The simultaneous warm/cold currents, recalling Broadcast, are reflected in Ramani's word. [Jul 2021, p.84]

Occasionally it's dull - but the mood's upbeat where it once was ominous. [Apr 2023, p.83]

With O’Brien running the gamut from one-night-stand shelf lurker (No One To Blame) and post-coital dewy (Dawning On Me) to resentful (Hot Scary Summer) and widowed (Darling Arithmetic). It’s a risky exercise but O’Brien pulls it off thanks to his trademark musical economy.

Restrained but emotionally compelling songs. [Sep 2014, p.93]

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.

Local Valley has no lows, nor any thrilling highs, but it's an even, easy pleasure from start to finish. [Oct 2021, p.91]

Unfolds like a hand-stitched musical patchwork quilt, gently educating its listeners in the great American songster tradition. [Apr 2003, p.114]

Universal Truths is not as raw overall as GBV's earliest efforts, but it seems much closer to their wonderfully chaotic live sound than the last couple of records have. [July 2002, p.104]

When I Was Cruel is bursting with bile and romance, tricky lyrics and tantalising tunes, and finds him practically trampolining with the thrill of messing about with sounds. [May 2002, p.108]

A distinctly melancholic affair. [Aug 2002, p.102]

These songs are consistently fantastic: from Brand New’s harmony-laden prayer for rebirth, to The Letters, Etc’s wry, country-steeped moment of clarity, whispering “how strange to be strangers after what we was”. [Sep 2024, p.89]

Strangelet's not so much odd as unusually good. [May 2007, p.102]

Reduced to a duo for Southern Records' live-in-the-studio Latitudes series in 2012, Tucker and O'Sullivan seasoning their cosmic mantras with such sweet tinctures as early Eno, This Heat and the acoustic mirror harmonies of early OMD. With Glynnaestra the potion is perfected. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Nothing prehistoric about the latest Buffalo Tom: this is the golden sound of a band in their element. [Apr 2018, p.90]

'Of Raymond' one exquisite lick of brass sends out enough light to illuminate the whole record. [Nov 2008, p.106]

Thrice Woven stirs in Norse and Gaelic legend into a bewitching barrage of arboreal-metal fury and black-winged flight, somewhere between early Darkthrone and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. [Oct 2017, p.93]

A record of jarring juxtapositions, a bunch of cool tunes that could[n't] care less about how they fit together. [Apr 2006, p.86]

The Brit School girl undergoes a successful soul-pop makeover. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]

Lidell's bluesy wail goes head-to-head with a dense, churning groove in what can best be described as anti-R&B. [June 2010, p. 97]

Troubadour delivers deeply rewarding pop from its stylistic risks eerily familiar at moments, but ever its own marvellous thing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

What she shows via sweetly understated arrangements, are beautifully simple love songs delivered with a summer-scented voice that echoes Karen Carpenter one minute, Linda Ronstadt or Peggy Lee the next. [Aug 2008, p.102]

Dead Man's Bones turns out to be a decidedly beautiful thing. [Nov 2009, p.93]

Ultimately, you suspect that their natural habitat are shoegazey guitarscapes like Everyone I Ever Met and Forever The Bridge, which marry controlled noise, atmospheric arrangements and subtly insidious melodies. Either way, it works. [Feb 2011, p.104]

A masterfully subtle follow-up to 2018's Down The Road Wherever. [May 2024, p.85]

It's when Spektor is less showy and more direct that her songs are most affecting. [Aug 2022, p.86]

A breathless, party-starting exploration of the connection between the Congo and cumbia. [Mar 2025, p.91]

Producer Hal Willner has dug deep to improve on [the original Rogue's Gallery] and reckons he has a happier collection as a result. [Apr 2013, p.88]

bare-knuckled rhymes and eerie sing-song hooks deliver the trademark thrills, though Muggs' lysergic touch is often missed. [Apr 2022, p.89]

[A] mix of old themes and new forms. [Nov 2015, p.96]

Amok Achieves a seductive unity of purpose which is all the more impressive for stemming from the advent of additional personnel. [Mar 2013, p.84]

Isla feeds on Steve Reich mathematics, Radiohead dread, African desert grooves and ECM northern melancholy to travel into a new, chiming cavernous sound-world that is both exotic and hypnotic. [Nov 2009, p.100]

In less accomplished hands it could have spiraled into pastiche. Instead, by being so dedicated to the past, Wilson has shaped a delicious future. [Aug 2011]

An admirable attempt to try something genuinely different has compromised an otherwise fine album. [Oct 2011, p.94]

Unity Band is now a scintillating platform for Metheny's fretboard wizardry. [Aug 2012, p/94]

Wald is a continued move in more playful directions. [Oct 2015, p.95]

The spaciousness foregrounds the band's relentless pulse and frontman Timo Kaukolampi's incantations. [Apr 2016, p.93]

The eight-song concoction is a joyful, lush and fittingly grandiose suite. [Feb 2017, p.93]

Yet for all the invention and undeniably impressive groove control, there are lulls when their meditative update of '70s fusion stars Lonnie Liston Smith, Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers slicks into something wallpapery, doodly and unselfconsciously by-numbers. [Aug 2018, p.95]

MacIntyre's creativity is clearly in full flower. [Nov 2018, p.90]

Zietsch's music upholds the sparse, haunted tone set by Lana Del Ray, the minimalism so acute that each chord change often lasts for just one stroke of the strings or ivories. [Jan 2024, p.88]

With barbed lyrics and messy, thrumming guitars a Honeyblood speciality, things never get overly pretty on thes 11 tales of "horror, lust and laughs," while new Honeyblood drummer Cat Myers, successor to Shona McVicar, has bedded-in nicely. [Dec 2016, p.90]

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

The music... still has the from-odd-angles of Smog records, but now there's exquisite light amid the shade. [Jun 2007, p.114]

Willie makes a hell of a job reshaping an array of Sinatra classics. [Nov 2018, p.93]

Blood pressures doesn't quite take charge of their joint destiny as decisively as it needs to, the cohesive chain smoking cool do their earlier albums diluted by sudden shifts in tempo and mood. [May 2011, p.104]

This eco-themed, sci-fi clad concept album bristles with electro-pop sounds (Light Years, the OMD-ish title track) yet retains Gab's furrowed-brow lyricism and singular approach as he forges his own space within this changing landscape. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Building on the fresh inventiveness of 2017's Uyai, this new album cheerfully chops up and reassembles genres in a way that is seriously funky. [May 2019, p.89]

There's nothing here to shock or surprise, but that's a major part of the attraction and Erasure remain a guiltless pleasure. [Sep 2020, p.91]

Ghost are soundtracking a fresh, modern hell. [Mar 2007, p.99]

Slime & Reason practically revels in its juicy sense of freedom. [Sep 2008, p.112]

Fallon tempers the rancour with expertly crafted tunes. [Oct 2011, p.97]

Gigi Masin bathes us in pure sunlight for 90 minutes. Emotional, but never over-wrought. [Feb 2020, p.91]

A succession of sprawling mini-epics--throbbing with energy, insidious basslines and pulsing chords--prevail. [Mar 2016, p.95]

It is the sound of an introverted man reaching out to the workd and speaking uits language. [Oct 2009, p.102]

Subtly psychedelic, intuitively clever and constantly challenging, Everyday Robots underlines that Albarn is an artist of originality and depth, a master of the haunting, insidious melody and--perhaps this needs no reiteration--a gifted, inventive musician. [May 2014, p.84]

Established fans will find much to adore, but Finn and company need to be cannier about their long game. [June 2010, p. 98]

His relentless intelligence is itself a consolation, bearing gifts of order and sly humour -- though not so many haunting tunes as on, say I'm Your Man. [Nov 2001, p.100]

Ethereal snatches of long-lost voices from old 78s, stentorian tones of TS Eliot and--on Richardson Road--Robert Wyatt adds plenty to this warm-hearted electronica. [Aug 2012, p.87]

It's to Blakeslee's credit that Book Of Changes charms even in its bleakest moments. [Feb 2017, p.94]

In Mind is an altogether lovely album that quietly demand to be heard. [Apr 2017, p.91]

Rarely has a plunge into apocalyptic hell been such a hoot. [Aug 2023, p.82]

For all the florid curlicues and crescendos, Welch's second album is light on true beauty, real idiosyncrasy. [Dec. 2011, p.94]

A lugubrious but fresh, genre-bending take on modern club music. [Nov 2021, p.91]

Whatever the sonic weather, Gira's spiritual austerity remains unimpaired.[Nov 2019, p.89]

A deluxe synth odyssey. [Feb 2020, p.96]

The lyrics have become downright soppy and the melodies turned trite. [Feb 2004, p.92]

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]

The best songs here more than compensate for the near misses. [May 2008, p.112]

Ultimately, such details of momentum and mood are testimony to how Them Crooked Vultures flouts the supergroup manual. It doesn't sound like the work of rich men on holiday, but rather three serious individuals looking to prove themselves over again. [Jan 2010, p. 88]

This is an album that expands upon a growing body of work. [Dec 2014, p.92]

A powerful introduction to a compelling artistic presence. [Apr 2015, p.92]

Mulcahy follows the songs through rock, jazz and indie pop, from opening lullaby Stuck On Something Else to the Robert Wyatt-esque Geraldine, a rare and wise treat from an underrated songwriter. [Jun 2017, p.89]

The results are terrific, harking back to The Black Album and Strawberries, with lots of Phantasmagoria-like gothic pop and '60s-via'80s garage a la Naz Nomad. [May 2018, p.96]

It's something of a lucky dip, lurching between lean electro jams with a half-finished feel, robust MC skills, Young Fathers-like melds of chants and bleeding synths, and the breathy exhortations of Maskandi guitar legend Phuzekhemisi. [Aug 2019, p.97]

These 11 songs - several expansive - are often sophisticated indie pop with a lot going on. musically and lyrically. [Jul 2022, p.95]

His voice remains strident as the album veers from pared-down solo to spritely contributions from the likes of Chaim Tannenbaum and David Mansfield, plus a less successful string arrangement. [Sep 2022, p.90]

The heavy-breathing White Rabbit and Scarper comes with a prickle of John Carpenter Menance, while Last Transmission or Imminent are hyper-vigilant Tangerine Dream. There are times when a less obviously doctored emotion bleeds through, though. [Jan 2024, p.94]

This is beautiful music. [Feb 2013, p.91]

Their work together hits an irresistible sweet spot between old-school r&b and punky ramalama. [Feb 2010, p. 101]

All through this listenable, though frankly inconsequential album, PSB are stuck on a sound: it's that booming release of early '90s dance, filtered through a bit of early-noughties terpsichorean quiet-loud sonic sexiness. [May 2016, p.86]

A spectacular step forward. [Mar 2009, p.111]

Sonically ambitious it may be, but it's consistently accessible. [Nov 2012, p.94]

So You Wannabe An Outlaw may be one of his very good, rather than great albums, but it's truly wonderful to hear him having such fun making it. [Aug 2017, p.93]

The Pet Parade is calmer, folkier, and more accommodating to Johnson's pinched nasal tones. [Apr 2021, p.84]

Bands, as Donahue famously sang on Holes, “never work quite right”, but with this late-period beauty, Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly. [Oct 2024, p.83]

It's inspired genre-hopping and relentless invention resulting in a substantial and brilliantly sung career-best. [Nov 2012, p.85]

Martin Courtney's music is unsurprisingly like Real Estate's in that it comes at an unhurried tempo and sounds deceptively simple. [Nov 2015, p.94]

Believe You me is something of an art-house installation. [Oct 2012, p.86]

Black Cascade meshes razor-throated fundamentals with panoramic sweep, its four thunderous riff odysseys wreathed in soulful desolation. [May 2009, p.109]

They confidently harness the emotion-sapping melodramas of the '60s girl group. [Oct 2008, p.108]

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]

I Was a Cat from a Book is as warm as an all-enveloping blanket by the hearth. [Sep 2012, p.89]

Ragan's fifth album is rock as much as roots. [May 2014, p.91]

The resulting record never splashes too far out of the gene pool... but it creates a pleasing coherence along with a slightly sentimental glow. [Dec 2014, p.100]

Wright has unequivocally delivered her best album yet. [Oct 2015, p.94]

She may not over-emote, but Elsewhere still has burn marks around its emotional edges. [May 2015, p.97]

Most of these 11 new songs begin with Tutlle's solo finger-picking guitar, and it's lovely. So's her voice. [May 2019, p.90]

Often described as old beyond his years, on Fires For The Cold Tolchin has truly grown up. [Nov 2019, p.88]