Played with a straight face rather than a raised eyebrow, the whole thing is a gas. [Dec 2016, p.92]

Good-natured guitar pop from Brighton-via-California by a young all-male quartet with a flair or radio-ready melodies. [Apr 2018, p.96]

Miller and Lauderdale's duets has both the easy familiarity of old friends and the musicianship of old pros. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Sardonic, wistful, always finely wrought songs. [Apr 2014, p.98]

At points they're both elegant and, dare we say it, beautiful, so if this is the emperor's new clothes then they're wonderfully cut. [Jul 2009, p.97]

If you open your album with a song, 'Hard Times,' which rails against the mediocrity of the modern world, it might be worth ensuring it isn't the only tune out of 14 that sticks in the memory. [Jul 2009, p.105]

There are so many tricks twirling for your attention that the effect is a little like wearing all your clothes at once. [Jun 2005, p.100]

This is a richly textured debut that creates a very agreeable collision between the organic and the electronic. [Feb 2011, p.100]

Do you like reading poetry while folded into a big armchair in some sunny corner? You'll love False Beats And True Hearts. [Jun 2011, p.102]

Their polemic backed-up by their abundant charms, not least the plentiful guitar heroics of frontman Rick Rizzo, evoking both the lyricism of Neil Young and the artful amp abuse of Sonic Youth in their thrilling scree. [Jun 2011, p.106]

The naff raps and Auto-Tuned gloop can't spoil the addictive rush of the air-punching, get-pissed-destroy-a-bus-shelter anthems that abound here. [Jan 2012, p.93]

The Redeemer finds Blunt adding a series of potent new weapons to an already well-stocked musical armoury. [Jun 2013, p.88]

It may seem an unlikely match, but Martin and Brickell bring out the best in each other. [Jun 2013, p.93]

A promising diversity of ideas, tempo and riffs. [Feb 2018, p.97]

Although the listener doesn't expect dynamics in this kind of music, there is little variation in either its colour and timbre. [Aug 2020, p.89]

He's pushed his sound forwards into more mature, less swaggering territory and recruited non-threatening guests Paul O'Grady and Corinne Bailey Rae. [Mar 2022, p.83]

Anyone craving Smith/Kramer’s piledriving interlocked guitars, or Tyner’s ramalama stoner poetry, will not find them on Heavy Lifting. Get past the branding issue, however, and there’s a great deal to love about this full-blooded, riotous and often deliciously funky record. [Nov 2024, p.82]

Broadly, his remains the church of raucous or jangling indie-guitar with quirks (unexpected strings at the end of I Couldn't See The Light; clunking smartphone recording The Well Known Soldier), but Universe Room rewards the patient. [Mar 2025, p.92]

Their ninth studio album is simultaneously more cosmic and conceptual than earlier efforts. [Jun 2017, p.89]

There's no great leap forward here but the spring in their step is unmistakeable. [Sep 2013, p.87]

Rather than a showcase for their collaborators, however, MOM take the greatest of liberties with these sound sources, fragmenting and processing them into unrecognizable forms, and even occasionally playing them straight. [May 2018, p.

Its mood affecting. its melodies haunting, Fading Parade is spellbinding. [Apr 2011, p.101]

Hypnotic, doomy, edgy, but strangely forgettable, too. [Apr 2012, p.84]

The Final Frontier, its scratchy, clattering intro resembling The Mars Volta and signifying that this national institution's quest for adventure remains unabated. [Sept. 2010, p.98]

While quite meaty in itself, this is odd and not necessarily called for. [Jul 2013, p.88]

It's charming, understated and has to be heard in context. [Oct 2007, p.100]

The resulting record is one that softens with repeated listens, even if it's so full of bad juju you may initially feel compelled to burn it at the stake. [Jul 29011, p.112]

Mr. Love and Justice unvels a warmer, less blustry, more soulful Bragg. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Downtempo it may be, but joyous rather than dark. [Apr 2012, p.91]

Sometimes Duffy tries just that little too hard to capture the sound of soul music's glorious past. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Remarkably compelling to anyone with slightly more outre tastes. [Aug 2005, p.102]

It's a beauty, intimate songs and poetic lyrics, overdubbed with the Seattle-based Texan's own harmonies. [Jun 2012, p.93]

"This is a song for anyone with a broken heart," Fink sings on 'Blue Skies' and the break-up album of the year is complete. [Sep 2009, p.98]

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]

Girl Ray's metamorphosis is still ongoing, and that their true final form may resemble something darker and more substantial than Girl's neon reveries, diverting though they are. [Dec 2019, p.94]

Praxis achieves the tricky balancing act between playful and poignant. [May 2013, p.90]

The quartet's grandeur evokes Maiden and Priest with a hint of Thin Lizzy, yet they avoid European power metal's widdly overkill. [May 2008, p.109]

The band's most persuasive album. [Feb 2006, p.92]

Forth is a good, but not great Verve album, then, its glimmers of brillance all too brief. [Sep 2008, p.98]

Characterised by both an ill-advised flirtation with cutting-edge electronics and an overabundance of rather washed-out reggae. [Jun 2003, p.98]

Dreamily exploratory, but rooted in pop. [Apr 2004, p.102]

Songs terrific, band sensational, and -- big plus -- Costello's voice late-developing way beyond that pinched whine into an instrument of substance and character. [Oct 2004, p.97]

When she opens her mouth, you get nothing but depressed. [Jun 2004, p.110]

The ensuing synthetic pop suite can't disguise a crucial lack of memorable songs. [Mar 2009, p.111]

Communion clearly packs a unique set of quirks, diversions and comedowns. [Sep 2009, p.102]

The whole album is uncertain and unconvincing. [Jul 2012, p.94]

Evan Brettin's sometimes self-conscious production affectations cannot obscure a thoroughly lovely psych-pop album. [Nov 2015, p.88]

This is repeat-play head music that still manages to hotwire the heart. [May 2006, p.102]

It's difficult to make either narrative or poetic sense of, well, what she's on about. [Jun 2012, p.85]

Franz Ferdinand's first album since 2018's Always Ascending finds them re-invigorated, if not wholly reborn. [Feb 2025, p.88]

His gritty voice and folk-art lyricism ensure that these stylistic curveballs carry real emotional resonance. [Sep 2005, p.90]

It all slides down nicely--great bachelorette party music that sounds good on headphones. [Sep 2010, p.104]

Support from Howe Gelb, Patty Griffin and more, but things never really take off. [Feb 2012, p.99]

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

It's a meandering but heartfelt collection. [Jan 2014, p.97]

Tricky effectively goes missing as sultry vocal proxies Avalon Lurks, Mina Rose and Terra Lopez takes the weight, before beautifully briny closer When We Die, with original foil Martina Topley-Bird, reminds us of his peculiar strengths. [Oct 2017, p.94]

A starkly beautiful unerringly poetic outing. [Sep 2011, p.100]

Winterval has glimpses of Walls' hypnotic, frostbitten, ambient beauty, but equal airtime is given to funkier, tech-leaning tropes. [Dec 2012, p.86]

Life is rarely more tellingly captured in music. [May 2014, p.89]

This second outing is an exercise in documenting a much beefier, hot-blooded sound. [Nov 2015, p.87]

[A] heartfelt, reflective LP. [Nov 2015, p.91]

The Wild Swan echoes both John Hiatt's gnarled, R&B-rooted wit and Van Morrison's lyrical-mystic flights while developing Vance's own romantic voice. [Jun 2016, p.90]

The slow-burners can drag, but it peaks again on Down and Eno-ish Waiting. [Jul 2017, p.96]

It doesn't quite blow the emotional lid off, but Open is rich in subtle variations. [Dec 2017, p.88]

The unfamiliar are advised to check out his first three solo albums. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Vince Mendoza's symphonic orchestral arrangements ooze romantic grandeur, combined with Porter's magnificently soulful vocals, resulting in a thrillingly transcendent experience. [Dec 2017, p.93]

[The EPs] bring together the best of both sides of Belle And Sebastian: the innocence and experience, if you will. [Feb 2018, p.92]

[Alice Moki Jayne's] one-hour length is rather testing. The 29-minute 8 Spring Streeet is more structured and achieves a thrilling momentum. ... 35 minutes in [Galaxies (Sky)], the 12-strong, 12-string "guitar army," directed by Moore hit a breathtaking peak. It feels like a spectacular end, but then there are still over 20 minutes to go. [Oct 2019, p.86]

With its shuffling drums and strong tune, Microclimate has a song-like feel, while the title track is very different in mood as it gently pulses with restless rhythmic tics and a melancholic, meandering keyboard line. [Sep 2018, p.93]

When he's good (Con Conn Was Impatient, B'n'D) he's sublime. [Nov 2018, p.96]

The combination of Schultz's desperately appealing voice and Fraites's lonesome but poppy piano still hits hard. They're still doing things right. [Mar 2025, p.88]

An astonishing album... a nu soul master that should ride high on any 21st century 'best of' lists. [Dec 2003, p.109]

An explicitly shambling and weedy breed of music rendered with slavish precision, even muscularity... Decent tunes. [Dec 2011, p.100]

Basement Jaxx's energy and vision appears to be undiminished. [Oct 2014, p.93]

With Love's blackout material is thinly stretched, allowing light to shine in on a skeletal basement stock of dubstep sketches and flat house beats that repeatedly loop out to abrupt endings, halting Zomby's greater narrative ambitions. [Aug 2013, p.92]

It's conceived, written and designed for the loud appreciation of sweat-drenched pill-poppers at a 'nitespot' nowhere near you. And as such, it succeeds in magnificently silly style. [Feb 2007, p.100]

This album pop-pops with pleasure, sunshine and subversion. [Feb 2016, p.96]

This is serious... and seriously good. [Oct 2015, p.89]

This ambitious record loses subtlety in the grand Springsteen-ish gestures of songs like Just For Tonight. Bay fares better with the looped, crunchy soul and more nuanced lyrics of Fade Out and Slide. [Jun 2018, p.95]

First album in 16 years for the post-punk maestros. Riveting and robotic. [Feb. 2011, p. 106]

He has an honesty, knows how to caress a good song, and phrases knowingly. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Over the course of a whole album their light-as-afeather mix of glacial keyboard, breathy vocals and mid-tempo time signatures begins to grate, and you wish producer Thom Monahan had made them take more risks. [Jun 2009, p.99]

Throughout the album's crisp 10-track sequence, this reconfigured band are clearly once again enjoying the fruits of the unfathomable confluence of life and art. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Department of Disappearance won't surprise or disappoint anyone who loves its 2009 predecessor Yours, Truly, The Commuter. [Nov 2012, p.86]

OFWGKTA are talented, if not as ground-breaking as they think. [Jun 2012, p.85]

ESG are still creating music of eerie austerity. [Oct 2002, p.108]

Coral Fang finds The Distillers aping the bloodless Hollywood impotence of Hole's Celebrity Skin, their 'punk rock' inoffensive and utterly forgettable. [Dec 2003, p.113]

Drifts somewhere between Mogwai's softest moments and Her Space Holiday's wry prettiness. [Aug 2004, p.101]

The heart of the album sticks closely to their well-tried formula: sing-song melodies and puerile lyrics set against a steady backdrop of numbingly bland riffage. [Jan 2004, p.106]

A sophisticated set of cutting edge R&B.... TLC's best, most consistent LP. [Dec 2002, p.106]

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]

Fans of Porcelain Raft will go nuts for the aural sigh that is Pavo Pavo. [Dec 2016, p.94]

It's a mixed bag. ... Until Hot Chip's mothership heaves back into view, Taylor's emotive, immersive solo output will tide things over nicely. [May 2018, p.93]

New Facts Emerge could be said to be business as usual: ie, it cannot be quantified, and pulses with raw music, stimulating confusion and a certain monstrous glee. [Sep 2017, p.88]

What could of been a sedentary stopgap has become an heroic attestation to the thrillls of music fandom. [Apr 2010, p.104]

With much of Harrison's early solo output slammed upon original release, these remasters allow us time to search for the diamonds in the dirt. [Nov 2014, p.109]

The Darkness have regained much of the joy, silliness and virtuostic songcraft that made their 2003 debut Permission To Land such fun. [Nov 2017, p.96]

Whatever Royal Blood have surrendered in volume here, they have gained in new dimensions. [Jul 2017, p.89]