93]

Some career-catchiest tunes and a lively self-production make Sing an absolute triumph in repositioning. [Mar 2020, p.91]

In surpassing her debut, Agnes Obel has confirmed hat she is in it for the long haul. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Hardcore Julius fans might recognise old tunes but the London-based musicians have given them all a fresh coat while the boss blows up a storm. [Nov 2014, p.94]

His arch whimsy is solidly underpinned by simpatico, full-band arrangements and his keen nose for an idiosyncratic tune. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Buck's guitars are supportive throughout, inspired by Haines's alternative universes. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Peppered with succinct instrumentals, Three/Three switches styles with impunity, smudging the lines between old and new. [Mar 2018, p.93]

He sounds the most determined he has in over two decades. [Feb 2015, p.94]

A career highlight for Carlile and a rejuvenation for John. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Lanegan's own journey may be ongoing, but this is a vivid snapshot of where he's been. [Feb 2014, p.102]

An album of studied precision and endless textures. [Mar 2014, p.95]

Tries to understand where to go, and whether he's already there. ... Life is a casket. And it's golden. Both are true. Brock apparently has figured it out. [Aug 2021, p.80]

It feels like a very personal and agreeably languid autobiography. [Mar 2014, p.93]

Welcome to Mali celebrates its artificiality, flaunts its illegitimacy and waggles its infidelities in your face. Amadou & Mariam have just damned authenticite to an eternity in caducite. [Dec 2008, p.98]

Music that alchemises urban jazz with rural Americana to create something that is haunting and otherworldly. [Jun 2016, p.94]

Beneath the Day-Glo surface, Chemtrails rage away. [Jan 2024, p.89]

Standouts include Burn Through, a Springsteenesque tale of blue-collar grit, and the haunting Corner Girl, where a lonely kid opens up her world like a plant unfurling. [Feb 2011, p.109]

There's a real sense of party-beneath-the-scaffold much of the time--a looseness you don't often get on these star-studded affairs. [Nov 2003, p.122]

The once-lairy Scots' high-volume potency remains beyond question. [Oct 2017, p.92]

How Will I Live… feels like a portal to some esoteric beyond, where minimal jazz, obtuse indie and folk-horror collide. Ominous, calmly-executed highlights I Swallowed A Stone, Unbraiding and How It Starts are marvels of world-building. [Aug 2024, p.84]

Diving into yesterday never sounded so good. [Aug 2014, p.90]

The songs are rigorously infectious. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Proceedings occasionally veer toward earnestness, but gorgeous textures of clarinets, guitars and synthesizers keep the project bracingly alive. [Dec 2020, p.82]

Embellishments frame soul-searching songs about dislocation and romantic ill-fortune--think a grittier Brendan Benson--which soon demand frequent revisits. [Dec 2019, p.86]

[A] stripped-down, beautifully stark and simple new album. [Sep 2014, p.96]

Gibbons's wily blend of open-mindedness and roots-loyalty remains intact. [Nov 2015, p.86]

Indubitably, worth the oxide it's been taped on. [Nov 2013, p.86]

It's knowingly throwaway exhilaration all the way. [Nov 2014, p.95]

Modern Genius is a warm breeze after the hit-and-miss Afrofuturist sax/drum experiments of 2022's Ibeji. [Feb 2025, p.89]

The highs, lows and bitter aftermath are all documented, in some of the classiest electro-pop of the past 20 years. [Aug 2008, p.102]

You've heard it all before, but rarely done so well. [Mar 2014, p.98]

All coalesces, near-inexplicably, as yet another excellent album. [Aug 2021, p.80]

10 songs that are the apotheosis of their spartan sound. [Jun 2019, p.95]

An account of how virulent idealogy can draw in the most rational people. [Jun 2016, p.97]

Hearing Aidan Moffat in such jocose mood on his first song-based record without Malcolm Middleton is quite the revelation. [Apr 2009, p.99]

Among their best. [Sep 2002, p.104]

Coldplay-style ascendance is entirely within reach. [May 2012, p.92]

These stark, sweet confessionals easily rank among the best of his career. [Nov 2004, p.108]

Gorgeous from beginning to end, Luck Or Magic is evenly split between originals and covers. [Aug 2016, p.91]

A beguiling marriage of tradition and modernism. [May 2011, p.107]

While Long Live The Strange turns the outsiderism of Supergrass's Strange Ones into an anthem, with bonus chorale. The rest is more soul-searching, but with instrumental structuring and melodic grace of satisfying excellence. [Feb 2023, p.82]

For a record about captive states - isolation, anxiety, romantic hope - Things Take Time, Take Time knows how to move. [Dec 2021, p.85]

MC Dalek's indignant imagery can be tricky to unpick, yet his barbed lines are hard to dislodge on Weapons And Battlecries. [Oct 2017, p.96]

This is an enthusiastic hymn to the terminally uncool. [May 2004, p.106]

Caravan sound reinvigorated and energised here on their best album in, let's say, quite some time. [Nov 2021, p.93]

The Soderbergs seize the day. [Jul 2014, p.91]

The songs have a sort of likeable innocence; humanistic and quirky. ... Nothing not to like here. [Apr 2022, p.84]

An album that welds together sedate ambient techno and grand Radiophonic Workshop-style analogue experimentation. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Yet another acknowledgement of these two commanding talents. [Nov 2014, p.95]

A record that feels warmer, wiser and less forced than any of his albums so far. [Jun 2022, p.88]

Sol. Hz radiates a luxuriant warmth that's hinted in its title. [Jun 2026, p.93]

With Halycon Digest, Deerhunter are dealing in an altogether different kind of tension. [Oct. 2010, p. 90]

Merges jazz and Arabian classical music with invention and panache. [Apr 2025, p.87]

The interplay between Stephen McBean's laconic drawl and Amber Webber's gothic-tinged wail remains their secret weapon, lending a lean bite to this hefty psychedelic behemoth. [May 2016, p.93]

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

At it's core, Peasant resembles a masterpiece, but this softening of the sonic edges ultimately dulls its grand impact. [Jul 2017, p.94]

There's often an old-world gravitas and a contemporary lightness of touch at play simultaneously, the tangible lineage of these story-rich, often long-form songs reaching deep within you. [Nov 2022, p.89]

Follow-up to 2008's widely acclaimed Dear Science recorded at guitarist David Sitek's home. [June 2011, p. 92]

Two gorgeously restless, swarthy voices destined to be together. [May 2012, p.92]

There is a single-minded intensity to the writing and the production which makes The Bride a very strong proposition indeed. [Aug 2016, p.91]

At times, it recalls the late-'60s acid blues experiments on Leigh Stephens' Red Weather and Peter Green's The End Of The Game but with a shimmering summer optimism and textural complexity all MacKay's own. [Oct 2017, p.92]

The album's schizoid ruse is neatly summed-up by Make Art Not Friends, which makes its wondrous metamorphosis from lithe dance track to all-American rocker in just under six minutes. [Nov 2019, p.86]

By opening out his vocals slightly from the gruff mutter of yore, Ashworth has extended his music's emotional range to that of a battery-powered Kris Kristofferson. [Sep 2015, p.94]

By the time the album ends in a full-on industrial free-jazz freakout you'll either be totally lost or suspecting this man might be a genius. [Jun 2005, p.97]

The wait has been worth it. [Oct 2011, p.98]

Versions Of Us is full of such emotional blue plaque moments, small humans marking their time on a grandly heartfelt scale. [Jun 2023, p.85]

The sister have turned that pain and drama into this elegantly nuanced third album. [Mar 2021, p.86]

The songs dive off in unexpected directions, but remain linear. [Nov 2012, p.87]

Many of the inventive musical excursions were improvised live in the studio. [Nov 2014, p.95]

A wonderful album. [Jan 2016, p.93]