That play of sonic summer and spiritual winter shades this. [Mar 2008, p.102]

Despite the eclectic material, the slow tempos and monochrome tone gets wearing. [Sep 2017, p.94]

Moderate in everything but length, Big Wheel And Others seems to go on forever. Again not in a good way. [Nov 2013, p.84]

A Wasteland Companion revels in the layers of experience overlaid on life, building up texture, building up meaning, building up songs. [May 2012, p.87]

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

The sextet ply their angular chord changes and syncopated rhythms in first-rate tunes. [Sep 2012, p.97]

This is (finally) an album that is enjoyable solely as a listening experience. [Sep 2013, p.89]

One of Neubauten's very best releases. [Jan 2014, p.98]

[Sid Griffin] hurled all bluegrass boundaries out the window as pride of place on this new album. [Nov 2016, p.92]

Spinning Coin have spun new dreams from old. [Mar 2020, p.94]

Skirls of noise are layered like mille-feuille, bass drops hit with the muscular impact of a piledriver, and a cloud hangs heavy over the entirety of proceedings. [Jan 2022, p.87]

The Unfolding is an inventive and accessible mix of acoustic instrumentals and electronics with an elemental atmosphere. [May 2022, p.92]

It is gorgeous in the way a hotel painting is – very pleasant to look at once or twice but not to ponder for too long, an autumnal soundtrack whose glow fades like leaves. [Dec 2024, p.93]

While its parent album's themes of grief, ageing and mortality don't naturally transfer themselves to the dancefloor, it's often that juxtaposition that makes these reworkings so effective. [Jul 2024, p.78]

The songs are charged with love for both the music and Molina. [Oct 2025, p.80]

They're bowing out on a high. [May 2026, p.93]

As with everything Morrissey does, ROTT's resonance will elude those not hitherto fascinated by its master's voice. A shame, for in terms of pure musicality, ROTT is possibly his most ecumenical solo album, his most welcoming and loveable. [Apr 2006, p.89]

The album's seven-minute epics, Done and Tomorrow, chase their melodies to powerfully dramatic heights, pocket symphonies that stir and haunt with graceful, emotive crescendos that beg lighters waved aloft. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

The overall effect is affecting and exhausting, the listener feeling queasy and spent. [Nov 2017, p.96]

She now finds plenty to lampoon in 2011 on this droll, provocative comeback. [Apr 2011, p.105]

The material is, if anything, stronger than its predecessor and at times exquisitely beautiful. [Aug 2015, p.93]

The results may finally help them to escape the label of a light-hearted Fall with singer Eddie E. Smith. [Jun 2009, p.96]

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]

The Ohio duo's mastery of the unmathematical Hill Country style oozes here from every groove. [Jun 2021, p.87]

The winnowing, soul-pop sheen of the hit-yielding Soul Mining and Infected is long gone, replaced by an overall grungey, corrosive edge which indicates that Johnson bought up every last piece of analogue gear in town.

The bluegrass scene is now offically in touch with its feminine side. [Sep 2001, p.96]

Harper offers nice lines in homages to Marley, Basement Tapes Dylan, and funky James Brown. [Apr 2003, p.106]

Sounding like lost transmissions from classic '70s AM radio, it's Stringfellow's best yet. [Dec 2004, p.116]

They may have just failed to make a Great Rock Album--though it has many moments of greatness--but they have unquestionably become a Great Rock Band. [Album of the Month, Nov 2002, p.90]

Delicate without being twee. [Jan 2004, p.98]

Their groovy, meditative parlaying consistently elevates Live! Beyond the realm of optional for-diehards-only purchase. [Feb 2001, p.94]

This is a raging leviathan of a set, each track a powerful, swaggering anthem. [May 2002, p.97]

The Night Has a Thousand Screams dresses the oily synth ripples and murky bass lines of Hill's previous Umberto releases From The Grave... and Prophecy Of The Black Widow with glistening descant textures and rich analogue pulses, bringing a new shimmering elegance and profound foreboding to both his sound and, in the great tradition, the base source material. [Jan 2013, p.98]

It rates amongst the best three or four post-millennial psychedelic rock records. [Jan 2015, p.95]

Jones sounds like he's in his element. [Nov 2015, p.94]

Jade Bird's compelling voice is the deliberately uncontested focus of her no nonsense debut. [May 2019, p. 93]

On this debut album, the plaintive dizziness of Peter Ericson Stakee's vocals is offset by crashing guitars and wind-swept epic aesthetics that recall The Verve's early post-shoegazing incarnation, then City Walls comes on like a socially maladjusted Kasabian. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

This debut stands apart, not because it hails from St. Petersburg but for its speedy and electronically iced take on shoegaze. [Mar 2015, p.100]

Despite including some familiarly-styled acoustic reflections, 101 is very different to 2007's New York-influenced Keren Ann. [May 2011, p.104]

Joji draws dark arterial blood from backwoods bedrock, mining a country mile adjacent to My Morning Jacket's. [Jan 2005, p.105]

An aptly schizophrenic alternative history. [May 2005, p.114]

An agreeably bittersweet album. [Mar 2005, p.101]

Sometimes it's a bit repetitive or her voice goes trebly, but then you get What's Not Mine's Bjork-style weirdness. [May 2016, p.92]

Day After Tomorrow finds her in fine form, the famous falsetto is an octave or two down but the conviction that she brings to the songs is as strong as ever. [Oct 2008, p.106]

The swell and squall lets up just once, on the transcendental In A Cloud, but it's in the moments of pure sonic abandon, like Wilding, that the group truly find themselves. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Experimental pop that feels for the warm electronic pulse of '80s futurism. [Mar 2016, p.100]

It seems more about Africa's love affair with US urbana, and so less endearing. [Aug 2012, p.94]

While there's a suspicion that the album format isn't their natural habitat - only the melancholic shuffle of (Vi-Vi) Vicious Games veers away from the acid template - the sinewy, skeletal intensity here has a creeping allure. [Oct 2019, p.90]

The result is an atmospheric sound, refined without losing its feisty, sometimes bitter vitality. [Sep 2014, p.98]

At its best--Northern Blues' soulful echo--a bit of Southern grit's rubbed off on the Canadian. [Nov 2015, p.96]

Embellishments frame soul-searching songs about dislocation and romantic ill-fortune--think a grittier Brendan Benson--which soon demand frequent revisits. [Dec 2019, p.86]

There's enhanced pop acumen and elemental shivers too, so maybe make that the new Lykke Li. [Jul 2015, p.89]

Songs For The General Public astonishes and delights. [Sep 2020, p.83]

Naturally, it's a disjointed exercise, but consumed at one sitting, 5EPs also makes perfect sense, showcasing how each part contributes to the whole. [Jan 2021, p.83]

Where Dizzee Rascal's deliberately diverse third album "Maths & English" found him flirting with more mainstream pop styles, this leaner, punchier fourth record comsummates that union to entirely gratisfying effect. [Oct 2009, p.96]

Songs are complemented by a close-miked acoustic production. [Nov 2012, p.96]

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

A meld of punk brio and grunge licks. [Oct 2014, p.96]

His self-titled debut falls a little short, but Son Little has potential. [Dec 2015, p.89]

This is vaulting, widescreen soundscaping of the first water. [Oct 2017, p.92]

Almond has certainly never sounded better as a singer than on this, largely a collection of covers of often obscure source material. [Nov 2017, p.102]

It's his most moving writing of his career. [Jul 2021, p.83]

Their first album in eight years finds their bond as strong as ever, Burton scoring Mercer's pocket heartaches for widescreen. [Nov 2022, p.90]

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

A fifth studio album filled with hooks aplenty and gonzoid fun. [Nov 2014, p.102]

["2012 (Bury Our Heads)" is] a brief downer and nestled among a clutch of songs that demonstrate how far the band has come since their 2003 debut. [May 2011, p.107]

John Schmersal's quirky falsetto lights up this debut. [May 2014, p.96]

Eight songs that drift and haunt with layered voice and moody strings. [Jun 2018, p.97]

It feels like a reaction to the concise, clear-headed It's Blitz; wild-eyed hoopla, in that spontaneous, occasionally brilliant, occasionally patchy kind of way. [May 2013, p.90]

Whether it improves on 2010's First Four EPs compilation is debateable. But as Morris would doubtless observe, 'progress' is but a bourgeois vanity. [Jul 2012, p.85]

The evidence here is that he's maturing nicely. [Jun 2012, p.88]

Here technology is merely a vessel for a sound that remains pastoral and beguiling. Truly, a class act. [May 2015, p.95]

The all-pervasive teenage sexual obsessions on his tenth album can only come across as sweaty-palmed and distasteful. A shame, because musically Pom Pom's 17 tracks are uniquely inventive. [Dec 2014, p.96]

Business as usual: expansive, often magical, raw rock'n'roll classicism. [Nov 2017, p.103]

A third LP of warm, retro pop jangle. [Oct 2016, p.100]

Hook-packed mini-album, direct first-person narratives are sung with knowing sweetness over sunny guitar classicism. [Sep 2017, p.96]

This may not be the '70s cosmic cowboy of Nelson in his prime, but wise old grandpa Willie is as sage and poignant now as he has ever been. [Aug 2020, p.85]

This is room-shaking, gut-quaking stuff. [Apr 2009, p.106]

Expanding on the rolling grooves of 2009'a Song Of The Pearl, The Gathering is a sonic monster. [Apr 2011, p.101]

An earthy, beat-oriented album... It ain't '3 Feet High'--or even 'De La Soul Is Dead'-- but it ain't half bad. (Sep 2000, p.96)

Sometimes, the abiding mood is one of grand interstellar drift, an ancient exhausted spaceship cruising through deep space, leaving rippling waves of a strange blank intensity in its wake. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Younge's Axelrodish take on orchestral soul dominates. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Lina bringing the tradition, Raul Refree adding experimental soundscapes for her to play in. [Sep 2020, p.89]

Another album of homages, jammed fast and loose in early 2025 at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in the wake of a cancer diagnosis for the singer’s father Chuck – who died soon after on March 29. The urgency and catharsis in these tracks makes sense in that context, but there’s something else here: a deep connection with music, felt in every groove and texture. [Jun 2026, p.89]

Capture/Release's clanking guitars and shimmering melodies meld the abstract and the earthy with a Mark E Smithian panache. [Sep 2005, p.102]

An album of considerable weight. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Close To The Glass is full of charming, understated yearning. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Destroyer shifts up a couple of gears for a less cosmic,more hard rockin' thrust, complete with headlong NWOBHM riffs and even shredding. [Jun 2019, p.90]

Ane Brun has never before sounded so alive.[March 2012, p.98]

This fourth album's a gas. [Apr 2015, p.86]

Garvey's poetics have acquired more acuity. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Shine A Light is a labour of love and a personal indulgence for its two creators, but it's always welcoming. [Oct 2016, p.93]

[An] engaging, likable, thoroughly listenable, and indeed, sing-along album. [Feb 2013, p.96]

There's no arguing with the brilliance if New Partner or I See A Darkness, though the sweetness of Oldham's mature voice and the impressionistic arrangements tend to detract from their ominous gravity. [Jan 2019, p.84]

Blight is powerful, but hermetically airless. [Nov 2025, p.91]

Bada$$ proves a natural born rhymer on a deeply rewarding showcase of advanced level lyricalism. [Feb 2015, p.89]

It's been worth the wait. [Oct 2010, p.103]