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

Their template of new music plus archival spoken word is revitalised here, with Earhart’s writing voiced anew by actor Kate Graham. Towards The Dream is guitar-twanging exhilaration. [Nov 2024, p.84]

Interspersed with scored interludes and fragments of poetry read by Jessica Griffin of Would-Be-Goods, the effect is one of benign diffusion, the hazy avenues of MacLean's impressionistic lyrics running through the music as if the songs themselves now inhabit that hypnopompic state of consciousness where the centre cannot hold. [Aug 2023, p.86]

[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]

A strong contender for soul album of the year. [Oct 2007, p.98]

Here, for the first time in years, the primetime Gallagher swagger is back, in a more mature form. [Nov 2011, p.94]

Mimicking the band's whole existence, it flickers between light and shade, its clouds fast-moving, sunshine blotted out before it breaks through. [Apr 2018, p.88]

Flegel's ability to surprise and disturb rarely dims, the experimental held in exhilarating balance with their pop gifts. [Apr 2025, p.82]

As Ever, they're at their best when Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell trade vocal lines. [Aug 2022, p.92]

Mick Jones's production captures a vibrant, timeless analogue vibe, particularly on the sister's sassy numbers. [Mar 2015, p.97]

Few Pretenders albums have honoured the classic line-up's template so faithfully or successfully as Hate For Sale. [Aug 2020, p.86]

Blissed out, beautiful... and quite probably bonkers, with Dilate Bardo Pond seem intent on redrawing their personal cosmos's final frontiers yet again. [May 2001, p.100]

This is a different sounding Billy Childish. Not Radically different, but enough to notice that something's going on. At the root is personal tragedy: he had a nervous breakdown last year, and lyrics, written more like prose than punk missive, deal with mortality and the passing of time. [Sep 2019, p.88]

[Nelson] sounds in great shape. There are some upbeat moments (good ol' boy Made In Texas) but mostly it's on the slow side, a tempo in which Willie excels. [Jul 2024, p.84]

These radio sessions and TV appearances present an unique, accelerated Kinks history. [Sep 2012, p.103]

An 11-song set that's melodically insidious and swings like a noose. [Apr 2006, p.90]

This opens with rocking electric blues guitar, rolling piano and a singalong chorus. The warm, barroom feel continues in Alcohallelujah. [Aug 2023, p.80]

Caribou meets late-period Madonna, perhaps, but given DIA's depth of melody and nuance, Minus might be the Phoebe Bridgers of Techno-pop. [Feb 2025, p.82]

Unabashedly weird, surprising wise, A Turn In The Dream-Songs is Lewis at his most accessible and affecting. [Nov 2011, p.95]

The slightly muted beats across Record suggest the memory of good times, but the joyous flash of self-recognition on Dancefloor shows they are far from over. [Apr 2018, p.95]

Waiting in Vain mines a harmony-rich seam of sticky-fingered country rock and blue sky FM pop. [Oct 2008, p.109]

[Signs Under Test] satisfies the soul without losing its precision-tooled digital lustre. [Mar 2015, p.97]

Somewhere between the Moonlight Sonata-inspired title track and the desolate L'Enfer Et Le Paradis, Hardy will make you forget Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles was ever considered her finest song. [May 2013, p.84]

All-enveloping and omnivorous, it's hard to tell if this record wants to hug you or eat you, but it's blissful submitting to its embrace. [Jun 2011, p.93]

Baby I'm Bored's knotty guitars and ramshackle production values recall the Lemonheads' swansong, Car Button Cloth. [Mar 2003, p.94]

This edge, this acknowledgment of the stakes at play behind her messages of faith, pushes these songs past any risk of empty sentimentalism, and makes Sun Without The Heat truly uplifting. [May 2024, p.87]

The more you play it, the better it sounds. [Sep 2016, p.96]

This "new" RP Boo set feels like a deeper, warmer work. [Aug 2015, p.98]

On Blue Electric Light, he hasn't lost his touch. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Early Riser is a special album that pulls you deep into its alternative universe. [Aug 2014, p.92]

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

His bellowed cadences are as timeless and elemental as the blues. [Nov 2005, p.98]

The 23-year-old Ethiopian-Canadian's sonic evolution continues on Kiss Land. [Oct 2013, p.88]

These witches are still burning. [Jul 2023, p.88]

Here, he notes the dying of the light show with autumnal retreads of key songs from his annus mirabilis, including A Whiter Shade Of Pale, See Emily Play, A Day In The Life and – maybe toughest of all – Traffic’s No Face, No Name, No Number. [Oct 2024, p.82]

We get to bask in the calm in the eye of Young's wilful hurricane without suffering the trail of destruction that followed it. An intensely enjoyable experience it is, too. [Feb 2019, p.99]

Stein steers these heavy songs with an admirably light touch. [Jan 2025, p.89]

Future Ruins achieves everything an admirer could ask of the reunited band's new album. [Feb 2019, p.84]

Halfway through, 39-year-old Jose James undergoes an astonishing transformation via the infectiously funky, Pharrell-esque, dance cuts Live Your Life, and Ladies Man, where he convincingly morphs onto a get-down disco dude. [Mar 2017, p.92]

Fine follow-up. ... McBryde's charisma remains centre-stage. [May 2020, p.90]

Upbeat, sometimes painful, all sold with witty pop chutzpah. [May 2019, p.94]

Enthralling fever dream of an album. [Apr 2025, p.82]

Each note feels laser cut, accompanied by the bellowing bass keys that have long characterised Geist's work. [Oct 2022, p.87]

Achieved what they wanted: Mariah Carey scaling dramatic peaks on Somewhat loved (There You Go Breakin' My Heart); Babyface recrowned the king of quiet storm on He Don't Know Nothin' Bout It, and Usher, the love doctor, all breathy and hot on Do It Yourself. [Oct 2021, p.95]

If the circus-field antics are superseded by darker, sleeker dance-floor shapes, it remains a volatile, persistently disconcerting record. [Jul 2018, p.93]

Much of the material is standard heavy fare, based around familiar riffs and embellished with solos that blaze momentarily. [Jun 2015, p.89]

Smother sees this singular and intriguing group still on the ascendant--limiting notions of normal music notwithstanding. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Derretirse displays a consistent fondness for gauzy shimmer and hypnagogic atmospherics. [Aug 2019, p.93]

This is his finest collection of melodies yet, reflecting candour, tenderness and pthos with no bare polemic to disrupt the intimate tone. [Jun 2024, 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]

Deftly delivered and heartfelt, a career high. [Jul 2014, p.95]

These 11 songs never let the beats-per-minute lag, and this--coupled with the easy abundance of melody with which our host continues to leaven his left-field power pop--makes for some deliciously easy listening. [Oct 2017, p.91]

This is thrilling, intelligent stuff. [Dec 2002, p.122]

Rattle That Lock escapes the weight of legacy and operates in the here and now in a serene triumphant manner. [Oct 2015, p.88]

For all Wild Loneliness's concerns about our ailing world, it's unmistakably a tonic. It's also a life-affirming thank-you note for what we have left. [Apr 2022, p.87]

Swarming with rich atmospherics, it's a wee-small-hours treasure trove for fans of Blue Nile, Scott Walker or Bill Callahan. [Jan 2018, p.90]

A left-field jazz date transversing elation and sadness, and electronic weirdness peaking on off-radar standout Gecko Sound. [Aug 2023, p.88]

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

The impression left by Total Dive is that Brown Horse still have many miles in them yet. [Jun 2026, p.91]

Explosions In The Sky are true masters of their craft. [Apr 2007, p.102]

Palme finds Arnalds in fresh, electronically enhanced surroundings. [Nov 2014, p.96]

A muted trumpet melody and wordless chorale drift through Siren Spectre's gorgeous intergalactic ambiance before space-disco juggernaut Responder tunes into the transcendental infinite--a glitter ball in one eye, the other on the cosmos. [Dec 2013, p.86]

[A] smart and accessible record. [Nov 2011, p.95]

As with earlier records, Build A Rocket Boys! is touched by ambitious, intuitive invention. [Apr. 2011, p. 92]

The sixth Dublin-based Mexican metalheads is an awesome thing in which every trick in the jard-rock manual is applied to the duo's Latin rhythms and acoustic wizardry. [Oct 2009, p.107]

From Mason Dixon's struttin' Southern boogie and the title track's exhilarating echo of the Stones' Soul Survivor, through to the adorably vulnerable Quiet Person--what a hoot. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Though "French Rock'n'Roll" is somewhat lacking in zest (quelle surprise), the care afforded to the rest of this record's conception and execution is obvious.

There is sweetness--Shuffling Stoned's hyperfocused vignette; the title track's mystical George Harrison drone--but August feels like the product of a wandering mind deliberately slipping through the cracks. [Sep 2019, p.89]

Inji is great fun, offering new surprises with every listen. [Aug 2015, p.92]

The follow-up packs a whole heap more precision ramalama. ... Top class. [Nov 2020, p.86]

Ultimately, Futurology is brave and unexpected, and though some of it galls, much is magnificent. [Aug 2014, p.87]

Remaining loyal to Laurel Canyon and the NY underground, the collision of '60s classicism and noise is joyous. [Oct 2017, p.94]

A venomous, scabrous, often hilarious protest record, full of ramshackle blues, stinging garage-rock and the occasional brawny hardcore pelt. [Oct 2018, p.93]

A thorough pre-history, ending just before the release of first studio album, Everything Falls Apart. [Dec 2017, p.104]

The resulting ruminations on loss prove both playful and deep. [Apr 2022, p.89]

It's nigh impossible not to succumb to their hurtling energy and panache. [Oct 2013, p.94]

For his fourth album, which fuses poo, techno and retro-futuristic disco with deftness, direction and a thick slice of humour. [Feb 2017, p.95]

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]

Kammerkonzert's immediacy and dynamism feel more like a concert recording than studio album, powered by the incandescent energy of its creator. [Jun 2026, p.93]

Sunken Condos is a slyer, slow-burning pleasure. [Dec 2012, p.89]

Shrugging off the stones, flower girl persona of 2024's AM pop-heavy Chaos Angel, Miatreya Corso is a more modern proposal. [Jul 2026, p.83]

Fade is a tease that she could do out-and-out pop if the mood were ever to take her, but there are too many strange and good ideas for anything quite so prosaic. [Oct 2023, p.81]

Their sixth album shows them shaping the grim thoughts of The Animals and The Island into poised, potent songs. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Bathed in hope and spiritual substance. [Mar 2020, p.93]

A record whose maker has poured his life into it. [Apr 2018, p.95]

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

There's no manifesto here, only an exploration of identity, just as Letissier searches for her place in this decade's pantheon of fabulous poly-musical femmes. [Apr 2016, p.92]

Ancestral Star finds Barn Owl alchemising those touchstones into new sonic vistas evoking either nocturnal desert chill or fathomless cosmic expanse. [Dec 2010, p.97]

After 1991's low impact Kill Uncle, the often truculent Your Arsenal was where Morrissey discovered a newly villainous persona and a way forward. [Mar 2014, p.105]

I Quit subtly pushes their boundaries. [Aug 2025, p.80]

Has a[n] unhurried Southern swing that pulls like an undertow against the emotional freight of confessional songs like Solitaire and Nature's Child. [Aug 2025, p.82]

Full and lush, yet somehow homey and direct. [May 2003, p.97]

Bruce Springsteen began making this album in 2010--like golden reflections late in the day, it's been worth the wait. [Aug 2019, p.88]

Lina bringing the tradition, Raul Refree adding experimental soundscapes for her to play in. [Sep 2020, p.89]

Anderson never sounds too like any of those people for comfort, she just projects a similarly high level of sinewy individuality. [Jun 2011, p.94]

Much of Give A Glimpse has the warm familiarity of a beloved sweater, but none of it sounds rote or autopilot. Mascis might be tending the same patch, but there's fresh flowers sprouting from that soil. [Sep 2016, p.88]

Lee is free--and it sounds wonderful. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Pollard sounds more curious and engaged here than on some recent releases, and the result is the most compelling GBV of their third act. [Aug 2024, p.82]