Pissed Jeans might deal in uncompromising, near-unlistenable noise, but in a world gone increasingly crazy, their scourging hi-jinks make more and more sense. [Mar 2017, p.94]

A mix of pulsing, oven-ready bangers and darker reflections, Freakout/Release exudes the confidence of a band operating at its giddy peak. [Sep 2022, p.91]

[Jackie] is another near-masterpiece. [Apr 2017, p.93]

A sprawling Daphni DJ set in microcosm, Butterfly is feel-good music of the purest kind. [Mar 2026, p.89]

It's the skill of Tabor, the lyric interpreter, that is most telling and, predominately set around atmospheric piano and accordion arrangements, this deeply affecting collection of sea stories demonstrates the core of her art almost to perfection. [Mar 2011, p.108]

[A] terrific LP, which depicts a sickness at the heart of America with a confident swagger and righteous anger.

The Eraser is less crabbed, cryptic or violently bitter than Hail To The Thief... and is often more satisfying for that. [Aug 2006, p.86]

An hour of absorbing rhythmic transport, The Visitor fully satisfies the brief. [Aug 2013, p.84]

Rave Tapes does not find Mogwai colonising new territory, but that seems fair when their own stretch of land is still giving up such gold. [Feb 2014, p.89]

Not the Holy Grail that was promised... But considering what material is present, the set plays like a fairly compelling musical narrative. [Dec 2004, p.120]

A good listen. that slightly misses the debut's exuberant cohesion. [Aug 2014, p.86]

Despite its lulls, Ashes & Fire sounds like a new beginning. [Nov 2011, p.101]

The Bros' songs mostly rollick on witrh the agreeably vaudevillian bonhomie of The Band, when not essaying gloom with swooningly lachrymose balladry. [June 2008, p.114]

[Lekman] delivers a buoyant, frankly heart-wrenching, autobiographical album. [Oct 2012, p.86]

A sweet yet spiky soundtrack for our march into oblivion. [Jun 2014, p.89]

Icelandic duo reflect their homeland's long winter nights. [Jan 2016, p.98]

A glistening hybrid. [Dec 2020, p.87]

Karate consummately glide through those crisp changes, unleashing wafts of Thin Lizzy swing (Defendants), Hendrix-y picking (Liminal) and stuttering Costello new wave (Rattle The Pipes). Farina’s honey-voiced complaints (see Cannibals’ swingeing cancel-culture takedown) clinch a spicy comeback. [Nov 2024, p.86]

Buxton's posthumous appearance on the raw, Eddie Cochran-esque What Happened To You also shines, but elsewhere things sometimes get formulaic, the horror cod and the guillotine a little blunt. [Aug 2025, p.77]

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

Three LPs in a year is only a good idea if you have enough songs. [Oct. 2010, p. 94]

From the vogueish cat on their album cover to the deliberate non-production, Crazy For You comes wrapped in a hipster cloak, but Cosentino is no slacker. [Sep 2010, p.98]

Harte's mixture of charisma, vulnerability and errant tunefulness holds everything together. [Nov 2007, p.95]

Fab follow-up to 2009's Tomorrow Is Alright from the San Franciscan collective. [Sept. 2011, p. 95]

Ultra Mono is the almighty sound of the do getting done. [Oct 2020, p.82]

Moondust For My Diamond stays the right kind of precious. [Nov 2021, p.91

Glad Rag Doll breaks intriguing new ground for a hitherto smooth operator. [Nov 2012, p.90]

Atmos aplenty then, but more melodies like Magdalene's would be nice. [Dec 2015, p.94]

This short but sweet EP is her love letter to the Lone Star state. [Mar 2017, p.93]

Though some things never change, the Serge Gainsbourg-like instrumental Interlude (Wednesday Part 1) and electro-pop winners It's A Beautiful World and She Taught Me How To Fly are invigorating departures. [Dec 2017, p.90]

Little known natural wonders are gleaned from Rennie's witty and offbeat stories.... Meanwhile, Brett's deep bow-saw of a voice has never sounded so sonorous. [Jun 2013, p.87]

For the most part this pensive, intriguingly restrained album marks a welcome, if overdue, return. [Oct 2013, p.91]

Balf Quarry sees the duo swaggering through louche wah-wahed blues, no-wave barn burners and salty pop ditties, culminating in an eerily beautiful, piano-haunted fever dream. [May 2009, p.109]

This sensitive tribute lingers. [Jun 2012, p.86]

Here he achieves immediate take-off with a version of Nilsson's The Flying Saucer Song that could fit neatly on The Dark Side Of The Moon without too many people noticing. [Aug 2013, p.92]

An array of session superheroes fill the album with crackling electricity. [Mar 2014, p.93]

The indie poppers stay true to their roots with a tuneful balancing of high-tempo and the laid-back. [May 2014, p.96]

It's a journey worth taking with him. [Mar 2014, p.95]

These "little" songs have the feel of home-studio genesis, thanks to pitter-pattering drum machines, the unflashy layering of instruments, and the author's intimate lyrical reflections. [Feb 2016, p.94]

An unexpected sound-palette of smouldering beauty, often lit up by sumptuous orchestral arrangements from one Sebastian Hoffmann. [Jan 2017, p.101]

A perfect starting place for Holter neophytes, In The Same Room doesn't really add much to her extant discography. [Apr 2017, p.96]

Minor key, acoustic introspection done so beautifully it's as if they're singing to one another in the dustlight of a pub backroom. [Aug 2017, p.97]

An intriguing, undeniable gem. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Its breezy charm belies clever compositions and the odd jagged stylistic shift, but at 58 minutes feels overlong. [Nov 2018, p.96]

Though Robinson's limited lyrical purview rarely moves beyond "moths, dragonflies, bumblebees," the well-trodden poetry of the road and the inevitable woman with silver rings on her fingers, his soulful rasp, when combined with the Brotherhood's easy, 200-gigs-a-year musicality, is hard to resist. [Jul 2019, p.95]

The bluesiest tracks are best (Beat The Drum; Witness). [Oct 2019, p.92]

A step up from last year's choogling Livin' The Die: freakier and funnier. [Dec 2019, p.88]

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]

Sonic hexes that feel simultaneously cursed and curative. [Oct 2020, p.91]

While Time Skiffs sounds deeply, existentially scattered, every atom is in its rightful place. [Mar 2022, p.87]

The songs have a sort of likeable innocence; humanistic and quirky. ... Nothing not to like here. [Apr 2022, p.84]

Hugely entertaining. [June 2022, p.91]

Focusing in the songwriting, at its best the album recalls Gene Clark (Outsmarted), folksy Led Zeppelin (All God Did and Make You Happy) and even the very best of his father (the title track). [Aug 2025, p.77]

A deceptively simple set of songs that manage to explore his Southern roots while sounding as if they've always been around. [May 2026, p.84]

While the rest of Sigur Ros make babies, their singer creates too. [May 2010, p. 96]

There's something for anyone with a taste for things multicoloured and marvellously eclectic. [Nov 2008, p.104]

Samurai is a cheesy teen ballad similar to those written by David lynch and Angelo Badlamenti, where Vega gives us bulletins on the Magi and unsolved murders. It's typically unsettling and helps give the album some welcome structure. [May 2021, p.87]

With its onus on hooks, the result is an enjoyable, lightweight pop album. [May 2011, p.104]

A craftsman-tough album about decision times. [May 2011, p.106]

Lewis hasn't topped 2010's masterful Forget, but he has proved it was no fluke. [Aug 2012, p.87]

Occasionally, the lyrics veer into fuzzy abstraction, but the music never does. [May 2021, p.82]

This 77-minute abbreviation includes the 18-minute triptych 'Time Of Ye Life/Born For Nothing/Paranoid Arm Of Narcoleptic Empire, typifying CBP's simmering conflagration of Mogwai, Godspeed! and The God Machine. [May 2009, p.109]

This a masterful, emphatic stuff, brimful of poignant insights and unforgettable melodies. [Jun 2014, p.92]

A trippy reined-in take on Madlib's psychedelia across a powerfully conversational ode to person resurrection winningly contrasted against past druggy misdemeanours. [Jul 2017, p.93]

For all of Startisha's eclecticism, Juwan's visions are coherent, his voice assured. [Aug 2020, p.88]

Fluorescent keyboards crowd Kiwi Jr.'s once-open spaces on Chopper, making the surface of their first "produced" LP feel more like an oil slick than the band's past terrain of jagged delights. [Sep 2022, p.93]

Here they're presented as a crisp, razor-edged groove unit, with not a milligram of flab aboard. either instrumentally or melodically. [May 2024, p.84]

That bravery and those haunting songs make for an album that, while not the very best Oberst has made, buttresses his growing reputation as the best songwriter working today. [Sep 2008, p.102]

Sadly A&E neither draws on personal crisis or the intimacy of "Acoustic Mainlines" [June 2008, p.106]

It's a puzzler.... Given brilliant execution, no doubt we'd still have come out with out hands up. Instead, it's patchy and the worst comes first. [Dec 2001, p.114]

Much sparser and looser than we are used to from David Sylvian. [Sep 2003, p.101]

While initial listens don't suggest a classic like Kiko, one gets a feeling that this as a work that will reveal layers over time. [Sep 2010, p.104]

Have Some Faith In Magic pushes further out, into a gorgeous and strangely spacey conflagration between the pastel end of '70s prog, the Kosmiche end of funk and '90s dance. [Mar 2012, p.103]

As ever, though, their sheer weight in numbers often becomes overbearing. ... Yet, while their palpable urgency is frequently dissipated in the splurge, Hug Of Thunder's peaks are sky-scraping, indeed. [Aug 2017, p.88]

A superbly crafted reiteration of Walker's aesthetic, with the Chicago scene influences of 2016's Golden Sings That Have Been Sung given greater prominence. [Jun 2018, p.90]

The sounds that Volker Bertelmann creates with(in) a piano is astonishing. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The undoubted highlight is a completely reconstructed version of Ring of Fire that's guaranteed to stay in your heart forever. [May 2012, p.82]

Mostly, Suit Yourself matches its predecessor's brilliance. [Jul 2005, p.100]

Contains some of Broadcast's most adventurous music. [Sep 2006, p.118]

An uber-melodious debut.[Mar 2014, p.96]

Occasionally infuriating when great ideas are cast aside indiscriminately, Wolf's vision remains undimmed. [May 2017, p.92]

As an album it's uneven, but tantalisingly the harmony-driven 'Hang Them All' sounds like "Tim"-era Replacements and hints at even bigger things to come. [Sep 2009, p.92]

Despite her emotional punk-meets-Brecht contralto, Marianne's vocal limitations are clear on tracks like 'Easy Come, Easy Go' or Sondheim's Somewhere (A Place For Us)' which she struggles through with an overawed Jarvis Cocker. But she shines on songs that seem more personal to her. [Apr 2009, p.99]

His music finally a match to his unswerving anti-capitalist manifesto. [Jan 2013, p.93]

Never overwrought, A La Sala is a cool exercise in the beauty of restraint and understated groove mastery, exploring new vistas without subverting Khruangbin's blueprint. [Jun 2024, p.88]

Vanishing Point might be the best of this bunch, the group's B-movie R&B leaner and lairier than ever. [May 2013, p.86]

Reveals a still intense and enthralling grittiness to her performances. [Feb 2006, p.93]

[It is] a testament to Hunter's ongoing vim. [Sep 2009, p.96]

After eight years, EWF are right back in the groove. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Seven Dials reminds us of the joy Frame finds in craft, its grateful rallentando endings, plum chord-voicing and exquisitely sung choruses elevating a work that seems part break-up album, part understated redemption story. [Jun 2014, p.94]

Wrangler's is a twitching, throbbing, mildly dystopian sound-world of vivid analogue synthesizer tones, overlaid with heavily processed vocals. [Jun 2014, p.96]

More diverse, howling dirges from the West Coast quartet. [Oct 2015, p.98]

Meredith and David Metcalf craft slow-rolling CA ghost ballads, beguiling end-of-days stories with the same mournful beauty as The Triffids' Born Sandy Devotional. [Oct 2017, p.98]

All 12 songs have a warmth and, often as not, a jangle and sweet harmonies. [Nov 2017, p.100]

The Caribbean funk that results, however, sounds unpredictable, i,possibly human and imperfect. Oh, and fun. [Sep 2020, p.89]

The music makes fearsome sense on its own, but a viewing of The Cry Of Jazz is recommended before listening. [Jun 2023, p.87]

Barratt’s plummy texts present fragmentary narratives aquiver with unresolved tension and hyperreal detail. Her compadre is talking them up as In Every Dream Home A Heartache rebooted, but Loose Talk is surely but an intriguing distraction compared to that pop-cultural landmark. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Gush's sticky, slightly unsettling sensuality suggest Smith is on a serious mission to get right under the skin if human connection. [Sep 2025, p.84]