The latest set of back-porch ballads, junkshop country hymns and chiming indie rock--all born of his beloved Arizona desert. [Nov 2013, p.94]

That Aurthur Jeffes--son of late Penguin Cafe orchestra founder Simon Jeffes--is a chip off the old block is becoming increasingly clear. [Mar 2014, p.91]

Suffice to say, they've kept their edge. [Dec 2015, p.93]

The DIY disco maverick channels vintage R&B and thrilling dancefloor pop of an '80s Madonna/Janet/TLC stripe, in a voice that's crystal cool in up and downtempo settings. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Future Islands still sound thrillingly marginal, people standing on an emotional faultline, waiting to be swallowed up. [May 2017, p.94]

MC Dalek's indignant imagery can be tricky to unpick, yet his barbed lines are hard to dislodge on Weapons And Battlecries. [Oct 2017, p.96]

A lysergic brew of dust-blown ballads, thumping punk rock and shimmery psychedelia. The jarring stylistic clash is often part of the charm. [Dec 2019, p.88]

For the most part Swift doesn't stray far from The Great Dylan Songbook. [Oct 2020, p.86]

Pearlies has more the feel of a wistful autumnal folk record than any kind of'90s throwback. [Dec 2023, p.92]

The songs often begin like standards then vanish beneath noise creeping in from the sides. .... Before the music returns to the foreground, triumphant. [Aug 2025, p.83]

A challenging yet rewarding listen. [Aug 2025, p.85]

Their trademark bubblegum choruses are all reassuringly present, with a handful of songs here good enough to tough it out with anything on their early revered studio albums. [Dec 2025, p.83]

It's disappointing that only 12 tracks have been handpicked for this release. [Jan 2007, p.124]

They remain ridiculous, but thunderingly good fun. [Dec 2019, p.91]

All intriguing and unique, but as the concluding third settles into shapeless moodiness, Hesitation Marks could've done with some pruning. [Oct 2013, p.87]

COYB trade in wintery, foreboding hymnals that conjure Sigur Ros, Radiohead and an existentially challenged Aled Jones staring out across the abyss. [Apr 2012, p.94]

If the lyrics deal with wavering states of mind and quiet struggles, though, the music is sharp and direct, echoing Belly or Tsunami but also keeping pace with Lucy Dacus or Phoebe Bridgers. [Oct 2025, p.88]

Nadler's cathartic inner journey isn't always as easy to empathise with as it is artfully expressed. [Oct 2018, p.88]

There's still no room for the instrumental warm-up, so don't throw out that original bootleg. [Jun 2012, p.99]

The 75-year-old's first album in six years is both tough and tender. [Nov 2014, p.93]

Nit-pick all you want but this is a tour de force, heady, joyful, ambitious, elegiac and--as with the 1968 original--unlike anything else. [Apr 2009, p.99]

White Stuff once again feels like the work of avant-garde self-mythologisers inveigling themselves into the Stones' Nellcote basement. But the riffs, cutting a swathe through dense electronic meltdown, are the strongest they've engineered, together or apart, since 1997's Accelerator. and there's a neww, mature pathos to the likes of Suburban Junkie Lady. [Apr 2019, p.96]

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is more lyrically direct and honest, even if the lure of The Big Music remains strong for Welch. [Jul 2015, p.87]

Are You Serious is goosebump thrilling and deeply moving. It's also warm and funny, even in its darkest moments. [May 2016, p.93]

What Pony can't disguise is its influences: Orbison, Presley and Morrissey at their most doleful and camp, channelled through a similarly luscious baritone. [May 2019, p.91]

With the skeleton of a dance beat on Daydream, you can picture Powers doing a little skip around his bedroom, momentarily escaping the sad, hermetic beauty that characterises his record. [Jan 2012, p.96]

What could have been a confused, trying-to-be-hip mish-mash is instead a re-playable collection of extremely strong songs, Paul's most interesting, varied and soul-baring in years. [Dec 2013, p.84]

You can't accuse Powers of resting on his laurels--although it's at the expense of some of that first record's unique character. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Buck's guitars are supportive throughout, inspired by Haines's alternative universes. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Overall, The Chills' seventh album is about Phillipps drawing a line between now and what was seen on screen, gathering strength and moving forward. [Jun 2021, p.82]

A relatively orthodox live recording. [Dec 2014, p.92]

This time there's more of an improvised, experimental feel. ... Once again, Beam wrote most of the songs, but the imprint of both acts is pretty equal. [Jul 2019, p.94]

These are stories about patterns of behaviour, like dreams that keep returning, or won't end. The way out, these songs counsel, lies in relinquishing. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Sometimes, it fits and sounds glorious. ... But on other tracks it sounds like an Aphex B-side is bleeding in from the next room. Beneath the white noise, however, Moreland is in rich form. [May 2020, p.88]

A lovely album, but not one which lingers. [Jan 2026, p.87]

Fourth outing for the hirsute folk/pop alchemist. [Feb. 2011, p. 107]

An odball masterpiece. [Oct 2003, p.110]

A fabulous, strangely soothing listen. [Feb 2004, p.100]

Sharp, sleek, sophisticated, more going on (jazzy horns, juicy backing vocals, switchblade rock guitar) than a couple of spins can take in and seductive enough to keep drawing you back.

We Are Chaos thrives when Manson ditches his horrorcore shtick and actually emotes. [Nov 2020, p.80]

Michael Collins' latest sounds like a 21st century Ween--knowing pastiches of '70s Laurel Canyon, '60s jazz soundtracks and more, with guests. [Oct 2016, p.100]

It feels more like 10 individual songs than an album. [Mar 2017, p.93]

There are some surprising nuances in the set. [May 2016, p.91]

It's a noticeably urban record, an irritated rebuttal to the notion that dance music is dead. [Jun 2005, p.98]

Using jaunty jigs and marches, [Matmos] mishandle flutes, bagpipes, violins and God knows what else to illustrate the mid-1800s battlefield. [Oct 2003, p.111]

MacNeil is certainly a stronger singer--though without the coarse and charismatic Carter there's a sense that they are now one punk band among many, albeit still more sonically violent than most. {Oct 2012, p.86]

Debut album from an eclectic yet melodic Omaha band. [July 2010, p. 97]

Thankfully it finds Richter exploring other directions. [Sep 2010, p.94]

While Heart-Shaped Scars might not be the first flowering of such wistful folk mysteries, it still brings in a good harvest. [Sep 2021, p.80]

Every Valley is timely and useful. [Aug 2017, p.89]

In the main, conjure strange, eerie atmospheres filled with ghostly spirits like those inhabiting the recordings of Del Shannon and Joe Meek. [Oct 2021, p.95]

They deliver breathless, urgent rifferama, elements of which can be traced to RATM, The Stooges and Placebo.

An extraordinary 80-minute concept album. [Oct 2020, p.91]

It mostly works but can be breathless. [Dec 2020, p.82]

Budget-price corporations such as Lidl and Ryanair take a mauling, amid a sonic barrage which occasionally coalesces into pleasing punk-funk but mostly glories in making lap-steel sound like a cement mixer. [Nov 2022, p.92]

Darnielle is a lyrical genius, for sure, but... you're left wishing for a song, just one song, that doesn't sound like a man strumming or plucking that damned folky guitar. [Mar 2004, p.96]

Gist Is feels like an urgent conversation,a record driven by compulsion; fortunately, tuning in to its internal dialogue is a pleasure. [Sep 2014, p.93]

Red Barked Tree compares favorably with the very best of the definitive Wire. [Feb. 2011, p. 98]

Every so often an album comes along that's so original it's difficult to accurately liken it to anything else--even Efterklang's last album, "Tripper," is left behind by Parades. [Nov 2007, p.106]

Producer Joe Henry complements Toussaint with respectful production and respected guests including Charles Lloyd, Van Dyke Parks and the thrilling trilling of Rhiannon Giddens. [Jul 2016, p.94]

She indulges her mystical side to mesmerising effect. [Dec 2005, p.100]

It ranks right up there with 2010's exquisite Black Sands. [Feb 2017, p.98]

Hypnotic Eye mostly returns to their earliest days of razor-edged guitars and garage rock.... The listless You Get Me High and Burnt Out Town's clunky blues may let the side down, but it feels good to finally have the real Heartbreakers back. [Aug 2014, p.94]

[An album that] makes you wonder where they will travel next. [Nov 2011, p.101]

The key problem lies in the album's occasional sense of underachieving drift. [Aug 2001, p.104]

Its songs hurtle at Buzzcocks pace and fizz with nagging melodies. [Jun 2003, p.110]

Brings to mind the MC5, the Stones and Otis Redding. [Jun 2003, p.113]

Half of Release feels like an old routine -- looming melancholy and not-quite-cheery disco by the pound. [Apr 2002, p.108]

As eloquent an emotional discourse as [Gedge] has mustered. [Mar 2005, p.101]

This is their best album in 65 years. [May 2005, p.94]

Crowell employs his gift for setting complex ideas to twangy hooks. [Oct 2005, p.101]

A big-tableau statement that combines his musical and ideological passions. [May 2007, p.106]

Joni Mitchell delivers a counter-intuitive, brilliant artistic response. [Oct 2007, p.90]

North Star Deserter is unrestrained and always affecting. [Nov 2007, p.106]

The sunshine's grim down their way, but their best songs allow a glimmer. [Apr 2009, p.109]

More than great, this is well worth hearing for the Tex Mex No Way I'll Never Need You, Lone Star barroom rocker Just About Time, beautifully-sung After The Storm, and state-of-the nation border ballad Homeland Refugee. [May 2009, p.101]

Still totally themselves, Madness have made the album of their career. [Jun 2009, p.100]

Male Bonding brilliantly transpose their neighbourhood's scrufffy, rule-breaking fashion ethos into an exhilaratingly melodic breed of post-hardcore punk rock. [June 2010, p. 96]

Cantrell's voice exudes greater purity than Wells's and she has some tricks up her sleeve, one being an original that gives the album its title, a song that namechecks Wells and other country icons such as Maybelle Carter and Martha Carson. [Jun 2011, p.105]

His craftsman's melodiousness and honest voice add balm and balance. [Jun 2012, p.84]

This very playable record has a broad appeal at the same time as it reasserts modern electronica's vitality. [Jan 2013, p.98]

Though their sound seems delicate and ethereal, in a live setting the quartet's music yields plenty of compelling sonic drama. [May 2013, p.94]

It's gritty urban dramas never become too heavy-hearted, the breezy tunes blowing through like prime Jonathan Richman. [Jul 2013, p.84]

A two-hour 2-CD trip, hanging free in reflective well being. [Jul 2013, p.96]

Weiss weaves his way through a songbook that encompasses olde-tyme rock, jazz, R&B and Cajun sounds. [Jun 2014, p.90]

Whether melodic and mellow or blown out and busy, this exhilarating ride through rock's back pages offers irrefutable proof that these Nordic giants are currently operating at the peak of their powers. [Jun 2014, p.94]

A soothing balm in anxious times. [Nov 2014, p.93]

The Decemberists' seventh is unlikely to weaken their commercial pull. [Feb 2015, p.91]

The songs on All These Dreams luxuriate in their arrangements, swept along by gossamer strings, and silky backing vocals. [Apr 2015, p.92]

An exercise in soulful, somnambulant alt-R&B with a distinctively British sound. [Jul 2015, p.91]

This is restrained music-making; a slow-release capsule of languid grooves, haunting vocals and crafted songwriting. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Pulsing, hypnotic 13-minute opener Tardis Cymbals is a tough act to follow, with its primitive drum machines and rippling bassline, yet they trump it with voyages into scything death disco, bright Floydian vistas and even '60s vocal pop on Liquid Gate. [Mar 2016, p.95]

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

And the Anonymous Nobody is another stroke of inventive brilliance from ever-humble, non-showboating masters of the long-playing arts. [Sep 2016, p.92]

The Song Of Day And Night catches Jones aka Summertyme at his best. [Jun 2017, p.91]

The melancholy Tumbleweed sound become the sound of '70s country rock. [Jul 2017, p.100]

When he slows for a stroll through You Ain't Going Nowhere and offers up the obscure Abandoned Lover as a wonderfully interpreted finale, you're hit by the realisation that Willie has actually pulled off what is unquestionably a daunting challenge. [Sep 2017, p.94]

At times, it recalls the late-'60s acid blues experiments on Leigh Stephens' Red Weather and Peter Green's The End Of The Game but with a shimmering summer optimism and textural complexity all MacKay's own. [Oct 2017, p.92]