Gelb may be onto something and his chutzpah i laudable but, ultimately, only time decides which songs become standards. [Dec 2017, p.94]

It's the very essence of being "unplugged" as Chilton--laughing, joking, fluffing lines, forgetting verses and whistling choruses--breaks down all barriers between musician and fan. [Nov 2013, p.102]

With its portentous pulse and skirls of feedback BN9Drone, sounds like nothing less than a call to mobilise. [May 2021, p.87]

What it lacks in vocal grit it makes up for in abundant hooks. [May 2019, p.96]

Blues Of Depression picks up from where that album [2014's Different Shades Of Blue] left off, allowing the fretboard wizard to demonstrate that he can write good tunes as well as produce a seemingly endless supply of molten solos. [May 2016, p.92]

There are moments of a chamber ensemble compactness and clarity, but at times it all gets suspended in and blurred b clouds of ambience. [Jun 2016, p.95]

There are moments when things don't quite work as they should. But the Blind Boys, left to their own devices on the funky Jesus, Hold My Hand, do what they do best. [Jun 2011, p.104]

Paley's voice is a little frail but it's true, and his picking skills are as finely honed as when he gave lesson to the young Ry Cooder and Jerry Garcia. [Oct 2012, p.90]

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

These are wonderfully built earworms here, but callow writing sometimes morphs them into mere infections. [Apr 2021, p.82]

Despite the recruitment drive, it's another curious case of history repeating itself: N.E.R.D setting their phasers to stun, but only intermittently finding the target. [Feb 2018, p.91]

Gallipoli, recorded in Berlin and Puglia, is oddly unmoving, lacking range for all its seductive picturesque roaming. [Mar 2019, p.96]

The amount of recording distortion on some pieces, like on the sparse, meandering piano instrumental Last Of The Lantern Oil, can tip the balance over into ear-buzzing discomfort. [Apr 2020, p.87]

They wear their ideas on their sleeves, certainly, but under all the layers, a heartbeat is sometimes hard to find. [Feb 2008, p.104]

The boogie imperative on Knuckleball Express is less deconstructed than usual. [Jul 2020, p.84]

There's a punkish, uncompromising bravery to tracks like Raging Earths--piledriving beats and a gathering storm of swelling synths--that's strangely compelling. [Jun 2019, p.95]

The first half of this Bristol-based quartet's debut is too idolatrous, but the second plunges into deeper cavernous spaces. [Apr 2015, p.89]

With the frustrating Violent Light, Wilson has surrendered his own persona. [Apr 2014, p.97]

It's only when Lennon takes over that the collaboration really works. [Jul 2016, p.94]

An amibitious record. [Dec 2003, p.113]

[A] thrilling state-of-a-broken-nation address. [Jun 2013, p.95]

Moddi's own arrangements, translations and distinctive Donovan-esque tones ensures Unsongs coheres as a n album as well as an eye-opening lesson in the importance of music. [Nov 2016, p.88]

The Sun Awakens isn't wildly different (from its predecessor)--though it introduces tripped-out electric guitars to Chasny's homespun palette. [Jul 2006, p.102]

You're left feeling less !!! than ??? [Apr 2007, p.102]

Great to have back that little razor edge that Lytle loses when he steps away from his bandmates, but this might be the last time he gets away with it without a major rethink. [Apr 2017, p.96]

As feisty good-time rock goes, the Stones get good and gone and its worth every penny for the duet with Buddy Guy on Muddy Waters' 'Champagne and Reffer' alone. [May 2008, p.103]

What follows in this set is a chaos of experiment and assigned alliances. ... Ironically, the oldest recordings on You're The Man are--that single excepted--among the best Gaye here. [May 2019, p.100]

Outlaw doesn't deliver six-pack sagas, instead he offers Bottomless Mimosas as a morning pick-me-up. [Jun 2017, p.93]

It's breathless stuff, but can feel homogenous after a while. [Apr 2014, p.98]

Just a tad more quirkiness would be welcome. [Jul 2016, p.92]

Another album big on willful naivete and arrangements so pretty they make Belle & Sebastian sound like Finnish black metal. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Michael Collins' latest sounds like a 21st century Ween--knowing pastiches of '70s Laurel Canyon, '60s jazz soundtracks and more, with guests. [Oct 2016, p.100]

Top heavy with gleeful dysfunctional relationship songs, though eventually stalling via forgettable '80s rock mediocrity. [Dec 2003, p.109]

Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk's 30 minutes stand on their own despite nods to Flaming Lips' darker side and Linear Downfall's fascination with early King Crimson. [Sep 2014, p.91]

Though overly familiar for boomers, perhaps, Wasted On Youth's sibling rivalry-fuelled irreverence will likely chime with Gen Z kids seeking their own Oasis, not mum and dad's. [Apr 2026, p.86]

Anyone possessing their previous output will find little in the way of reinvention. [Oct 2006, p.96]

Strings, gospel choirs, outeros inspired by Queen--the Manics' 10th album cranks up the drama, but in their hands grandiose needn't be a dirty word. [Oct 2010, p.94]

The band retreated into the more self-contained approach which has spawned My other People. [Jul 2022, p.92]

Though Anderson buries his voice and words in the maelstrom, his declared (if not immediately) apparent) theme of a constantly thwarted search for "true love" seems right at home in shoegazing's characteristic marriage of bliss and anxiety. [Dec 2023, p.93]

It is mainly a joyous affair, good-timey in a well structured way and often reminiscent of the kind of thing Johnny Rivers used to dispense at the start of the '70s. [Apr 2009, p.101]

Adrift in a sun-warped dome of guitar wah, wobble and dub. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Something Dirty is powerful and multi-textured, but there's less of the studio experimentation that marked 2009's C'est Com...Com...Complique, despite Peron being promisingly credited with flamethrower and goat hooves. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Sweet, then, but you wouldn't eat a whole one. [Apr 2014, p.98]

Another sprawling, somewhat overwrought Ashcroft solo record. [Jun 2016, p.88]

Another point of reference is Gorky's Zygotic Mynic and it's Girl Ray's appropriation of their scherzo sensibility lifts the three-piece beyond pastiche, feeding songs such as Don't Go Back St Ten and Where Am I Now with a musical strangeness that's totally alluring. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Bows & Arrows might seem like the ideal rock'n'roll yuletide soundtrack--and it is, but only for those who spend their Christmases in dive bars with nothing but a gold-hearted hooker, bottomless highball glass and volume of Bukowski poetry for company. [May 2004, p.100]

Good news for shoegaze-curious neophytes too afraid to dive headfirst into MBV's loveless, but very backward looking, too. [Jan 2012, p.98]

Thoughtful, slow-burning dream pop. [Apr 2014, p.98]

If this is about cities, it's cities glimpsed in poetic, fragmentary dreams. [Jul 2017, p.90]

Results vary, froma plodding, Kasbian-like 'Deeripper' to the charmingly labyrinthine 'Headdress,' which is so fresh it feels like the genuine article. [Jul 2009, p.96]

First new solo album for four years from the young jazz maverick.

Hood's vision for the band has always been cinematic--never more so than here, in fact--but by mid-album tracks such as "Get Downtown" and "After The Scene Dies," things are becoming sketchy.

[Nelson] moves effortlessly from pop country balladry to well-heated Western Swing. [Jul 2012, p.94]

OEH are a more intriguing venture when confident enough to aim for the universal. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Apart from the upbeat soul of Never Want To Be Kissed, featuring Stax veteran William bell on vocals, Set Sail stumbles and squints through its nine other tracks, although on Bumpin' they at least rouse themselves long enough to sound like Tony Joe White imitating Sly Stone. [Mar 2022, p.86]

An album that stalks the perpetual gloaming so wholeheartedly, you do rather wish for a ray of sunlight here and there. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Uneven but exceptionally inventive. [Sep 2005, p.92]

Right On! seesaws between spectral moments of introspection and bristling passages of electric activity. [Jan 2016, p.88]

[Her] supple vocal sounds are partly obscured here by loops and electronics or resonant layers of Eno'd guitars. [May 2021, p.88]

Sadly, there's a few too many tunes like (Girl We Got A) Good Thing--the sort of throwaway preppy drivel critics of Weezer think they sound like all the time--for this to sit alongside the band's classic work. [May 2016, p.90]

Although recognisably, and powerfully, the work of Explosions In The Sky this is now a band whose music undulates. [May 2016, p.92]

Finally, a grown-up album from the oldest kid at the party. [Apr 2015, p.92]

JRW's third has enough honky-tonk brio to merit comparison with Kings Of Leon. [Apr 2014, p.98]

There are enough off-kilter moments to stop complacency setting in. [Jul 2018, p.90]

Odd tracks recall Animal Collective, but these immersive 63 minutes mostly ripple with hallucinatory effect, overdubs virtually free of beats. [Sep 2017, p.92]

Wrangler's is a twitching, throbbing, mildly dystopian sound-world of vivid analogue synthesizer tones, overlaid with heavily processed vocals. [Jun 2014, p.96]

A Deeper Understanding is exhilarating in places, but perhaps inevitably, give n it's long and convoluted gestation, it can at times feel like it's trying too hard. [Sep 2017, p.90]

The folk comes juxtaposed with industrial creaks and eastern drones, the virtuosity tempered with scrabbling wildness. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Alias perhaps lacks a truly killer song, a lightning rod to draw newbies in. [Sep 2014, p.94]

There are certainly treasures here if you sift through Guv's prolific unburdening. [Dec 2019, p. 94]

Nas's fifteenth is a heap of comfort food for old-school rap fans. [Apr 2022, p.90]

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

It's disappointing that there aren't one or two more inspiring moments, especially when there's a roughly equivalent number of duds. [Jan 2017, p.92]

Van sounds relaxed and perfectly at ease. [Feb 2018, p.93]

It's a mix of acoustic and occasionally stodgy soft rock with a message of peace and positivity to all men and women. [May 2016, p.88]

Sanborn's relentless modernism occasionally overwhelms Meath's sumptuous keening vocal and serpentine melodies. [Jun 2017, p.94]

Trad-indie may be flailing but Barat's belief is persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.92]

The way a latent power blends with an occasionally slightly gauche drama suggests early Radiohead. And, as with Radiohead, it feels like the second album could be the key event, deciding whether these collegiate English sounds can enrapture the wider world. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Akin to career suicide, it's admirably bonkers but overlong. [Oct 2009, p.108]

[An] impressive return from the veteran doyens of acid jazz. [Jun 2013, p.95]

Technically striking, yet for all its precision sounds oddly sanitised. [Jan 2017, p.104]

While the song selections are unimpeachable, the execution varies massively. [May 2026, p.101]

It's beautiful throughout, but more ice or fire is sometimes required. [Mar 2018, p.91]

Samurai is a cheesy teen ballad similar to those written by David lynch and Angelo Badlamenti, where Vega gives us bulletins on the Magi and unsolved murders. It's typically unsettling and helps give the album some welcome structure. [May 2021, p.87]

It resets her musical dial by abandoning the borderline Nick Cave-isms of Welcome... to amp up the rock dynamism which first won her attention.[Mar 2019, p.92]

His risk-taking is admirable but "abandon," perfect or other-wise, is not his optimum look. [May 2015, p.91]

When Jones starts singing about Clapham over the clipped, welter-weight indie of this quartet's second studio album it begins to seem a curiously south-eastern English rock vision - the clean guitars and Cure-style vocals suggesting a lighter shade of Bloc Party. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

He reinterprets key moments from his back catalogue. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Baobab fans will love this, though the Massako tracks have audible distortion. [Sep 2015, p.101]

California five-piece coming soon to a stadium near you. [Sept. 2011, p. 100]

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

The Pet Parade is calmer, folkier, and more accommodating to Johnson's pinched nasal tones. [Apr 2021, p.84]

A fun day out only slightly marred by clinical execution that lacks the emotional tug that lovers of this vintage seek. [May 2008, p.102]

Gone is the Fisher Price-redolent instrumentation and found--sounds, in their place something more measured and radio friendly. [Jun 2009, p.98]

Anyone who blanched at Herrema's strychnine sandpaper vocals won't be seduced by this set, however, and Hagerty only rarely scale the truly sublime heights of harmololdic skronk within his reach. [Jul 2017, p.90]

She sounds a tad daft masquerading as a feisty Harlem mama on the Pharrell-produced I Can't rely On You, but her uber-gutsy delivery still charms. [Apr 2014, p.90]

A dauntless spirit permeates; and while there's only fleeting evidence of Berman's later literary wit, or Makmus' skewed rock swagger... [several songs] hint at the riches to come. [Jul 2012, p.101]

The more successful versions tend to be of recent, less iconic songs--John The Revelator, Fragile Tension--but, despite the invention throughout hours of listening, not one version matches the original. [Jul 2011, p.112]