Songs feel shy of messing with the familiar. [Sep 2018, p.94]

The results are as wildly evocative as anything by Steve Reich or Terry Riley, but thunderously affecting on their own terms. [Jan 2019, p.85]

It took the reformation of Three Hypnotics, his first band, to get his groove back. It's fully maintained on this second RM album, in gale force determination, resolution and incision. [Apr 2019, p.95]

The fourth volume continues the quality but widens the focus to include Delta State, Abuja and the border with Benin. [Jun 2019, p.106]

A fine writer who is really finding her voice. [Jun 2019, p.94]

A second set of tuneful snark. [Oct 2019, p.92]

A trancelike alliance of technical mastery and instinctual chemistry far greater than the sum of its acoustic parts, GoGo Penguin already feels definitive. [Jun 2020, p.93]

Sixty Summers is a record of imagination and scope. [May 2021, p.87]

The music swings again, even if Currie's damning viewpoint hasn't lightened. [Jun 2021, p.87]

Magnificently unsanitised ramalams in the shape of Please Come In and BFIOU. [Aug 2021, p.88]

[Still Life] finally moves her on from being just "one to watch" to the woman of the moment. [Apr 2022, p.81]

Here and there you can hear a touch of JJ Cale breeziness and, on Ballad Of An Unknown, urban cowboy noir with socio-political lyrics. [Apr 2022, p.85]

None [of the guest artists] crowd out Hitchcock's distinctive songwriting, though, nor his undimmed ability to reach through the existential murk and grasp a revelation or two. [Nov 2022, p.90]

Dickinson is the singer's best foil since Bernard Butler, spinning a kaleidoscope of suave, modernist soul-pop. [Mar 2023, p.87]

If the default mode of these simmering barroom confessionals is a certain existential weariness, they're nonetheless dispatched with substance and soul. [Mar 2023, p.90]

All and all, a winning, beats-driven combination of the personal and the universal. [Apr 2023, p.82]

Ultimately, Mid Air is an ecstatic love letter to love, but also the queer clubs where Romy found validation and her soundtrack to liberation. [Oct 2023, p.88]

They remain wholly beholden to Liam Fray’s songwriting, but they’re assisted by contemporaries: upwardly mobile Scottish soul singer Brooke Combe offers depth-giving harmonies on Sweet Surrender, as does Pixey on the unusually sweary First Name Terms. Solitude Of The Night Bus skirts too close to Arctic Monkeys, but Fray is developing apace. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Nu-riot grrrls who may well be doing it better than anyone since Bikini Kill. [Feb 2025, p.91]

Altogether Stranger is a significant upgrade and these dystopian but hopeful, image-drenched songs are surely the way ahead for an artist who's becoming special. [Jun 2025, p.82]

While Oldham frames his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy alias as a group name this time out, it's a collaboration which enhances his long-running idiosyncrasies rather than blandifies them. [Apr 2026, p.92]

Five unreleased LP outtakes and alternate versions make this essential even for Fucked Up completists. [Feb 2010, p. 115]

Even when he's so amiably out-of-focus, Vile's melodies remain vivid, his wanders never self-indulgent. [May 2013, p.86]

Even as she turns 73, Williams sounds present, ready to mix it, and therefore as good a hope as we have. [Mar 2026, p.83]

The stories collected on Death Cab For Cutie's tenth album are rich in both detail and substance, with solidary lines that can unravel you. [Oct 2022, p.82]

Elevated by Austra's opera-trained vocal, thrilling fluctuations confirms she's progressed from grief to anger, and with serene finale Good Riddance, acceptance. [Dec 2025, p.84]

The main feeling it provokes is sincere admiration at a job well done, but a raised pulse, unfortunately, is something Spoon can't craft from scratch. [Apr 2017, p.96]

There's no flash, no showing off, just some rock-solid playing from the quiet man of Afrobeat. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Michael Chapman sounds just fine exactly where he is, deep in the knowledge of what is coming, but finally aware of how far he's come. [Feb 2017, p.88]

Though McLennan's poetry, hurt and melodic gift is lost, his partner's crafted vignettes are the closest we have to the timeless albums they make together. Inferno stands among them, a few stops down the line, and for Forster, like the rest of us, life turns another page. [Apr 2019, p.84]

Vile's no relic-treasuring throwback, finding a unique, laconic voice of his own among the tangle. [Apr 2011, p.95]

She delivers intelligence and sensuality like she never saw a line between them. [Mar 2016, p.98]

Though the shadows of Wilson and Lennon/McCartney loom large over this latest psyche-pop platter, the Apples tap into a tradition of classic pop songwriting rather than merely plagiarising their ancestors.

A tad melodramatic at times, this remains a "Christian rock" album with a serious hellhound on its trail. [Sep 2002, p.94]

The band's conventional elements are even more conventional while the boundary-pushers stretch as far as ever. [Album of the Month, July 2002, p.92]

There's a lushness to Dungan's layering throughout that reminds of William Tyler, Stuart Hyatt and labelmate Ezra Feinberg. [Mar 2025, p.90]

The long, swirling guitar patterns remain, as the bandleader enjoys letting a groove stretch right out before demonstrating his blues-rock credentials. [Sept. 2011, p. 104]

In Jessy Lanza's case, disruption has elevated artistic output. [Jul 2020, p.82]

There is sweetness--Shuffling Stoned's hyperfocused vignette; the title track's mystical George Harrison drone--but August feels like the product of a wandering mind deliberately slipping through the cracks. [Sep 2019, p.89]

An instinctive and honest sublimation of a state of mind, full of intriguing revelations but leaving enough questions unanswered to keep you ever seeking more in its grooves. [Feb 2015, p.88]

The fact that some of the material was lifted from cassettes means that the production quality varies wildly, but nonetheless 001 is catnip for Strummer fans. [Oct 2018, p.107]

Even the less bristling episodes feel luminous and ecstatic, but mostly the magnificent Historian thrives on tension. [Apr 2018, p.94]

A joyously spiky yet danceable debut. [Aug 2019, p.90]

This follow-up is stronger [than his debut]. [Apr 2009, p.109]

A liminal, dreamlike music of eye-moistening poignancy. [Aug 2011, p.106]

Some of the most minimal yet complex, heavy but refined music going. [Jun 2025, p.86]

There's surely never beena Sonic Youth album so unself-conscious. [Jul 2006, p.98]

Even after three intervening decades of teknoid endeavour, these pioneers remained uniquely disturbing. [Feb 2013, p.88]

Seesawing between pristine songcraft and experimentalism makes for a diverse, satisfying whole. [Apr 2021, p.94]

True Love Cast Out All Evil is a genuine triumph of the spirit and heart. Other 62-year-old surviviors have released comeback albums as good, but none better or more uplifting. [Jul 2010, p.90]

It's Blitz! succeeds because YYYs have managed to mix the human and the electronic, the emotional and the artsy, the fashion-forward and the oddly retro. [May 2009, p.94]

It's their immersion in multi-layered psychedelia that give Midnight Sun its compellingly ominous underpinning and complete two-sides-of-vinyl feel. [Jun 2014, p.91]

This lean, hungry and impeccably intense record is everything the involvement of those collaborators [RocketNumberNine & Kieran Hebden] might lead you to hope for, and a lot more besides. [Mar 2014, p.95]

While the incredibly kinetic South Central LA rapper's second album wins no prizes for originality, it's a relentlessly fun listen. [Mar 2018, p.93]

Songs fall into two categories: those tracking matters of the heart--Don't You Know could be a forgotten Delfonics single with drummer Aaron Frazer's sweet falsetto taking the lead--and those scolding their home country. These are jolting, especially opener Morning In America, with its Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron touches. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Ambitious comeback. ... It works a treat. [Jun 2019, p.96]

Lovely instrumental set. [Dec 2020, p.89]

Wholly drums-free, it takes time to reveal its charms. [Mar 2021, p.85]

Lighten Up takes its sometimes melancholy frown, turns it upside down and delivers an infectious beam of musical sunshine. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Forsyth knows exactly how far to let out the line before returning to the earth's atmosphere, leaping forward, bringing it home. [Sep 2022, p.95]

Experimental, but far from intimidating. [Dec 2022, p.94]

A ferocious blast of distorted guitar riffs, skronking sax and explosive testifying. [Nov 2013, p.91]

Brisbane trio navigates teen psychodramas with the sort of wry reportage that makes Courtney Barnett such a charming indie narrator. [May 2016, p.96]

Katy J Pearson's second album heralds few radical stylistic shifts, but showcases renewed confidence, intention and focus. [Aug 2022, p.86]

At best, Fear Fear is as compact and airless as its title, an existential crisis dancing in warm leatherette. [Aug 2022, p.87]

They remain a magical band still searching for a commensurate album, arriving at a record whose thrills are real but fleeting. [Nov 2022, p.92]

Warbling soul, classical lieder, No Other's stage-musical rapture, the title track's echo of Copeland's 1986 New-Age-synth album Keyboard Fantasies - all united by his seemingly unshakeable belief in humanity. [Aug 2023, p.84]

It's over in a flash, an exhilarating fairground ride you won't want to disembark. [Mar 2024, p.88]

Rarely has ruminations on decline, in fact, sounded so vigorous. [Mar 2025, p.90]

Unlike the super-saturated rush of Everything Ecstatic, There Is Love In You radiates a mellow subtlety, the wonderfully named She Just Like To Fight a twinkling pastoral while the luscious groove of Plastic People pushes its most interesting clicks and skitters to the periphery. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Yes, they're flavour of the month, but they're the real deal too. [Nov 2025, p.88]

Placing a rich overlay of guitars, piano, banjo and synths over bleak and difficult circumstances, Cullum restores a gentle magic to the world. Heads, he wins. [May 2026, p.86]

Again, the result is terrific with Hunter, band and producer in perfect harmony. [Mar 2016, p.92]

A record out of time, and, in terms of quality, out of this world. [Jul 2018, p.91]

Frank and redemptive, it's a journey of small Texas towns and wide open spaces. [Nov 2022, p.89]

Thanks to its exquisite craft, and Remy's feel for her characters, that project finds its finest expression yet in Heavy Light. [Apr 2020, p.86]

The themes - anxiety, longing and dislocation - are familiar, but here Blonde redhead address their potent heartaches with renewed grace and strength. [Nov 2023, p.93]

The result is charged and post-apocalyptic. [Oct 2019, p.90]

The old stomp is still here, but Alabama has stoked The Black Keys' dark side. [June 2010, p. 93]

He sounds fresher than in years. [Dec 2006, p.108]

There’s something about this mix of scrawling guitars, frank lyricism and brazen dub that is a joyfully empowering inversion of the girl group sound. [Mar 2023, p.87]

Rhythmically dense is the result. [Jul 2015, p.93]

Many of the songs segue into one another, a percussive keyboard outro blending into a slow keyboard intro, with Moses sounding like the soundtrack to sunrise--gorgeous. [Oct 2013, p.95]

Delivers some great tunes in tight, concentrated blasts, but sets them behind a gauze of distortion that gives the impression they are gradually fraying around the edges. [Apr 2004, p.102]

Fennesz excels when he squeezes something truly sublime and undeniably human through his gritty, labyrinthine microprocessors. [Jun 2004, p.112]

Ha Ha Sound reveals that the band still have a penchant for 3/4 time, still transcend their cinematic influences effortlessly, and Trish Keenan still conjures wondrous lyrical evocations of unspecific tenderness and yearning. [Aug 2003, p.98]

The Moon's musical and thematic diversity is glued together by Brooks' ability to instill even the most desolate musical climes with warmth and emotion.... One of the year's most oddly endearing records so far.

The Horrors are operating at a way more advanced level, dragging rock, feedback-drenched, electronic and electrifying, into a new decade. [Jun 2009, p.101]

Echoes of Aphex Twin, Nils Frahm, Arvo Part and Biosphere swirl around a deeply personal but sonically seductive piece of work. [Jan 2016, p.94]

The eight tracks on Rojus rise and fall like a club set. [Jul 2016, p.95]

The insistent, even patient, rhythms that propel most songs on Wolf Parade's fourth album are some measure of hope. They suggest there's someplace the synth-rock band is trying to get, and that there is some place worth reaching. [Nov 2017, p.96]

Wildcard marks a brilliant reassertion of Lambert's magnetic wit. [Dec 2019, p.89]

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]

Highlights a voracious creative appetite and their relationship's enduring strength. [Dec 2020, p.87]

This time nuance embellishments lend greater power and depth. [Oct 2015, p.90]

Lustman's been musing on the conflict between the intimate, solo nature of his music making and the shared listening experience of his audience on dancefloors. Lustman's solution is the intimate, expansive Heaven Is for Quitters. [Dec 2016, p.93]

Here, Saunders marks out her own terrain, seeing how far she can go forward, and how far back. [Apr 2018, p.91]

Bursting with invention, energy and occasionally cheesy synths.[May 2018, p.95]