Malone draws the listener into the unique interior timbre of the pipe organ, like the idling breath of a large machine at rest; a music of worship, where the object of spiritual veneration is the inner space of the instrument itself. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Anderson's typically earnest, if uncharacteristically earnest, readings of Buddist sutras punchuate proceedings, and a pervading transcendence lingers long after the music has ceased.[Nov 2019, p.89]

When it rocks, it rocks hard, and when it slows down--which it does several times--it's grimmer and more emotional. [Feb 2020, p.84]

Short, spellbinding, almost painfully beautiful album. [Sep 2020, p.96]

A gently breath-taking wonder. [Apr 2024, p.91]

Undoubtedly his definitive statement--not just as a guitarist, but as a songwriter and vocalist. [Jul 2005, p.96]

A bold and encouraging modern pop debut. [Nov 2013, p.90]

More muscular, less ethereal than 2007's "...Are The Dark Horse," it is no less exciting. [Apr 2010, p.99]

An extraordinary record... It's not, nor is it intended to be, easy listening. [Sep 2004, p.94]

Doomed to the shadows of Flying Nun's more famed exponents, this box set should finally rehabilitate the band. [Sep 2015, p.103]

An intriguing blend of countrified, down-tempo acoustic charm. [Nov 2015, p.96]

Material arcane yet relevant, as well as freshly minted. [Oct 2018, p.90]

A set glorying in its sensual exoticism. [Jan 2007, p.102]

You're left with the impression that Lower Dens are both big sounding and very clever. [Jun 2012, p.85]

The overriding tone recalls Lana Del Rey's gothic torch song elegies, albeit with far more economy and less overacting. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Few albums meld frank postcards from the psyche with such poppy directness. [Apr 2016, p.93]

A progression in Blake's music, his melodies less elusive, his productions less ethereal. [Mar 2019, p.88]

A sense of closure pervades here. The group's hermeticism-influenced lyrics remain cryptic as ever, it's true, but TSOOL will be missed. [Jul 2012, p.94]

Fresh Blood’s 10 tracks span an impressive spread of moods.

There's a cohesion and thrust to the fusion, a mathematically bracing energy that they have't quite located since 2011's D. [Apr 2019, p.86]

This is memorable music for exceptional times. [Nov 2020, p.89]

It's a coherent entity which should be heard as a whole. [May 2023, p.89]

As with 2023's downbeat Everything Harmony, what might be a Beatles-beach-Boys-Big-Star data-scrape is elevated through high-calibre songwriting. [Jun 2024, p.82]

Django Django confound because they sound gloriously, unpredictably new, but also recall past bands and sounds gone. [Feb 2012, p.98]

No more the quieter introspection and reflection of solo tracks like Hormones or Fever Dream – here Thorn and Watt are a combined force, capturing the giddy euphoria and release of the club experience.

Thunderstorm Warnings doesn't put a foot wrong, delivering the big music with heart instead of bluster. [Mar 2021, p.90]

The Con rockets beyond even their own high standards. [Mar 2008, p.103]

Performance is White Denim's most produced album, thickly textured with brass, keyboards and studio atmospheres. Play it loud, though, and you easily imagine the euphoria at the bar after every track. [Sep 2018, p.84]

This is Hogan's first solo album in 11 years and her best. [Aug 2012, p.96]

Black Age Blues is satisfyingly solid and reassuringly familiar a comeback as you'd expect. [Jul 2015, p.89]

Goat Girl grapple with strings, makeshift choirs, electronics and mellotron in a quietly exploratory set of off-centre tunes and potent lyrical questioning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

i,i never sounds less than excellent, with wide-open acoustic/electric audio structures allowing pizzicato strings to waft through and rising clouds of horns to blow in unexpectedly. It really is bleeding edge stuff. [Oct 2019, p.90]

Smith's best, most satisfying album to date. [Mar 2005, p.106]

A delectable-sounding record slathered in guitar magic: what’s not to like?

Italian-blooded debutante rocks passionately. [March 2011, p. 96]

44 minutes of scourging song broken up by ambient drone, terrifying din and choral interludes - is both uncompromising and brilliant. [Aug 2023, p.85]

Though the lyrics sometimes explore the US's increasingly polarised political allegiances, Leithauser's passionate optimism and the record's grooving drums keeps our spirits up until mesmeric guitar arpeggios usher in the beautifully pensive title track/closer. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Greying at the edges, its tremor more pronounced, his voice is sober, honest, defiant. And it turns rock songs into something that sounds as old as the hills.

A stoner's paradise from start to finish. Most pleasurable.

They have an inherent gift for the split-second pause, the cool coda, the scene-stealing lyric. [Feb 2004, p.98]

The 11-song tracklist forgoes perennials such as Touch Me I'm Sick for lesser-spotted nuggets like Fuzzgun '91, a splenetic thrash through Roxy Music's Editions Of You and the Heart-sore epic Broken Hands. [Feb 2018, p.90]

Adept at expressing keenly observed details in a Beat vernacular, he makes excellent use of a 14-piece string section and more drum machines than are typical for him. [Jul 2022, p.89]

Explosions In The Sky are true masters of their craft. [Apr 2007, p.102]

This pan-generational Jones/Dap-Kings team have been injecting new vitality into a classic form since 2002, and the people will certainly want their strong new soul album. [Feb 2014, p.90]

Never less than inventive. [Jul 2006, p.110]

Overall, this is pretty near perfect. [Dec 2013, p.90]

Proves Mark E. Smith's gang have lost nothing of the power to surprise. [Nov 2005, p.104]

On all these fabulous tales, Gira's voice remains reassuringly salty. [May 2005, p.106]

The band's bluegrass, country-folk and doo wop-informed debut packs a front porch charm. [May 2014, p.89]

Respite is infrequent with Blanck Mass, but when it arrives, its effects are heightened. [Sep 2019, p.91]

150 minutes of challenging, organic electronica. [Apr 2013, p.95]

The Magic Numbers have made one of the records--perhaps the record--that 2005 is destined to be remembered for. [Jul 2005, p.110]

A typically heartfelt and demonstrative record given to wistful glances backward. [Aug 2006, p.90]

His most satisfying album in a decade. [Dec 2006, p.106]

The tonal similarities of these tracks blend into one another, holding only half of your attention like the soundtrack of an imagined film. [Apr 2011, p.105]

Hotly tipped Ipswich rapper's expansive debut. [July 2011, p. 112]

Three of the tracks pass the 13-minute mark, but not a second is wasted. [Aug. 2011, p. 100]

Listeners who have enjoyed the prolific jazz pianist;s preoccupation with moody rock material will be delighted and unsurprised at his choices of vehicle here. [Oct 2012, p.82]

Fluttering, arpeggiated melodies, ice-crisp percussion and muscular beats mean tracks like Ya Po kick hard and linger long on the palette. [May 2014, p.93]

[A] stripped-down, beautifully stark and simple new album. [Sep 2014, p.96]

Superbly eerie and echoey evocations such as View From The Mirror and The Golden Bough don't need big productions to make your ears prick up, just their disturbing use of minor chords and subtle sound effects. [Dec 2014, p.90]

The material is cleverly sourced. [Mar 2015, p.97]

This is killer stuff, with Randolph providing a supply of unbelievable sacred steel licks. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Occasionally there is so much going on it's dizzying--haunting, vulnerable You is a welcome break. [Sep 2015, p.92]

Songs and melody remain paramount in this irresistible Technicolor world. [Sep 2015, p.88]

Maker's vocal may be Thom Yorke-like, falsetto lift0-invcluded, but that equidistant spellbound bittersweet spot is Aero Flynn's outright. [Sep 2015, p.91]

Albanese's piano plus synths and cello soundtrack near-darkness in pensive, drifting instrumentals. [Apr 2016, p.96]

At their best, the band conjures a delicious mix of slippery funk and soaring horns, a feelgood soundtrack to roaring down the freeway--or pootling to the off-licence. [Jul 2016, p.90]

Expansive and coherent, yet always subterranean and claustrophobic, this is easily Fearless's finest hour. [Aug 2016, p.94]

Fingers Crossed marks another welcome return. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Awash in trademark snaky overdrive, heavy sustain and controlled feedback, this is a big, rich work of buzzy acid-blues melodicism, the unique sound of a guitar virtuoso sketching wild patterns for late-night journeying. [Dec 2016, p.94]

More a growler than a singer, Ayisoba plugs in and lets rip from the start, his heavily rhythmic songs wasting no time on subtlety, his band driving the trance sounds home. [Jul 2017, p.91]

A storyteller in the grand tradition, with the instrumental skills and a crack band. These songs tell her story, of a hard-lived life, of love won then lost. [Aug 2017, p.

Claustrophobic ambient, minimal techno and orchestral themes for waiting for the axe to fall. 100 per cent Laibach. [Sep 2017, p.96]

No 11-minute epics this time, but there are two stand-outs: Neil Young-esque Cumberland Gap, and Airplane, as hypnotic and moving as anything on The Harrow & The Harvest. [Sep 2017, p.92]

It's a long time since Kelly drank at this well, and Life Is Fine is a deep, deep draft. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Everywhere Bourne's judicious minimalism proves compelling. [Sep 2017, p.89]

Peppered with succinct instrumentals, Three/Three switches styles with impunity, smudging the lines between old and new. [Mar 2018, p.93]

Goat Girl's vision is as unique as an oily fingerprint, their confidence dizzying, and richly justified. [May 2018, p.90]

So joyful, so tender, so warmly anthemic, its vintage moves are timeless, and irresistible. [Jul 2018, p.89]

While Maltese's playfulness extends to queasily imagining Theresa May and Donald Trump in flagrante as a nuclear holocaust rages on As The World Caves In, both Less and Less and doomy ballad Mortals prove he can deliver without relying on irony as a crutch. [Aug 2018, p.89]

Tropical Fuck Storm's wonky rock discordance is not quite as provocative as they perhaps think. Nevertheless, there's still plenty to be enjoyed here. [Feb 2019, p.90]

A good 'un, finely balancing his roots with his modernism. [Mar 2019, p.92]

It's an unlikely explosion of X-Ray Spex, The Raincoats, Oliver Mtukudzi and Stella Chiweshe, but it's a winning one. [Aug 2019, p.97]

The moving Electric Shock incorporates joyous synths and Headcase is berserk thrash-pop brilliance. Dizzying closer, Mortals, meanwhile, might have been a Top 10 hit in the early '80s. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Promising debut. [Jan 2020, p.92]

As in life, variety spices this highly entertaining tribute compilation. One for the stocking and beyond. [Jan 2020, p.86

Hey Rose is a bright, infectious opener, but elsewhere Little offers darker and more reflective material. [Mar 2020, p.92]

This is Wilson's most potent release to date, its title referencing a subtle fudging of classic country tropes with more modern textures. [Apr 2020, p.93]

Eventually capturing both the sickly magenta beauty and unnatural creeping dread of Lovecraft's alien world. [May 2020, p.90]

Revisits some of his most famous tunes. [May 2020, p.90]

Rose Golden Doorways will undoubtedly repel and attract, but its sheer force is spellbinding. [Apr 2020, p.94]

If you enjoy a record that can gently coax a cathartic tear or two, Monovision fits the bill. [Aug 2020, p.88]

There's nothing arch about Heavy Nights, only the sound of these gorgeously coiffured tunes. [Aug 2020, p.92]

Penn returns with a rare album, mightily played and poignantly sung. [Oct 2020, p.86]

This adrenalised debut's handful of instant classics is way above par throughout. [Sep 2020, p.88]

Murray's voice is a beautiful, dreamy magnet for Hughes's backdrops, which without losing their twang take all sorts of tangents. [Feb 2021, p.85]

It's colourful and imaginative while exerting a familiar pull. [May 2021, p.84]