It's a labyrinthine 64-minute journey, bound together by a group identity that gains clarity with every listen. [Jun 2012, p.80]

Villagers lives in its own hermetic and compelling space; it's not too late to pay a visit. [Jul 2023, p.84]

Regardless of how they're captured, these songs still have the capacity to enthrall. [Jan 2017, p.113]

There is pain here. The results, though, are delicious. [Feb 2018, p.97]

Spinning Coin have spun new dreams from old. [Mar 2020, p.94]

The horny Dry Spell is typically smart storytelling, cheekily contemporary and as wittily candid as her hero John Prine, while Back On The Wagon is a credulous assertion of faith in an erring lover from an unreliable narrator. [Jul 2026, p.87]

Less minimal folk this time, the title track and Holograms are particularly fulsome. [Mar 2019, p.99]

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

It's a brave and brilliant refocusing of her energies, virtually a rebirth. [Oct 2007, p.91]

Even the less bristling episodes feel luminous and ecstatic, but mostly the magnificent Historian thrives on tension. [Apr 2018, p.94]

As expected, it's perfectly executed. [Apr 2019, p.89]

What might sound like a depressing work of angsty indulgence is in fact an uplifting record of angular alt-folk. [June 2008, p.108]

The one constant is their ability to chill the nape hairs, which ultimately is all that matters. [Apr 2008]

10 tracks of grainy electronic drift, tension and poignancy. [Aug 2021, p.81]

Shauf paints an endearing sketch of his house party's many moods. [Jun 2016, p.97]

Even introspection is realised on a gargantuan scale, with the climatic rock symphony Exogenesis. Over the top? For Matt Bellamy and Muse it's the only way to go. [Oct 2009]

Between My Head And The Sky is an intriuing record, crackling with an excitement that most new artists would struggle to generate. [Oct 2009, p.97]

This jazz grandee has nothing to prove, but his quest for a deeper understanding of the human spirit is encapsulated by Sacred Thread. [Dec 2022, p.87]

This album was submitted to Radio 1 in lieu of a mix, and in many ways it works better when considered on those terms. Because lots of the tracks have a similar vibe they could blend in perfectly well with each other, and it’s a shame that they don’t overlap at any point as this could have improved the overall experience. However, the album is still immensely enjoyable and generously rewards repeat listens.

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]

[Producer Bach shaped] fragmentary song ideas into sprawling, free-flowing arrangements that nod to Mark Hollis, Tim Buckley and Jim O'Rourke. [Sep 2016, p.90]

A piquant appetizer for the impending movie re-boot then, and a balm to those who still wake up screaming because of Stallone's 1995 film. [Jun 2012, p.82]

It's more varied and interesting: angular, Cure-guitar shapes, echoing shapes. [Oct 2018, p.94]

Broken Brights is like a stroll along the beach at dusk; reflective, intimate, nostalgic and yet full of tomorrow's promise. [Aug 2012, p.92]

A quietly entrancing atmosphere is sustained throughout. [Jul 2024, p.84]

Played with authority and aplomb. [Sep 2013, p.96]

While tracks like The Whirl, Receiver, Sensory Street and Human are among Marr's most impressive, Fever Dream is too long, uniform and persistent to enjoy in one sitting. Perhaps best, then, to take your time and discover its sparkling delirium in its 4 x 12-inch singles form. [Apr 2022, p.81]

Brutal and delicate, merciful and relentless, [Ahmed] luxuriate in the new spaces and sightlines the studio opens up. [Feb 2026, p.87]

Freed from that angst, the group sound more savage, more inspired and, crucially, more fun than they have for a quarter of a century. [Dec 2016, p.88]

This album underlines she's more than a mere rock'n'roll totem. [Oct 2014, p.91]

It's a coherent entity which should be heard as a whole. [May 2023, p.89]

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

Muscular, melodic... this is the best outing yet from the Etheridge-Travis Soft Machine. [May 2026, p.90]

There is nothing brash or student bout these subtle, layered songs: her vocals remain hushed, confiding, blurry, a distant cousin of Justin Vernon's abstract exhalations. [Jun 2026, p.84]

A ragged triumph. [Jul 2026, p.88]

Earthy, reassuringly calloused country and bluegrass is its currency. [Dec 2007, p.110]

A release that impresses throughout. [Nov 2011, p.99]

This is unlikely to expand thier fanbase, but The Mars Volta are making music built to last. [Feb 2008, p.113]

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

Overall, it's a gently entrancing and quietly elegant album. [Sep 2025, p.80]

An inspired makeover that only serves to complement Weaver's past achievements. [Aug 2019, p.93]

Five unreleased LP outtakes and alternate versions make this essential even for Fucked Up completists. [Feb 2010, p. 115]

Moonbuilding 2703 AD proves that his space academy can still churn our excellent results. [Aug 2015, p.88]

Thee oh Sees have never done ‘Thee oh Sees’ quite as well as they do here, a riot of lucid cacophony, androgyny, glowing vignettes of loveliness, and two drummers caught in the most sublime lockstep.

A collision of punk-fuelled cacophony, halting balladry and guttersnipe sensibility. [Dec 2003, p.112]

Repeated plays will bear deep rewards confirming both protagonist' growing stature in modern music. [Jun 2012, p.82]

This full of 303 squelches and flat, ever wonderful 808 thups-thups, sinister vocals and robot rumba rhythms. [Aug 2012, p.102]

Imarhan's 11 songs come wrapped in a soundscape; a surround-sound version would have the guitars and vocal central, but dust devils and translucent scorpions in the corners of your room, a sweet tea bubbling away and, after dark, the shuffling of a hyena behind the settee. the music expands to fill the space. [Mar 2022, p.82]

It hold together, though--a quiet coalition, but one that is wholly satisfying. [Dec 2017, p.89]

It proves to be an oblique, sometimes outre, but always artistic reinvestigation rather than an indulgent lap of honour around erstwhile glories. [Feb 2016, p.94]

Mollestad Thomassen's adoption of free-flowing soloing brings a sound less claustrophobic than before. Extraordinarily, in doing so, no power is lost. [Feb 2019, p.87]

A brilliant piece of art. [Mar 2017, p.91]

When the songs are this well-crafted, we'll be back again. [May 2017, p.88]

It's the vast common ground that they delicately negotiate and improvise in which makes Totality so enthralling, so satisfying. [Jun 2025, p.89]

It cannot have been a paucity of good songs, strong playing or contemporary production values that was the problem, the 13 hitherto unheard tracks on Wings of Love stunningly illustrate. [May 2013, p.102]

If aging has robbed the 86-year-old of anything, it's not audible here. [Aug 2019, p.96]

God times are promised--and delivered. [Feb 2012, p.99]

The Menace is a far more varied and ambitious LP than the first and, one suspects, than the Elastica album we'd have got four or three years ago. A very pleasant surprise.

This album feels personal, contemplative, yet thanks to Harris's blurred vocals, the meaning is never in focus, like notes sent back from the edge of a waking dream. [Oct 2021, p.96]

The glitchy future R&B of Playing House is evidence of Active Child's depth, but it's the emotional blood-letting of tracks like dark hymnal Way Too Fast which gives this record a gravitas most popular music never achieves. [Jan 2012, p.92]

Born In The Echoes finds them capturing the most elusive sound of all. They sound, at last, like themselves again. [Aug 2015, p.90]

These are songs to admire rather than lose oneself in. [Jan 2004, p.116]

Highly seductive and pulsates with youthful energy. [Mar 2023, p.88]

An album like this could be relevant at any time, really, but it takes the past couple of years to make it quite this livid. [Oct 2018, p.91]

Relic sounds like an album that could have been recorded in the last 50 years. [Aug 2014, p.89]

This record shows an artist stretching out to fill space, refusing to settle for anything small. [Oct 2024, p.85]

Finds an uncommonly energised Oldham ranging across his capacious back catalogue, his palpable enthusiasm manifesting in unlikely between-song whoops of joy. [Dec 2005, p.116]

When it comes to making smart, mischievous electronic merry, no one can touch him. [May 2006, p.105]

Some of his best songs yet. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Under~Between moves with a whisper from avant-garde chamber works to beguiling voice exercises and delicate percussion pieces, as if Hunt were creating ambient chamber scores for utopian landscapes, where birds chatter like computers, and passing cars sound like small sad jazz trios. [Apr 2021, p.85]

Whip-smart and wonderful. [Jul 2022, p.89]

In 2019 terms, then, it's a Village Green Preservation Society for people whose village is on the banks of the (alarmingly diminished) Niger River. [Feb 2019, p.91]

An evocative, synesthesic aura halos the second LP from the transatlantic trio. [Jan 2019, p.93]

It's a beautiful soundscape to get thoroughly lost in. [Apr 2025, p.87]

The sound they conjure is often heavenly. [May 2017, p.95]

Multi-Love's frequently tremendous follow-up. [May 2018, p.92]

If the crackle of original Dylan electrifies Marshall's voice, she finds her own phrasing, both robust and reverent, as she ringmasters Ballad Of A Thin Man's mystic forces, or brings a limpid empathy to Like A Rolling Stone. [Dec 2023, p.92]

From One Day's po-sweet surprise to DsharpG's shivery vocal/harmonium drones, each gear shift is proof of a compelling new voice. [Dec 2010, p.100]

If David Lynch were looking to soundtrack dreamlike disassociation, he need look no further. [Jun 2016, p.91]

It's a raucous portrait of a well-drilled band on fire. [Jul 2017, p.87]

His violin-led handiwork dazzles and swoons more than ever. [Aug 2019, p.96]

A beautifully honed vision of an often-harsh landscape. [Aug 2018, p.89]

The lovely Jaakko Eino Kalevi, the most coherent album so far from the former Helsinki tram driver, is a gem.

Fun House moves Duffy ever closer to the revelatory heart of the matter. [Nov 2021, p.92]

Aching, poetically quotidian observations permeate Universal Themes. [Aug 2015, p.89]

Hawk's stentorian baritone croon is almost irony free and his freewheeling songs blossom because of it. [Mar 2023, p.93]

Enough memorable moments to make this the first Catholics album worthy of your love and attention. [Sep 2003, p.113]

The grain and gravitas of Jones's voice is perfectly suited to this diverse material. [Jun 2012, p.82]

While the playful spirit and precise progressions of his previous albums linger, it's demonstrably darker entries that capture Gonzales's disarming craftsmanship best. [Oct 2018, p.91]

Her songwriting pen has never been sharper. [Jan 2026, p.83]

High Flyin' is a highlight of the bootleg series so far. [Jun 2023, p.105]

The beauty of Jump On It also lies in how it evolves Orcutt's music rather than compromises it. Start here and work backwards. [Jun 2023, p.89]

[A] deft combination of emotional intimacy and musical ambition. [Oct 2005, p.108]

He's embraced a lush, harmony-drenched sound akin to late-period Fleetwood Mac or even the outer reaches of yacht rock. Yet, it's underpinned by biting, literate lyrics and mostly crestfallen characters. [Apr 2022, p.83]

Portrait gives us what the composer feels are the definitive versions of these tracks. It's also an excellent introduction to this most singular of musicians. [Jan 2020, p.88]

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

Blood Karaoke ought to be an incoherent mess. Instead, it's a sometimes beautiful, sometimes brutal sound collage, with unexpected twists and turns every few seconds. [Jun 2022, p.84]

Adept at expressing keenly observed details in a Beat vernacular, he makes excellent use of a 14-piece string section and more drum machines than are typical for him. [Jul 2022, p.89]