RTZ is a must for Six Organs fans and anyone interested in what has since been termed "nu weird folk." [Mar 2009, p.123]

Music For The People is a record that brims with weighty ambition. [April 2009]

Many sure-footed, instantly memorable songs. [Jun 2018, p.88]

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin may well be the second best cabin-in-winter indie album ever made. [Jul 2009, p.96]

A more austere, exploratory affair. [Jul 2016, p.97]

Palomino is a wholly convincing bid for wider recognition. [Dec 2022, p.84]

This is Birch untethered, stretching out and rightfully enjoying the musical havoc she intigates. [Aug 2025, p.76]

A real emotional rollercoaster ride. [Apr 2003, p.102]

The 6ft 5in, broad-shouldered Gibson finally sounds the part. [Jul 2015, p.90]

The words "necessity", "mother" and "invention" spring happily to mind. [Jul 2013, p.92]

This album is bravely beautiful, and one of her best. [Jul 2024, p.84]

At once spooky and playful, romantic and angry. [Sep 2015, p.89]

It is sentimental and raw, demented and ultimately reaffirming. [Aug 2024, p.81]

Love Is The King is determined to hold on tight to the good things while keeping a sharp eye on the mirror. [Dec 2020, p.80]

A bold and beautiful record borne of quiet surety, this is their best since The Trials Of Van Occupanther. [Dec 2025, p.86]

The duo shine as a beacon of warm and quirky outsiderdom in a rising tide of cookie-cutter Nashville Americana. [Nov 2019, p.90]

Intelligent, pan-generation pop you won't mind taking your teenager to the O2 to see. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Like all of Numan's greatest work, Savage sounds timeless. [Nov 2017, p.100]

A delight of many layers. [Aug 2021, p.83]

The Hex expands brilliantly in a musical vision that had lain mostly dormant. [Dec 2018, p.90]

Music this soulful should need no introduction. [Feb 2021, p.88]

Theirs remains a gallows wit. [Nov 2005, p.112]

Eleven-minute workout Don't Look Down's shifting continents of influence cement the notion of a band tightrope walking with aplomb. [Apr 2026, p.91]

For all these disturbances, this grappling with difficult stuff of life and death, there is lovely, graceful ease to The Ballad Of Darren. This isn't the sound of a band trying to react against their past, or challenge their Britpop audience with US noise, or justify their existence - it's Blur simply showing what they do best. [Sep 2023, p.80]

A challenging move from such a young artist who deserves to have his fans take a leap of faith. [Dec 2014, p.94]

12 knockout tunes soaked in feedback and melody. [Apr 2007, p.96]

The wiry Dubliner is stealthily building a similarly indelible songbook. [Feb 2016, p.92]

Recent world events demand some kind of visceral response, and sonically, musically and emotionally, Hidden City's primal, from-the-heart worldview represents just that, unwittingly or not. [Mar 2016, p.90]

Never willfully ramshackle or unfocused, Women tread the line between discord and delight with deceptive style. [Sep 2010, p.96]

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

[A] wonderfully scrappy debut. [Feb 2015, p.95]

Matthew Sweet returns with a tenth tune-fest that's equal parts sunny delight and cathartic, Posiesesque bluster. [Oct 2008, p.106]

Fantastic stuff. [Feb 2014, p.102]

[The album boasts] more accomplished songwriting than some bands manage in a career. [Mar 2014, p.96]

That Aurthur Jeffes--son of late Penguin Cafe orchestra founder Simon Jeffes--is a chip off the old block is becoming increasingly clear. [Mar 2014, p.91]

There's bountiful fun to be had pledging your inner teen's allegiance to Ho99o9's burning flag. [Jul 2017, p.93]

A tremendous (and timely) distraction from the bad news from the desert this year. [May 2013, p.85]

It's guitarist Kaye Woodward who remains the band's covert star: her fuzzy solo on 'Crimson Enemy, limpid precision on 'Satellites'a dncrystalline backing vocals throughout represent thefairy dust on a record full of highs. [Jul 2009, p.97]

If the album has a fault, it's in sequencing, with some of stronger moments low in the pecking order. [May 2015, p.99]

Brief yet hugely entertaining debut. [Sep 2020, p.83]

The Brooklyn foursome's debut is the work of some feverishly creative minds, as it effortlessly genre-hops between dusty Americana, Breeders-style angular art-pop and off-kilter folk. [Jun 2016, p.93]

Challenging and sometimes extraordinarily beautiful. [Mar 2002, p.108]

There's a real poignancy to waltz-time close The War, which is partly a tribute to the late Labour politician Jo Cox, but Gilmore also houses rally calls amid floorfillers. [Aug 2017, p.96]

Timely stuff. [May 2014, p.88]

If harvest Moon ever threatened to melt your teetch, now's the chance to really bite down. If You already love iut, you can get a sugar rush all over again. Win-win. [Feb 2010, p.112]

Songs For The General Public astonishes and delights. [Sep 2020, p.83]

More confident that last year's transitional Drop, this new line-up's second album together finds Nick Murray's drumming busy and complex, but thrillingly so, lending sophistication to the band;s trademark trash-psych. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Thrillingly raw, it captures the pair at their most streamlined, visceral and direct, disproving F Scott Fitzgerald's theory about second acts. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Maisha builds on the old man's legacy by digging deeper into their background while allowing British producers Oli Barton-Wood and Tom Excell to add further layers in the mix. [Jul 2024, p.86]

Placed in the modern setting and told in the universal language of folk music, her tales all ring true. [Aug 2024, p.83]

That's a lot of black power in every sense and edition. And this time, you can get up and dance on the grass all you want. [Apr 2023, p.92]

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

The songwriting revealed another unique strength: commercial hooks wedded to allegorical poetry. [Dec 2020, p.96]

Whatever the sonic weather, Gira's spiritual austerity remains unimpaired.[Nov 2019, p.89]

He makes it all the juxtapositions and fusions feel fresh and natural.[Mar 2026, p.80]

Sheer liquid mayhem. [Dec 2005, p.98]

Opener Anybody’s declaration of fresh love duly builds with electrifying presence. There follow bare-wire examinations of audience dependency (Lavender, Raspberries) and resurgent desire (In A Dream I’m A Painting), before Sick Of The Blues provides a heartburstingly triumphant ‘choose life’ finale. [Nov 2024, p.84]

This album elicits a powerful aura, which continues to resonate potently several hours, even days, after the last note has died. [Nov 2012, p.82]

A country album of slide guitar, sweet harmonies and heartworn ballads from a landscape on the edge of the unsayable, the kind of high lonesome petitions to the gods Syd Barrett might have made in his flat on the night pink Floyd never turned up.

Accompanied by electronic and acoustic instruments, Brett's baritone sounds less sombre on this album, more rich, relaxed, even crooning on Strawberry Moon - a perfect foil ro Rennie's vision of a world full of blood and ghosts. [Oct 2023, p.83]

Collaboratively, spiritually and musically... it works superbly. [Mar 2016, p.99]

Throughout, this is a masterclass in pop fun. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Teeming with deftly plucked and delicately pitched melody trails, Whispering Trees stands worthy of its forbears. [Feb 2013, p.88]

There's a dark, delicious humour and true heartbreak in the NY trio's frank yet delicate confessionals. [Apr 2016, p.96]

These evocative originals, inspired by road trips, inevitably reconnect ti her Memphis roots. [Mar 2014, p.96]

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]

Parts & Labor have made their best album yet. [Apr 2011, p.95]

His fourth album isn't quite as rich a powerpop confection as 2002's "Lapalco" but it still shows off songs as sweet and sharp as peanut brittle. [Sep 2009, p.104]

Even if purists find the whole baroque confection too much, they will have to admit there's never been a record quite like this. [May 2015, p.99]

The Machine Stops proves that Dave Brock's sonic adventures still have plenty to say, and inspired ways in which to say it. [Jul 2016, p.95]

[A] fine, part-politicised follow-up. [Aug 2017, p.96]

Some of Herbert's most engaging work since 2001's Bodily Functions. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Disc four's unreleased assortment holds little for Wobble-Levene obsessives. More noteworthy: a disturbingly atonal Banging The Door, two abstract thumpathons from '81-83's "lost" fourth album, some speculative Album demos, and a n instrumental stab at Led Zep's Kashmir. [Aug 2018, p.102]

Meredith and David Metcalf craft slow-rolling CA ghost ballads, beguiling end-of-days stories with the same mournful beauty as The Triffids' Born Sandy Devotional. [Oct 2017, p.98]

It's a seduction in halves. [May 2023, p.93]

An overwhelming record that bends and blusters with grand passions, bittersweet beauty and no small hint of desperation. [Apr 2005, p.98]

Nasty, brutish, short, and wholly compelling, Yeezus begs only one question: where next? [Sep 2013, p.89]

The sprawling Montreal ensemble [is] nback at their most spirited, their Weltschmerz poured into wordless music of soaring transcendence and, on occasion, fierce beauty. [Dec 2017, p.91]

The repetitive refrains and orchestral interventions of Lil' Beethoven are developed with the judicious use of rock guitar into something bigger, yet just as beguiling. [Feb 2006, p.90]

Heart Song dips deeper into drama, with additional electric guitar and heavier drums adding chiaroscuro to her patented slowburn. [Dec 2016, p.89]

...Bolgatanga is easily AHC's most accessible, vivid approximation of Brian Eno's fabled "vision of a psychedelic Africa". [Aug 2023, p.78]

For the most part Empire is every bit as powerful as its title suggests. [Oct 2006, p.96]

He sounds fresher than in years. [Dec 2006, p.108]

Simple stuff, sparsely rendered, with a weighty undertow. [Dec 2014, p.93]

There's a lushness to Dungan's layering throughout that reminds of William Tyler, Stuart Hyatt and labelmate Ezra Feinberg. [Mar 2025, p.90]

On Antiphon, Midlake sound like a band unburdened and read to fly. [Dec 2013, p.82]

At times on this impressive debut Dan Willson's alter ego attains the celestial lustre of that holy grail of lapsed evangelical folk nouveau, the first Palace Brothers album. [March 2010]

Cowards is all killer, both musically and thematically. [Mar 2025, p.84]

Jean's sonic scope is breathtaking, complemented by imaginative lyrics. [Dec 2007, p.102]

The result is a sparkling 24-minute digital raga that builds to a tumultuous mid-point crescendo, before gliding elegantly out of the other side. Euphoric synth-pop that's smart and never po-faced. [Sep 2022, p.90]

Imperial Wax Solvent is a swift two-finger rejoinder [to middle aged mellowing]. [June 2008, p.112]

The space disco of 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again)' and Listen To Your Body Tonight' are destines for repeat plays on this summer's festival circuit. [Aug 2008, p.106]

An uber-melodious debut.[Mar 2014, p.96]

Mvula is a gifted arranger with a distinctive cri de coeur, and this is where she soars. [Aug 2021, p.83]

Their star-kissed analogue sprawl and beautiful singing revitalise tired classic rock moves. [Mar 2009, p.107]

It's Buffalo, New York-born David Stith's turn now to fashion a brilliant, hermetically sealed world that makes unabashed emotional connection. [Apr 2009, p.109]

There's a newfound earnestness and openness to caroline's songcraft. [Jul 2025, p.78]

The Glass Bead Game sees him broadening his palette to even greater effect. [Aug 2009, p.96]