The results so far, as on 2006's martial piledriver "Empire," have both been levitating and gut-level, as befits a group who count DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" and Oasis's "Definitely Maybe" among their musical epiphanies. These same virtues are all over "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum." [Jul 2009, p.93]

Krautrock surrogates get expansive on fourth album. [March 2011, p. 96]

III is third time lucky in all senses other than sadly-departed guitar visionary David Hackney being around to share in the joy it brings. [May 2014, p.87]

Pulsing with youthful rebellion, PV sound wildly bacchanalian. [Jun 2015, p.96]

In its own way, Time is as pleasingly surprising as Bowie's re-emergence. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Through the hypnotic, J Dilla produced Love to the ghostly Incense, the short skit You Loving Me to the skittish jazz of Agitation, it's the sound of an artist in full, uncensored flow. [June 2010, p. 93]

Her beautifully compassionate songs are cradled in gentle, melodic arrangements from ever-inventive producer John Vanderslice. [Aug 2015, p.94]

Amanda Shires has made the year's most emotionally raw album. [Nov 2025, p.86]

Bonny Light Horseman probably could've said just as much over half the tracks, but the fact they had the courage to keep digging ever deeper into their emotional turbulence has bourne spectacular results. [Jul 2024, p.87]

She keeps the mood focused and the music softly funky. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Callahan is back on track. [Jun 2005, p.104]

Beyond box-ticking cameos from Snoop, Nas, Eminem and Busta Rhymes, horror film-stringed posse cut The Vow (with relative unknowns Mad Squablz, J-S.A.N.D. and Don Pablito) shows LL at his sharpest, “movin’ chess pieces like telekinesis” and stretching his elasticity to ridiculous extremes. Call it a comeback. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Easily their most accessible album, Algiers is also Calexico at their most expansive and very, very best. [Oct 2012, p.94]

The definitive elements of this bijou gem are the author's own. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Beguilingly, knowingly rendered debut. [Jul 2023, p.92]

A feverish set that borders on near-delirium. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Without sounding like a faintheart, it comes as a relief that this album features a crop of high quality songs and instrumentals playing with dazzling finger-picking. [Mar 2017, p.90]

An understated treat. [Nov 2011, p.103]

Sounds miraculously unburdened by its conceptual weight.[Dec. 2011 p. 90]

It's Williams's confessions, delivered with an intensity worthy of Richard Thompson, that make their second album so compelling. [Apr 2025, p.79]

A hypnotic and original treat, an utterly timeless futurist retro symphony. [Jan 2008, p.100]

This second RVG record finesses a precision indie-pop sound hinged up on Reuben Bloxham's chiming guitar, equal parts Johnny Marr and Darklands-era William Reid - a classy backdrop for one of 2020's most arresting batch of lyrics so far. [Jul 2020, p.78]

Vibrant and uninhibited, dotted with rule-bending twists, Mood Valiant is the sound of summer. [Aug 2021, p.88]

It's lovely stuff throughout. [Apr 2015, p.87]

A lofty ambition [songs to heal some souls], perhaps, but one this resonant and deeply pleasurable album achieves with grace and groove. [Aug 2021, p.78]

It take a rare confidence and skill to throw a million (roughly) ideas into an album and make it sound not just coherent but as good as this one. [Apr 2012, p.91]

Here is The Stooges Mk I's answer to the James Williamson-era Metallica KO - ferociously exciting on the brink of collapse. [Sep 2020, p.99]

Mohawk finds him reaching an apotheosis. [May 2014, p.90]

This is a thing of deftly understated beauty from pillar to post. [Mar 2002, p.104]

Silence Yourself demands you shut up and listen. Compliance is advised. [Jun 2013, p.87]

The results isn't just his best album post-Sonic Youth, but some of the best music he's ever released. [Oct 2020, p.90]

An album full of inspired electronic melody and pastoral reflection culminating in the heartsore title track. [Oct 2016, p.100]

Death Cab weave together smartly taut guitars with vivid observational lyrics to create perfectly crafted pop songs, stunning in their simplicity and beauty. [Apr 2002, p.96]

You're left with the impression that Lower Dens are both big sounding and very clever. [Jun 2012, p.85]

A haunting meditation on the state of America in the age of Trumpery (How I Wish) is the highlight, preceding the title track’s rousing gospel call to civil rights action. In contrast, she also documents the intimate and personal (Nothing Personal). [Aug 2024, p.89]

[Day Breaks] is arguably her masterpiece to date. [Nov 2016, p.90]

Charmer is in essence an Americana and power-pop confection with piano and tasteful guitars swaddled in the choicest vintage tones. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Through it all, Veirs' voice remains intimate but deadpan -- a la Suzanne Vega. [Sep 2005, p.96]

Confirm Mumford & Sons are back in business. [Apr 2026, p.85]

West Kirby Country Primary declares the vivid flowering of a great talent. [Dec 2015, p.84]

An audacious, X-rated treat. [Aug 2006, p.90]

Masterful vocal mash-ups with London songstress Poppy Ajudha, South African electronic upsetter Nonku Phiri and a wonderfully gravelly Obongjayar help propel this testament to Boyd's illimitable outlook far into the stratosphere. [Mar 2020, p.91]

It ranks among the best work of a major innovator and his unfeasibly talented Magic Bands. [Dec 2014, p.106]

[An] engrossing paean to wrestling's heyday.[Dec. 2011, p.93]

The lyrics' heavy-hearted take on relationships is more evidence of an astonishing maturity at play. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Bursting with invention, energy and occasionally cheesy synths.[May 2018, p.95]

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]

Sonic Soul Surfer mostly trades in toe-tapping slide-guitar riffage. [Apr 2015, p.88]

This band could, and should, go mega. [Jan 2003, p.99]

If "Street Horrsing" was a bit of a lark, then Tarot Sport plays an altogether more serious game. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Estoile Naiant is a work of excessive indirection and wonder that becomes terrifying only if you try to define its boundaries. [May 2014, p.90]

Their most ruthlessly focused. [Nov 2020, p.88]

For every song that reacts against the last album, another chimes perfectly with its mood of epic redemption. [Sep 2003, p.101]

Distractions is one addictive rush of spiky DIY energy. [Aug 2015, p.96]

Wasner downplays the rockier aspects of her previous two solo records to delve into her Joni bag, pulling out both folk and AOR models - with streaks of Americana - sourcing gorgeous melodies to match her glowing vibrato that resembles a young Lucinda Williams. [Dec 2025, p.84]

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

From Out Of Nowhere is a stronger, better focused set than its predecessor. [Dec 2019, p.84]

The delicious, Moroder breakbeat thump of Birth4000 and squealing garagey rave of Vocoder (Club Mix) have the swagger and heft to leave club soundsystems wobbling, but also need good headphones for home enjoyment. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Buchanan's Voice is the star, but his songs rarely let him down. [Mar 2026, p.86]

It's when everything begins to fan out like a peacock's tail at the height of courting season that you're reminded just why Newsom is a 21st century one-off. [Nov 2015, p.84]

Awash in trademark snaky overdrive, heavy sustain and controlled feedback, this is a big, rich work of buzzy acid-blues melodicism, the unique sound of a guitar virtuoso sketching wild patterns for late-night journeying. [Dec 2016, p.94]

The songs are gorgeous, lyrical, chimerical, the arrangements weighty, complex and cool. [Jan 2019, p.89]

A meditative counterpoint to Reflection. [May 2022, p.94]

If 2018's fragile debut At Weddings tended to become lost in the beautifully abstract mists as the Pastor's daughter explored faith and its losses, I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This... navigates using sharper corners and edges. [Jun 2022, p.84]

It was uniquely visionary--primordially rockin', yet titled defiantly at the stars. [Dec 2012, p.101]

The alert and taut Always Ascending restores theband's original pop kinesis and then some. It is by far and away their most interesting offering since that debut album. [Mar 2018, p.92]

Bluefinger marks an artistic rebirth for the king of quiet/loud. [Sep 2007, p.110]

Rose's songwriting revels in its directness. [Jun 2021, p.90]

Here her wonderful voice, smooth and warm with throaty twang and unforced power, has free rein to do what it does best on 11 fine new songs. [May 2008, p.111]

Greene here pulls together abstract R&B, twisted 2-step and crunching house, skillfully adopting vocal techniques employed by his heroes, Masters At Work. [May 2017, p.91]

A cache of hissy, vivid, occasionally creepy but mostly sweetly touching brain pop that stands proudly alongside GBV's ragged former glories. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Listener as shrink? A bit, but you'll be happy to attend E's chaise longue. [Mar 2013, p.86]

The 10 songs here complements mainman Creston Spiers' whisper-to-howl vocals with startling dynamic shifts. [Sep 2008, p.106]

Emiliana is blessed in her musical collaborator Dan Carey, with whom she calibrates an acoustic-led chamber trip-hop with plenty of room for her voice to breathe. [Nov 2008, p.111]

It boasts stronger songs than Stern's 2007 debut "In Advance Of The Broken Arm," without losing the fretboard fireworks that made its predecessor an underground smash. [Feb 2009, p.106]

A record you don't want to turn your back on in any way. [May 2019, p.93]

The Jeff Buckleyesque epic 'Larkspur' and the desolately pretty 'It Hits Deeper' raise the bar for sensitive creatives everywhere. [May 2009, p.103]

This Is The Sonics emits the same primal heat that's inspired successive generations of garage-dwellers, from the Cramps through Mudhoney to The White Stripes. [May 2015, p.90]

The result is laidback and chilled. [Apr 2003, p.104]

Barnes's first outing in seven years offers a timely blast of healing positivity, all but impossible to resist. [Jan 2023, p.84]

Though other instruments emerge from their corners their sparing deployments against Amidon's fragile voice lends them a far greater power, like vivid flourishes of colour in a starkly monochrome film. [Jun 2013, p.92]

Life is rarely more tellingly captured in music. [May 2014, p.89]

The production... is appropriately lush and celebratory, brimming over with strings, synthesizers and layered, sensuous vocals. [July 2000, p.111]

Last Day Of Summer confirms that White Denim have a broad understanding of music as a whole... Their ability to synthesise this knowledge makes them one of the most thrilling forces in rock music right now. [Jan 2012, p.96]

From the second opener Get Got's frantic arpeggiations synths kick-in there's little let-up on a mind-mugging set so fresh even Delia Smith can't test its flavour. [Jun 2012, p.85]

Ultimately, Future Echoes is a dark pop album, as joyful as it is unexpected. [Oct 2016, p.95]

A perpetual guilty pleasure. [Jun 2004, p.107]

The result is a most ambitious, rewarding and soulful debut. [Nov 2016, p.86]

For every infectious pop song, there's a lengthy, piano-and-synth-based epic, and everywhere a lust for life. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Shows he hasn’t lost the knack for marrying accessible melodies with vivid storytelling, wry humour and subversive lyrics. [Nov 2024, p.85]

There can't have been a better 1968 record in all of 2015. [Dec 2015, p.90]

Martin’s sounds are of a grain so abrasive as to draw blood, but while much of Machine’s considerable power to thrill derives from Martin’s sonic extremism, there’s an impish creativity also at play. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Once inside, you discover fresh wonders. [Dec 2016, p.104]

Focused, melancholy, modern ghost blues, these 10 rough-hued duets move from jeremiad to elegy, from love ballad to lament to scream. [Jan 2019, p.91]

[A] more light-hearted, and lightweight, fifth album. [Nov 2014, p.106]

11 searching, beautifully rendered songs which rhythm section Jay Bellerose and Jennifer Condos finesse with artful subtlety. [Jul 2022, p.91]

Immediately and huantingly familiar, it circumvents pastiche courtesy of a mischievous cut'n'paste aesthetic. [Feb 2008, p.108]