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

His best yet, a mix of reimagined trad pieces, diverse covers and elegantly rowdy new jams. [Nov 2018, p.89]

Here he marmelises the American songbook, 99c cut-out standards mutilated and reanimated by Delta blues magick. [Nov 2013, p.89]

It's not that Tortoise have got their groove back--they've never lacked compelling rhythm--rather, they've rediscovered their alchemical ability to conjure the atmospherically and melodically sublime from premium grade popular and art music precedents. [Jan 2016, p.89]

This very playable record has a broad appeal at the same time as it reasserts modern electronica's vitality. [Jan 2013, p.98]

A solo debut with am encyclopaedic range. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Eighth and best-yet album of horn'n'vibes-heavy jazz cinematics. [Oct 2014, p.96]

It's packed tight with wayward ideas. [Jul 2021, p.89]

Sun-scorched Californian jams. [Dec 2023, p.87]

Exhortations are soundtracked by languid funk that occasionally stumbles into trip-hop autopilot but is mostly electrified by Peng's restless inspiration. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Everything feels tactile rather than crowded. [Apr 2016, p.92]

It's soulful, spiritually questing--pretty much irresistible, too. [Jun 2017, p.88]

Wonky beats and shimmering twisted tech melodies. [Nov. 2010, p. 109]

The project pushes him into new and different directions, with beat band ballast ('Ate It Twice'), horn-laded soul ('Ready To Pop'), orchestral gloom (the title tracks) and pleasingly weird mini-epics ('Still In Rome'). [Oct 2008]

If Congrats is no less aggressive than its three predecessors, the crisp Neon Dad qualifies as pop and Acidic is a weird kind of joyous electronic ska. [Jun 2016, p.92]

Who Is The Sender? is effectively a set of moving, funeral-paced closing tracks addressing familiar themes--political disillusionment, morality and spiritual wonder. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Anyone seduced by the standout Wounded Rhymes track Sadness Is A blessing will be left winded by the even more sorrow-stricken I Never Learn. [Jun 2014, p.92]

Lamb offer the perfect antidote to all manner of vapid pop-cultural vomitus without sounding pretentious or preachy. [Dec 2003, p.118]

It's a hyper-vivid and intensely musical affair that takes us deep inside Apple's skittish, fretful mind. [Jul 2012, p.82]

Her voice is as earnestly soulful as Tracy Chapman, as deep and characterful as Nina Simone - and, like Simone, when the emotion engulfs her, the results are electrifying. [Sep 2025, p.87]

Hamdan works slowly, but this has been worth waiting for. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Jolting with energy and pitch-black humour, Stardust is a sonic pink'n'mix that finds Brown firmly relocating his psychedelic wildness. [Jan 2026, p.87]

Another epically conceived record from a cult hero who should be slaying arenas. [Oct 2015, p.95]

II offers a litany of brief, mellifluous, vaguely jazzy mood sketches, fluidly mapping a terrain both playful and emotionally resonant like the missing link between Eric Satie's Gymnopedies and Everybody Digs Bill Evans. [Sep 2012, p.88]

This is Joe Ely at his rugged best. [Nov 2015, p.94]

This is repeat-play head music that still manages to hotwire the heart. [May 2006, p.102]

The debut solo album is as ornate as 2009's Veckatimest, with Rossen now playing almost all the buccaneering acoustic guitars, cascading piano lines, cellos and woodwinds himself. [May 2022, p.94]

Remarkably moving. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Remastered with a disc of rarities and curiously, a screamtastic bootleg-quality 1980 show at Tokyo's Budokan. [Apr 2021, p.97]

Road is a hugely enjoyable hoot. [Oct 2023, p.82]

Wraith finds those heterogeneous elements [post-punk, industrial Krautrock and Angelo Badalamenti-like soundtrack atmosphere] fusing even more satisfyingly than [2015's Highly Deadly Black Tarantula]. [Mar 2019, p.97]

In classic Brit-rock style it is this intrepid combo's assembly of these disparate echoes into something of their own that takes them ever closer to the pantheon of greats. Join the Dots is another exhilarating leap in that direction. [Jan 2014, p95]

From the gentle breeze of the Tala Tannam to the howling gale of lead single Chismiten, the little clumps of ambient sound - village chatter, footsteps, maybe a cockerel - hold their ground against every new gust of virtuoso fretwork. [Jul 2021, p.89]

This, one, in its place [Pixies reunion], is fresh and really rather fab. [Mar 2009, p.106]

Reality Tunnels finds the Bristolian beat-master reaffirming known skills while cultivating fresh ones. [Aug 2020, p.87]

Downtempo it may be, but joyous rather than dark. [Apr 2012, p.91]

Charm, tunes and a certain hazy vision--Real Estate have them in abundance, and on Atlas they are more than enough to coax endless summer warmth from behind the wall of winter. [Apr 2014, p.92]

In all, a gloriously imperfect storm. [Aug 2025, p.79]

Black's chops and tunes suggest he won't stay underground. [Aug 2009, p.99]

Gloriously nonsensical and beautifully out there, this is a joyful triumph. [Oct 2009, p.107]

Like the band's best '80s output, Lilac6 is the work of a bona fide songsmith. [Nov 2001, p.108]

This is music of compelling intensity. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Live Rain is a concert album like they used to be: prime Howlin Rain, only longer, louder and more full-blooded. [Jun 2014, p.92]

An extended groove workout, akin to Erykah Badu's Worldwide Underground EP. [Jan 2004, p.102]

Almost exclusively orchestral, this soundtrack works brilliantly as a half-hour suite. [Sep 2016, p.90]

Hawley continues to enchant. [Jul 2024, p.85]

This is the band at their melodious best. [Jun 2004, p.112]

[Painted From Memory is] a beauty. ... [Taken From Life is] a treasure trove within a set that defines how well collaborations can work. [Apr 2023, p.94]

It’s this ease and connection that gives When I’m Called its cumulative power. [Aug 2024, p.86]

The Last Hero captures them approaching the peak of their powers. [Nov 2016, p.94]

BASIC speak their own language, but it’s not long before their signs and signals unfold into a fascinating new conversation. [Oct 2024, p.82]

His gritty voice and folk-art lyricism ensure that these stylistic curveballs carry real emotional resonance. [Sep 2005, p.90]

A riotous union of scabrous '60s punk, resonant surf licks and grimy, narcotic song-craft. [Oct 2014, p.94]

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

Thanks to the vision of singer/songwriter Traceyanne Campbell, this is a killer record, rather than just a pretty one.[Jul 2006, p.102]

Another great, mind-bending, soul-baring, melodically rich album to his name: a singer tap dancing on the very edge. [Jan 2025, p.80]

It's an album of soothing '80s-style motorik synth-pop given just enough bite from contemporary dance music to avoid becoming pastiche. [Mar 2015, p.97]

It's a slow burner that catches fire. [Feb 2025, p.82]

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]

Filled with tearful ballads and ragged-trousered country, the Avetts' playing may not be the most technically accomplished but the feel they bring to Never Been Alive and Another Is Waiting is alone worth wading through their previously misfiring albums. [Jan 2014, p.96]

Though there isn't a dud in Apple's back-catalogue, she has never sounded quite so liberated and artistically sure-footed as this. [Jul 2020, p.86]

Chuck sets an example for everyone else to follow. [Jul 2017, p.94]

The best solo album of her career. [May 2003, p.90]

Has more to do with Primal Scream's Evil heat than any arched-eyebrow electro-clashers. [Dec 2002, p.113]

A charm offensive, rewarding casual observer with a supreme precis of Pollard's genius: the bombastic rock anthem rationalised into naive-pop jewellery. [Sep 2020, p.92]

Hyde and Eno's voices knit together well and the album is full of surprises. [Jun 2014, p.93]

A one-man rap vigilante. [Jul 2012, p.92]

Here across 11 instrumentals, it's a totally entrancing journey as grooves are saturated by horn swells, eerie organ, bad-trip backwards guitars and drum breaks ready for sampling. [Nov 2020, p.83]

Weather is so deftly under-produced that you turn it up; so hazy and intimate you're drawn in close. [Jan 2012, p.98]

The album is at its rawest and most dynamic on such garage tracks as I Gotta Get Shorty Out Of Jail and One-Eyed Jack. [Aug 2012, p.90]

It's easily their best work. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Where the previous LP put them on a higher plane and widened their audience, this broadens the palette and consolidates their status. [Sept. 2011, p. 92]

In Just Lie Down, grief gives way to wrath and post-hardcore freakery. While Soft Stud and Sam, A Dream have more blissful guitar codas that signify a resolution to her woes. [Nov 2018, p.94]

The tunes are all there but the mood is woozy, the arrangements spare and programmed to hypnotize. [Oct 2011, p.98]

In sterling voice throughout. [Apr 2021, p.84]

Live, the band’s urgency and spaciousness transform their fondness for cavernous arena rhythms and antiquated synths from clever re-appropriations into something that teases transcendence. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Blissed-out analogue synths, the swell and drone of ambient rock and epic, beatless, drawn-out melodies characterize the debut. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

Moving from deliciously tense cop-show rhythms to echoing guitar feedback and pure-signal electronic buzz. [Jan 2013, p.98]

Singer Barbora Patkova's soulful charge that brings a tighter focus to a set of roiling, otherworldly jams whcih sound like Can and Funkadelic getting high on Sun Ra's unfettered jazz supply. [May 2020, p.93]

The stage is small, the set short, but as ever, The Bad Seeds contain multitudes. [Jan 2014, p.96]

A little strange, a little strained, Mercy still rings with its own truth. [Jun 2021, p.88]

Hackney Diamonds feels like a self-aware, historically mindful party, Jagger’s remarkable vocal thrust utterly unimpaired.

It benefits substantially from the synergy that the potent presence of Charlie Musselwhite helps to create. [Feb 2013, p.90]

A very fine, if long-gestated, debut. [May 2020, p.93]

Los Angeles already feels like a destination record, Lee, Tolhurst and Budgie putting their decades of world-building expertise to excellent use. If the world they have built is on the brink of collapse, it only adds to the thrill. [Dec 2023, p.85]

The next must-have pastoral American sensation, from Oklahoma.[Sep 2011, p.97]

A transporting treat, tapping both the personal and the universally political. [Jun 2020, p.86]

This double LP has sonic coherence across 65 minutes of taut, sinewy but ever-unpredictable compositions, with a subtly altered sound palette. [Feb 2024, p.86]

This second volume maintains the high standard. [Jul 2018, p.104]

At 12 years' distance, these Papists sound anything but straightforward, ably navigating a compositional logic every bit as nutty as Debaser or Cactus, just with the sonic derangement notched down, and the odd deft pedal-steel lick chipped in. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Great punk-funk (Faith), but the real triumphs are her alliance of Le Tigre-level sass and superior tunes. [Oct 200, p.94]

Parr's front porch vocals and mesmerising guitar pickings mingle with mouth harp, backing vocals, piano, electric guitar and fiddle on an album full of wonder and love for the unloved. He really should invite friends round more often. [May 2024, p.91]

The Cherry Thing is quite a brilliant combination, with its creepy, freaky sound and clever reinventions. [Jul 2012, p.92]

It's a daunting but ultimately rewarding listen. [Jan 2022, p.92]

An image-rich rumination on Scotland past and present. [Aug 2014, p.86]

#7885 is an ideal primer for the curious previously cowed by their considerable legacy. [Aug 2014, p.102]

With no grounding bass, the groove is understated on a 13-minute title track that imperceptibly limbers from low-end oscillations and primitive pitter-patter into a billowing, blazing free jazz-prog odyssey in its own distinct dimension. Szun Waves sweep you into it. [Nov 2018, p.95]

Easy on the ear yet never sugary, full and layered yet never stodgy, intricately assembled yet never fussy, pulsing with a Ringo beat yet never monotonous. [Nov 2012, p.91]