While they haven't suddenly become a different proposition, they are exploring structure and metre. [Dec 2016, p.88]

One to file alongside fan favourites Aether (2001) and Open (2013): records that initially appear starkly minimalist, but gradually reveal boundless, beautiful depths. [Dec 2024, p.85]

A record that makes the tortured beauty of Tilt appear like a mildly resigned shrug. [Jun 2006, p.102]

A saucer-eyed treat. [Apr 2022, p.84]

Diverse yet cohesive. [Jan 2016, p.96]

The record comes on like a sweaty, amphetamine-fuelled rehearsal room bash that went extraordinarily well. [Oct 2006, p.102]

Almost impossible to replicate in the studio, this is the level of energy and conviction which drives the album as newly buoyant Thompson discovers his second wind. Scintillating. [Sep 2010, p.93]

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

Dan's Boogie remains fascinatingly obscure in places, but these songs are full of buried gold. [May 2025, p.84]

Think more of pastoral My Morning Jacket or Irish superstar-in-waiting James Vincent McMorrow and their keening, introspective-yet-expansive songs. [Mar 2013, p.96]

As a whole it lacks the unity of mood the characterised White Ladder... but there is much to love. [Dec 2002, p.106]

A dizzying series of minimalist Afro-psych mantras, Ay Ay Ay interlaces eccentric pounding beats, multitrack boom-tsch hiccups, and nervy fragmented vocals, building a groove that crackles with the rhythmic perversity of Arthur Russell's strangest sound experiments but drives on like a reborn TV On The Radio who've learnt to lose it down the disco. [Jan 10, p. 90]

While containing only new songs, feels like a greatest hits and as such is a perfect entry point for Giant Sand neophytes. [Jun 2015, p.90]

[Supermigration] fastens pillow-soft beats to steadfast bass lines in a variant of the motorik rhythm. [Jun 2013, p.89]

There's an impressive sense of pop classicism, but these songs are even more melodically insistent, occassionally verging on show-tune mellifluousness. [Apr 2010, p.105]

Smoke Fairies still possess great harmonies and sweet melodies, but they now come steel clad. [Jun 2012, p.92]

Its claustrophobia is total, unique, spellbinding. [Mar 2005, p.106]

An exquisite, meditative experience. [Nov 2017, p.108]

In their hands, [a cover of Nina Simone's Assignment Song is] a hypnotic wonderwall of sound. [Dec 2016, p.89]

The best Gang Of Four tribute album... ever. [Nov 2005, p.96]

Even though Marathon is rife with such oblique, ominous trails (Safety offers "Compleete us/King snake ringed with rust"), it still feels like a personal and revealing testimonial. [Apr 2026, p.93]

The album follows a North American folk linage from Jean Ritchie and Hedy West through to the present, via the chugging, churning electronic (folk) rock of The Velvet Underground, all the time infused with a joyous communal warmth. [Nov 2012, p.85]

A filmic atmosphere is constant. [Jan 2016, p.96]

A raw, often unnerving experience, but it delivers compelling and uplifting catharsis. [Apr 2020, p.94]

The songs are often slow (Boise, Idaho and One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Night with You) are lovely), sometimes more upbeat (smile-inducing Tonight With The Dogs I'm Sleeping; waltz-time Guns Are For Cowards) occasionally Doomy (Is My Living In Vain?). and all backed by a rich ensemble of Nashville "cats". [Mar 2025, p.90]

Sometimes it's more about a blues feeling, encompassing high-lonesome, electric country-blues rock, two-chord garage rock and at its most beautiful on the opening track Promise The World. [Apr 2017, p.94]

The whole record's buzzy, hat-wearingly trendy; but also irresistible, and almost boundlessly exciting. [July 2008, p.104]

Gibbons rises to the occasion. [May 2019, p.89]

Exactly the sort of angry rebel rock you want from a band with their backs it the walls and foes on all sides. [Apr 2017, p.96]

This fifth and self-produced eponymous LP restates their collective intent with the hip-hop groove and soaring chorus of Gold Rush, the breezy drivetime rock of Old Tape (tackling persistent self-criticism) and the Judee Sill verses of Mad Love. [Jun 2025, p.80]

With producer Owen Morris at the controls, Which Bitch? always promised to be a riotous affair. [Mar 2009, p.107]

This cleaner-sounding set finds the quartet's elemental power now yielding to poise, thier speaker-bleeding blues and jagged riffs leavened by folk shimmer and country jangle. [Mar 2009, p.110]

Less like leftovers from a previous album than another move forward, creating out of his prepared piano and mini string section something fresh, subtle and beguiling. [Apr 2009, p.106]

Together, Holden & Zimpel deliver something restorative and transcendental. [Aug 2025, p.80]

It's his skill as a bruised, intimate narrator that makes this album such an alluring addition to Doe's swelling canon. [Feb 2003, p.90]

There are simple messages, delivered earnestly, but the magic of this group has always been their ability to translate the elemental into the transcendental. It is a miracle they pull off frequently on My Morning Jacket, with confidence and inspiration, every moment a fresh beginning. [Nov 2021, p.85]

As striking as her career-defining 2010 album, The Brothel. [Sep 2017, p.92]

With percussionist Sam Clayton growling the vocals here,they bathe in the blues, immersed in classics by masters Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Little Walter. [Jul 2024, p.89]

The nonpareil group's best record in exactly a decade. [Apr 2023, p.82]

It could all be so much MOR easy-on-the-earwash but Gardot's silken voice, musicality and knack for a telling lyric exude class. [Jun 2012, p.92]

While Riddick doesn't boast the vocal chops of his heroes, telling interventions from Q-Tip, Leon Sylvers III and The Doggfather himself flesh out his questing intergalactic creations with charm to spare. [Oct 2015, p.89]

Zajac's gnomic lyrics make the direct bits hit that bit harder, and if there are swamp-fuzz debts to J.J. Harvey, it is still a powerful piece of personal witness-bearing. [Jan 2026, p.85]

Highlights: I Know's breathless vocals and pummeled drums; Invisible Man's irradiated energy, railing against Alzheimer's. [Nov 2016, p.96]

The melodies are so lush and the arrangements so stylish that you can't deny them. [Jun 2005, p.105]

No retro trip, this, greasy grooves and hollered pulpit soundbytes remain Blue Explosion's prime business--and business is good. {Oct 2012, p.90]

Labyrinthitis is another tantalising Destroyer album, one that resists being clutched too tight or loved too hard as it roams its peculiar world. [Apr 2022, p.86]

Harmonious stuff, in every sense. [Jul 2023, p.86]

Daunting? Yes. Fun and engaging? That too. [Apr 2026, p.86]

Rekindle the guileless spirit of mid-'90s alt rock in The Alarmist's twilit wistfulness; or Moment's surge of power-chord melancholy. [Feb 2020, p.96]

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

A rich seam of molten psychedelic heaviness pitched between Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. [Jan 2016, p.96]

The majority of Not Too Late hums with a placid darkness and neurosis which is as delicious as it is unexpected. [Feb 2007, p.104]

Their traditional strengths remain, chiefly McVeigh's rich vocals and their knack of emphasising a simple hook with a cacophonous, multilayered production. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Songs like the Breeders-worthy single Doubt reveal serious song-writing smarts. [Nov 2023, p.94]

These former young lions are well on their way to becoming venerated old masters. [Nov 2022, p.91]

It is as timely as it is sobering and, in places, austerely, compellingly beautiful. [Nov 2022, p.90]

The result is a brilliant modern singer-songwriter record, full of wit and musical variations. [May 2009, p.100]

Heavy with atmosphere, Dream House doesn't disappoint, corralling their genius for cerebral house chicanery, subtle techno and motorik rhythms. [Jul 2018, p.95]

Homme has gone on to make sexier records, but for sheer creepy sensuality QOTSA is the definitive article. [Apr 2011, p.112]

Expertly sequenced as a narrative of lethargy, collapse and recovery, Purple Mountains is ultimately an album about return. It is the sound of David Berman coming back from the cold and converting it to a welcoming, lyrical warmth. ... Prepare to be taken in. [Aug 2019, p.86]

Shaman! strays from predecessor An Angel Fell's dark politics to explore more sprawling, introspective territory. [Oct 2020, p.87]

It initially feels fragile, but Carvings is hard to shake off. [Feb 2023, p.84]

From labyrinthine opener Men In Bed, the material is inimitably Smith-esque, and if it is tempting to dig for premonitions of mortality, the Frank Zappa-via Hanna-Barbera thrills of Busty Beez or Skating feel like the work of a very much living artist. [Nov 2025, p.89]

Charmingly eccentric...but spiky too. [Jun 2012, p.92]

This small brick of a box set housing 22 Isley Brothers albums, many of them essential to any soul-funk library, astonishingly does not include something like a dozen tracks that any sane person would suggest were key to the band's story. This is not a complaint, merely a fact to illustrate the broad sweep of their career. [Sep 2015, p.104]

Much warmer and more inviting [than 2017's Pleasure]. [May 2023, p.88]

C'est La Vie is as potent, visceral and concise a sonic expression of this act of courage [step up and be an adult] as you could hope to find. [Nov 2018, p.87]

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is both an album of admirable ambition and a mantra worth repeating until its mysteries are revealed. [Mar 2022, p.81]

The gorgeous harmonies of Fran Foote add further engagement on a set rich in attitude and uncompromising intent. [Nov 2015, p.91]

One of this unlikely old master's most hauntingly satisfying works. [Dec 2016, p.90]

Mysterious and enfolding, Ascent seduces. [Oct 2012, p.90]

Surgery won't catapult the group into the realm of all-time greats, but it's certainly a move in the right direction. [Sep 2005, p.92]

It's unequivocally the guitarist's most cohesive and satisfying artistic statement yet. [Oct 2014, p.91]

Silver Age is the most consistently exciting record he's made since Sugar's Copper Blue. [Nov 2012, p.86]

The box set joy is the archive additions, their whiff of ancient wasted sweat. [Jan 2016, p.102]

The epic A Friend Like You, the tenderest song about being unable to walk away from a relationship, rueing "why the hell do you have to be so sweet", or the self-explanatory Sad Song, ironically the jauntiest track here. [Jun 2026, p.87]

Ash's cover of Teenage Kicks itself is on the limited-edition 3-CD version, alongside the likes of a cover of Buzzcocks' Everybody's Happy Nowadays, making this the best buy. [Mar 2020, p.101]

Top-drawer tunes throughout. [Oct 2023, p.78]

A well-constructed, unselfconsciously retro set. [Apr 2020, p.96]

Impressive, entertaining - a new supergroup is born. [Aug. 2011, p. 101]

A triumph of healing and connection, experimentalism balanced out by emotional heft. [Nov 2023, p.89]

If 2017's Hard Love overreached, Eraserland is a successful recalibration. [Apr 2019, p.91]

10 seamless melds of indie guitars and electronic pop, stuffed with spry choruses and poetic self-castigation delivered in Toledo's appealingly crushed bleat. [Jun 2020, p.86]

[The album,] at first, seems suffused in the same late-summer glow as The Beach Boys' low-key '68 LP Friends. But this brightness soon fades, the album becoming a beautifully solitary journey into night. [Feb 2014, p.95]

Joan Shelley has a trick, at least, of making time disappear, her stately clear voice a rock at which the world flings itself in vain. [Jun 2017, p.86]

You're left with dual perspectives that aren't quite duets, anthems of vague disquiet, and an utterly satisfying sense of an artist following his own directs and nobody else's. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Cooder magnificent way with bottleneck on steel is often in evidence, while his son Joachim's percussion-rich soundscapes with loped and sampled elements help contemporise his dad's inherently rootsy sound. [Jun 2018, p.90]

Vivid, touch-sensitive responses to a world unravelling. [Nov 2022, p.90]

Nothing is off limits, the entire artistic palette is there to be used. And Diawara exploits that uniqueness with aplomb. [Jun 2018, p.92]

As with previous album "Songs III," this us an enchanting record. [Apr 2009, p.109]

Williams' forward-pushing, inter-generational sound - 70s fusion-era grooves mingle with modern club motifs - is fully formed on this second full solo outing. [Aug 2020, p.91]

Peace & Love continues this new mature streak with her most musically stripped down but lyrically most strident and complex collection yet. [Feb 2010, p. 102]

The overall vibe is: It's a time for extremes, for ear damage, and KJ--ever exemplary in reactivation--deliver 'em in spades. [May 2012, p.83]

It's compulsive listening. [Jun 2013, p.92]

If we force ourselves inside American Head, we find it full of intimate details that eschew social distancing. Breathe it in. [Sep 2020, p.86]

It's Plain's elusive ruminations and off-balance poetics that resonate in ever more artful, affecting ways. [Feb 2023, p.88]

An intermittently discomfiting record, tinged with sadness and beautifully composed. [Oct 2021, p.97]

What follows is like an eccentric, audacious musical collage that somehow hangs together. [Sep 2018, p.93]