1960s-obsessed power-poppers discover the '70s. Time travel indeed. [July 2010, p. 102]

Much of IM is thrillingly intense, then; a rabbit punch with pop-prog interludes and Devo-like hooks. [Sep 2023, p.88]

Producer/arranger Joel Burton steeps Bock's butterly-rich voice in shifting contours that match the nuances in her words while leaving acres of space. [Aug 2022, p.90]

He's less scattergun and easier to pin down. More crucially, Graham's songwriting has blossomed. [Jun 2021, p.85]

Perhaps the most mellow and settled LP of White's career. ... These slow burns seem good for White. [Aug 2022, p.84]

Its mercurial art-pop is dotted with contrary pulses and unexpected detours. [Sep 2022, p.96]

If the formula is simple, it delivers brutish thrills a-plenty. [Feb 2015, p.89]

As well as Billy Zoom's fuzz-punk rhythm guitar there are psychobilly drums, hints of country and some tangy, Blondie-esque pop melodies. [Aug 2020, p.86]

Wisely not handing over the reins completely to the makeover crew, the new Sangaré is not so very different from the old one--and when you have a voice like hers, it really doesn’t make a lot of difference what knobs are being twiddled in the studio. Sangaré rocks in her own way, and nothing is ever going to change that.

A sonic adventure best enjoyed with very good headphones. [Dec 2022, p.85]

Ultimately, A Sober Conversation amounts to a brilliant and bold record that is all the more powerful for its deployment of life-affirming groves and melodies. [Aug 2025, p.78]

It's hard to imagine a more perfectly realised Wire artefact. [Sep 2002, p.95]

With elements of synth-pop, new wave and blue-eyed soul distilled into a succession of heart-beating hits, Trial Of The Century is a record that gets better with each listen. [Dec 2004, p.99]

While the brilliant closing Murder Of Sunrise delivers a suspenseful 18 minutes of menace via shimmering cymbals, speaker hum and fathoms-deep bass lines. There's beauty here too. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Forget notions of old or new schools: this is an album that blends a kindergarten-level technique with styles that are strictly postgraduate. [Jun 2004, p.116]

Buzzing with delicate analogue warmth, the gamelan rhythms, toy-piano chimes and warped guitar loops or Walking Field are lullingly hypnotic and eerily deja entendu. [Jul 2013, p.87]

Hval deals in big cerebral questions, but these songs--intimate, intricately fleshed out--have roots in both body and mind. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Wonderful. [Jul 2014, p.93]

A richly downcast experience, his deft arrangements recalling the powerful, orchestrated cloudbursts of Curtis Mayfield's solo debut. [Feb 2022, p.82]

[It's Alright Between Us as It Is] finds the Stavanger native matching more vocals to his grandiose productions. [Nov 2017, p.99]

Absorbing follow-up. [Feb 2026, p.90]

[The Long-Awaited Album exudes] humour on such tracks as Caroline and Strangest Christmas Yet. Martin also offers a touch of romance with All Night Long and delivers a chunk of heads-down speedgrass with instrumental Office supplies. [Dec 2017, p.87]

While dark moments abound, Bad Wiring is also thick with the evergreen anti-folkie's charm. [Jan 2020, p.92]

These are gallingly sad, often crudely simple folk songs, interlaced with menace, though her assertions of agency are just as bracing as the dark parts. [Jan 2018, p.105]

As closing track Assagasswar fades out, we are left with a synthetic breeze, the sound of the 21st century Sahara. [Feb 2026, p.89]

Like Hope Sandoval, Savior's smoky timbre is cucumber-cool rather than over-emotive. [Feb 2020, p.86]

Burke's prodigious talent and larger-than-life presence ensures the big name cameos don't steal his thunder. [Nov 2006, p.102]

A delightful demonstration that sticking to your guns can be well worth it. [Mar 2017, p.95]

This album as a whole is a definitive statement by a peerless ensemble. [Nov 2023, p.90]

All but unchanged aesthetically at 64, this alt-rock icon's rockin' on. [Apr 2025, p.78]

Wood's most accessible set to date is also her most ambitious, for its Byzantine approach to its concept, but also for her honesty and openness. [Nov 2023, p.88]

We get bouquets as well as barbed-wire. [Jul 2025, p.84]

Opener Wall Of Glass resounds with stirring audience participation while a robust rhythm section and lively Hammond organist help cut through the din. [Aug 2020, p.86]

The exuberance and delight in the newness and rightness of it all is captivating. [Jul 2009, p.107]

Great tunes delivered in ways you'd never dreamed of. [Oct 2001, p.122]

Wings Over America records the fact that they were a far sturdier, more streamlined and thrilling proposition than they were ever given credit for. [Jun 2013, p.96]

Floating Coffin is manna for the faithful, but also an excellent point for newbies to get onboard. [Jul 2013, p.87]

A huge step forwards: certainly professionally but surely personally too. [Jan 2026, p.84]

It's a pleasant place to hang out, though it occasionally feels like you're listening to a piece of fake history, a one-for-ourselves indulgence by a big band whose major work you've not heard. [Nov 2001]

Power Up is one mighty curtain call, and listening to it feels a bit like playtime. [Jan 2021, p.80]

A title that came to John Darnielle in a dream vividly interpreted as the score for a musical. [Feb 2026, p.90]

The corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's songwriting so expertly exerts. [Mar 2022, p.80]

A meditative record that flutters elegantly and throbs with delicious menace. [Nov 2019, p.95]

Van's back, lending vocals to Ain't That A trip, a joyous R&B number that provides one of many highpoints on Hunter's eleventh album. [Jan 2026, p.86]

Craven Faults harness electronic power to recount compelling stories. [Mar 2026, p.88]

Here If You Listen is never less than gorgeously meditative, and in its cloudy, impressionistic swell bobs flotsam of unusual beauty. [Dec 2018, p.88]

Promising debut. [Jan 2020, p.92]

The result is Gorillaz's most ambitious (and moving) record to date. [Apr 2026, p.84]

This is the desert-blues album for fans of Can and Pink Floyd to sink their teeth into. [Nov 2013, p.91]

A poignant reminder of a talent that may have gone forever. [Mar 2018, p.102]

The Decemberists' ace and absorbing eighth album is rather more traditionalist than they're letting on. [Apr 2018, p.88]

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]

[The new songs] have a compression and pop playfulness often lacking from his albums, yet still manages to address the complex "every feeling" emotions of high school students. [May 2020, p.91]

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]

Boldness has its own reward in the big grime beats, tension-filled horns and cold self-loathing of Mercury. [Nov 2008, p.104]

It is simply beautiful. [May 2009, p.96]

Their most piercing and autobiographical yet. [Sep 2020, p.82]

Blending bossa with trip-hop and samba with vintage synths, she creates an entirely contemporary blend. [Jul 2016, p.91]

Hersh's voice is measured, husky, and quietly defiant, the sound of the [Throwing] Muses' ambient alter ego. [Apr 2003, p.97]

Eight lengthy bouts of exquisite thrumming folk. [Jan 2023, p.86]

Though the battering ram thrust of Sad But True takes some beating, other highlights are James Hetfield solo with orchestra on The Unforgiven III, and on (Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth, SFS principal bassist Scott Pingel paying tribute to Metallica's Cliff Burton, who died in 1986 aged 24. [Oct 2020, p.86]

A masterfully subtle follow-up to 2018's Down The Road Wherever. [May 2024, p.85]

Yet for all the luxuriant, Gong-like dreaminess of I Surrender or Imagine An Orchestra, sudden beats and vocal hooks make Delight more unpredictable odyssey than easy float downstream. [May 2024, p.89]

Holy grail or curate’s egg, diehard fans will run to this 5-disc package and relish even its flaws. Adding the original album simply emphasises what we already knew: Nebraska represents the very best of Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2025, p.92]

Inventive, reactive, but hauntingly untethered, there's no doubt UK Grim comes from a very bad place. [Apr 2023, p.85]

An album of alluring dignity and depth. [Jul 2014, p.93]

KG is no mere retread of the earlier album, Stu Mackenzie's custom-built electric baglama leading him in unexpected directions. [Jan 2021, p.86]

Hatchie is moving into interesting territory. [Feb 2026, p.84]

Stars offers deep dreamlike comfort, undercut by the melancholy violin of founding member Noel Sayre, who tragically died during the album's recording. [Sep 2011, p.96]

Less chaotic and parochial, more serene and accessible, but no less magical. [May 2005, p.96]

Pyramids’ borrowing of Chuck D’s mantra “I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’” is emblematic of his still-abrasive mood, whether dissecting the prison system’s failures on A Bigger Picture Called Free or unleashing his most heartfelt rallying cry on the thrilling Robert Glasper-produced, Stevie Wonder-starring title track.

The low-fidelity recordings add a refreshingly unpretentious, non-commercial realism. [Dec 2019, p.102]

These transformations prove entirely worthwhile. [Dec 2015, p.92]

Throughout, Starr’s drumming is reliably great, and while he may indeed have travelled a long long road, here he sounds 85 years young. [Jun 2026, p.86]

On paper, it looks so wide-ranging as to be in danger of coming out gloopy and overdone; as it turns out, Rhys glues everything together with a crisp sense of confidence. [Feb 2007, p.98]

A precision, Sleater-Kinney-ish rewiring of new wave guitar with cool, no wave delivery. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Spiral slowly reveals a core mood, triangulated between Talk Talk, Radiohead and Pink Floyd models of taut, blissful, trance-inducing rock, but often beat-driven. [Sep 2021, p.86]

There is plenty going on: doomy folk blues; sparse Woody Guthrie-esque folk; slow, sad Sweet Refrain and The Levee On Down. There's also passionate, pissed-off, rousing country rock. [Sep 2021, p.85]

One of their most consistently impressive releases. [May 2013, p.90]

Khruangbin haven't forgotten the global jukebox that got them this far: Turkish psychedelia, flamenco palmas, the shimmering heat of Houston, dub ... The ice has definitely melted. [Sep 2020, p.82]

This record is way better than we had any right to expect. [Oct 2009, p.99]

For reggae fans of a certain vintage, This Generation will rule the nation. [Apr 2013, p.94]

The album has its own voice. [Jul 2018, p.95]

Where her previous band, Williamburg's The Jealous Girlfiends, struggled to reconcile an awkward mix of styles, the vision on Miranda's solo debut is seemless. [Mar 2009, p.90]

The album captivates wen his bad keeps pulling Freeman and his florid drawl back down to earth, the tension creating a form of transportive rural psychedelia. [Sep 2025, p.79]

Kite breezes of melodic distortion blur into fog banks of silver noise before everything goes Dream-psych with Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan on hazy closer Happiness. [Jul 2013, p.87]

Impressive--and then some. [Sep 2015, p.86]

He digs deep on guileless rock and soul with bold flourishes, ala Lowell George or Randy Newman. [Feb 2022, p.92]

Overall these "ultimate mixes" sound airy and punchy. [Dec 2020, p.96]

The results are an impressively cohesive testament to Lambchop's interpretative skills as much as their experimental slant. [Jan 2021, p.86]

The packed tracklist suggests perfectly imperfect nuggets. ... The haunted, magical lies of Gonna Learn Too Crawl, meanwhile, invite close listening to his more muted, intimate moments, too. [Feb 2026, p.81]

Nothing unfamiliar, yet distinguished by granite totem-pole vocals and mesmerically ominous axe. [Sep 2011, p.97]

Though-provoking yet full of fun, DePlume's willingness to dig dep has turned up a genuine treasure. [May 2022, p.88]

Lurid yet skillfully inconclusive music for these precarious times. [Feb 2020, p.88]

There's also a cameo by Ruben Blades on the lively Pajarito Volo, but Ochoa remains the undoubted star of the show. [Sep 2023, p.82]

An impressive album, fulled with songs that often hark back to familiar strains but offer compensation in their lyric content. [Mar 2018, p.97]

It's a nuanced, multi-layered insight into Raczynski's increasingly becalmed world. [Jan 2025, p.87]

This 18th LP is their finest since '90's Painkiller. [Apr 2018, p.96]