Bugbears is a rich and warming curio, and there's something quietly noble about Hayman dragging the thoughts of these long-dead writers back into the light. [Aug 2013, p.93]

On Antiphon, Midlake sound like a band unburdened and read to fly. [Dec 2013, p.82]

He's rarely sounded better. [Nov 2014, p.98]

These 41 short, snappy but entirely involving instrumentals generously reaffirm Dilla's inimitable way around chopped-up vocal samples, waspish, distempered synth lines and spacey unquantised drums. [Jan 2016, p.104]

Colour Theory showcases a more lavish, studio-based approach. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Music that alchemises urban jazz with rural Americana to create something that is haunting and otherworldly. [Jun 2016, p.94]

Resistance to its charms is futile. [Sep 2016, p.93]

Enduring, reliable but far from set in their ways. [Jun 2017, p.92]

Titular peaceful intent is achieved. [Aug 2017, p.97]

Scum is a joyous mash-up of cheap beats, precinct-loitering aggro punk and youthful vim; it's by no means a classic, but you suspect Cardy may well have one in him soon. [Oct 2017, p.94]

Their eighth long-player feels leaner, nastier, equally impressive [as 2014's Time to Die]. [Dec 2017, p.91]

Mixture of West Africa and Caribbean influences. Oscar Jerome's glowing highlife guitar opens Dide O, a midway tryptic with Soul Searching (Afrobeat) and We Give Thanks. (soul). [Sep 2022, p.96]

A sonic adventure best enjoyed with very good headphones. [Dec 2022, p.85]

It seems to have been compiled via the randomness of fridge poetry, but that's a strength rather than a weakness. [Mar 2026, p.96]

False Priest is a blur of swings and roundabuots, the sheer ambition of its crazed vision propelling it through any lull. [Oct. 2010, p. 96]

It is an unconvincing record as a whole, and parts of it are profoundly dull. [Oct 2001, p.124]

Diving into yesterday never sounded so good. [Aug 2014, p.90]

[IX meerges] distortion and tunes with heartfelt euphoria and big breakdowns. [Dec 2014, p.102]

All pomp and bluster, like Coldplay at their most bombastic. [Mar 2004, p.108]

Although Duffy sounds like a pissed Year 9 teacher on 'Live And Let Die' and The Hold Steady confirm suspicions that their greatest strength is being an E Street Band covers act on Bruce Springsteen's 'Atlantic City,' Hot Chip, Peaches, TV On The Radio and Elbow all go that extra mile to create something new, unique and often quite wonderful. [Apr 2009, p.101]

Despite the elegant grey-sky thinking, deep beneath the emotional permafrost, Piramida isn't as cold as it seems. [Oct 2012, p.86]

A debut packed with infectious fun. [Feb 2016, p.94]

Warm, understated third LP. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Gutter Tactics is their most approachable set to date. [Mar 2009, p.107]

An engaging, yet still hip-swinging trip. [Jun 2015, p.96]

And while White Rabbits' wild Americana and freaked folk makes for a varied and vivid sprawl of sounds, their knack for addictive melody and honed songcraft delivers a beguiling, coherent and memorable whole. [Feb 2010, p. 97]

Super Furry frontman's third solo venture, its title inspired by hair product freebies. [March 2011, p. 98]

This album isn't shy, but the jittery electro-pomp and lyrical cleverness can feel off-puttingly arch. [Aug 2016, p.90]

Raft is a woozy drift between euphoria and unease. [Aug 2017, p.31]

For all its skill you do miss Neville Staple's aggro, Roddy Radiation's punk-Chuck Berry guitars, and inevitably, Jerry Dammers' singular, maddening vision. [Mar 2019, p.88]

Canny, foundation-shaking urban pop. [Jun 2015, p.91]

Defiantly dark, dense and hazy hip hop and paranoid urban blues. [Nov 2015, p.93]

A fine album is in here, but on this evidence, embracing the instinctive over the reflective might have been a better strategy. [Apr 2020, p.89]

The songs on Enter Now Brightness, however, suggest no dulling of Reid’s songwriting senses, just an acute desire to keep moving closer to seeing the light. [Mar 2025, p.85]

Often he makes a lot of noise without really connecting. [Oct 2004, p.100]

A beautifully honed vision of an often-harsh landscape. [Aug 2018, p.89]

Mines dips and twists spindly, telescopic guitar lines, taut coils of rhythm and controlled electronic pulses. [Oct. 2010, p. 100]

The New York boy-girl duo make sweet love to a musical memory. [July 2011, p. 107]

It's unfair he no longer sounds unique. As a transmitter for cute. stylistic oddness, though, he remains staunch. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Motion Sickness won't convert the uninitiated, but offers subtle craftsmanship and deft musicianship. [Feb 2006, p.95]

This is the sound of a band making a bold, if not entirely original, creative leap. [Mar 2014, p.92]

This solo debut sits her ripe, occasionally darkly brooding voice--Rachel Sweet with a hatchet--against grungy country and knowing '60s vibes. [Apr 2017, p.93]

A bloody-nosed hardcore ruckus that makes no bones of its debt to Black Flag's vintage thuggery. [Aug 2016, p.97]

There's not a single weak link on this excellent record. [Aug 2005, p.100]

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]

Rare Birds unpacks a wealth of sonic detail. In the best way, this feels like a record you could lose yourself in for months. [Apr 2018, p.87]

By the end, As If makes you want to run away, arm in arm with the night. [Nov 2015, p.93]

They offer up a wonderful lysergic carousel of communal singalongs, spiked pop and tribal hoedowns. [Nov 2007, p.95]

Too often their untethered jangle neglects the other side of the tight-but-loose equation. [Jun 2016, p.97]

The record is starting to sound worn. [May 2011, p.105]

Tends to drift in one and out the other at times. [Jan 2005, p.102]

Every time you think you've got to the bottom of a particular song, another layer of intrigue presents itself. [Oct 2003, p.118]

He puts down the rumour-mongers with an acid tongue. [Nov 2004, p.100]

Farrar has rarely sounded so stirring on record. [Aug 2004, p.89]

There's no denying the intuitive understanding Stone has of the often daunting material she tackles. [Mar 2004, p.104]

They present a united, often more supple front. [Nov 2003, p.131]

With her flinty guitar growling eloquent melodies and stricken solos, the group rock with a primal sensitivity akin to early Throwing Muses, but it's Powell's voice that's their truly irresistible element. [Nov 2008, p.118]

While there is no quibbling with the noble sentiment behind this set, a more judicial selection policy might have established a unified aesthetic to eclipse some of the B-side material here. [Mar 2009, p.114]

The result is fabulous, Ogerman framing Krall's sultry, languorous delivery with arrangements that are opulent yet don't swamp her voice. [Jul 2009, p.93]

Much here stands in marked contrast to that lushly arranged benchmark ["The Shepherd's Dog"]. [Jul 2009, p.114]

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

Martin-McCormick's vocals remain a deal-breaker, his high-pitched yelp threatening to overheat otehrwise superb, noise-slicked bangers. [June 2010, p. 104]

Metheny returns with a beautifully understated acoustic album whose virtue is its bare-boned simplicity. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

It gives all sorts of instrumentation the confidence to surprise us. [Nov 2011, p.102]

Exudes warmth. [Dec. 2011 p.94]

When the storm clouds on final cut Protection finally part,Okumu riffing like The Edge mainlining steroids, it completes as astonishing redemptive arc brighter than any rainbow. [Jul 2012, p.92]

Rambling, stoner guitar and drifting synths elevated by radiant percussion. [Dec 2012, p.96]

This fourth record in six years is another gem, a touch rockier than 2011's saccharine Lollipop, but no less sublime. [May 2013, p.95]

A set of seamless, lyrically concise songs that are as sweet and harmonic as their pairing suggests but also strangely stilted. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Chiaroscuro is the contrast between light and dark in visual art, and I Break Horses' second album is similarly conflicted. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Tiersen lays out nine densely dripping songs, full of lavish orchestration, indeterminate clanking and on the choral Midsummer Evening, a kind of Wicca-pop maelstrom. [Jun 2014, p.96]

The songs are rigorously infectious. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Hard to know if he's upbeat or down--at times it might be a break-up album--but enjoyable either way. [Nov 2014, p.92]

It’s subtle, it won’t grab you by the lapels, much less the jockstrap or G-string, but it does carry that twangy tang of life.

Bowness's delivery on the more subdued material tends to revisit similar melodic cadences, but when the musicians inject more energy, as on The Great Electric Teenage Dream and the gorgeous Sing To Me, the music is transported to a different level. [Sep 2015, p.90]

Feed The Fire takes Lana Del Rey to a spacey summit meeting with Lee Hazlewood of Summer Wine after a conference call with Sweden's own Concretes. [Mar 2016, p.99]

His own voice is a marvel too, heartfelt and luminous. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Bayley's lyrics--inspired by fly-on-the-wall over-hearings--add depth. [Oct 2016, p.109]

Any fears that Deaner may have matured during his absence are summarily nipped in the bud by the most puerile collection of ditties since, well, Ween. [Jan 2017, p.94]

It's Flynn's warmest outing so far. [Apr 2017, p.98]

Each song struggles to reach the three-minute mark, and are all the more enjoyable for it. [Aug 2017, p.97]

Highlights include Richard Youngs' wistful Summer's Edge, with Sugden deadpan amid a splashing keyboard fountain. [May 2018, p.97]

Tastefully arranged, high-spec country-folk introspection. [Aug 2018, p.96]

There's an agreeable robustness to proceedings. [Sep 2018, p.91]

This is very much an album to shout "Hey!" at regular rhythmic intervals. [Jun 2019, p.95]

This worthy and humane sequel lacks only the original's pioneering force. [May 2021, p.85]

The sixth full-length is a more modest affair, but also one of their finest. [Nov 2021, p.88]

Soundtrack to Mona Fastvold's story of love amid tough rural landscapes has similar mood contrasts. [Feb 2022, p.92]

A proper fire-starter. [Mar 2022, p.88]

It's a beguiling mix for the most part, even if they have overly sacrificed melody on the altar of rhythm. [Jul 2022, p.93]

It puts ZZ's impeccably-tuned engine room under the microscope, their "just us and the music" gambit paying off. [Aug 2022, p.90]

A concept album set in the 1890s, revelling in simplicity. [Oct 2022, p.92]

Predictable, perhaps, to mention Torrini's compatriot Bjork. ... Ultimately, though, RTS charts its own path. [Apr 2023, p.91]

The overall feeling of lab-hygienic utility is clearly intended, but a pretty wistfulness also whistles down these wires. [Feb 2025, p.87]

An elegantly collaged exploration of death and its consequences. [Mar 2025, p.86]

Walker's narratives land like a looser Lucy Dacus or a more skittish Craig Finn (especially on the regret-buckled Bitter Root Lake), her voice shat=ring the fur-rubbed-the-wrong-way scratchiness of Jeffrey Lewis or Kimya Dawson. [Sep 2025, p.85]

Holy Island nods to mid-period Flying Saucer Attack, Souvlaki-era Slowdive, maximum-shimmer Ride and motorik. Such influences are offset by an innate drama which inexorably draws inwards. There is, though, a potentially overwhelming backstory. [Jan 2026, p.91]

It's the rarest of soundtracks: one that makes you excited to watch the documentary, not the other way round. [Feb 2026, p.80]