While Corporal is recognisably Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, their seventh LP is evidence for a reinvigoration; one which may bring fresh ears their way. [Nov 2025, 85]

Hard to pin down, harder not to enjoy. [Jan 2026, p.90]

Tackling eight traditional songs, he plays Just A Close Walk With Thee and Old Rugged Cross relatively straight, but turns the likes of We Shall Rise and Are You Washed In Blood? into glorious Southern boogie, replete with screaming guitar solos. [Mar 2022, p.82]

[A] queasy mix of super-sharp realism, clammy surrealism and elegant melody. [Feb 2005, p.98]

An uncomfortable listen, especially the Big Star's Third-esque When I Think Of You, but also an album imbued with acceptance and dignity. [Nov 2019, p.93]

His most lyrically sharp and melodically inspired material in years. [Jul 2005, p.99]

By this double alum's end, it feels like a breakthrough in every way, the sound of an artist who has not only forged on, but also hit a glorious peak. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Younghusband's second LP pushes bittersweet melodies from under a reverb rug. [Dec 2015, p.94]

Moby Dick's cast-of-thousands approach actually makes it feel more like a smart, funny musical without a stage. [Mar 2020, p.95]

It's Lynn's show, and she and the band are on fine form. [Apr 2021, p.81]

Limber, spacey music, pitched somewhere between jazz, funk and ambience, in the company of an innovative new class of sessioners. [May 2021, p.87]

Born To Sing is a return to classic form. [Nov 2012, p.86]

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

At once as snug as a velvet quilt in a log cabin, yet as challenging and testing as modern architecture, VII is a signpost to a whole new direction for Americana. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Restless, relentless, righteous: this guru of the primeval groove is once more helming an exceptional rock'n'roll band. [July 2008, p.108]

A breathy soundworld throbs with chillout opportunity and toggles toothache-sweet grunge buzz, Laurel canyon lilt and skyward soundtrack The Last man On Earth. Alive with confessional ideas. [Jul 2021, p.80]

There's an appealing stealth and positivity to Ron's writing here. [Jun 2017, p.91]

Twisting the familiar sounds into altogether more challenging forms. [Jul 2020, p.84]

The sounds that Volker Bertelmann creates with(in) a piano is astonishing. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The result is a collage of several kinds of classic U2 album, one that has the beauty of their panoramic '80s Eno/Lanois recordings plus the synthetic experimentation andd dalliances with pop merriment which revolutionized the band's modus operandi from "Achtung Baby" onwards. [Apr 2009, p.96]

More than the sum of its parts, the whole is wonderfully fresh and quite lovely. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Tantalizing use of spare and mostly intelligible, always unsettling lyrics. [Apr 2015, p.98]

If anything, it's darker [than Fenster's debut album], like clotted blood. [Apr 2014, p.97]

Sunwise is anything but one note. [Sep 2025, p.85]

This is a sumptuous and personal record capturing universal human themes of hope, fortitude and loss. [Jul 2018, p.95]

songdreaming is by no means perfect; Lee’s version of Black Dog And Sheep Crook comes on a little too much like Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, and his Anglicisation of Robert Burns ballad Aye Walking Oh feels a bit unnecessary. However, Lee does unaffected loveliness very well (case in point: the closing Sweet Girl McRee), and his intense empathy – for the bees, the trees, the birdies and his fellow man – shines through. [Apr 2024, p.80]

All quite stunning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Garvey's lyricism is elevated by the subtle complexity of the music, clarinets, choral voices and churchy keyboards whispering through the vents of these sons, causing a quiet stir. [Dec 2021, p.86]

There's something disarmingly joyous about it with only hints of the darker music that they also create. [Oct 2016, p.99]

Escape and new beginnings are constant themes in these eight mostly superb songs, but his old preoccupations keep yanking him back onto familiar turf. [Sep 2024, p.85]

The reference points suggest Cerebral Ballzy care little for innovation, but they've nevertheless created the best US punk debut for some time. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Booker's unique sound is a taste worth acquiring. [Sep 2014, p.91]

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

The box set's main selling point is the inclusion of a completely different version of Never Let Me Down, recorded posthumously. [Nov 2018, p.100]

It's easy to see why those indie luminaries were so deeply seduced by Acetone's languid and ever-so lovely drawing together of Doug Yule-era Velvets, Spiritualized and Low. [Oct 2017, p.106]

While relatively straitlaced on hooky earworms Good Mood and Hexagons, it vanishes into a netherworld of hypnotic minimalism amid Tol Circle's warped Mantovani exotica and the title-track's spaced-out disco frug. [Jan 2020, p.91]

The results are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. [Feb 2017, p.95]

With lyrics informed by loss and his current post-divorce relationship with a man, at the age of 64, Friday has clearly found himself and made a deeply heartfelt record, most of which is perhaps best heard at club-level volume. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Minor caveats notwithstanding, at its best One Breath is, indeed, breathtaking, and an undeniable upgrade on its much-vaunted predecessor. [Nov 2013, p.87]

The result is an album of eminently listenable sonic frontierism, and Butler's most accessible work in years. [Dec 2018, p.89]

The whole album is characterised by a subtle, all-pervading sense of menace that superbly offsets Campbell's snow-pure vocals and sparsely psychedelic orchestration. [Dec 2006, p.104]

Dark humour and combustive noise are proven fine bedfellows, and Flat Worms will soon have you slam-dancing as the planet burns. [May 2020, p.86]

Humanity's end sounds grim; but beautifully rendered. [Jul 2021, p.90]

A very fine album. [May 2019, p.94]

Oldham's typically weary, wavering larynx is rendered imperious as it rises Lazarus-like from the wind-tanned dronescapes and rasping harmonues of an epic 'Cursed Sleep,' while a mistily brooding 'Ain't You Wealthy? Ain't You Wise?' finds him deploying unlikely falsetto whoops a la springsteen. [Nov 2008, p.110]

More is that rarest of reunion records: one that transcends nostalgia to actually enhance a band’s legacy. [Jul 2025, p.74]

His third album, with its surprisingly upbeat title, makes good on the escalating promise of his previous releases. [May 2009, p.110]

Music that is dizzying beautiful, but never precious. [Oct 2021, p.88]

Her jazzy instincts and surreal lyrics perfectly offset the music's mosaic minimalism. [Sep 2009, p.92]

His gospel-tinged solo debut withstands most Levon Helm comparisons you may care to throw its way. [May 2012, p.87]

By embracing the space between, Taylor has created a meditative, magical record. [Oct 2021, p.91]

With its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

The imaginative fire still burns. [Jul 2024, p.93]

The humour enhances the band's vigour: loud and ragged, they sound like a band much younger than their years, although the high quality of songcraft is a giveaway of their veteran status. [Nov 2025, p.93]

That on-the-road-again feeling is all over the album, with a well-honed band that plays like they still get a kick from it. [Jul 2024, p.91]

And if nothing on Killing Puritans has quite the commercial potential of last year's You Don't Know Me (a UK Number 1), it does have the same cheekily opportunistic spirit, Van Helden's sticky fingers busily probing all kinds of forgotten pop cultural corners.

It's tempting to surmise that the songwriting has improved since the Smash Hits years, but an extra CD of acoustically played hits--shorn of period production--reminds you that they were always this good. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Third album proper for San Fran psych quartet. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Some of the purest, restorative, most unburdened music imaginable. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Dan and his cohorts craft an especially intimate and understated kind of English-born Americana that could easily hold its own in any late night session with the likes of Bill Callahan, Will Sheff or Tim Rutili. [Sep 2014, p.90]

Throughout, Earthling toys with classic radio-rock clichés, only to cleanse them of jadedness via Vedder's trademark wholehearted investment, a trick which still charms. [Apr 2022, p.88]

It's McCraven's gift to integrate radical individuals into his inclusive sound design; exuberant groupthink in action. [Nov 2020, p.84]

Anyone who fell for Fontaines D.C.'s 2019 debut Dogrel should find plenty to love in this first offering from Cork's Cardinals. [Mar 2026, p.81]

Heady, bodily, beautiful stuff. [Jan 2006, p.126]

As candid as Steiner can be, this doesn't play like a primal scream: her naked vulnerability makes it a remarkably moving experience. [Apr 2026, p.91]

Perrett might not have been having fun before, but even factoring in a song called Do Not Resuscitate, this finally sounds like the real thing. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Confirms her 2019 Rising Star Brit and BBC's Sound Of 2020 awards were no fluke. [Apr 2021, p.83]

Mortality looms large as he recounts a car accident on The Last Ten Seconds Of Life, the bluegrass-flavoured Not A Lot Of Sand Left In The Glass and again for prairie trail eulogy I Want To Be The Man (My Dog Thinks I Am). [Nov 2024, p.84]

Fine follow-up [to 2016's Lovers & Leavers] ... has a wider range of emotions and some new classics. [Apr 2019, p.91]

A winner from top to bottom. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Seventy-five non-stop minutes of high-end squawk and groove. [Jun 2021, p.83]

It's all carried off with the panache and confidence of a group making their first, not 24th, album. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Changes redefines the Bradley Soul sound again. [May 2016, p.87]

This follow-up to The Aliens' debut "Astronomy For Dogs" keeps the faith. [Oct 2008, p.109]

An eclectic gem that namechecks Malcolm Gladwell's social psychological musing as an influence. [Feb 2013, p.91]

From top to bottom, what a joy it is. [Jan 2024, p.88]

Badwan and Zeffira have done him [director Peter Strickland] proud. [Apr 2015, p.89]

The makeover has done him proud. [Aug 2009, p.108]

Flaming Pie saw Paul McCartney critically asserting his place in the Fabbed-up mid-90s landscape. [Sep 2020, p.102]

While Powell's bruised vocals evoke early Cat Power, she does remarkable things with that sound. [Sep 2020, p.87]

The result is a meditative set full pf surprises, and songs that haunt. [Aug 2018, p.90]

An incantatory history of the acoustic guitar, as instrument of devotion, dance and lament, at times The Borametz Tree also feels like a book of incantations, spells for the universal elixir of joy, conjured up by a master alchemist. [Jul 2019, p.93]

Part of a singular lineage of deceptively amiable and peculiarly British music that reaches back from Supergrass to Madness and Squeeze. [Nov 2002, p.102]

A little gem. [Jul 2015, p.89]

As on her debut, beats are minimal, bordering on lo-fi, allowing Bey space to voice in meditative jazzy runs whose no- messing eccentricity strongly recalls primetime Erykah Badu. [Jul 2024, p.94]

It's all pretty essential stuff.

Hiatt sounds throughout as if gargling a box of frogs in some eternal late-night New Orleans backroom. And it's glorious. [Aug 2014, p.90]

If Melody Nelson had been hit by a car driven by Arthur Vercocai rather than Serge Gainsbourg, this could have been the result. Jan 2025, p.91]

A wholly unsanitised vision, where screeching white noise guitars eclipse thundering beats in a reverb dungeon far from prissy "Health & Safety" regulation. [Apr 2022, p.80]

His supersonic flow frequently dazzles, yet he remains intelligible and intelligent throughout. [Mar 2006, p.106]

Dan Auerbach takes Finley further away from his church-and-porch roots with a brief to present the artist as a classic all-rounder and on 10 songs written by Auerbach, John Prince and Nick Lowe, he proves himself just that. [Jan 2018, p.89]

Overflowing with ideas. [Apr 2021, p.83]

If it is meant to be a Pink Floyd homage, then it's an entertaining and highly distinctive one. [Nov 2013, p.84]

This rolling membership opens the palette considerably. ... The songs that leave the biggest impression, however, are the raucous yet soulful bangers. [Mar 2020, p.89]

It's another late-life triumph. [Jun 2022, p.87]

Halfway through and it's breathtakingly apparent that David Bowie isn't so much back on the horse as riding bareback towards a cliff-edge. [Jan 2016, p.86]

[A] disarming, relatable debut. [Mar 2017, p.97]

Remind Me Tomorrow feels full to the brim, flooded to the top with experimental colour and texture, drones and drums and synthesizers. [Feb 2019, p.85]