Handsomely subversive. [Nov 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]

While they haven't suddenly become a different proposition, they are exploring structure and metre. [Dec 2016, p.88]

Innovative it's not. [Oct 2006, p.112]

It is an easy album to like. [Apr 2012, p.85]

The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends was the perfect Record Store Day artefact--dramatising the value and mystique of physical recordings. [Sep 2012, p.94]

The album is a retroactive joy from start to finish. [May 2015, p.92]

Compare this latest instalment of vivid, left-wing existentialist pop with past triumphs like Mars Audiac Quintet and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and it's every bit as good. [Apr 2006, p.102]

An interestingly mixed-up album. [Sep 2001, p.114]

Love Is Here is juvenalia -- persuasive, and suggesting greatness should the band have the courage (or the license) to cut loose. [Nov 2001]

A covers album supreme. [Dec 2004, p.114]

Scales new heights of bong-loaded majesty. [May 2005, p.108]

They return with an eleventh album on which they seem to have distilled every good idea into these 14 short, smart songs. [Sep 2008, p.106]

O'Brien prowls around angular guitar and drums. Imagine a Kim Gordon-fronted PiL. [Jul 2022, p.97]

There's something quietly masterful about The Other Side Of Make-Believe. Strong, dignified, scarred but moving forwards, it's the sound of a band charting emotional disturbances, but emerging renewed. [Aug 2022, p.91]

Like a series of melancholy one act plays. [Jan 2006, p.131]

While they fight shy of radical "Kid A"-style reinvention, hats should be doffed to Coldplay for at least having artistic cojones to mess with a winning formula. [July 2008, p.101]

Occasionally, as on the stuttering, beats-at-war-with-the-tune One And Lonely, it's not so successful, but in the main it's easy to feel both the width and the quality. [Jun 2011, p.106]

With these less-then-cutting-edge elements Wilson manages to conjure that's diverse and full of drama. [Oct 2009, p.97]

The odd uptempo beat rather jars. [Jul 2013, p.96]

These are top space-jams. [Feb 2017, p.90]

The best of these songs are easily a match for Broken Social Scene. [Nov 2007, p.106]

It's definitely in the family tradition. [Oct 2006, p.112]

Monstrous stoner-psych jams from, of all places, Williamsburg. [July 2010, p. 95]

The electronic treatments melt lusciously into the acoustic source material and only occasionally ... does dissonant incongruity intrude. [Aug. 2011, p. 106]

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

The overriding feeling, though, is that you want to give them a good shake, maybe get them a it drunk, try to liven them up. [Apr 2016, p.91]

Hectically enjoyable LP. [Oct 2020, p.87]

The London singer's stark acoustic covers album works best when furthest removed from the original. [Mar 2021, p.91]

With many of Paisley's songs dealing with people struggling between places, timeframes or lovers, such unforced, reflective songwriting deftly grounds these unsteady experiences, an arrangement that simply works. [Apr 2023, p.85]

Here, the tunes are dubbed to within an inch of their lives, reduced to fiddly-for-fiddling's-sake electronic bleeps and riffs. [Oct 2011, p.100]

Small World suffers from sonic conservatism: The Tame Impala-lite of I Lost My Mind is undercooked, while It's Good To Be Back's tracly synths are a touch self-parodic. [Apr 2022, p.88]

This is the far meaner, angrier and punkier [of the two post-Libertines albums] [Jun 2006, p.98]

[A] diverse new set. [May 2014, p.96]

Part happy break-up LP, part honest look in the mirror, Extreme Witchcraft works magic. [Feb 2022, p.82]

Moodily modish but emotionally intriguing, Arthur Beatrice inhabit a stylish grey area. [Mar 2014, p.92]

A strangely bloodless album heavy on technical perfection rather than the visceral emotion at the core of the best roots music. [May 2023, p.91]

In the world of the gilded musical scion, sixth album counts as stripped back. [May 2010, p. 93]

But despite the lack of surprise, Gold Rush is a fine, rollicking jig, and Sparrow's skeletal voice and uke combo feels like it's been pulled from the ground still caked in Prairie soil. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

An album that falls between traditional and progressive country stools. [May 2014, p.89]

With Fate, Dr. Dog have begun to deliever the sort of super-confident songs that, up until now, have proved frustratingly out of reach. [Sep 2008, p.108]

It's hard to envisage anything this parochial moving beyond cult status.

For the most part it's a genuinely thrilling, energy-charged adventure. [Feb 2002, p.98]

[An] almost equal measure of intriguing and tiresome music. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Irksome and intriguing, compelling and calculated, Goblin confounds at every turn. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

Throughout, a twinkly otherworldliness is counterbalanced by rhythmic excursions evoking the passage between one liminal world and another. [Feb 2019, p.92]

Elephant's songs of love and death are heart-wrenchingly sad, movingly performed and sung in a poignant, luminous voice betwixt pop and country folk-country. [Apr 2009, p.110]

There's much of Lawrence's beguiling attention to detail present here. [Oct 2014, p.94]

Striken, sorrowful balladry is the meat of this fine album. [Feb 2008, p.102]

The vocals of core dynamic duo Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers instantly proffer more light and shade, while the punchy garage of Kraut Of All Of This, distorted, gliding My Bloody Valentine-lite of Frayed And Spank, or thundering Chemical Brothers detonations at the heart of A Wolf In Geek's Clothing all point to far more than just obscure psych records in their collection. [Apr 2011, p.100]

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]

A triptych of glitchy, dissonant beats, shards of white light and fractured, ambient interference. [Aug 2013, p.91]

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

A potent debut that juxtaposes pastoral lyricism with urban angst. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Johnson recorded 30 songs between 1927 and 1930, and 11 are covered here by a curious, though often great, selection of artists. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Too often, though, a combination of slight songcraft and waters' awkward tendency to sound simultaneously angry and platitudinous starts to wear thin. [Jul 2017, p.89]

Visitations may just be their finest half-hour. [Dec 2006, p.108]

These Wooden Shjips, however unchanging, even conservative, are becoming increasingly irresistible. [Nov 2013, p.86]

There are some lovely moments. ... But ultimately, the impossible ambition of Planetarium looms over every single moment. [Aug 2017, p.89]

It's searingly sincere, earnestly aching stuff, but when The Thermals hit the melodic bullseye, yours will be the next heart that breaks. [Dec 2010, p.94]

Palindrome Hunches is a record full of songs that whisper their entreaties. [Dec 2012, p.88]

The Black Keys’ raw edges are retained amid the Hendrix fuzz of Man On A Mission, while on the slick, Philly-shaped soul standout Make You Mine, the pair soar to new poppy heights. [Sep 2025, p.79]

Minimalist of palette it may be, but Laraaji's characteristic approach to melody, harmony and rhythm, at once both charmingly childlike and spiritually ecstatic, is present throughout. [Aug 2020, p.87]

Subversively moving. [Aug 2016, p.94]

On their third album Beak> still feels like a wonky and productive hobby for Geoff Barrow of Portishead with his mates Will Young and Billy Fuller; it's serious but it also sounds like a lot of fun. [Nov 2018, p.94]

The album is, however, still ramshackle and oddball where it counts. [Jun 2019, p.86]

Tom Petty's turned his attention to a resume of his life so far -- 15 crunching, clever, moving tracks that make his earlier point far better, indicting the rest by breezy example. [July 2010, p. 96]

Free, in a good way, resembles his more esoteric work from that time, such as 1999's brooding Avenue B. [Oct 2019, p.88]

The superb Ditherer belies its title with head-on immediacy even if it giddily ignores the confines of triangular rock. [Sep 2007, p.108]

This album is as artistically varied as can be. Best of the faithful versions are Margo Price's rousing Stranger In A Strange Land and Monica Martin's intimate A Song For You. [Oct 2023, p.83]

Traces lines to both Bill Callahan's downbeat philosophising and Jonathan Richman's crafted wit and primal rock'n'roll chug. [Nov 2023, p.94]

An impressive debut. [Nov 2008, p.109]

While there's nothing here that immediately screams to be considered in the front rank of their input, the more you listen, the more it feels like being reunited with some long-lost, missing-presumed-dead relatives. ... Voyage is just as good as you expect. [Jan 2022, p.84]

She's right back on track with this terrific debut for Capitol. [Jun 2005, p.110]

A series of richly textured, ambient instrumentals from pedal steel guitar. [Oct 2016, p.92]

Ex-Wallflower's second solo reveals a chilly, magnetic power growing songer. [June 2010, p. 104]

Urban Turban is another irresistible Cornershop mash-up. [Aug 2012, p.86]

Man Alive is daisy-fresh, and reaching levels of unexpected bliss on the album's three ballads. [Sep 2010, p.99]

A country album of slide guitar, sweet harmonies and heartworn ballads from a landscape on the edge of the unsayable, the kind of high lonesome petitions to the gods Syd Barrett might have made in his flat on the night pink Floyd never turned up.

Collection of angular electro, cavernous soundscapes and delightfully off-kilter rhythms from Depeche Mode's creative hub. [Mar 2021, p.89]

Frustratingly, Adams' insistence on releasing his every whim means that for each wonderful My Heart Is Broken or Pa, there's a rather ordinary The Hardest Part, dreary Silver Bullets or simply stinking Dear John. [Oct 2005, p.112]

It works remarkably well. [May 2012, p.83]

Though mostly a one-man affair, he covers a lot of ground across the album's 11 tracks. [Jun 2015, p.86]

The formula makes for a kick-ass sound, one which you can imagine rocking a festival tent to its foundations, and yet uncomfortable echoes of Lenny Kravitz keep reappearing. [Dec 2007, p.108]

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

Upbeat episodes are outweighed by melancholic drama. [Jun 2018, p.88]

No new ground is broken, but everyone emerges unscathed. [Dec 2023, p.86]

WLIB AM is best taken as a whole. [Nov 2008, p.116]

It's intensely personal. [May 2017, p.88]

There's something of the counsellor's couch about these songs, a record that trembles between acute self-awareness, self-laceration and self-preservation in its quest for "the deep blue OK". [Jun 2025, p.82]

A real emotional rollercoaster ride. [Apr 2003, p.102]

An elegant digital reverie. [Apr 2003, p.112]

Baby I'm Bored's knotty guitars and ramshackle production values recall the Lemonheads' swansong, Car Button Cloth. [Mar 2003, p.94]

These may be other people's words, but Dulli well knows the vocabulary. [Nov 2004, p.112]

A persistently funny exercise in nonconformity. [May 2003, p.106]

This is well-muscled, heavily mascara'd dance music. [Sep 2004, p.99]

By focusing on the temporal, he reduces himself to simple protest music rather than timeless folk. [Aug 2005, p.104]