A gentle triumph. [Jan 2006, p.130]

Fans of dramatic Diamond are well taken care of here. But the real masterpieces are the opening and closing tracks. [June 2008, p.104]

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]

Morse Code is more concerned with our collective lost soul rather than individual anxiety. [Nov 2019, p.86]

The hydra-like mix of music genres which FaltyDL has previously taken direction from has been refined into deep burnt, highly charged, twisted electronic soul. [Feb 2013, p.91]

Foxx reaches pensionable age in 2013, but the creative fires still burn white hot. [Mar 2013, p.90]

May's 10 songs are barely there yet carry genuine emotional heft thanks to Voss Romme's tremulous, close-up-and-personal vocal delivery. [Jun 2014, p.94]

Winsome, pastoral electronic vignettes that loop and swoop. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Sunnier than before, Malamore is a swirl of pounding drums, spoken French, baroque melodies. [May 2016, p.96]

This vital, vintage-sounding hook-up with dusty jazz fiend Ben Lamdin and reggae producer Prince fatty--packed with wilding horns and lurching bass--bridles with unwearied defiance on How Many Bullets, The Music and She Is. [Jul 2018, p.90]

It could all be too cute for its own good but some inspired darker moments elevate the whole to the level of a Raymond Carver short story collection set to music by Joan Of Arc-era OMD. [Nov 2018, p.90]

Gallo's eccentricity is bound to irritate at least as many as it charms. [Jan 2019, p.91]

The piano's push into poignancy is occasionally too much, but Yawny Yawn largely feels like new information, a clear-sighted re-vision of a tremendous set of songs. [Sep 2019, p.86]

Her first album since 1968's Kufunta on Immediate. The former Ikette's voice is little changed since those days and still rooted in powerful gospel. [Aug 2019, p.88]

OEH are a more intriguing venture when confident enough to aim for the universal. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Joan Wasser's second covers set finds romance in Prince's lust-blind Kiss and innocence in the Strokes' Under Control. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Crain has always been good, but on A Small Death she's genuinely great. [Aug 2020, p.92]

In all, far more touching than we've been allowed. [Oct 2020, p.92]

Idles and Tom Morello score highly by taking an edgy staccato approach, faithful to the original songs, but La Roux's synthy take on Damaged Goods teases out an unexpected amount of melody. [Jul 2021, p.83]

There is plenty going on: doomy folk blues; sparse Woody Guthrie-esque folk; slow, sad Sweet Refrain and The Levee On Down. There's also passionate, pissed-off, rousing country rock. [Sep 2021, p.85]

Apart from the upbeat soul of Never Want To Be Kissed, featuring Stax veteran William bell on vocals, Set Sail stumbles and squints through its nine other tracks, although on Bumpin' they at least rouse themselves long enough to sound like Tony Joe White imitating Sly Stone. [Mar 2022, p.86]

[Luke Haines] has never been backed like this before. ... It's as if The WreckingCrew wound up on a Skip Spence album. [Nov 2022, p.91]

Bob Mould's been hereabouts before, of course, but The Tubs' tightly-wound songs are good enough to transcend the concept. [May 2023, p.95]

She might feel her work-life balance is out of whack, but Power's creative scales are perfectly aligned. [Aug 2023, p.80]

Darkly versatile second LP. [Nov 2024, p.95]

They still sound remarkably fresh, and here their short (only three of the 14 songs last longer than three minutes), sharp shock still kicks hard. [Jan 2024, p.86]

Absorbing follow-up. [Feb 2026, p.90]

Fans of Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs take note. [Nov 2008, p.19]

Away is a looser and more poignant than the band's previous releases ever hinted. [Oct 2016, p.95]

A lush and trippy affair with shades of Edward Lear-like surrealism and John Winston Lennon amid strawberry Fields. [Mar 2008, p.103]

Nighttime Birds And Morning Stars doubles back on that trajectory [on 2018's Deeper Woods] and heads left, its eight enveloping essays featuring live 1-and 6-string guitars manipulated and looped into capacious soundscapes, only occasionally topped off by vocal salutes to nature and the mysterious heavens. [Feb 2019, p.87]

Broken repeats the team-up, but in wider-screen yet, fully evocative of its genesis in the sprawl of Los Angeles. [Sep 2009, p.95]

If not quite an Ironman or Supreme Clientele, this is Ghostface's most unified, coherent work in years. [Jun 2013, p.94]

Not even the most Boss-eyed would claim the world needs another Springsteen Best-of, mostly comprising songs available elsewhere and built around a clutch of repeat offenders. Yet Freehold, NJ's famous son is barely recognisible on Chapter And Verse's first five track. [Nov 2016, p.104]

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

There's much that's familiar about Demolished Thoughts, but Beck's arrangements draw fresh new pleasures from those elements. [Jun 2011, p.96]

Dissonant yet heavenly, Gas Lit is an album that seethes, soothes, liberates and bewitches in equal measures. [Mar 2021, p.83]

In amongst the jumble of influences, trad indie-guitar Parquet remains: in, say, the early Go-Betweens-y Just Shadows, and the galvanising lyrics of collective consciousness - written pre-pandemic, but wonderfully inspiring for late 2021. [Nov 2021, p.84]

Musically this is the most satisfying Deftones album in a decade, welding their patented post-hardcore crunch with their noted love of twisted, Cure-styled melody. [June 2010, p. 92]

It might sound like a stunt, but results in a deeply felt and surprisingly enjoyable exploration of American Vernacular music. [Sep 2010, p.93]

James' final studio album is a sturdy effort that belies the catalog of increasingly serious health issues that have dogged her. [Feb 2012, p.102]

There are moments when dear slips down pop alleys, but for those following, there's a creeping sense it could turn a bit Don't Look Now at any second. [Sep 2012, p.86]

As a heady whole, Mother is a cousin of '60s American boundary pushers Kaleidoscope and, especially George Romanos, whose 1970s album Two Small Blue Horses defined a new Greek psychedelia. Mother is that good. [Feb 2018, p.95]

Although Gibbs's lyrics rarely veer beyond their survivalist comfort zones, his innate ability to switch up styles allows him to scale the gaping chasm between Forever And A Day's moody confessions and the unreconstructed boasts of Cold Ass Nigga with ease. [Feb 2016, p.94]

Savour John Darnielle singing. [Dec 2020, p.86]

By the time the album ends in a full-on industrial free-jazz freakout you'll either be totally lost or suspecting this man might be a genius. [Jun 2005, p.97]

A little too much. [Apr 2005, p.90]

It is a slow-growing treasure that reveals a little more of itself with each listen. [Nov 2009, p.94]

With 15 tracks, there a good deal to like. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The [7-year] hiatus hasn't impaired the band's vivid country-gothic grandeur one iota. [Apr 2012, p. 90]

An eerily oneiric album of light, space and silence. [Jun 2007, p.100]

A lush, shimmering and fully immersive experience. [Nov 2012, p.90]

This is a radical musical departure, certainly, but one that affirms the assured versatility of a singer/songwriter whose talent knows no boundaries. [Jul 2015, p.92]

In The Magic Hour is, in turn, both exhilarating and exploratory. [Feb 2016, p.97]

Another star turn for soprano Lavinia Blackwall. [May 2018, p.98]

She's better shifting gears beyond her stylistic bounds. [May 2019, p.89]

A gimlet glare cast not downwards but right between your eyes. [Mar 2020, p.107]

The results are an impressively cohesive testament to Lambchop's interpretative skills as much as their experimental slant. [Jan 2021, p.86]

Tyron unpacks its creator's complex character, flaws bravely to the fore. [Mar 2021, p.88]

Should rightly have fans and newcomers alike punching the air in solidarity. [Nov 2021, p.88]

Tackling eight traditional songs, he plays Just A Close Walk With Thee and Old Rugged Cross relatively straight, but turns the likes of We Shall Rise and Are You Washed In Blood? into glorious Southern boogie, replete with screaming guitar solos. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Bares no audible strains of road weariness. ... Retain[s] all their live urgency. [Sep 2022, p.91]

Lewis hits peak saxophone artistry here. [Mar 2023, p.89]

Hard-won optimism, as ever, from this troubled heroine. [Oct 2023, p.78]

Occasionally they get lost in their own jams - the meandering Tripping In The Graveyard definitely overstays its welcome. By contrast, Impermanence And Death captures the at their best. [Nov 2023, p.90]

Hymnal flows like diaphanous silk, the Berlin-based artist's otherworldly vocals stitching a sensuous golden thread throughout. [Aug 2025, p.85]

Overall, a compelling set clearly completed in the aftermath of a storm. [May 2026, p.87]

An urgent if mostly meditative-sounding call-to-arms, that he brings poetic shape and power to his politics. [Jan 2017, p.98]

Happy Hollow swings with the nutty abandon of Madness, sharpened with the literate punk frenzy of Fugazi. [Oct 2006, p.104]

Their second album is a delicate collection that welcomes you back into their magical world. [Mar 2018, p.95]

His breathless falsetto remains a dealbreaker, but such vaulting ambition should appeal to fans of US forebears Deerhoof and domestic square pegs Wild Beasts. [Oct 2008, p.109]

Lyrically her songs are as politically charged as ever, musically they're laboured experiments in style. [June 2010, p. 94]

The result is a bold, career highlight that's dizzyingly inventive on the surface, with a powerful emotional undertow. [Jul 2023, p.87]

A great summer indie pop album. [Oct 2021, p.99]

Sounding sharper than they have done in years, they’re more up for the fight than perhaps ever before.

Setting out its wares most convincingly with dreamy weighlessness of The Gaudy Side Of Town. Relayted gives a nod to its influences with a cough syrup slow rendition of Godly & Creame's '80s classic Cry before drifting off into a heavy-lidded haze punctuated by the occasional flurry of woozy dub and ethereal funk. [Jul 2010, p.92]

Charm, tunes and a certain hazy vision--Real Estate have them in abundance, and on Atlas they are more than enough to coax endless summer warmth from behind the wall of winter. [Apr 2014, p.92]

An album of rich, intricate grooves that use house and techno merely as a jump-off point. [Jul 2014, p.94]

The Follower places him alongside Caribou as a master of emotional reverie. [Aug 2016, p.99]

This will thrill those who believe Pavement's best album was their first. [Jul 2014, p.86]

Silence is not an option when Hyvonen is this witty and brazen. [Mar 2009, p.115]

Few bands can make desperation sound so all embracing and enticing. [Jun 2004, p.111]

It occasionally drifts away but with a subtle pillowy beat or piano, Brun holds it together beautifully. [Jan 2021, p.85]

Imelda May can voice rockin' blues, slap-bass rockabilly and smoky torch jazz and she can do it incredibly well. [Nov. 2010, p. 102]

Well worth a late discovery. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Equally comparable to Sleaford Mods' savage lo-fi and Leonard Cohen's fatalist poetry, Prince Of Tears is an outright triumph. [Nov 2017, p.94]

Scott continues to ring changes elsewhere, hence the gung-ho title track channels Robert Parker's '60s Mod classic Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is), and Right Side of Heartbreak (Wrong Side Of Love) brings sweet soul hooks. [Jun 2019, p.91]

Succinct and entirely self-preformed, Regan's typically poetic sixth album conjures a singular, almost meditative mood via fingerpicked guitars, backwards-recorded instruments and subtle textures. [Sep 2019, p.95]

Supreme Balloon is an airy sphere of joyful electronic possibility. [June 2008, p.103]

Uninhibited, Wrecking Ball misses a star here only because two love-among-the economic-ruins, This Depression and You've Got It, don't quite fit the big-theme fierceness - deep feelings to draw together whoever may listen. [Apr 2012, p. 89]

A US singer-songwriter-guitarist who values both tranquil folk purity, rooted in her crystal-clear voice, and '70s classic-rock range, in the same smouldering fashion as Red House Painters and Jeff Buckley. [Mar 2020, p.95]

This feels like Hermansen's most charming and wide-ranging collection yet. [Jan 2018, p.96]

The climax of Tumast is a trance0drone masterpiece that the band would be foolish not to stretch to its limits in concert. Only closer Ma S-Abok suggests there is a comedown side to the Saharan psychedelia. [Apr 2018, p.93]

In the album's second half, Georgia aims beyond euphoria and thrills with Mellow and Ray Gun's hip-hop shade, Honey Dripping Sky's aching power ballad and Ultimate Sailor's Tangerine Dream-style banks of ambient synths. [Feb 2020, p.92]

Easily Band Of horses' best LP in over a decade. [Feb 2022, p.86]

The trio's gifts mesh to deliver a truly idiosyncratic attack, as refreshing and labyrinthine a hip hop debut as New York has delivered since Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus. [May 2014, p.87]

Blom hits all the alt-rock pleasure centres. [Jul 2019, p.96]

Transistor Radio's songs do lack the shirtfront-clenching grip of Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent set. But shapeless and misty atmospherics have their shadowy power too. [Mar 2005, p.92]