A Martian mix of space-age sax, sky-high doo wop, seance-strange electronics and the rich, soulful vocals of [Adebimpe]. [Jun 2004, p.116]

Overlong, but Chocolate Factory is an impressively varied opus. [May 2003, p.100]

One of Americana's most exquisite singers. [Dec 2004, p.114]

As the plot inexorably winds on to its tense denouement, the depth of tempest's storytelling ensures the album yields more with each further play. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Burgess always wanted to be a country soul man, on this album he has done it. [Oct 2012, p.87]

It reframes familiar, comforting songs of joy, innocence and goatherds within pitiless orch-industrial rock and suspicious pop softness, rediscovering the original's Nazi-assailed gravity and reflecting on a divided Korean peninsula and the international power relations beyond. [Jan 2019, p.84]

Here lies much of the album's magic: whatever ornate turns the music takes, at its heart is the primal stuff of great rock'n'roll. But God, is it big. [Apr 2007, p.94]

A big-tableau statement that combines his musical and ideological passions. [May 2007, p.106]

Mitski has long stared at happiness and wondered what comes next; here, she spies it, smiles and then shrugs, the smart band beneath glowing like some warmth hearth on a cold Los Angeles Night. [Oct 2023, p.85]

It's All True joyfully returns to the shimmering electronica of old. [Aug. 2011, p. 98]

Their emotional post-club grooves are the real star. [Mar 2016, p.95]

This disc is bloated with anti-matter sing-alongs to savour. [Apr 2017, p.98]

The geo-political subtext only adds gravity to Foon's already compellingly brooding soundscapes. [Apr 2017, p.95]

Bada$$ proves a natural born rhymer on a deeply rewarding showcase of advanced level lyricalism. [Feb 2015, p.89]

There are straight-ahead, stripped down, old-style blues rockers. ... Also there just the blues - slow beauties that seem to be about depression and being lost, that feel more personal than political. [Jun 2020, p.88]

The hit rate is high, and Mike Scott is clearly having fun cutting himself free from The Waterboys' past, and playing fast and loose - much like the mercurial subject of this album. [May 2025, p.88]

An album of intelligent genre hopping. [Mar 2014, p.95]

[Cryptic, allusive, impressionistic, The Bible needs its own concordance at times. Yet, after three decades on a quest to close in on the mysteries of being human, Wagner's perceptive edge hasn't blunted. [Oct 2022, p.83]

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]

As you hit repeat to hear Horehound for the umpteenth time, what's remarkable is that these 11 tunes, with their sonic curveballs and causl vim, suggest that a second Dead Weather LP would be almost as welcome as the White Stripes' seventh. [Jul 2009, p.90]

Their 21st studio album. Not so dissimilar to the other 20. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]

Impeccably sequenced, with fulsome liner notes, global groovers will find this seamless mix of the known and obscure frequently revelatory. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Oui LSF remains firmly in the group's idiosyncratic wheelhouse, equally foregrounding their bristling dissonance and acerbic pop flourishes. [Jun 2024, p.90]

These may be other people's words, but Dulli well knows the vocabulary. [Nov 2004, p.112]

At each stop on the tube map, much yobbo-chorus fun ensues. [Jan 2021, p.86]

DOOM is in the form of his life here. [Jun 2012, p.85]

Expertly miked to capture Cannell’s own sharp recorder breaths and the church’s own otherworldly reverberations, the result is both a hallucinatory venture into sonic time travel, and a consciousness-expanding act of medieval meditation. [Nov 2024, p.88]

Fairbairn's side-of-mouth playing is extraordinary bucking the universal post-millennial effort to out-blast Coltrane, in favour of beautifully gentle explorations which are both intrepid and sublimely calming. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Its depth makes this their most satisfyingly sensual work to date. [Apr 2017, p.99]

NuAmerykah is her boldest and best yet, brilliantly eccentric but repaying every indulgence. [May 2008, p.106]

It's obvious that the Chicago-born, multi-instrumentalist bluesman is about to add yet another Blues Music Award nomination to his already impressive tally. [May 2017, p.96]

Blood and religion, sin and redemption are as key to Biram's music as country, punk, blues, spirituals and good-ol'-boy rock.... There's great examples here. [Mar 2014, p.91]

A deeper return to that midnight shade of soul frontman Greg Dulli long ago made his own. The grungy tenor of the previous album is now mostly absent. [Jun 2017, p.94]

Amid the chaos, some rare calm and solace from Emmylou Harris's favourite rhythm guitarist. [Sep 2021, p.78]

They are a fuller-sounding group in 2013. [Apr 2013, p.91]

While a palpable sense of mournfulness lingers throughout Mia Gargaret, there's a degree of catharsis attached to it too. [Aug 2020, p.89]

There are 808s and sensory synths galore, but it's the powerful message and those voices - tough soulful leads and contrastingly sweet gospel harmonies - that hold sway here. [Mar 2024, p.87]

He sounds as raw and vital as ever. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

So, was Tony Bennett exaggerating when he called lang, "the best singer of her generation"? Yes, but on this form only a little. [May 2011, p.114]

Weirdness and wonder abound at every turn. [Oct 2025, p.81]

["2012 (Bury Our Heads)" is] a brief downer and nestled among a clutch of songs that demonstrate how far the band has come since their 2003 debut. [May 2011, p.107]

The New York boy-girl duo make sweet love to a musical memory. [July 2011, p. 107]

Ghost Stations is blithesome evidence of Marconi Union expanding on their ambient/downtempo tag. [Sep 2016, p.93]

Futire-proof and intense, this is art-jazz-rock at its most cathartic. [Nov 2025, p.86]

A keeper. ... This is still a terrific entry point into a band who repay obsession. [Oct 2018, p.87]

A lysergic brew of dust-blown ballads, thumping punk rock and shimmery psychedelia. The jarring stylistic clash is often part of the charm. [Dec 2019, p.88]

One of the most compelling and stone-cold beautiful albums Simon has ever made. [Jul 2023, p.80]

A debut solo album of such synth-streaked electronic sleaze and shimmer that it kicks Goldfrapp and Gary Numan into the bleachers. [Jan 2018, p.90]

It's a moody, unpredictable thing, from the Call's Balearic moment of ecstasy, to the deconstructed country-folk of Feist's What Happens Now, to the indie-noir of This Briefest kiss, all sulphurous bass and saxophone, but these many facets cohere brilliantly. [Jun 2026, p.88]

Once Upon A Time In The West treads a similar path [as "Stars Of CCTV"], though this time Richard Archer and co have packed in more guitar wallop and catch-all harmonies. [Oct 2007, p.90]

Reid offers up dreamlike meditations on pained experience possessed of a quiet rhythm and disarming lyrical beauty. [Apr 2017, p.91]

To some he may always be Neil's boy, but Liam Finn is very much his own man. [Aug. 2011, p. 98]

You do wonder what, exactly, fires his pistons and to what end, but quality control remains excellent. [Aug 2022, p.91]

A confounding and bewitching set of songs that feels gloriously out of time. [Dec 2011, p.100]

Reminiscent of early Nathaniel Rateliff and John Moreland, and prime John Prine, there's no reason here to doubt Martin might one day eclipse them all. [Dec 2023, p.88]

Fed is something of a lost classic. [Sep 2008, p.123]

This intimate, intelligent album boasts that rarest quality in 21st century rock music: inimitability. [Mar 2014, p.89]

Sinner Get Ready spotlights the itinerant Californian's magnetic vocals by removing harsh textures, reflecting her move to rural Pennsylvania with a majestic palette of choral polyphony, crashing percussion and traditional porch and church sounds. [Sep 2021, p.86]

Black Cascade meshes razor-throated fundamentals with panoramic sweep, its four thunderous riff odysseys wreathed in soulful desolation. [May 2009, p.109]

For all of Startisha's eclecticism, Juwan's visions are coherent, his voice assured. [Aug 2020, p.88]

Costello has again hauled material from diverse regions of his writing life into a strangely cohesive cornucopia. [Jul 2009, p.96]

It's their talent for great hooks, that gets you in the end. [Aug 2009, p.99]

Meditative Time (You Got Me) sets the pace: a gently rambling rumination twinkling with congas, shakers and bird-like flutes. [Oct 2019, p.92]

The Return could do with some editing as it's unwieldy 78 minutes risk losing the audience before its finest songs: the epic, autobiographical title track, and the redemptive, gospel-soaked closer Made Us better. But Too much of a good thing is nothing to hold a grudge over. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Presence is the best of the three [remasters].... The deluxe edition's bonus track, a soft, piano-led instrumental titled Pod, reiterates how dark and gnarly the rest is. [Sep 2015, p.98]

Thematically, Radical Romantics can be seen as a mellow follow-up to the angrier, gender-politics-driven Plunge. Instead, it celebrates self-exploration. [Apr 2023, p.88]

Punchy, seductive, surreal. [Jul 2014, p.92]

The sextet ply their angular chord changes and syncopated rhythms in first-rate tunes. [Sep 2012, p.97]

Has much nuance to gild its inimitable energy. [May 2023, p.88]

It feels like Palace's first significant work. [Feb 2021, p.85]

Fish is Chapman still pushing out the boat and long may he sail. [Nov 2015, p.86]

While there's more than a little influence from early New Order here, one can also hear echoes of Suicide, PiL's Metal Box and the motorik reveries of Cluster. [Jul 2005, p.112]

Live At Berkeley 1971 powers through it all – relentless, often overwrought, often brilliant, too. [Jun 2023, p.99]

Extraordinary. [Aug 2023, p.88]

The album levitates with light and serenity. [Mar 2021, p.88]

["Fünf"] A finale that thrillingly manifests the Can legend – equal parts ascetic and visceral, a wondrous zone where the corporeally propulsive co-exists effortlessly with the cerebral. The preceding Eins to Vier really aren’t bad either. [Jan 2025, p.98]

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

With these songs, though, Cilker is building a beautiful place of her own. [Oct 2023, p.86]

This imaginative collaboration reveals itself as a ghostly and brooding collection with a healthy dappling of rainbow-bright harmonies. [Apr 2018, p.89]

These are out-of-reach glimpses of environmental paradise; hazy, transient, atomised, and, like the technological future they presaged, their expiration in-built. [Mar 2019, p.105]

More deliciously downbeat analog instrumentals. [Feb 2015, p.96]

Tinariwen still speak to the world as outsiders, but now they are telling us more about ourselves than we knew before. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Shine[s] a light on forgotten corners of the influential '70s label's past. [Jun 2021, p.94]

Genuinely inspiring, the story of Bananagun is a great yarn. [Aug 2020, p.87]

Their second with this new line up comes up trumps again. [Jun 2009, p.104]

This is college rock meant to be blasted over the radio, a record as vigorous as it is joyous. [Jul 2025, p.87]

Countless bands can switch from quiet to loud effectively; few do it with such overwhelming power as Jambinai. [Jul 2019, p.91]

In truth, despite Diana Krall as producre and accompanist, this is hardly jazz. Instead, it's another nigh faultless array of ballads, immaculately dressed by arranger Johnny Mandel (a deluxe edition has backings by Krall's quartet.0 [Dec 2009, p. 92]

Gush's sticky, slightly unsettling sensuality suggest Smith is on a serious mission to get right under the skin if human connection. [Sep 2025, p.84]

Her voice is as irresistible as her songs. [Feb 2004, p.103]

A palpably open and free atmosphere underscores these songs, on which the same exotic and dexterous musical arrangements Rostam honed with his old band allow Leithauser's sandpaper Sinatra to truly swing. true dream team. [Oct 2016, p.96]

File next to the Super Furries' Mwng as a landmark album for Welsh-language pop. [Jul 2014, p.93]

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]

There are several instant classics here. [Oct 2015, p.94]

Seamus Fogarty's songs are sparse affairs with banjo, guitars, cellos and electronics framing pithy, observational lyrics. ... There's poignancy too. [Jan 2021, p.87]

Neale is imaginative, but she's steeped in songwriting craft and she knows her way aound a whopping chorus. That's more than enough. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Gorgeously sweaty in its simplicity. [May 2005, p.103]

His stark solo work--with an amplified wood board for footstompin'--remains the stuff that'll Hook ya. [Jan 2018, p.102]