Hot Chip's impressive musical facility remains, it's merely a little out of focus. [Apr 2010, p.102]

An overpoweringly diverse record. [Aug 2003, p.92]

HIs essential charm flows through raise-a-glass choruses tinged with melancholy. [Oct 2007, p.91]

Lord Steppington simultaneously engages the grey matter while snapping at the neck muscles. [Apr 2014, p.93]

No Treasure But Hope is further refinement of what they've been doing in the past. [Dec 2019, p.89]

There are twists, but no clutter, just a gentle lyricism leaving every song lit from the inside. [Feb 2007, p.100]

Glass Boys' legacy will likely be the Fucked Up record fans praise for its songs, rather than the risk-taking. [Jul 2014, p.95]

If quality control on Sukierae sometimes sags amid the fecundity, all is forgotten when Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Brooklyn-based new lights Lucius help gild country-folk standouts Wait For Love and Nobody Dies Anymore with calm-yet-striking backing vocals. [Oct 2014, p.94]

Smilers is a masterpiece from a songwriter who's quietly chronicling the blanched last days of a sunshine empire. [July 2008, p.112]

Copeland herself is always gloriously centre-stage. [Jun 2009, p.108]

It's all about Rosanne's voice. And she's rarely sounded better. [Nov 2009, p.96]

Radical tech rockers' microshift to the center ground. [July 2011, p. 100]

The pace rarely rising above languorous, the lyrics resolutely wistful, with the now 50-year-old Sandoval's vocals the compelling focus across 11 drowsy, folk-rock noir essays. [Dec 2016, p.88]

Two nuanced, outstanding duets with French avant-popper SaraSara help lighten the all-consuming existential despair. [Jun 2020, p.91]

more ambitious and more accessible than the sonic paranoia of 2005's "Burner." [Dec 2007, p.109]

The whole thing carves out and inhabits a persuasively exotic world of echo that invites total immersion. [May 2015, p.97]

Sirens proffers another string to his bow, its nine skittering essays overlaying richly textured, genre-melding electronic sound worlds with liminal song "structures." [Nov 2016, p.81]

Years Of Refusal isn't a great album, but it's no disaster. [Mar 2009, p.104]

The delightful, multi-mood Commontime is just shy of an hour, opens things out and is more personal [than 2012's Plumb]. This might be the sound of maturing. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Well before David Essex provides a gruff guest turn on Relocate, you are entirely won over by this record, brimming with music from a postcode synonymous with class. [Jul 2005, p.106]

The album sounds squashed and claustrophobic, but lacks the sense of play that still characterises his clever, incident-packed rhymes. [Oct 2007, p.106]

One Bedroom finds the group in a more forthright mood -- just shifting up a gear makes a big difference. [Feb 2003, p.90]

The 62-year-old Bradley, meanwhile, has all the marks of the soul greats who have gone before him; the testifying smart Syl Johnson, the grit and gusto of Otis Redding, the raw power of James Brown, the smoulder and shudder of James Carr. Together they make an intoxicating sound, one that would have fit in perfectly at Twilight in the late-'60s.

[A] curious but very listenable LP. [Nov 2011, p.99]

Surprises at every turn. [Jan 2013, p.93]

While much here errs toward vanilla and cheese, delectably idiosyncratic morsels are also on the menu. [Dec 2018, p.100]

There's still a lot of soul-searching at mournful tempos, but reconnecting to his roots has made for a fine set of songs. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Groovy and moving, in all the right directions. [Oct 2019, p.88]

Reggae/dub comes no more vital, nor far-sighted, in 2019. [Jan 2020, p.85]

It may make for a rollercoaster musical ride, but it's utterly thrilling. [Mar 2024, p.88]

An album that's a steady pleasure from start to finish. [Jul 2012, p.82]

Nepenthe finds Julianna Barwick's already established wash of angel tones and free-floating radiance newly influenced by the breathtaking, often alien wonders of her host country. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Things can get twee--but this feels like a tiny church in that forest, sacred and touching. [Jul 2015, p.92]

An album of mischievous melody, fairground keyboards, cut'n'paste aural collage and an undeniable love of pop all but buried in junk shop Dadaist clatter. [Oct 2007, p.106]

Arguably the band's most magical record to date. [Nov 2003, p.123]

It's surely their most eclectic. [Oct 2009, p.103]

It benefits substantially from the synergy that the potent presence of Charlie Musselwhite helps to create. [Feb 2013, p.90]

It's Metheny, ever the mercurial magician, who's driving the band; his eloquent guitar etching a kaleidoscope f sonic hues. [Mar 2014, p.92]

These songs conjure shifting states-of-consciousness. [Aug 2017, p.97]

There's a distinctly Mitteleuropa aura to her enigmatic Nico-like vocals. [Nov 2016, p.96]

It's clever, funny, confrontational and touching. [May 2017, p.94]

Chillwave premier goes in search of the funk. [March 2011, p. 95]

He sings with committed restraint and plays outspoken guitar. [Feb 2005, p.95]

The awkward early passages of Pyramid/When The Poor Can reach The Moon would surely struggle to gain airplay in any decade, including this one, yet it ultimately rises to the kind of triumphant chorus at which Phillipps excels. [Nov 2015, p.87]

For a record about captive states - isolation, anxiety, romantic hope - Things Take Time, Take Time knows how to move. [Dec 2021, p.85]

A spectacular lift-off, but Owens' career apogee sounds a long way off yet. [May 2017, p.91]

Breathlessly brilliant stuff. [Sep 2022, p.93]

The foggy nights of soul chronicled here lend Chastity Belt's bruised indie pop a weight that suits it. [Jun 2017, p.89]

In The Future showcases a group who knows exactly what they're doing. [Feb 2008, p.101]

With unerring melodies, Eleanor F hits the sweet spot time after time. [Jul 2013, p.84]

It's exhilarating stuff, the kind of record that sets new parameters as to what is possible from a punk rock'n'roll band in the 21st century. [Oct 2004, p.106]

Their first full-lengther is a seemless, beat-driven shadowplay, wherein luminescent passages of prog-pop uplift are stalked by eerie, intense atmosphere. [Sep 2008, p.106]

Head Down sounds highly-charged and fresh. [Dec 2012, p.84]

The trademark use of acoustic as a lead guitar still sounds refreshing, and Knights' sweet and salty vocal style is still full of vulnerable charisma. [Nov 2013, p.88]

Defiant and cathartic. [Dec 2014, p.90]

The Space Between is a delicate, dignified joy. [Nov 2022, p.86]

Sometimes co-written with The The’s guitarist Barrie Cadogan or keyboardist DC Collard, these 12 songs cement Johnson’s ‘cherishable agitator’ status. And – whisper it – there’s hope here, too. [Oct 2024, p.86]

Naturally, every song is a fully formed gem underscoring Saint Etienne's unique way with setting reflective pop upon a dance floor chassis. [Jul 2017, p.86]

Throughout, Earthling toys with classic radio-rock clichés, only to cleanse them of jadedness via Vedder's trademark wholehearted investment, a trick which still charms. [Apr 2022, p.88]

Smith's usual meditative, ambient-leaning approach is dialled back in favour of soaring wonky pop, ornate neoclasical and even quasi dancefloor movements. It gives rise to her most joyous music yet. [Oct 2022, p.87]

The best moments find Deerhoof unadulterated, like the angular tropicalia of Begin Countdown, or drummer Greg Saunier's Prefab Sprout-like Ay That's Me. [Oct 2017, p.94]

True, [Merritt] still sings in a voice that's subject to fairly strict demarcations of range and malleability, but his deft spadework in the trench of song-craft more than compensates. [May 2004, p.93]

Too wholesome for some, perhaps, but the melodies are reassuringly strong. [Oct 2002, p.96]

Clinic just aren't as sinister as they first seem. They're damaged, but friendly and worth visiting. [Mar 2002, p.105]

The Brewis brothers opt for distinctive texture of sampled acoustic guitar. Measure--a sprawling gem of album-- is full of such inspired decisions. [Mar 2010, p.98]

Each track on Under The Sun has its own unique, haunting spirit, lingering long after the final note decays. [Jun 2016, p.95]

A taut, fraught dalliance with '90s trip-hop melancholy vivified by spidery Sisters Of Mercy-esque guitar figures and a gruff cameo from Massive Attack's Daddy G. [Sep 2017, p.91]

Bowie's live vocal is excellent on a cover of Jacques Brel's Amsterdam, and the sound is seriously beefed up by the addition of Tony Visconti and Mick Ronson partway through the set, but massively new or consistently brilliant it is not. [Aug 2021, p.98]

Through dry humour, love songs as tender as Tim Hardin's, tremolo guitars and intensely moving samples Powers reveals a psyche reborn. [Mar 2025, p.93]

It is an enormously beautiful. [Sep 2025, p.86]

Pop songs at warp speed in the vein of say, All or early Lemonheads. [May 2014, p.96]

2006's album of the year may have arrived early. [Mar 2006, p.104]

The Dodos switchback moods and rhythms never settle and that's the prime joy of No Color. [Jun 2011, p.105]

Hard to avoid thinking of Neil Young and Crazy Horse at the peak of their '70s powers. [Feb 2005, p.95]

Adroit instrumentation and elegant melodies from the NY quartet. [May 2014, p.96]

Wistful alt pop gets an ample glug of electro groove and distinct hints of '80s cheese comfortably reinforce Austin William's hazy vocals. [Oct 2015, p.98]

Cerulean Salt's added electricity, rhythm section, variety and production clarity still retains the intimacy, the skeletal arrangements and the plaintive urgency in here delivery, from a yelp to a croon. [Aug 2013, p.93]

At its best, Factory Floor powerfully blurs the lines between human and machine and back again, and is very hard to argue with. [Oct 2013, p.91]

Both slow-burning, early Zeppelin-style blues, its understandable they would front-load the album with its trump card, but both seem slightly at odds with the Dickinsons' mission statement. [Jan 2014, p.101]

The Mudcrutch reunion is a refreshing tweak to the comfy old Petty band chemistry. [July 2008, p.108]

Ghostpoet serves up his bruised, tender heart with the steely precision of a master sushi chef. [Jun 2013, p.89]

A rich seam of molten psychedelic heaviness pitched between Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. [Jan 2016, p.96]

Heaps more respect's due for the full-bloodedness of rippers like Frenzy, Modern Day Rip Iff and Neo Punk. ... Four-letter lyricism and dumb-ass riffing, however, leave you craving the substance of '16's Homme-guided Post Pop Depression. [Feb 2023, p.85]

Drily recorded and subtle to a fault. in places, Island Of Noise becomes so evanescent it threatens to disappear altogether. [Dec 2021, p.92]

He's written better collections of songs, but for fun, warmth, vigour and power, it' sup there with his best. [Mar 2013, p.86]

The best moments involve stranger juddering textures, as on Flowers or Wishing Well. Beauty is always better with an edge. [Aug 2020, p.87]

Classic weep-alongs. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Dark, edgy, yet full of light and hope, Brother Sinner... is dazzling, moving too, and bordering on perfection. [Dec 2012, p.89]

The Czars only had minuscule--if fanatical--support, but Grant's current profile should see retrospective justice done. [Jan 2015, p.112]

The on-stage versions bring genuine human warmth--healing even--to Vulnicura's raw emotional truths. [Sep 2016, p.99]

There's an appealing stealth and positivity to Ron's writing here. [Jun 2017, p.91]

This compelling song collection offers an abstract journey through the themes, influences and emotions of a most eventful year. [Apr 2017, p.94]

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

[Bonnie Bloomgarden's] brings formidable, shamanic energy to California Mountain Shake, Magic Powers and Sunday, her untamed vocals on the latter conjuring a young Maria Mckee. [Apr 2023, p.88]

These dozen songs are a prime distillation of their essential pantheism. [Aug 2023, p.84]

It's exquisitely crafted and the backing vocals on North Country Ride are beyond beautiful, but a little more colour in their palette wouldn't go amiss. [Aug 2023, p.78]

This is the band taking stock, creating a record that has a bleak, sonically rich beauty. [Jul 2025, p.88]

The trio return with 12 mesmeric tracks that are a love letter to their native south Manchester and its iconic brutalist architecture. [Aug 2025, p.85]