With Heartworms James Mercer has produced another fine crop of pop. [Apr 2017, p.88]

It's better to simply let La Cucaracha happen and enjoy how much Gene and Dean toy with and transgress musical forms while still playing them to a high degree of invention, proficiency and sincerity. [Dec 2007, p.99]

It's defiantly uneasy listening, becoming more uneasier still when No Help Pamphlet comes in sounding like a lost Badly Drawn Boy Song. [Sep 2017, p.88]

Less exotic perhaps than the West Coast, Brazilian, German and Franco-Italian musical forays of the past, but even more remarkably musical, intriguingly textured and affecting. [Nov 2003, p.130]

Smith's third album since her mid-'90s comeback, might be a more orderly affair than one might have hoped for, but she's still capable of wreaking a little havoc.

Her songs, paradoxically both epic and intimate, shimmer and pulsate as their kaleidoscopic images and mysterious characters drift in and out of focus.

It's not as spiky or sleazy as 2001's superlative Kittenz And Thee Glitz... but this is shiny, addictive pop that's never lost for a good tune. [Jun 2004, p.114]

A four-course meal of a record. [July 2002, p.108]

Folie A Deux recalls the high-impact pop oof "Private Eyes"-era Hall & Oates, and that's preferable to sounding like Blink 182. [Jan 2008, p.104]

Gently is how Carey does it, and he does it well. {Sep 2010, p.102]

An adult pleasure. [Jun 2014, p.90]

A delight. [Apr 2020, p.95]

A big-sounding record, it feels like a step forward for Segall. [Nov 2021, p.91]

Recasting love songs as ghost stories, and with no recycled early '80s moves, The Coral's self-created world seems reinvigorated. [Jun 2005, p.96]

This album more than does him [Vic Chesnutt] justice. [Apr 2011, p.98]

Here he mines Suicide and Depeche Mode's sleazy synth overtures. [Mar 2016, p.100]

There's a sense that such modishly retro melancholia might have had its moment, but given that a yearning for what's been lost shades Static so starkly, that notion can only enhance the mood. [Dec 2013, p.85]

Citay's third album ratchets up the production values from its predecessor, 2007's "Little Kingdom," emphasising deluxe stoner grooves and coruscating fuzz-guitar wig-outs. [Mar 2010, p.92]

Intense and moving. [Jul 2011, p.105]

Car Alarm offers a fine entry point into the quartet's breezy soundworld. [Nov 2008, p.110]

The latter tracks sink into Beck-by-numbers fare. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Atmospheric, reverbed beats that suggest indie boys who dance. [Feb 2013, p.98]

This covers collection moves with mysterious grace. [Feb 2017, p.90]

Recent electric songs mix well with country ballads. [Aug 2015, p.98]

Certainly, the music here is very often brilliant. ... .Paak's tendency for juvenile and preening bad-boy bluster is a recurring weakness. [Feb 2019, p.84]

There's tear-in-the bear country, an angry field song, but the killer is Sorrow's shine. Classic Jim White. [Feb 2015, p.95]

In Through The Out Door is an honest album that makes Zeppelin sound (almost) human. But it hasn't aged well. [Sep 2015, p.98]

Though she occasionally loses focus Leila mostly pulls off this ambitious album and ends on a high note with 'Why Should I?' [Aug 2008, p.106]

The softer tracks find the group negotiating their path to maturity with confidence.

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

Invitations rushes of feeling are rich and real. Filthy Friends are a genuine supergroup surprise. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Quality control dips during the last quarter, but this is a reassuring step forward. [Nov 2009, p.94]

What they bring to the table is a living, breathing sence of the organic. [June 2009, p.109]

The exuberance and delight in the newness and rightness of it all is captivating. [Jul 2009, p.107]

Dreamy and cacophonous. [Feb 2013, p.98]

Their third tribute set is exactingly detail-correct. [Dec 2013, p.90]

It's easy groove doesn't suggest exhaustion, just peace of mind. [Jan 2019, p.84]

To some he may always be Neil's boy, but Liam Finn is very much his own man. [Aug. 2011, p. 98]

Tobacco is more appealing when playing it straight. [Aug 2009, p.108]

Shulamith proves that intelligent pop music still has the ability to seduce and enthrall. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Some of it hisses and gurgles like early Future Sound Of London. [Oct 2003, p.118]

Cracknell's straight '60s pop ballads sit oddly, but a clubbable Shower Scene and well-electroclash Amateur and New Thing suggest more than a fiar outlook for the weathering well threesome. [Oct 2002, p.110]

Comes on like an evil Duran Duran making future music for damaged teens.... It's both disturbingly compelling and very, very wrong. [Jun 2003, p.112]

A scrapbook of tuneful, scattershot fragments. [Mar 2004, p.97]

It's hardly a career-defining collection. [Sep 2004, p.98]

The quirky rhythmic tics remain, as do the cheeky little melodies, but this is a tougher and funkier project altogether. [Feb 2002, p.100]

Bluefinger marks an artistic rebirth for the king of quiet/loud. [Sep 2007, p.110]

It's a fine entry point into Faust's lineage. [May 2009, p.104]

LaVette says thank you to the British Invasion for bringing soul back home. [July 2010, p. 103]

She was born on Christmas Day, but has an unsentimental take on the holiday. [Jan. 2011, p. 94]

Better Strangers' intense mechanoid rhythms and unfamiliar time signatures can make for uncomfortable listening, but snatches of melody are never far away. [Jan 2016, p.94]

Despite the presence of a few additional collaborators, much in Half Japanese-world is as anticipated. [Feb 2017, p.94]

Meditative Time (You Got Me) sets the pace: a gently rambling rumination twinkling with congas, shakers and bird-like flutes. [Oct 2019, p.92]

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

Highlights: Tropicalia-Afro-funk fusion Bobbie's Second World; 7th Dynamic Goo's silvery disco. [Apr 2020, p.96]

When Goddard himself provides vocals – notably on Follow You and On My Mind – it adds necessary cohesion. [Aug 2024, p.83]

Fruitful collaborations... invite the listener to keep that dial locked, despite the odd distracting lapse into free-form digital static. [Jul 2005, p.112]

This time Baird's own compositions dominate. [Nov 2011, p.100]

By turns acoustic intimate and theatrical-loud, this spellbinding work peaks and soars with all the warmth and wonder of some great romantic adventure, demanding and rewarding total immersion in its magical narrative. [May 2009, p.110]

CLPPNG is the work of hip hop auteurs delivering the shock of the new. [Jul 2014, p.88]

It's more varied and interesting: angular, Cure-guitar shapes, echoing shapes. [Oct 2018, p.94]

The wrong kind of sonic adventure undermines about half the songs. A drop of Waitsian, drunken, junkyard percussion might have been just the ticket, but the plethora of drony guitar and keyboard distortions proves distracting, rather than "atmospheric", and impairs the effect of some strong songs including Back To Manhattan and Stuck. [Dec 2009, p. 88]

Inside The Ships is one of their most entertaining yet confounding albums. [Oct 2011, p.101]

An album drenched in familiar swathes of charm, pathos, elegance and black humour. [Dec 2015, p.90]

A giddy, unpredictable pop record that put new spins on every cliche it touches, while Benson;s innately McCartneyesque melodic gift successfully sells every occasionally saccharine lyric. [Jun 2020, p.88]

Although the quality dips dramatically on Samir & Abboud's bland, overworked Games and Gharbi Sadock & George Garzia's sickly slap-bass odyssey Lala Tibiki, both prove rare exceptions. [Jan 2018, p.102]

Instead of a bona fide entry in either band's catalogue, chalk this up as a Dungen sidebar. [Apr 2018, p.89]

[Obits] sound ever more like a desiccated AC/DC. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Finger-pointing music has rarely been as much fun. [Nov 2008, p.116]

Ear Drum confirms Kweli's position as an icon. [Oct 2007, p.106]

For all the band's rich resonance, she shines brightest when [producer Colin] Cripps holds the kilowatts. [May 2005, p.98]

Buoyed with emotional heft and supernova guitar riffs, their second album is wired around a maturing songcraft and the studio savvy of grunge producer Butch Vig. [Aug 2008, p.112]

Tell Me is a pure and earnest amble through heartbreak, Bluegrass-tinged, with Seldom nods to anything approaching modern. [Apr 2011, p.106]

Devotees of J Dilla and Flying Lotus in particular should investigate. [Apr 2013, p.95]

Cheatah's emotional core is easily decipherable. [Dec 2015, p.94]

Lush and emotive. [Feb 2017, p.99]

Reflection Of Youth swoops through grandiose, visceral and skeletal arrangements (producer-engineer Nick Rayner is a revelation): Full-tilt rock on I Wanna Dance; warped folk bleeding into orchestrated glitch on Christine; steely, shivery ballad Survived. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Minimal beat-logic and a new-age-ish ability to work below pop's usual emotional horizons sets them apart. [Sep 2018, p.96]

It reframes familiar, comforting songs of joy, innocence and goatherds within pitiless orch-industrial rock and suspicious pop softness, rediscovering the original's Nazi-assailed gravity and reflecting on a divided Korean peninsula and the international power relations beyond. [Jan 2019, p.84]

This still requires a certain kind of listener: namely, people who find Michael Cera's movies charming. [May 2011, p.109]

The result is as good as anything Cale's delivered in years. [Nov 2012, p.91]

This hour-long excerpt inevitably loses that multimedia narrative heft, yet its marriage of dronescape synths and Chinese libretto - voices alternatively soaring, skittering and sorrowful - still casts an otherworldly spell. [Feb 2022, p.84]

The pace is relentlessly uptempo, but the sheer feisty spirit and conviction with which it is delivered ultimately brooks no argument. [Feb 2008, p.102]

Though not without the odd turkey, it is arguably their most satisfying work since 1978's Some Girls. [Oct 2005, p.100]

This is too much fun to be a one-off. [Apr 2024, p.82]

Plays like a budget price homage to ELO and early '70s Beach Boys, full of pocket symphonies and childlike wonder. [Jan 2006, p.132]

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

Originally intended as a YouTube offering, The Palace Guards teeters between alt country and folk rock in a diverse and totally appealing manner. [Jun 2011, p.103]

This album is a punchy, lyrical and moving set. [Nov 2011, p. 103]

Waterhouse's 2012 debut, Time's All Gone, combined strong songwriting with an impressive, hard-voiced approach, and this follow-up does the same again. [May 2014, p.94]

Each song seems like an effort to atomise their grief and frustration, with frequently clarity amid icy electronic noir. [Mar 2019, p.99]

Best tracks are the most acid. [May 2020, p.96]

The melodies and fire return in Baby I'm Coming Home, but held up against their past triumphs, Dropout Boogie often sounds half-cooked. [Jun 2022, p.84]

Except for hitting the odd unfamiliar note, as on an exquisitely lap-steel and fingerpicked Galveston, the singer's vocals sound unchanged, still keening and honey-pure. [Aug 2013, p.89]

A mellow, tender, easy album...

The dejected vocals and mesmerising mood of the music are in place, making this an album for long lonely winter nights. [Feb 2009, p.115]

The trio's vocal harmonies have lost none of their warm-blooded magic. [Nov 2018, p.96]

The Stockholm-based composer edges into metallic wave-like dissonance, using organ and guitar to explore points at which sonic clarity starts to mess with our spatial awareness. [Sep 2019, p.91]