Confronted by performances like this, you just have to lay down your critical apparatus and surrender to the spell. [Oct 2013, p.100]

It's a little hard to take in one sitting, though downcast fans of Saint Etienne and The Magnetic Fields will find much to adore. [Sep 2005, p.92]

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

Relatability charms never harmed Dolly Parton, and that's who you think of as these gargantuan melodies shimmer and soar. [Jun 2020, p.88]

An album of colossal strength and maturity. [Sep 2006, p.104]

Equal parts bludgeoning Art Brut and soaring pop grace. [Aug 2006, p.94]

With the voice of Linda Ronstadt and songwriting gifts of Joni Mitchell, there simply isn't anything to dislike about Old Flowers. [Jul 2020, p.84]

There’s a new level of sophistication here, befitting the fact that the one-time teenage home-recorder is now 27 and this is her fourth album. [Dec 2024, p.85]

The lyrics' heavy-hearted take on relationships is more evidence of an astonishing maturity at play. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Heartbreaking, heartwarming, Eric's still very much a contender. [Jan 2016, p.92]

A rich, bright sounding record, albeit etched with Ward's lyrical ruefulness and voice of crumbling, lugubrious regret. [Oct 2006, p.111]

It's far from a one-dimensional experience though, thanks to Mehldau's jaw-dropping virtuosity. [Feb 2011, p.107]

This is a record that rewards digging into Treays' melodic moods and lyrical follies. It is also a staggering collection of exceptional songs. [Oct 2014, p.86]

An elegant, thought-provoking record. [Mar 2024, p.86]

There's still some beautifully glacial music....but now, occasionally, the Arctic exploration party becomes simply a party. [Aug 2008, p.103]

She has moved into a more hospitable climate, where multitracking of bass-strung guitar, lap and pedal steel, electric piano and percussion have resulted in a warmer palette, a golden late-sfternoon landscape of long desert shadows. [Aug 2016, p.97]

A decent album, but perhaps not the one some of us were hoping for. [Nov 2019, p.95]

This is the sound of 19 different keyboards imagining a parallel world where the test record in every '70s hi-fi home was Wendy C micro-Mooging her way through the Sun ra spaceways. The combination highlights the innocence and beauty of both styles, like forgotten '70s TV themes soundtracking scientific experiments or lonely IBM computers hymning their own obsolescence. [Jan 2022, p.86]

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

This collaboration feels like a specific crystallisation of his {thom Yorke's] enduring love of electronic music, its release on Warp fitting given how much Autechre and Aphex Twin informed Radiohead’s Kid A-era pivot. [Jun 2025, p.78]

Winehouse remains one of modern music's most original voices and is now emerging as arguably the finest soul singer of her generation. [Nov 2006, p.116]

The logical progression for a band who know exactly what they are doing. [Jun 2015, p.87]

This feels like Hiss Golden Messenger's overdue breakthrough album. [Nov 2016, p.89]

It's soulful, spiritually questing--pretty much irresistible, too. [Jun 2017, p.88]

A provocative, anti-establishment critique of the blind idolatry received by the British monarchy and finds each of the nine tracks paying homage to Hutchings' list of notable women that he believes are worthy alternative monarchs. [Apr 2018, p.87]

Opposite House and It are his most Succinct and affecting work since the near-perfect Wit's End, the album that Mangy Love now replaces as his finest. [Sep 2016, p.98]

This third-eye-for-the-folk-guy makeover suits them well, its 11 tracks filled with space and light. [Sep 2020, p.94]

Imagine the Bronte sisters trying to play Yo La Tengo music on Air's instruments with Joe Meek producing.

This is exhilarating stuff. [Mar 2003, p.111]

This concise yet rewarding selection... allies Beans' oft-celebrated intellectual rigour to commendably rock-solid beats. [Mar 2004, p.104]

The bona fide release is a triumph, there's an understated elegance about Logos, which dabbles in Kraut-and math-rock and slacker-styled electronica. [Nov 2009, p.91]

If...'s successful melding of epic vision and intimate solemnity marks an exciting new beginning. [Dec. 2011 pg. 95]

Mind Control [is] as entertaining as the schlock horror flicks which informed it. [May 2013, p.86]

A great country music record. Nothing less. [Oct 2014, p.91]

Sprawling yet rewarding, Blume is a sprightly, athletic consolidation of the journey so far. [Sep 2019, p.93]

This is a sparse, minimalist ode to joy. [Nov 2019, p.88]

Repeat plays lay bare a record of rare ambition and thematic complexity. [Feb 2023, p.84]

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

A record sensational only in the best ways. [Jun 2006, p.103]

A bewitching brew of experimental jazz, droning electronics and raw, progressive rock. [Dec 2017, p.87]

A difficult record for many reasons, but an ineffably beautiful one, too. [Nov 20224, p.89]

A wholly unsanitised vision, where screeching white noise guitars eclipse thundering beats in a reverb dungeon far from prissy "Health & Safety" regulation. [Apr 2022, p.80]

Lurching guitar, chiming piano and stabs of overdubbed choral harmony are combined with vocals that swing from sweetly intimate to dry and flippant. [Mar 2024, p.89]

One to file alongside fan favourites Aether (2001) and Open (2013): records that initially appear starkly minimalist, but gradually reveal boundless, beautiful depths. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Expand their ragged country-rock sound, the strings, horns and choral backing vocals investing in Wriggins' frayed ruminations and road-weary baritone with a necessary blue-collar grandeur. [Sep 2025, p.80]

It's elemental Underworld, and their most generous work in years. [Apr 2016, p.86]

Haggard's now 73 and I Am What I Am is as good as anything he has ever done. [June 2010, p. 94]

This compilation is a reminder of the stillness and quiet power at the heart of his frank, softly sung confessional, of Smith's talent as an arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and of his able, Paul Simon-like finger-picking style. [Dec 2010, p.114]

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

This new project from Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg signals serious sonic intent but wears its experiments lightly. [Apr 2018, p.96]

[A] gloriously sensual record. [Sep 2015, p.93]

A desire to keep old traditions alive while redefining them for the 21st century drive Son Little aka Aaron Livingston, and with his excellent second album, he's achieved that. [Oct 2017, p.95]

This album doesn't have the blinding clarity of proper revelation but, in its febrile examination of survival and redemption, Oh My God is on the side of the angels. [May 2019, p.86]

It initially feels fragile, but Carvings is hard to shake off. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Ultimately, Afternoon X finds its strength in contrast: while the mostly languid pace suggests meditation, the lyrics reveal a theme of carpe diem. [Nov 2023, p.92]

It's a mess of ambition and avant overload, and often too much, but you can't help but admire The New Sound's Stevie Chick wild abandon. And while the whirlwind of concepts and sonic right-turns ultimately fails to cohere, its thrills are many. [Nov 2024, p.84]

Though the results are not always easy to take.... The sense of folk and country pervades each and every performance, saving the day. [Sep 2015, p.90]

Audaciously, it all coheres. The vision is precise and the execution meticulous. The album's 14 songs are tightly arranged and energetically delivered. [Sep 2021, p.81]

There’s an irresistibly slinky Stones groove to Boom Boom Back (Beck Hansen yelps mid-chorus), while Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten guests on the smouldering Stranger. Throughout, Cosials and Perrote joyfully excel. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Lyrics are vital, and here they often clunk where they should pierce, deadening some of her undeniable power. [Jun 2020, p.86]

What might be a bleak set of songs about fragile ecosystems and unsustainable lives is saved from desperation by the warmth of the instrumentation – strings, synths, piano – and the watchful humanity of the lyrics. [May 2024, p.84]

The saturnine wavs of As Above Perhaps So Below suggest the torpor induced by the titular barbiturate, while We Were Vaporised proffers further subterranean tectonics offset by cosmic keyboard drifts that might have been plucked, like much here, from an art-house sci-fi movie score. [Jun 2024, p.91]

When Robert Smith guests on the strident How Not to Drown it's a perfect retro storm. Yet the opening Asking For A Friend has a very 2021 clatter, while Violent Delights evokes a sugar-free Ellie Goulding. [Oct 2021, p.98]

Amid the aggro, Taylor's intense stack-heeled charisma dominates: whether raging or romancing, she's the queen of this glorious chunder from Down Under. [Jun 2019, p.88]

This is music that seems to inhale and exhale around Faithfull, making space for wonder to unfurl without crassly signposting it. [May 2021, p.86]

With Lullaby his tricky metamorphosis from Golden God to dignified elder statesman is now complete, and the last stages of that transition make for a rewarding, often touching listen. [Oct 2014, p.84]

The Philadelphia quartet's second has a deep warmth emanating from it. [Mar 2022, p.82]

The duo-only, no bass required songs don't lack for sonic depth. [Sep 2004, p.98]

While opener Der Lange Marsh 1 sways like a marram grass in the breeze, there's a relentlessness to the album's overall progress. [Mar 2022, p.87]

There's an undeniable zip to these. [Jun 2024, p.82]

[Snaith] continues to explore a digital/analogue interface to mind-bending effect, balancing riotous abstraction with day-glo pop. [Jun 2005, p.97]

This is real person-to-person music. [Jan 2013, p.95]

Fits is sublime, sexy, unmisable. [Jul 2009, p.99]

Metals is the product of a stock-taking pause, it's clear the former Canadian indie scenester had rediscovered her bearings. [Oct 2011, p.106]

This time Linkous lets his gift for fractured folk song to resonate without encumbrance from freaky noise slugs. The results are sensational. [Jul 2001, p.98]

OOIOO instill Boredoms' cosmic clatter with an air of genre-bursting adventure and mischief. [Nov 2005, p.108]

If Solomon Burke and Will Oldham had a baby. [Mar 2009, p.105]

S, no watersports this time, but a wee triumph nonetheless. [Dec 2009, p. 100]

[ORO: Opus Alter] is more startling than the first [Oro: Opus Primum]. [Nov 2012, p.96]

These are ingenious, affecting songs on a DIY recording budget. [Nov 2013, p.88]

Occasionally tracks are achingly earnest; but overall this is light in the darkness, about love and death and bravery of all kinds. [May 2014, p.94]

Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees and GBV overlap on this Venn diagram of melodic powerpop. [Jul 2014, p.96]

For all its flaws, the outcome remains spectacular. [Oct 2014, p.103]

Eighth and best-yet album of horn'n'vibes-heavy jazz cinematics. [Oct 2014, p.96]

An eerily rootless modern drift through the electronic depths of Tarkovsky's Zone. [Feb 2015, p.96]

A vessel for unsettled emotional truths. [Sep 2015, p.95]

West Kirby Country Primary declares the vivid flowering of a great talent. [Dec 2015, p.84]

Treetop Flyers have not exactly reinvented the wheel but certainly given the tyres a good kicking and come up with all kinds of right. [Apr 2016, p.89]

The Uzi/Live Skull/Come veteran conveys the therapeutic power of bleak yet lovely music. [Sep 2016, p.99]

The whole shebang is a lovely thing to bring back to Real World, the label that first signed Arthur back in 1997. [Aug 2016, p.96]

By finally abandoning the pursuit of making alt-rock sound as pristine as possible, Twin Atlantic have actually struck upon something much more significant here: their identity. [Oct 2016, p.96]

Dense and dark as always, but with new light seeping through the undergrowth, Unseen is The Handsome Family's masterpiece. [Sep 2016, p.95]

A worthy addition to the genre. [Nov 2016, p.92]

A weave of sublimely lysergic folk-pop. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Undoubtedly one of his strongest. [Feb 2017, p.97]

Like Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man's Out Of Season, say I'm A Harmony operates on a different plane. [Dec 2017, p.93]

A notably mature-sounding record full of gnarly guitars, scrunchy Hammond organ and tuneful innocence lost. [Jun 2018, p.92]

Where it really gets interesting--when you notice how music evolves and genre names become meaningless-is when the walls of commerce tumble down because musicians found freedom in the cracks and crawled through. [Jul 2019, p.106]