Inventive, shape-shifting arrangements always go the extra mile. [Oct 2006, p.112]

Tightly packed with Eight Days A Week-style harmonies and immaculate, 12-string strumming. [Oct 2004, p.100]

There's a weight and scale reminiscent of Ingram Marshall's epic sea-mist tone-paintings. [Apr 2014, p.95]

A quirky collision of funk, pop, blues, Bowie-esque rock and electro, it'll perturb traditional soul fans--some of his cross-genre experimentation is weirdly unsettling--but there are several ear-catching gems. [Aug 2015, p.92]

The result is a thematically complex neo-romantic narrative of wit, tension and sweep. [Mar 2016, p.97]

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]

The sprawling opening (title) track commencing with familiarly tremulous, slow-motion synths inexorably rising and falling, oscillating between exquisite consonance and transient dissonance. [May 2016, p.94]

It's an exploration of the end that assets it's not over. [May 2017, p.88]

Long Island is alive and involving, creating a world of its own. [Mar 2013, p.87]

Another mesmerising, profound, excellent record. [Jul 2023 p.86]

Beyond is the better-produced natural successor to 1987's epochal You're Living All Over Me. [May 2007, p.104]

Meditative, twitchy, cerebral, the Heliocentrics are at once timeless and of the now. [Jul 2017, p.93]

Another hip-rolling, dabke masterclass. [Jan 2020, p.92]

The second CD's half-hour of demos and discards is a repeat-play joy. [Nov 2015, p.102]

While Reggae Film Star is often droll, Jurado's empathy for his characters - from the enduring recriminations of Lois Lambert to the aching isolation of What Happened To The Class Of '65? - often makes for affecting songwriting. [Aug 2022, p.87]

Sumptuous, but still challenging. [Jul 2015, p.92]

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]

It may lack the wrong-footing eclecticism that made his name, but makes up for that in pure melodic charm. [Mar 2009, p.109]

Quite stunning. [Jun 2006, p.112]

This record [is] near the top of the band's bejewelled catalogue. [Sep 2014, p.92]

Sea Change aches too thoroughly to be mere career shift. It's the kind of album that at times seems too sad for the singer's own good. [Album of the Month, Oct 2002, p.90]

Thrilling. [May 2003, p.106]

A triumphant second solo chapter. [Oct 2015, p.98]

Brightly flags up their sixth album's abundant strengths. [Jul 2023, p.98]

Amid the thoughts of ultimate demise, the creative juices never cease to flow.[May 2012, p.88]

A bold redrawing of creative frontiers, Lux Prima is a gamble that pays off, handsomely. [Apr 2019, p.88]

'Leather Prowler' is as dank and industrial as you'd hope--but the emphasis is now on songwriting. [Sep 2007, p.112]

Sol Invictus scratches a creative itch created by the band's Second Coming Tour, and reasserts that they will not be second-guessed or pigeonholed. [Jun 2015, p.94]

Here Tyler not so much steps out of the shadows as over to a slightly less darkened corner on nine delicately plucked acoustic daydreams that also showcase his talent for arrangements. [Mar 2011, p.94]

The Lou Reed-approved alt-country band's sixth album. [July 2011, p. 105]

Chance-taking, richly rewarding. [Apr 2019, p.89]

Much will be familiar to JBs devotees... but this time their MOR predilections are more pronounced. [Oct 2006, p.100]

It's A Myth is like a musical Mondrian painting: all bold lines and defined patterns effortlessly delivered, but oblique and enigmatic too. [Jun 2017, p.87]

Radiating breezy melancholic warmth and lonely midnight chills. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Add winners selected from the songbooks of Billy Joe Shaver, Vince Gill and Bill Anderson and you have the best Willie package since he signed with Legacy. [Aug 2014, p.86]

Are Possible grasps the roots of folk tradition and propels them enthusiastically into new terrain. [Sep 2024, p.88]

Even when she blinds her audience wit science, though, Bjork's vision remains remarkable. [Oct 2011, p.97]

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

Distorted vocals, metallic clunks and disquieting sonic strangeness in spades. [Nov 2014, p.102]

Despite the extended sabbatical, Leftfield’s muscular, invigorating presence remains undimmed.

Rolo Tomassi are best when varying the textures. [Aug 2015, p.96]

It gives way to creeping synths, much post-rock elation and an epic finale, sung in French with nape-raising efficacy. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Singer-songwriter Ala.ni's debut story of doomed love is a hazy mix of innocence and experience. ... A pearl. [Jul 2016, p.97]

Intoxicated Women makes you fall in love with Gainsbourg and his women all over again. [Dec 2016, p.95]

Strong synth tunes and beats, bristling with vocal angst. [Oct 2017, p.98]

This is a sweet entry point. [Oct 2019, p.92]

[Singer Hazel Wilde's] words are clear, emphatic and beautifully sung, like a post-rock seer gazing over the landscape. Her bandmates also play their socks off. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Eccentric yet accessible avant-electronica. [May 2021, p.88]

Critically, Dark Matters evokes, rather than merely simulates, the band's hallmark quirk and strangeness, lending integrity to the ongoing endeavour. [Oct 2021, p.97]

The sparseness lends a quiet power and intimacy to proceedings. [May 2022, p.100]

Without the accompanying visuals, Ugly Season makes most sense when there's a vocal to centre it. [Aug 2022, p.86]

[Jess Shoman's] roller-coaster voice, sometimes Kermit-like, sometimes as out there as Mary Margaret O'Hara, is an acquired taste. yet she's successfully sensual on Be. ... Everything comes together on Sharp Wheel. [Dec 2022, p.82]

[Evil Spirits] was a curiously muted affair. ... Darkadelic does much to address that imbalance with the Cap back to showboating magnificently on Bad Weather Girl and Girl I'll Stop At Nothing and adding vibrant, shimmering psych textures throughout. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Garden Party is a golden-hour dream of a record, balmy keyboards and cicada-like percussion setting a perfect scene for the easy, receptive conversations between the guitars of Johnson and Barry Walker. [Jun 2023, p.87]

Blackwell remains an inveterate magpie of all things psychedelic. [Sep 2023, p.84]

They're still sparkling. [May 2024, p.91]

Mortality looms large as he recounts a car accident on The Last Ten Seconds Of Life, the bluegrass-flavoured Not A Lot Of Sand Left In The Glass and again for prairie trail eulogy I Want To Be The Man (My Dog Thinks I Am). [Nov 2024, p.84]

What's certainly clear is that this spin-the-bottle project has legs, its relaxed meeting of minds a mellifluous triple-threat. [May 2025, p.84]

These 14 songs mostly charm and world-build in under three minutes. [Sep 2025, p.79]

Great to hear these session giants unchained. [Oct 2025, p.83]

The absolute highlight is Dion's magnificently assured live performance of his own King Of The New York Streets. .... New York Minute stands out, with its overt nods to Dion's late-1950s doo wop sides. [Jan 2026, p.89]

An inspired, unique dramstist, at the peak of his powers. [Feb 2026, p.81]

Mosquito is enticing. [Apr 2026, p.90]

Positivity lights up the British Nigerian's debut. [Apr 2026, p.94]

There's an occasional clunkiness and Let England's Shake's visionary fever is lacking. Yet there's an authority in Harvey's voice, her brisk musical and lyrical stride demanding the listener keep up. [May 2016, p.84]

Theirs remain an abstract, liminal brand of pop, with Prekop's vocals as delightfully gossamer, and his lyrics as intriguingly impressionistic as ever. [Oct 2012, p.88]

Gibson's captivating, narrative postcard songs are bolstered by a cast of Brooklyn musicians. [May 2016, p.96]

A low-key exploration of how delicate melodies, processed noise and the occasional beat can intertwine, When It Rains drifting artfully to uncompromised skronk. [Oct 2025, p.83]

Bringing out the too-often buried pop nuances of his stylish songs and new inventions from his under-rated guitar work, it's a stylistic cloth that Ward seems very comfortable wearring. [Mar 2009, p.111]

Martin Phillips was, and is, a singular songwriter, whose unassuming delivery belied songs of psychological depth and complexity. [Dec 2014, p.89]

Another weighty addition to this first-choice list. [Dec 2015, p.91]

The Unfairground finds Ayers rejuvenated and stands comparison with his best work. [Oct 2007, p.98]

In sonic terms, it's considerably more aspirational than even last year's Sun And Shade, allowing Earl's take on various ages of American song-craft to snap into sharper focus. [Nov 2012, p.84]

If Three Futures lack depth, then, it's only because everything inside has been dragged out, up to the surface, into the light. [Nov 2017, p.98]

May can be schmaltzy, yes; but also needle-sharp. [Sep 2017, p.94]

Any threesome with such a full house of boss songwriters shouldn't go splitting up again. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Their most affecting and cohesive statement to date. [Oct 2001, p.108]

These songs cut too deep to be pastiche.... A lovely record of enormous warmth. [Jun 2003, p.101]

Incredibly, No More Shall We Part is as urgent and vital as Cave has ever been.... Raging and delicate, complex as faith and simple as a goodnight kiss, it is an incredible summation of a singular career.

Slimmer, leaner, more disciplined than its predecessor.

Hiatt's misfortune is your guaranteed entertainment.

The overall vibe here us one of relaxation rather than tension. [Apr 2015, p.93]

An album of swooning, soft-lens electronica that is firmly of the Eno/Aphex Twin lineage. [Jul 2018, p.95]

Straightforward but elliptical; direct but enduringly rich; the unseen, in between. [Feb 2019, p.86]

The good news, however, is that admirers of the later albums such as Bone Mahcine, the Black Rider and Real Gone are very well served. [Jan 2010, p. 91]

If letting the world in has resulted in an album this beguiling, there's nothing to fear. [Oct 2012, p.80]

Lotta Sea Lice feels like a happy and deliberate mind-meld, rather than the work of two competing songwriters duking it out knee-to-knee over their guitars. [Dec 2017, p.84]

The once-lairy Scots' high-volume potency remains beyond question. [Oct 2017, p.92]

The lack of personal revelations that brought nuance and light to 2016's Made In The Manor often makes these vivid, grim depictions of inner city strife uncomfortable listening. [Nov 2019, p.89]

A career highlight for Carlile and a rejuvenation for John. [Apr 2025, p.79]

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]

DSU's charm is its blissfully carefree vibe. [Dec 2014, p.92]

Anaïs Mitchell with guitarist/singer Jefferson Hamer unexpectedly proves that her precious storytelling art is equally mesmerizing on the great traditional ballads collated in the 19th century by Francis James Child. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Somewhere between Faultline's bedroom-boffin invention and Stephen Merritt's pensive elegance. [May 2003, p.99]

The 10 tracks here find the band bridging the gap between saloon singers and barroom rockers, the results playing like Frank Sinatra fronting The Replacements. [Jul 2017, p.90]

Swindle wears his perfectionism lightly: satisfying tastebuds while leaving listeners hungry for more. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Fans of self-possessed art-pop are directed here. [Apr 2020, p.91]

An album of unashamed emotional purgation. ... Swamp's late renascence is wonderful. [Apr 2020, p86]