At a couple of number shorter than its predecessor, Lazaretto packs a hell of a punch. [Jul 2014, p.84]

Beneath Tweedy's twinkling lights, Crowell wears each look like a favourite old coat - familiar, easy, and pocked by stains and rips that remind him of all he's seen. [Jun 2023, p.91]

Basement Jaxx's energy and vision appears to be undiminished. [Oct 2014, p.93]

Excellent third LP aligns with riot grrrl-era pop for its force and intelligence. [Aug 2023, p.88]

The sound of a band re-energised, La Futura is possibly the hard rock album of the year. [Nov 2012, p.88]

No one said living "woke" was gonna be easy, but Thick turn the friction into furious, satisfying pop. [May 2020, p.95]

This sequel traverses reassuringly similar zones, with Tuttle's banjo threading in and out of the FX atmospherics, and an expanded instrumental cast - notably fellow travellers Chuck Johnson and Luke Schneider on pedal steel - operating with equal subtlety. [Sep 2022, p.86]

Ozarker is both sentimental and hard-nosed, nostalgic about a past without ignoring the modern world's gritty reality. [Dec 2023, p.93]

Joy Division, Suicide and JAMC collide for a post-punk racket: ear-splitting and sublimely desolate. [May 2018, p.98]

This band's charms are elusive, indeed, but uniquely compelling. [Dec. 2010, p. 99]

She was born on Christmas Day, but has an unsentimental take on the holiday. [Jan. 2011, p. 94]

A snapshot of the music driving Europe's cooler clubs. [Apr 2012, p.91]

This is fresh music, making exciting shapes with primitive resources, and though some will find Longstreth's keening bleat and bravura deconstructions show-offy there are constant flowerings of devastating prettiness, and when all the singers blare in unison the beauty they summon is almost overwhelming. [Jul 2009, p.100]

Lawrence Arabia's world may lean toward Edwardian anachronism, but that echo of simpler times will charm your socks off. [Jan 2010, p.123]

Overall the feel is sparse and desolate. [Jun 2015, p.89]

More muscular, less ethereal than 2007's "...Are The Dark Horse," it is no less exciting. [Apr 2010, p.99]

Penn returns with a rare album, mightily played and poignantly sung. [Oct 2020, p.86]

Don't worry so much about what it all means, lie back and let the tape hiss. [Jun 2024, p.89]

Desire Lines is the immaculately conceived album they've always threatened to make. [Aug 2013, p.92]

The languid voiced one has rarely sounded better. [Jun 2012, p.100]

With its transforming moods and quiet beauty, Stars Are The Light might just be Moon Duo's finest to date. [Oct 2019, p.83]

The spring in their step has a dangerously sharp point to increase Never's allure. [Aug 2012, p.87]

Affecting, uplifting, damned catchy. [Oct 2015, p.94]

With shade and contrast added to the anthems, the songs emerge from a brooding, often restrained darkness so when Fray and co click into euphoric chorus gear they genuinely soar. [Dec 2016, p.92]

This is a musical round-trip calculated to delight anyone who has previously enjoyed Can or Amon Duul's loose-limbed walks on the cod-tribal wild side--and enlighten anyone who hasn't. [Oct 2014, p.93]

A suite of songs involving a character returning from a near-death experience, it works just as well without the plot. Still, there are twists and turns aplenty. [Jan 2021, p.91]

Hi Honey ultimately triumphs thanks to its creator' perfect chemistry. [Aug 2015, p.93]

25 tracks of faux-Brill Building candy, corn and echo-laden chaos with linernotes by Richie Unterberger worthy of a PhD thesis. It is also an essential, at times wickedly delightful‚ corrective to the habitual dismissals of this era, Reed’s included. [Nov 2024, p.96]

With most cuts clocking in under five minutes, Sonancy's austere precision carries right through to its auteur's Chrome-esque robo voicing. [Apr 2022, p.80]

Even in Beth's comfort zone, her acoustic band, produced by Tucker Martine, enrich some beguiling songs, with not a dud among them. [Nov 2012, p.90]

Each song is perfectly realised.[Mar 2021, p.90]

Languid piano, sleazy Rickenbacker, intellectual Lothario. Lethal. [Oct 2016, p.96]

This is possibly the most optimistic album about depression ever made. [Mar 2007, p.98]

Lyrics tend toward the brutal, but there's tenderness too. [Mar 2020, p.92]

The opener, Demba Kunda, suggests a straight-forward instrumental set; but French singer Camille's hymn around the sound of the word "kora" is transcendent; Piers Faccini's vocals take you one step higher; and there's a slightly hoarse-sounding Salif Keita thrown in as a bonus. [May 2021, p.85]

Rousing sedated melodies under a blanket of distortion. [Mar 2019, p.99]

All in all, it's lovely, uplifting stuff. [Aug 2022, p.87]

The results, recorded in Brooklyn over two years, are something of a revelation. [Mar 2025, p.82]

Breathlessly brilliant stuff. [Sep 2022, p.93]

It's A Myth is like a musical Mondrian painting: all bold lines and defined patterns effortlessly delivered, but oblique and enigmatic too. [Jun 2017, p.87]

A band effort. And it shows in the diversity and quality of the songs. ... A fine album. [Aug 2020, p.93]

Julian Casablancas emerges with this engagingly odd collection of songs. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Upbeat and jubilant... a showcase for Wyclef the songwriter. [Dec 2003, p.107]

Winsome, pastoral electronic vignettes that loop and swoop. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Gendron places her gorgeous songs on a far more uneasy footing, seeking out new, strange routes for these ancient folk roots, resulting in an album that us both comforting and confounding, and depthless in its strange beauty. [Jul 2024, p.92]

It's a rare delight to hear a band so accomplished take what it does so seriously without taking itself that way. [Jul 2024, p.87]

Field of Reeds is a startlingly listenable proposition. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Today it sounds quintessentially McCartney. [Jun 2012, p.100]

Nothing suggests that Parton has lost her touch as a writer. [Aug 2014, p.94]

Here the ensemble hangs together a little more coherently. [Jan 2026, p.86]

That [Psapp] completely circumvent high blood sugar whimsy is testament to the duo's songwriting ingenuity and Durant's silken vocal cords. [Apr 2005, p.89]

European Heartbreak feels wonderfully whole, bound together by De Graaf's sweetly inscrutable voice and the unshowy, languid complexity of her songs. [Nov 2018, p.92]

Davachi’s work can be gently provocative but it’s never anything less than stimulating. [Oct 2024, p.91]

Things work best when the musical surroundings match their respective vocal style and they create something resembling the cinematic edge of Johnny Jewel's Chromatics. [Oct 2014, p.93]

Rice doesn't dismiss outright the folky troubadour charm that distinguished O, but here it's a springboard for jealousy, sex, misery. [Dec 2006, p.104]

Her debut LP eschews 4/4 rhythms to create a loose-limbed, free-ranging treat. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Chorus probes that the light from Lush's star still shines brighter and stronger than anyone might have suspected. [Jan 2016, p.105]

It's colourful and imaginative while exerting a familiar pull. [May 2021, p.84]

Each time they break free of their own locked groove, achieving mood-elevating uplift via genius structural shifts, or wig-flippin' solos spiritually comparable with Hendrix or Neil young. [Jan 2013, p.98]

Their reunion album fizzes with energy--although it retains the underlying melancholia that defined their previous work. [Mar 2016, p.95]

Inventive, swinging, dud-free and very musical: terrific entertainment by any standards. [Mar 2016, p.94]

Nothing is ever explained, but ambiguity only reinforces Sorry's wonderfully slippery presence. [Apr 2020, p.95]

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

Capturing the duo's perfect balance of fan with technician, it plumbs indie music's past, inhabiting the same sonic atmospheres as the JAMC, MBV and Joy Division, but is executed with expert ability. [Apr 2016, p.90]

This album has been well worth the wait. [May 2018, p.91]

Evilly powerful, filmic and flowing. [Jun 2017, p.88]

"Back In Back" it ain't, but it's certainly a real return to form. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Admirers of Granduciel's previous forays along E Street won't be disappointed. [Apr 2014, p.91]

There is a stark grandeur in songs like the almost Leonard Cohenesque title track, and the gritty, abstract New York Is Killing Me. [Mar 2010, p97]

Hit reset is stronger overall, because here The Julie Ruin fixes the spotlight on its raison d'etre, a woman who, in her own words, "can play electric guitar while shaving my legs in a moving car." [Aug 2016, p.94]

A more contemplative tUnE-yArDs? No bad thing when the goose-bumping post-punk gloaming of Time Of Dark is among the unexpected bonus. [Jun 2014, p.88]

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]

Shirley Inspired and Unheard Songs both bear rich testament to the fact that posterity is barely getting started in these two. [Jul 2015, p.88]

It’s a beguiling, meandering sprawl that rewards total immersion.

Above all, there's a genius for economy. [Aug 2014, p.94]

Shimmering debut. [Mar 2022, p.90]

The cumulative effect is lulling and hypnotic. [Jun 2023, p.89]

Played with a straight face rather than a raised eyebrow, the whole thing is a gas. [Dec 2016, p.92]

There's much of Lawrence's beguiling attention to detail present here. [Oct 2014, p.94]

The recurring hallmark is Ritter's literate storytelling. [Nov 2015, p.94]

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

Thirteen years after they retired Swans return with thunderous tour de force. [Oct. 2010, p. 104]

Summoning up the warm, intimate glow of a special day located somewhere in the past or up ahead in our unknown future. [Jul 2021, p.85]

Ersatz G.B. offers no easy explanations, but instead twists and excites the listener's brain with unexpected phantom bewilderments. [Dec 2011, p.100]

A boundlessly inventive and occasionally quite bonkers record that draws heavily on the input of its myriad guests. [Jun 2017, p.88]

Shades of Harry Nilsson and the odd splash of Allman Brothers-like lead guitars further distinguish this one-man band outing. [Jul 2021, p.84]

Her third album is a small masterpiece of restrained quirks; a slowburner that rearranges retro signifiers in a genuinely creative way. [Jun 2019, p.91]

His sometimes unkempt vocal performances can work better in the smaller doses of singles or cameos, but here, as on 2006's "The Big Bang," he sounds like he has made the album his metier. [Jul 2009, p.98]

[A] gorgeously appointed escape from rock'n'roll's habitual savagery. [Jun 2014, p.89]

A likeable collection of songs about family and companionship. .... The happy point where Belle And Sebastian meets Stephen Sondheim. [Nov 2025, p.88]

An electrifying exercise in first thought as best thought, ... One Day is thrillingly direct. [Feb 2023, p.83]

An extraordinary, multi-layered, attention-grabbing record. [Aug 2012, p.87]

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

It's Stigmergy, named after a concept of collective action, that best encapsulates the ecstatic NIS groupthink: one hypnotic soloist after another - Ben Lamar Gay, brilliant on coronet - drifting elegantly in and out of systems repetition. [Jun 2023, p.92]

It's Beach House's grandest vision yet. [Mar 2022, p.83]

The result is Proustian, the 18 tracks an overwhelming rush of joy. [Apr 2022, p.82]

Hen's Teeth is benchmark roots music from start to finish. [Apr 2026, p.85]

U-Bahn's debut satisfies as a hugely enjoyable listen. [Jan 2020, p.87]