A thought-provoking, welcome addition to the cosmic jazz uprising. [Apr 2019, p.94]

It gives way to creeping synths, much post-rock elation and an epic finale, sung in French with nape-raising efficacy. [Apr 2016, p.96]

The duo's songs may employ no chords and few notes to sing against, but they are brillantly structured via Andreas Werliin's melodic drum patterns, with Mariam Wallentin's flamboyant, unfettered voice a huge presence. [May 2009, p109]

Distractions' expanded palette takes in grime, experimental R&B and robotic house, like an alternate soundtrack for an arcade racer. [Jul 2017, p.91]

More cohesive and less Britpop than 2018's Brickbat. More trenchant too. [Aug 2021, p.87]

Stunning... a highly-textured, invigorating adventure in sound. [Mar 2012, p.94]

The Future and the Past is a triumph, a coming-of-age that over-delivers on all Prass promised, and suggests limitless skies in answer to where she might go next. [Jul 2018, p.86]

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

The more upbeat swing to the songs doesn't dull the crispness of her songwriting. [Jul 2019, p.90]

Allied to keening, reedy vocals and sophisticated hooks, these songs deliver a truly impressive debut. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Funny, thoughtful, pragmatic and whimsical, We're Only Human is a perfect alt-country album [Sep 2025, p.84]

The 13 tracks gallop along, urging listeners and musicians to stand up for what's right and take the fight to the forces of oppression. [Sep 2025, p.86]

There's often been a whiff of contrivance around the Avetts, but by coming of age they come up smelling of roses. [Aug 2016, p.92]

He transforms the bi-hearted bop of randy Weston's Little Niles into a plaintive musical love letter that, like much of what surrounds it, demands repeated listens. [May 2011, p.108]

It might not look like it's going to leap out and grab you, but Beam here launches a soft emotional ambush. [Sep 2017, p.87]

It's both organic and future-facing. A true metamorphosis, this album sees Queens Of The Stone Age shedding an old identity to discover new ways of playing the same song. [Sep 2017, p.84]

Intriguing ninth album from Sam Prekop's Chicagoan pop exoticists. [July 2011, p. 103]

American Dream feels like a strong re-statement of what they do, and what they can mean, a record that, despite its fear of death, feels very much alive. [Oct 2017, p.86]

The swooshing, intricate Doll's House might be The Orb's purest house moment yet, preceding a closing brace, Under The bed and Kharon, that represent ambient Orb in excelsis. [Nov 2025, p.91]

Occasionally there is so much going on it's dizzying--haunting, vulnerable You is a welcome break. [Sep 2015, p.92]

British cellist and Radiohead collaborator has created something darker but much more impressive [than 2018's Shelley's On Zann-La]. [Dec 2020, p.87]

Another wonderful, intimate love letter to pop. [Sep 2006, p.94]

Stereolab fans will not be disappointed. [Nov 2014, p.95]

As with predecessors Omega and The 7th Hand, Blues Blood brims with fresh harmonic ideas, but also an emotional potency that resonates long afterwards. [Nov 2024, p.90]

Beyond is the better-produced natural successor to 1987's epochal You're Living All Over Me. [May 2007, p.104]

GoGo Penguin build on its momentum with the most insistent distillation of their potent brand of piano-driven melody and groove. [Mar 2018, p.91]

A transcendent album, From This Place is possibly the Missouri fretboard maestro's most impressive opus yet. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Three decades on, the Mekons are a veritable institution, but as Natural proves they're a still-evolving and effective one. [Sep 2007, p.105]

Overall, one mighty, magnificent trip. [Nov 2023, p.84]

Clever and very subtle grown-up electronic pop that beats with a broken heart. [Mar 2018, p.93]

The uncompromising Condition is extremely attractive. [Apr 2017, p.93]

The songs on this second solo album are more substantive than those of 2017's Wintres Woma. [May 2020, p.90]

This second album easily stands on its own merits. [Oct 2008, p.102]

This fourth album proper is a stunning return to mind-melting form. [Nov 2008, p.118]

It's an impressively elegant and expressive one. [Feb 2024, p.87]

Nit-pick all you want but this is a tour de force, heady, joyful, ambitious, elegiac and--as with the 1968 original--unlike anything else. [Apr 2009, p.99]

Beth's vocals are startling. [Jun 2003, p.100]

Once more, Daptone has come up trumps; this is solid gold soul. [Jun 2015, p.90]

A deeply satisfying tribute to a great lost talent. [Oct 2025, p.90]

Intense and moving. [Jul 2011, p.105]

Their sixth also has a twinkly eye, and Cartwright's songwriting is never less than a joy. [Aug 2014, p.96]

This is serious... and seriously good. [Oct 2015, p.89]

A serious trip. [Oct 2015, p.95]

Less electronic than the albums he made under his King Biscuit Time and Black Affair aliases, it's Mason's best post-Beta Band work. [Jun 2010, p.98]

This is a raw and acutely personal document. [Mar 2018, p.93]

It's the jubilant reach and dynamite in the details that make The Scholars a rock opera worthy of the form. [Jun 2025, p.85]

Progressive conceptual art, underpinned with profound personal resonances. [Jan 2024, p.87[

Nelson's trademark rough vocal edges suit the rustic vibes of this Southern folk music and yet the ensemble also ventures into more experimental newgrass turf. [Feb 2024, p.88]

All in all, it underlines that These New Puritans remains a band apart. [Jul 2025, p.84]

It is a relief to see Wainwright honouring his formidable songwriting talents with songs as luscious as those on Poses or Want One. [Jun 2020, p.94]

Up-tempo and poppy, Simple Minds' energy remains undiminished on Direction Of The Heart. [Nov 2022, p.90]

The Consuming Flame is rich, intense and deftly woven into three hour-long suites. [Oct 2020, p.91]

Locally focused yet state-of-the-nation, in their inventiveness and force such songs as Working Poor, Lost In A Crowd and The Worst defy pessimism, good art in bad times. [Aug 2016, p.92]

Any notions that this [name change]--and additions of brass and strings--is a major label ploy to smooth their edges and distance them from the spiky traditional elements that chracterised "The Bairns" is soon decimated by this new album's equally moody, uncompromising nature. [Nov 2009, p.102]

Hippopotamus is never anything less than wildly entertaining. [Oct 2017, p.88]

A deeply human record, the shepherd stepping away from his sermons to look for wonder and rapture. [Oct 2024, p.86]

A proper fire-starter. [Mar 2022, p.88]

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

Avoiding the experimentation of their earlier work, No Age's second album-proper delivers winningly subterranean pop, bruised and vulnerable tuneage haunting their feedback racket reveries. [Oct. 2010, p. 97]

Musically, it's a radical rethink. [May 2019, p.89]

A bold sequel whose charms unravel further with each listen. [Oct 2022, p.84]

The "low tide" hinted at on side one submerges the second half, but delivers some of Brown's deepest, most affecting work. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Gutter Tactics is their most approachable set to date. [Mar 2009, p.107]

Communion clearly packs a unique set of quirks, diversions and comedowns. [Sep 2009, p.102]

Enduring, reliable but far from set in their ways. [Jun 2017, p.92]

The free-est, fun-est, most psychedelic Villagers record so far. [Sep 2021, p.76]

A series of near-overwhelming musical epiphanies. [Jul 2018, p.94]

A challenging listen. But such is Blake's sonic invention and flair for extricating beauty from the murk, it's well worth sticking with. [Aug 2016, p.92]

Returning to their electro roots might seem a surprising direction to take...but it works. [July 2010, p. 96]

With unerring melodies, Eleanor F hits the sweet spot time after time. [Jul 2013, p.84]

Random Access Memories manages to maintain a core of sense and sobriety. [Jul 2013, p.83]

Shadowy, masterful set. [Dec 2021, p.91]

Big, brave and laudably odd it is, then. [Oct 2017, p.93]

There's a succinctness to Some Like It Hot. .... But pleasingly, they've not junked their angsty edge amid this pop-oriented realignment. [Nov 2025, p.88]

With aid of latter-day Grace Jones producer Ivor Guest, his upbeat tendencies manifest in talk box-voiced electronic funk (think Roger Troutman/Zapp) that is more flattering, particularly when matched to the singer's biting wit on All That School and the MAGA-bashing Meek AF. [Jul 2024, p.86]

Gripping and energetic record. [Nov 2019, p.91]

Heal's molten flow of grandiloquent '70s rock and '80s electronica is unstoppable. [Jul 2014, p.88]

It's a soundtrack for rainswept, sodium-lit backstreets. [Feb 2005, p.101]

Even if it's not quite the Pretenders, it's good to have Chrissy Hynde back. [Nov 2016, p.86]

Spektor has lept from black and white into joyous colour. [Aug 2006, p.88]

A multi-faceted and in turns amusing and affecting album. [Jun 2022, p.86]

They've surpassed the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwoood comparisons to create an intense, fluid sound that's uniquely their own. [Sep 2010, p.96]

Tirzah matches the spacious, hazy intimacy of Levi's often distorted creations with unself-conscious melodies, as if singing in her sleep, finding beauty in imperfection and transience. [Nov 2023, p.90]

Bar the grating closer, it's their most beautiful yet. [Apr 2016, p.89]

While Drunk is occasionally muso brinkmanship there's a human touch that grounds it. [May 2017, p.91]

The music - a little Lumineers, a little Fleet Foxes - stands up for itself. [Jul 2021, p.88]

Clark has whittled a motley crew of characters who sit inside taut, ever so slightly paranoid, Byrne-influenced P-funk.... Wonderful. [Mar 2014, p.88]

Nau isn't especially original, but he is especially beguiling. These are songs to luxuriate in. [Feb 2024, p.89]

The songs on this collection are warm and human and worth the wait. [May 2019, p.94]

While Heart-Shaped Scars might not be the first flowering of such wistful folk mysteries, it still brings in a good harvest. [Sep 2021, p.80]

Rancid's strength is singer Tim Armstrong's touching depictions of the world; from his heritage on 'East Bay Night' to swimming through the devastation of hurricane-stricken New Orleans and on his brother's time in Iraq on the acoustic 'Civilain Ways.'

Choruses swell gorgeously but unpredictably out of the continual wordplay and there's occasional moments of musical reverie. [Sep 2025, p.79]

There's still a warm heart beating under all this newly-assembled machinery.

This compelling, enlightening aural history gives [lesser-known artists] a worthy platform. [Jun 2016, p.102]

Sparkling banjos arpeggios; freak-out saxophjone; John Parish's inventive production; a wealth og strong, beautifully-enunciated vocal melodies--tons has gone into the latest work from Kate Stables, aka This Is The Kit, and all of it is good. [Aug 2017, p.91]

Doubtless, it will all sound great in the car. [Aug 2016, p.93]

Fleshed out by two drummers, strings and brass, it's as infectious and disarming as it is genre-defying. [May 2011, p.109]

If Bruce Springsteen or Steve Earle had created these blue-collar character sketches Here We Rest would be a return to their very best. At 32, however, Isbell seems to be just warming up. [Jul 2011, p.107]