Musically it is more diverse [than Gone Away Backward] and his literary influences are to the fore. [Jun 2016, p.91]

Halfway through and it's breathtakingly apparent that David Bowie isn't so much back on the horse as riding bareback towards a cliff-edge. [Jan 2016, p.86]

Something More Than Free is as close as he's yet come [to a classic album]. [Aug 2015, p.92]

It's slow to coalesce, but when it does, U.F.O.F. flies. [Jun 2019, p.86]

Olsen never gives into indulgence, however, her songs keeping their shape, their direction and their impact to the end. [Sep 2016, p.90]

There's nothing here to stop her rise. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Still adept at spectacular, if somewhat opaque intimacy, he enchants on My Red Little Fox, with its baroque recorders. [Nov 2023, p.85]

Another vibrant, joyful, fun rock'n'roll record, albeit 'fun' with a slighter smaller 'f'. .... The music world is a better place for having The Black Crowes and A Pound Of Feathers in it. [Apr 2026, p.82]

An unusual yet utterly coherent balance of tenderness and euphoria, vulnerability and invention. [Mar 2018, p.96]

Every song on Nothing's About To Happen To Me bears Mitski's distinctive mark. [Apr 2026, p.85]

For it's pop smarts, Ten Love Songs feels like Sundfor's international breakthrough. But it's everything else--the disquieting atmosphere, her voice, the sinuous, haunting melodies it carries--which sets it apart. [Mar 2015, p.93]

Affecting, uplifting, damned catchy. [Oct 2015, p.94]

Each track is a combination of the cosmic and the deliberate. ... What connects these songs is Weaver's unearthly voice. [Apr 2021, p.86]

Skin takes in soul, jazz and trip-hop, and more than fulfils her early promise. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Absence finds New Orleans trumpeter Blanchard and regular band E Collective effortlessly shifting textures, with disguised flares of long notes and high blasts casting fresh melodic light on much-covered works Fall and Diana. [Nov 2021, p.89]

The 7th Hand embodies contemporary jazz at its most thrilling. [Feb 2022, p.91]

At 70 minutes it's worth wallowing. He's pushing his own boundaries. [Aug 2022, p.90]

Something notable about Albarn's tracks is how hard they are to pick out from the others. [Jul 2023, p.83]

His bristling, unexpected arrangements draw new complexities from songs as familiar as Wade In The Water and Swing Low. [Nov 2023, p.87]

Chewy but excellent. [Jul 2024, p.95]

His voice is magnificent, the songs simple and moving. .... Wonderful. [May 2025, p.84]

Intimate, absorbing. [Sep 2020, p.94]

Instrumentally complex and inventive. [Nov 2001, p.98]

Some of the songwriting is exceptional. [Dec 2003, p.114]

What Dizzee Rascal has done with this record is find his own - profoundly satisfying - balance between grime's digital vortex of ringtones and car alarms and an older more contemplative electronic tradition. [Oct 2004, p.104]

It’s a beguiling, meandering sprawl that rewards total immersion.

The fourteenth Bad Seeds record is willfully untidy and, at times, pretty chaotic. It also rocks like crazy. [Apr 2008, p.104]

Retains an elegant spirituality. [Mar 2021, p.89]

At 70 minutes long, there's a lot to digest but it's worth persevering with as repeated listens gradually unveil a musical universe unlike any other. [Sep 2015, p.89]

This is bruised, bruising music, intellectually satisfying, animalistic. [Jul 2017, p.91]

What makes the album itself addictive is Isbell's fusing of gothic Memphis blues and Nashville tenderness. [Nov 2013, p.90]

It routinely achieves a perfect fusion of forma nd content. [Dec 2021, p.87]

This time Fussell has a full band to flesh out his vision, providing front porch grooves that carry the same kind of woody resonance as those of The band. [Jul 2019, p.91]

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

Creatively, Reward is on point. [Jun 2019, p.89]

Display[s] a lurid intelligence that seeks to explore an alternate American history. [Oct 2004, p.102]

It's on hypnotic original compositions such as Excess Success or reworked pieces like La Jetee that Parker's true genius shines through, an ability to create entire new sonic worlds from the tiniest of elements. [Mar 2022, p.88]

The Beach Boys vault, though, is full of Dennis tracks, and Feel Flows makes a great showcase for that Wilson's unlikely gifts, and the inconsistent strategies that bedevilled the band. [Sep 2021, p.90]

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

The results have the in-the-room intimacy of Lenker's best work. [Apr 2024, p.91]

Lasting only an economic 33 minutes; on this form, she could pull off a double album. [Apr 2021, p.84]

Dry Cleaning have lost none of their distinctive edge, their idiosyncratic set-up proving to be endlessly elastic, as big as they want, as small as they need, 
to capture the chaos of the world. No hidden messages here: Secret Love is a wonderful record.

It is a deeply odd but consistently compelling work. [Nov 2014, p.98]

What Los Lobos's thirteenth long-player lacks in surprise it makes up for in groove and mood. [Oct 2006, p.103]

Ultimately, it's Woods and Elucid who provide the intense, erudite, funny through-line. [Nov 2023, p.93]

Hey Panda may seem whimsical at first, but its depth is all the grander for the work it takes to mine its many gems. [May 2024, p.84]

Her debut LP eschews 4/4 rhythms to create a loose-limbed, free-ranging treat. [Feb 2020, p.91]

A thrilling 90-minute swansong. [Oct 2023, p.93]

Hood have crafted a singular meeting of modern electronics, carefully layered arrangements and more conventional rock melancholia. [Dec 2001, p.96]

It is all heart, it is truth and it is beautiful. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Measuring out grief and resilience with a steady hand, these are the best songs of Low's quiet career. [Feb 2001, p.98]

New York is one of Reed's strongest solo albums, with its tight focus, impassioned lyrics and spare, almost punky music. This is a deserved reissue, but the extras - a complete, energetic live rendition of the record from 1989, and some outtakes including he unissued The Room - are for fans only. [Nov 2020, p.92]

And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow again shows Mering's most extraordinary craft. [Dec 2022, p.82]

This is Swans at their most user-unfriendly and trouser soiling. [Sep 2012, p.94.]

Expertly sequenced as a narrative of lethargy, collapse and recovery, Purple Mountains is ultimately an album about return. It is the sound of David Berman coming back from the cold and converting it to a welcoming, lyrical warmth. ... Prepare to be taken in. [Aug 2019, p.86]

Enhancing the listener's wonder at her rapid evolution, shoreline to treetops in under four years. [Dec 2020, p.90]

The most remarkable collaboration since Norah Jones and the Foo Fighters is also one of the best albums of the year. [Nov 2007, p.92]

Let's Stay Friends is a triumphant fusion of graft and glimmer. [Nov 2007, p.96]

Despite their meticulous craft, these songs don't feel like curated artefacts--they feel raw, unquiet, still moving. Vulnicura might tell an old story, but it still feels new. [Apr 2015, p.87]

The songs feel like they're boiling over, there's so much heat under them. [Mar 2004, p.95]

Nash and long-time CSNY associate Joel Bernstein have produced the set with reportorial faithfulness, arranging the songs to mirror a typical marathon night and leaving the scars intact.... You also hear the group's genuine power and competitive fury at its height as the four rotate the spotlight through their individual songbooks. [Aug 2014, p.103]

Mind-expanding stuff. [May 2017, p.106]

As passionately exciting as anything in the classic Carlos canon, Africa Speaks is an album of highlight after highlight. [Jul 2019, p.87]

His rare talent for corralling emphatic musicians into his rhythmically intense, entrancing vision adds a whole new spin to the Indo-jazz continuum. [Aug 2019, p.91]

McFarlane creates a series of vibrant storytelling soundscapes where her sweetly soulful harmonised vocals intertwine with woozy synth sounds and throbbing electronic rhythms. [Sep 2020, p.92]

An expansive, summery jazz-funk crossover that lives and dies on its monster grooves. [Aug 2021, p.85]

Donaldson keeps refining what is essentially one song. ... Fortunately, Donaldson's undeniable homage is exquisitely on the nose, one comforting swoon after another. [Mar 2022, p.86]

This is a new mature indie scene in the making. [May 2022, p.94]

Its 13 songs are mostly slow but diverse. ... Sometimes sentimental, sung in a dusty voice that still sounds strong. [Oct 2022, p.90]

10 moving gems of adult experience. [Oct 2025, p.90]

The new sound of young Scotland. [Dec 2025, p.82]

Lloyd is joined by pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell, who prove highly empathetic collaborators, creating delicately nuanced backdrops that are conductive to the saxophonist's poetic storytelling. [Nov 2025, p.82]

Yes, it can be formulaic, but when it's this deadly, bring on the soundalikes. Mar 2026, p.97]

There are grand arrangements and barbed bon mots in the style of Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, but what's most striking are the more restrained moments. [Mar 2014, p.94]

An engaging, rewarding whole [that] speaks volumes about the breadth of both of his imagination and compositional agility. [Nov 2013, p.86]

If at times things veer towards needy, the sum of the set is saved by how real it all feels. [Sep 2018, p.92]

The results make for a chilling and captivating experience, with the unexpected musical flourishes in stop-start songs. [Sep 2009, p.104]

The 22-track vinyl's an ace place for newcomers to get electrified. [Sep 2016, p.107]

The sound of a plan coming together - the novelty wearing off, but a different light switching on, all day long and beyond. [May 2022, p.88]

The Drones whip up a heady storm of garage-bred blues, post-punk intensity and Crazy Horse-style amp overload, in which they couch fevered narratives worthy of Nick Cave. [Nov 2006]

Random Access Memories manages to maintain a core of sense and sobriety. [Jul 2013, p.83]

Here lies much of the album's magic: whatever ornate turns the music takes, at its heart is the primal stuff of great rock'n'roll. But God, is it big. [Apr 2007, p.94]

The results here are extraordinary. [Jul 2015, p.88]

A masterpiece, exactly the sort of record that your average sentient pop genius should make in 2002. [May 2002, p.99]

Stick on the nine minutes of opener Lufuala Ndonga, turn the bottom end up and stand back. What happens next is unbelievable. [May 2005, p.98]

A record that feels warmer, wiser and less forced than any of his albums so far. [Jun 2022, p.88]

John's piano at the Festival Hall brought a stentorian new dimension to a sped-up Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) and the demos offer the sense of a band working out how to get the best from John's freewheeling melodies. In the end, they turned out to be just what was required. [May 2023, p.101]

Those who want their Emmylou full of sweet, sad longing will play a quarter of this album to death.... Elsewhere, there's righteous anger and an assertiveness and sexuality to the love songs. [Nov 2003, p.128]

The Roots have created another masterpiece. [Jan 2003, p.100]

Wolves can still rip jagged and vicious amid the befogged ambiance. [Nov 2011, p.95]

At 16 tracks Bowler Hat Soup is possibly a little overlong but what is youth for if not indulging a wealth of ideas? [Dec 2013, p.87]

Perrett might not have been having fun before, but even factoring in a song called Do Not Resuscitate, this finally sounds like the real thing. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Cocoa Sugar is an audacious high-wire act which captures them at a potent peak. [Apr 2018, p.91]

For all its intimations of rootless drift, The Suburbs finds Arcade Fire back home, and so much happier for it. [Sep 20110, p.90]

Seb Rochford's drumming gives songs such as Kouma an unavoidably non-traditional kick, and the guitars (primarily by the singer herself) have a crunch missing from her early recordings. [May 2013, p.85]

In Colour really comes into its own when Jamie xx gets abstract and confounding; where his ability to conjure something wonderful from mosaic, non-linear paths is most evident. [Jul 2015, p.84]

A seamless, melodic blend of psychedelia and C&W... the songs and instrumentals here hang together beautifully. [Nov 2004, p.95]

Beam's evocation of elemental themes and dramas is too profound and affecting to deny. [Jan 2003, p.92]