It's a compliment that guest spots by simpatico icons Iggy Pop and Kool Keith are by no means the best things here. [Dec 2019, p.86]

Make Me Feel Alright is a joyous call and response; Souled Out On You a heartbreaker with deep feeling; Country Child, meanwhile, is pure Hill Country hypnotic boogie. [Jun 2021, p.89]

Their enthusiasm for the project is palpable and if their joyful noise turns just one listener onto the original, it's job done. [Sep 2021, p.82]

Music that is dizzying beautiful, but never precious. [Oct 2021, p.88]

Subtitled "Ghana Music Power House", a fitting epitaph for Dick Essilfie-Bondize. ... Highlight: the blissful whirl Yeaba by CK Mann's Carousel. [Feb 2022, p.103]

A yin-yang parity asserts itself with the wistful, jazzy, Rose-sung Simple Days, electro-pop You Saw and epic, wicca-ish Druantia. Elsewhere, there’s arty chamber pop, demented swing-jazz and the epic Surf’s Up-echoing closer Sunrise: middle-aged bliss has rarely sounded so weirdly magical. [Nov 2024, p.91]

Breathless, and breathtaking. [Jul 2025, p.86]

It'll leave you hoping De La never stop. [Feb 2026, p.80]

Lyrics tend toward the brutal, but there's tenderness too. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Disappointment and cautious optimism for the future, rather than recrimination, is About Farewell's weapon of choice, a welcome female counterpoint to, say, the bitterness of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks or Josh Ritter's The Beast In Its Tracks. [Sep 2013, p.86]

WOW's melodies and motifs are pretty with a dash of strange. ... But Kate NV remains thrillingly individual. [Apr 2023, p.89]

They ensure Deerhunter's most accessible songs yet are also their most affecting. [Nov 2015, p.86]

These radio sessions and TV appearances present an unique, accelerated Kinks history. [Sep 2012, p.103]

John Talabot and Axel Boman share a rep for expressive, expansive rhythms aimed at forward-thinking dancefloors--music that can stand in its own right, away from the club. Thrust together, it's an approach that the Catalan/Swedish twosome maintain. [May 2017, p.91]

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

Most are country ballads--sentimental, heartfelt and tend towards sacred. [Apr 2009, p.109]

This harder edge suggests a long, bounteous road into the future. [Nov 2022, p.93]

The Next Day [is] Bowie's most impassioned and convincing work in decades. [Apr 2013, p.84]

To fresh melodies of Guthrie would surely have smiled upon, the four adorn every lyric with fine guitar weaves of rollicking dance, rugged grind or Paris, Texas haunt. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Smith leads one of the best and sturdiest bands in rock... and their intricately scored psychedelia is a running high in Mosaic, the title stomp, with its yowling-wolf lick and Nine, an extended beguiling jam that suggests Smith fronting her own Doors. [Jul 2012, p.89]

This NYC ambient country trio continue to evolve on their fifth LP. [Sep 2024, p.94]

On This Land, Clark and his guitar stay true to the mission. [Apr 2019, p.92]

A dense dream dialogue. [Jun 2015, p.96]

[A] very fine third album. [Mar 2012, p.98]

By the third listen, Burner is starting to feel like a great 21st century pop record. [Sep 2005, p.103]

Regan cross-wires mid-'60s Dylan and Paul Simon with the '70s CBGB pantheon, his songcraft on the verge of cohering his quirkily arresting strengths into true brilliance. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

It's sometimes easy to lose sight of the humanity in Randy Newman's songwriting. Some redress is afforded by an album which--as with its 2003 predecessor--sees 67-year-old Newman pare back songs spanning four decades to voice and piano. [Jun 2011, p.92]

A debut that will fry your ears and break your heart. [Jan 2012, 100]

These songs sound like old country classics. [Aug 2012, p.96]

His most impressive album yet. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Celebrating both Big Bill and the Alvins' shared boyhood, this genial collaboration throws a warm light on both. [Jul 2014, p.89]

Dark, minatory rhythms underpin stark lyrics telling of hard times in the north of Mali. [May 2015, p.95]

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

[His bathroom's] natural reverb add a wobbly-otherworldly feel. [Sep 2017, p.96]

This second volume maintains the high standard. [Jul 2018, p.104]

Confirms her 2019 Rising Star Brit and BBC's Sound Of 2020 awards were no fluke. [Apr 2021, p.83]

Volcano continues where 2021's Loving In Stereo left off. [Sep 2023, p.86]

A sobering adventure close o something like home. [Oct 2023, p.86]

These four sidelong pieces, buttressed by a trio of percussive friends, are gentle journeys into the great beyond. [Nov 2022, p.87]

Wolfe is the epicentre of the maelstrom, a banshee wailing through songs called things like Welt and Scrape. [Dec 2017, p.94]

The tunes are a panorama of Crowell's favoured styles. [Jun 2014, p.91]

Every one of its 15 tracks brings something new to the table. [Nov 2013, p.90]

Throwing down a persuasive gauntlet, opener Undying Love For Humanity is all breezy percussion, percolating synths, chiming vibraphones and complex, wordless backing vocal arrangements--a sunny, tropicalia-like setting for Sadier's typically liquid delivery of lyrics. [Apr 2017, p.97]

The rage and weight of 2014's Blank Project has lifted but the explorations of life at every level--refugees in Calais; exhausted living under patriarchy; missing your parents--continue. [Nov 2018, p.89]

At first spiky and combative, gradually (and ultimately) it is hypnotic and calmative. [Dec 2022, p.89]

Locating a broken, but still-beating heart within metallic machine music, East India Youth's debut is a triumph. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Could well be her finest yet. [Oct 2001, p.128]

Stellar noise pollution. [May 2003, p.99]

It's the first time in the history of the Missy-Timbaland team-up where, having delivered the goods early on and earned the space to do whatever theheck they like, they tread water instead of pushing things forward. [Album of the Month, Jan 2003, p.90]

Dana Margolin isn't just reckoning with a break-up, but a near-total collapse in its wake. ... Yet the prettiness somehow makes listening feel more voyeuristic. [Jul 2022, p.92]

Tripp is a complicated, slow-burning wonder that matches Cerulean Salt for fuzzy, bed-headed zingers but adds several layers of regret and self doubt and is all the more rewarding for that. [May 2015, p.95]

Almost flawless record. ... It alights on an entirely new air of depth and fascination, in keeping with its author's age and experience. [Oct 2018, p.85]

Her third album is a small masterpiece of restrained quirks; a slowburner that rearranges retro signifiers in a genuinely creative way. [Jun 2019, p.91]

It's easy to see why those indie luminaries were so deeply seduced by Acetone's languid and ever-so lovely drawing together of Doug Yule-era Velvets, Spiritualized and Low. [Oct 2017, p.106]

Loose Future positions Andrews between Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen, a triumvirate of singer-songwriters finding new alleyways in and out of familiar territory. These 10 absorbing songs, likewise, are testaments to remaining in motion. [Nov 2022, p.88]

Though the album opens with an isolated funky bass line, Butterss proves a democratic bandleader, often ceding the spotlight to saxophonist Josh Johnson and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, Butterss’ companions in another fine group, SML. [Dec 2024, p.87]

Coates uses an eccentric blend of rich strings and muffled hardcore rhythms that are seductive, haunting and deliciously weird. [Oct 2018, p.87]

From the gentle fire of the first, and title track, this is Green in the role of Love Man and in very fine form. [July 2008, p.100]

Kate Bush is the greatest living British artist in song and this is her masterpiece. [Dec 2005, p.96]

The wait, rewarded. [Dec 2025, p.85]

Exactly the sort of angry rebel rock you want from a band with their backs it the walls and foes on all sides. [Apr 2017, p.96]

These six new tracks flow neatly on from those recorded for Tche Belew 40 years before. [Mar 2018, p.95]

The freshness of allowing us into his private world, most importantly, fuels Lanegan's third rock/electronic beauty on the bounce. [Jun 2020, p.86]

This union [with Lady Gaga producers Yves Tumor and Lawrence Rothman and Taylor Swift co-writer Jack Antonoff] pushes his emotional, sophisticated rock in vivid new directions. [Mar 2025, p.84]

When it comes to making smart, mischievous electronic merry, no one can touch him. [May 2006, p.105]

Country-soul songs full of warmth and comfort. [Jun 2018, p.97]

Over time, however, it can feel like Clarke has excised the excitement along with the Extraneous matter, his balefully lovelorn tenor, now right out front without distracting clutter, often too reedy to carry the show. [Sep 2023, p.84]

The LP is a treat, like listening to an oracle from the depths of a digital cave. [Feb 2024, p.86]

It hold together, though--a quiet coalition, but one that is wholly satisfying. [Dec 2017, p.89]

This fifth album, produced by Dan Auerbach in his Nashville studio, captures The Clams' girl group sound with soulful feeling. [Apr 2018, p.92]

One of the States' great indie rock institutions, finding renewal largely in the familiar. [Oct 2022, p.86]

It's all funny, sardonic, heartfelt and loveable. [Apr 2006, p.106]

Driven along by a renewed sense of urgency and purpose, this may be Richard Thompson's most creative album in decades. [Oct 2018, p.92]

An alleviating statement from an artist whose curiosity and striving fir development have remained a driving force. [Apr 2024, p.85]

Ultimately, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they’ve scaled greater heights with more time and pre-writing. [Aug 2024, p.91]

Perfectly sequenced, Sinister Grift's dubious uplift gradually falls away to reveal an exquisite melancholy introspection, the sound of optimism weighted by mooring hooks of sadness. [Apr 2025, p.86]

It's captivating stuff, with the gnomic lyrics adding to the implied oppostion between the natural world and the machines used to make the record. [Apr 2009, p.108]

This is exciting, audacious work from a band yet again on the edge of a new future. [Oct 2013, p.84]

Contra is the sound of a band driving themselves to very satisfying extremes. [Feb 2010, p. 96]

When the approach works, the results are bracingly exploratory; when it doesn't they're frustratingly half-formed. [Jul 2005, p.94]

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

Tender, wise, compassionate and magnanimous, it's a special, special record for anyone who has ever hurt. [Dec 2004, p.114]

An entirely silly album. [Jan 2006, p.120]

San Fran stalwart John Dwyer continues to deliver quality goo goo muck with his subterranean garage-psych combo. [Aug 2009, p.104]

Mrs. Buffalo's boy's not one of the herd: weird, but kind of wonderful. [May 2010, p. 97]

Marnie Stern is a strong statement from a musician whose confidence is soaring. [Dec 2010, p.97]

This is a big album in every way, full of ambitious layers, heavy on piano, strings, brass and drums producing vast soundscapes and lavish arrangements which place strong emphasis on the atmospheric undercurrent of some unerringly dramatic material. [Apr 2011, p.99]

Part band memoir, part call for artistic renewal, delivered via chiming rock anthemics with pop appeal. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Repeated plays will bear deep rewards confirming both protagonist' growing stature in modern music. [Jun 2012, p.82]

Whether it's the horrors of recognising yourself in an obnoxious younger person, his downbeat but defiant re-working of Jerusalem or the uncharacteristically optimistic The Wolfless Years, it's still the words that really stay with you. [Aug 2013, p.93]

Eclectic whimsicality--chugging blues gets a stadium guitar intro; horns add even more uplift to engaging Fountains Of Waynesque Big Times. [May 2014, p.91]

The album has a clear, organic sound. [Sep 2014, p.90]

All lovely throwbacks have an instant familiarity. [Oct 2015, p.93]

They draw from a practiced old hand's bag of tricks yet feel delightfully fresh. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Though still no barrel of laughs--far from it--there is evidence of green shoots of hope here. [Dec 2016, p.91]

Closure is more substantial than that implies, carrying on the more direct approach of 2005's Disaffected. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Jardin retain the EP's satisfyingly minimalist approach. [Feb 2017, p.92]

The Chimp awakes. [Jul 2017, p.96]