Thee oh Sees have never done ‘Thee oh Sees’ quite as well as they do here, a riot of lucid cacophony, androgyny, glowing vignettes of loveliness, and two drummers caught in the most sublime lockstep.

A brilliant piece of art. [Mar 2017, p.91]

The most cohesive Gorillaz album since Demon Days 15 years ago. [Dec 2020, p.81]

Thirstier comes on like a bold, heady catharsis. [Sep 2021, p.86]

Songs build from hypnotic bass grooves and spindly guitar lines, Lottie Pendlebury's nonchalant vocals intertwined with circular countermelodies that pull you into their undertow. Lyrically deft and witty. [Mar 2021, p.82]

Microcastle could be 4AD's best release in well over a decade. [Dec 2008, p.108]

If Crack-Up falls short of perfection, it inspires hope that transcendence is waiting around the corner. [Jul 2017, p.84]

Its troubled state suits the melancholy in Hinson's soul, his broken burr laid like a wreath across lingering strings and the wistfulTexas twang of his tunes. [Jul 2010, p.104]

An exquisitely recorded, enjoyably messy affair. [Nov 2011, p.102]

It's funny, touching, thoughtful, more than a little weird....and rather wonderful. [Feb 2013, p.89]

In places, it's intense, heavy and oppressive, but Uondapaturu and Skeleton Island pull off the trick of satisfying both party hedonists and those simply seeking gratification within the confines of their headphones. [Aug 2013, p.91]

A Deeper Understanding is exhilarating in places, but perhaps inevitably, give n it's long and convoluted gestation, it can at times feel like it's trying too hard. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Lillies is an album which the solo Siouxsie Sioux would have been proud to record. [Nov 2017, p.96]

Dan Auerbach takes Finley further away from his church-and-porch roots with a brief to present the artist as a classic all-rounder and on 10 songs written by Auerbach, John Prince and Nick Lowe, he proves himself just that. [Jan 2018, p.89]

It is as timely as it is sobering and, in places, austerely, compellingly beautiful. [Nov 2022, p.90]

This opens with rocking electric blues guitar, rolling piano and a singalong chorus. The warm, barroom feel continues in Alcohallelujah. [Aug 2023, p.80]

This double LP has sonic coherence across 65 minutes of taut, sinewy but ever-unpredictable compositions, with a subtly altered sound palette. [Feb 2024, p.86]

Her naturalistic voice is a relaxed conduit to elegantly detailed songs about the psychogeography of er native Cardiff (Ghosts Of You), expectant motherhood (St Ives New School) and Jarvis Cocker dancing stylishly alone (kitchen sink pop jangling Dancing ON Volcanoes). [Aug 2025, p.79]

It doesn't always hit the bullseye - Te Tragaste El Chicle's intense shredding veers towards '80s hair metal, or the soundtrack to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie - but the dizzying ideas on display amply compensate. [Oct 2025, p.81]

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

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]

Ultimately, it's a record filled with beauty that tries to do what therapy does: sort through a mess of emotions and reorganise them into something that makes more sense. [Jun 2019, p.84]

The lack of solidity can make Mercy nebulous like any spirit photo, it sometimes takes work to find the shape, fill in detail. Yet slowly, its unfamiliarity coalesces into a cold beauty, memory acting as a spur, not a comfort blanket. [Feb 2023, p.85]

New View furthers Friedberger's quest to declutter, finding great pop and occasional profundity in getting to the point and letting her tunes ring clear. [Feb 2016, p.92]

Rhythm takes Mahalia Jackson into orbit. [Dec 2014, p.98]

An album like this could be relevant at any time, really, but it takes the past couple of years to make it quite this livid. [Oct 2018, p.91]

Draws out the same intense emotional responses as that first album [Lazer Guided Melodies] but in a post 1997 Ladies and Gentleman... way. [May 2012, p.92]

While never the greatest singer, Escovedo's lyrics more than compensate. [Oct 2018, p.91]

Eclectic and even occasionally upbeat. ... His croon remains dizzyingly swoonsome. [Dec 2022, p.94]

Hilarious, stoned hip hop drooling with ideas. [Feb 2005, p.100]

It's both organic and future-facing. A true metamorphosis, this album sees Queens Of The Stone Age shedding an old identity to discover new ways of playing the same song. [Sep 2017, p.84]

The Evangelist is tinged with the voyeur's illicit thrill a Forster spies on his neighbours and loved ones, but these are slso some of the most direct songs he's written. [June 2008, p.114]

His quiet, reasoning delivery works beautifully, and reminds one of the singer's instinctive ability to transform a song. [May 2013, p.91]

A humane and typically eclectic affair with winning flashes of eccentricity. [Aug 2017, p.92]

The humour enhances the band's vigour: loud and ragged, they sound like a band much younger than their years, although the high quality of songcraft is a giveaway of their veteran status. [Nov 2025, p.93]

A significant return to form. [Feb 2003, p.86]

Their debut, Mono, gave voice to little beyond their frustration, and the distance between that impressively venomous fit of black-hearted flailing and Penance Soiree's stereopathic, multiphonic attack is similar to that between Nirvana's Bleach and Nevermind. [May 2004, p.94]

The only gripe is that at 38 minutes, Insignificance is too short. [Feb 2002, p.92]

One of the most cerebral-yet-groovy hip hop albums you'll hear. [Apr 2002, p.104]

Fantastic! [Aug 2002, p.112]

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]

The Goon Sax have created a glorious pop album that perfectly captures those awkward confusions on the road to adulthood. [Oct 2018, p.90]

Kveikur largely conforms to existing Sigur Ros templates, and though the quirky rhythms and ethereal vocals of Isjaki spawn a certain magic, something is audibly lacking here. [Jul 2013, p.82]

Twelve Nudes' unbridled howl, mania and joy is on the nose. [Sep 2019, p.95]

His gifts remain undiminished. [Mar 2007, p.99]

The Bravest Man impresses on a steadily rising graph as Womack's soul-soaked voice humanises the machinery in ways rarely heard these days. [Jul 2012, p.84]

The Age Of Adz, by contrast, is problematic for its mind-boggling ambitions, as Stevens harnesses his folkier songcraft and complex orchestration to electronica. [Nov. 2010, p. 100]

Wildly imaginative music. [Jun 2017, p.92]

A muted trumpet melody and wordless chorale drift through Siren Spectre's gorgeous intergalactic ambiance before space-disco juggernaut Responder tunes into the transcendental infinite--a glitter ball in one eye, the other on the cosmos. [Dec 2013, p.86]

An image-rich rumination on Scotland past and present. [Aug 2014, p.86]

The true centerpiece is Tiny Wood's autobiographical 20-minute suite, Blue Remembered Hills. With pastoral inserts and thematic crescendos, it's evocative and emotionally raw. [Jan 2017, p.98]

An unexpected treat, as he takes great liberties with some of the material. [Sep 2017, p.93]

This new 11-song album is dense, almost joyous with sound, instruments all jostling for space--guitar, banjo, drums, horns. [Jan 2018, p.90]

The Unthank sisters admirably translate the atmospheric melancholia of the themes, though it's Adrian McNally's piano arrangements that really carry the day. [Apr 2019, p.95]

He and his songs sound beautifully close-knit. [May 2020, p.89]

Baudelaire & Piano isn't instant, but it lingers like a vivid dream. [Oct 2020, p.89]

Not a single ounce of fat on the bone, Return is a road trip well worth taking. [Jan 2021, p.88]

As distinctively fabulous as anything they have released in nearly 40 years. [Jan 2021, p.85]

Nelson has not lost any of his breath control and singular phrasing. [May 2021, p.78]

Humanity's end sounds grim; but beautifully rendered. [Jul 2021, p.90]

Reinvents Burt Bacharach on the Bell Gets Out If The Way and brings an XTC-ish bloom to the downtempo powerpop of Cherub and The Great Child Actor. [Dec 2021, p.84]

12 solo guitar pieces conjure spatial evocations. [Jan 2022, p.91]

Springtime has two approaches, one more methodical, like the intense needling Will To Power. ... The other is rooted in improv. [Jan 2022, p.84]

This excellently curated three-disc set uncovers a selection of previously unreleased outtakes. [Oct 2022, p.102]

These 10 tracks showcase Brewis's beautifully expressive singing and, in the waltz-time jazz of Start Over, deep empathy. [Mar 2023, p.91]

Roberts' dying-Jacobite vocals remain thrillingly feeble, and Nic Jones-ly fingerpicking on Wonderful Grey Horse and Young Airly may draw in waverers. [May 2023, p.89]

Augustine's fourth is celestially good, his own fevered vision. [Aug 2023, p.78]

Three albums in, and King is still full of surprises. [May 2024, p.82]

Ultimately, by stylistically venturing back and forth in time, Aaron Frazer has struck gold with Into The Blue, a multifaceted soul album that blurs the past, the present and the possibilities of the future. [Aug 2024, p.82]

The brothers’ art for art’s sake sensibilities drive pleasingly obtuse yacht-rocker Sounds About Right and fractured prog-funk oddity Curfew In The Square, while I Might Have Been Wrong’s ace chorus feels like an ambush after its clammy, insomniac verse. [Nov 2024, p.91]

With lyrics informed by loss and his current post-divorce relationship with a man, at the age of 64, Friday has clearly found himself and made a deeply heartfelt record, most of which is perhaps best heard at club-level volume. [Dec 2024, p.90]

With piano and dulcimer adding unforeseen acoustic texture, Trees Speak’s soundworld is ever-changing, often terrifying, but rarely short of awe-inspiring. [Jan 2025, p.90]

As always, Genders writes beautifully strange folk songs that wouldn't sound out of place back in folk revival clubs like London's Les Cousins, except they pop and ping with Lindsay's lo-fi beats and organic samples. [Feb 2025, p.83]

It's when he boosts the Zulu content on Emmanuele - his sweet tenor blending with clicks and close-harmony singing - or breaks everything down in a contemporary style on Kea Morata, that you'll feel like you have been transported to a new world, where everything is possible. [Apr 2025, p.85]

The results are as dreamy and swirling as Clouds Taste Metallic-era Flaming Lips, with Smith's unworldly vocals floating over the top. [May 2025, p.86]

There's gentle humour to take the edge off but this is haunting, impossible beauty. [Jul 2025, p.80]

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

The Manticore Tapes constitute an alternative history showing just how potent early Motörhead really were. [Aug 2025, p.92]

Both the Entermedia set and the alternate takes underscore how much the studio shaped and sculpted these songs. Like the etiolated, unstrung Polaroid band portraits on the album sleeve, there’s a lack of connective tissue in these versions, the alternate Found A Job lacking the delirious carnival sheen of the album take, the live Artists Only missing the full cinema-matinee drama of Jerry Harrison’s moustache-twirling keyboards. [Sep 2025, p.88]

This stately, sometimes gospel-esque, album has the forceful intensity of a coiled spring. [Oct 2025, p.84]

Thick Rich And Delicious is moreish powerpop; a dish best served loud. [Dec 2025, p.87]

There's beauty here, but Pine slowly melts away the frosted surface to reveal it's not an uncomplicated joy. [Apr 2026, p.88]

Bear witness to the city's enduringly restless guitar-led, predominantly white male aesthetic - obnoxious, inventive, middle finger raised. [Mar 2026, p.95]

It's a seductive lesson in understated beauty. [Apr 2012, p.86]

Simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, it moves from stuttering rhythms of ghost vocals and music loops to immersive multi-layered waves of digital polyphony. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

Although recognisably, and powerfully, the work of Explosions In The Sky this is now a band whose music undulates. [May 2016, p.92]

An album that opens full of tension, riot and discord--before the acoustic gospel of Peaceful Dream leads into strong pleas for universal love and understand and quests for personal redemption. [Dec 2017, p.94]

Rose's songwriting revels in its directness. [Jun 2021, p.90]

Segall's charms are as abundant as his releases: may his well never run dry. [Jun 2012, p.84]

With [producer Justin] Raisen, she creates a powerhouse sound, one that twists so it can't be easily "curated", labeled, boiled down for vibes. [Apr 2026, p.87]

This set stands out as Cleaves' most engaging release since "Broke Down" back in 2000. [Aug 2009, p.104]

A dizzying series of minimalist Afro-psych mantras, Ay Ay Ay interlaces eccentric pounding beats, multitrack boom-tsch hiccups, and nervy fragmented vocals, building a groove that crackles with the rhythmic perversity of Arthur Russell's strangest sound experiments but drives on like a reborn TV On The Radio who've learnt to lose it down the disco. [Jan 10, p. 90]

An extraordinary, multi-layered, attention-grabbing record. [Aug 2012, p.87]

[A] Second set of smart, retro-futurist pop. [Jun 2016, p.97]

The 13 songs, mostly slow to midtempo with some very fine lyrics, sound pensive and personal. [Jan 2018, p.86]

A delectably warm sonic pool that invites frequent plunges. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Native Sons adds a local twist as Los Lobos roll back--with new, inventive detail--through their LA roots and influences, binding the Chicano branch of '60s rock and California from the other side of town. [Sep 2021, p.78]

Smoke & Fiction is lean rock'n'roll that plays to the group's strengths. [Sep 2024, p.86]