We get to bask in the calm in the eye of Young's wilful hurricane without suffering the trail of destruction that followed it. An intensely enjoyable experience it is, too. [Feb 2019, p.99]

She's at peak power on Faraway Look, expressing feminine vulnerability over immaculate Dusty In Memphis arrangements. [Mar 2019, p.95]

City Pressure, the military-industrial complex, social injustice, ganja and plague/lockdown frustration are soundtracked by city-sized industrial noise and merciless rhythm. [Oct 2021, p.88]

While personal and sexual politics were always implicit within Taylor's bovver girl workouts, her words have grown tougher and sharper. [Oct 2021, p.89]

Delicate yet resolute, Geist is a beautiful spin through the windmills of Lay's mind, unreal in the best ways. [Nov 2021, p.92]

Surely Relentless is how Chrissie Hynde always wanted the Pretenders to sound. [Oct 2023, p.79]

Thrillingly raw, it captures the pair at their most streamlined, visceral and direct, disproving F Scott Fitzgerald's theory about second acts. [Jun 2024, p.86]

A radiant light cutting through the gloom, illuminating icy drone, crepuscular ambient and reverb-heavy beatless trips. [May 2025, p.91]

The folk-adjacent auteur’s ninth studio LP is alive, Natalie Merchant-style, to the marvels of creation, but also the vulnerability that comes with suddenly having a physical stake in the future of humanity. [Oct 2025, p.88]

I See You is more nuanced and upbeat than their previous records but, perhaps shrewdly, it enhances their blueprint rather than completely redrawing it. [Feb 2017, p.91]

This album is destined to redraw the parameters, thanks to its sheer scale and detail, its recurring themes and imagery, and its creators' refusal to settle for less than they could achieve. [June 2011, p. 90]

Bonny Light Horseman probably could've said just as much over half the tracks, but the fact they had the courage to keep digging ever deeper into their emotional turbulence has bourne spectacular results. [Jul 2024, p.87]

If it has a fault, it is that its relentlessly innovative music can overshadow often superlative lyrics. [Apr 2005, p.102]

Baroness have delivered their masterpiece: an album grounding their cosmic heaviosity with earthbound, compelling drama. [Jan 2016, p.88]

The corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's songwriting so expertly exerts. [Mar 2022, p.80]

The centrifugal force is Rosali's calm, deep voice, belying her lyric's nervous energy and drama, balancing vulnerability with resilience. [May 2024, p.88]

Rolls by like a summery blast of mid-'60s AM radio. [Sep 2005, p.89]

It sounds wonderful. [Apr 2014, p.96]

This disc is bloated with anti-matter sing-alongs to savour. [Apr 2017, p.98]

The single-disc edition offers a streamlined look at Cornell's career, cherry-picking some of his finest moments and complementing them with rarities. ... For a totalising retrospective, the 7-LP, 4-CD, 1-DVD box set is essential. [Jan 2019, p.104]

The more upbeat swing to the songs doesn't dull the crispness of her songwriting. [Jul 2019, p.90]

A record that makes the tortured beauty of Tilt appear like a mildly resigned shrug. [Jun 2006, p.102]

Extraordinary. [Aug 2023, p.88]

Funny, bleak, cathartic and brave, with a winning redemption arc, in all but design Weirdo is a blues album - transforming unbearable pain into deeply affecting, original art. [Jun 2025, p.86]

Daunting? Yes. Fun and engaging? That too. [Apr 2026, p.86]

Represents an ultramodern rock masterpiece, low-key yet ominous, offering new yet comforting ways of singing familiar tunes. [Jul 2003, p.98]

Not a crossover record, but invigorating. [Mar 2002, p.114]

Streetcore is an amalgam of all that made Joe Strummer, the musician and the man, so great. [Nov 2003, p.131]

Victoria's wracked, whispery, smoky rasp exudes her inner suffering. [Apr 2019, p.91]

If not every experiment works, Brown's twinkling hook-up with Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt on Really Doe totally surpasses its billing. [Nov 2016, p.89]

Some might find the work's almost wilful-seeming opacity and slight whiff of academia off-putting. Judged on purely musical terms, however, it's a ting of great beauty. [Apr 2017, p.90]

Heartmind is unlikely to break him out of the smoked-glass shell of cultdom. ... Yet this album does display notable lushness. ... It proves McCombs doesn't need any dream machine to induce new visions: 10 albums in, he's more than capable of looking at the world differently all by himself. [Sep 2022, p.84]

Collected together the fear might have been that the sound would be found wanting. yet from 1996's Nenette Et Boni to 2009's White Material here is a sound always pulsing with the same intimate warmth of Denis' films. [May 2011, p.112]

For the most part A World Lit Only By Fire finds Godflesh sounding just as brilliantly brutal as ever. [Oct 2014, p.92]

Power sings in an emotion-laden, ever-modulating voice that summons the spirits of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin as readily as Sibylle Baier or Sandy Denny. [Aug 2016, p.93]

The beauty of Jump On It also lies in how it evolves Orcutt's music rather than compromises it. Start here and work backwards. [Jun 2023, p.89]

When his sturdy tunes do hit the jackpot, one wonders why Kirsty MacColl's hit with A New England is such a rare cover. .... Like all political songsmiths, Bragg seeks to transcend the didactic and stir the blood, and largely succeeds. [Dec 2023, p.101]

Clark is over 70 these days but he's never over the hill--not as long as he and his co-writing buddies keep on providing visions of Texas few can emulate. [Aug 2013, p.93]

His seventh album vibrates with fear, rage and fierce defiance. [Mar 2018, p.92]

Smother sees this singular and intriguing group still on the ascendant--limiting notions of normal music notwithstanding. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Have One on Me is a very mature work indeed, even its resonant, discursive themes are underpinned by Newsom's usual playfulness. [Apr 2010, p.90]

It fits easily alongside Daptone's funky analogue repertoire. [Feb 2012, p.110]

Ba Power is all about intensity, force and electricity. [May 2015, p.92]

This is LaVette's album, start to finish: heterodox song choices, rearranged verses, tweaked lyrics--none of it gratuitous. [May 2018, p.90]

Sangare's voice is pushed to the fore. ... It's deeper and throatier now, and wise enough not to overpower the strings--but you can still hear the youthful street singer having fun on Kamelemba and Mogoya. [Aug 2020, p.84]

Rhys excels at holding anxiety and unease up to the light without becoming harsh; Seeking New Gods keeps that balance beautifully. [Jun 2021, p.83]

Five minutes in her personal company would likely be exhausting, but for this album's duration her brain salad music is fantastical. [Apr 2022, p.82]

Anderson's lyrics have rarely sounded more transparent. ... Autofiction builds its own emotional momentum as Suede, once again, write new chapters of their story. [Oct 2022, p.88]

This is, ultimately, music you feel in your body, your gut, your skull, a sensation of constant sonic regeneration and psychoactive power that, like the group's use of grim robes and smoke machines when playing live, survives on its enduring air of mystery. [May 2026, p.82]

A musical odyssey across a real and imagined landscape of mountains and cities, dreams and memories. [May 2005, p.95]

Awesome in scope and execution, it's an album that's ultimately easier to admire than it is to love. [Jun 2009, p.108]

If the circus-field antics are superseded by darker, sleeker dance-floor shapes, it remains a volatile, persistently disconcerting record. [Jul 2018, p.93]

The youthful buoyancy of Dogrel has ebbed away, there's a chill deep into the bones of these big, bold songs. ... Fontaines D.C. sound full of new life. [May 2022, p.93]

The quality across this neat primer demands the high star rating. [Apr 2010, p.112]

This is fresh music, making exciting shapes with primitive resources, and though some will find Longstreth's keening bleat and bravura deconstructions show-offy there are constant flowerings of devastating prettiness, and when all the singers blare in unison the beauty they summon is almost overwhelming. [Jul 2009, p.100]

This whole album is a desert rock classic. [Oct 2019, p.82]

A worthy snapshot of a band at its peak. [Dec 2005, p.104]

It's as good as anything in this group's monstrous catalogue. [Dec 2003, p.120]

It's the feeling of almost imperceptible menace that makes Bubblegum so unsettling. [Aug 2004, p.84]

Under Hval's microscope, the seemingly straightforward is anything but. [Apr 2022, p.83]

At times on this impressive debut Dan Willson's alter ego attains the celestial lustre of that holy grail of lapsed evangelical folk nouveau, the first Palace Brothers album. [March 2010]

A poignant portrait of post-industrial Britain - one that's leavened by some less-than-commonplace vocabulary. [Apr 2025, p.78]

Even at moderate volume, parts of Life Metal may loosen your neighbours' guttering. [May 2019, p.95]

His violin-led handiwork dazzles and swoons more than ever. [Aug 2019, p.96]

The energetic groove-riding results prove utterly compelling throughout. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Nuanced writing, full of tender challenges to lost souls, and Shelly's warmest sound yet. [Jul 2022, p.92]

Richey Edwards has his words set to the best music his bandmates have made since their last album together. [Jun 2009, p.97]

Her pearlescent, Joni Mitchell-style voice and feel are the clearest yet. [Nov 2017, p.101]

A hell of a production. [Apr 2013, p.87]

Another wonderful, intimate love letter to pop. [Sep 2006, p.94]

Taken as a rollercoaster whole, this will blow any right-thinking rock-action believer's head off. [Nov 2015, p.87]

Stand Up blueprinted the sound that would carry Tull ringmaster Ian Anderson and his troupe through the next decade, [Dec 2016, p.105]

13 evocative songs. [Jan 2020, p.84]

There's much to enjoy in his artistic arc. [Mar 2020, p.107]

An often terrific record with unexpected arrangements, Butler's feral guitars and Davies's perfect diction. [Nov 2020, p.83]

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

Clara is neither ostentatiously glitchy, nor overburdened by its conceptual heft. [Jul 2021, p.87]

More moments of delicate beauty than before. [Aug 2021, p.90]

The whole of Open Arms is much larger than the sum of its parts. [Jan 2022, p.89]

There's a lot of it, nearly five hours' worth, but you don't need to have a working knowledge of the inside of a Lambretta to enjoy the sharp-suited sounds here. [Mar 2022, p.98]

Capture Jackson at his very best. ... These eight songs are both questing and healing. [Jul 2022, p.89]

There's a sense throughout of Weller, the inveterate seeker, grasping for something tantalisingly out of reach - and, n doing so, creating a record of recurrent intrigue and frequently sublimity. [Jul 2024, p.93]

Each little element of Queen I’s flamboyant, sometimes preposterous excess now has its own place in the sonic firmament, youthful, incomparable Freddie Mercury close enough to touch. Rest assured, though, that the integrity of the original recordings remains. There are no new overdubs. [Dec 2024, p.96]

The impression left by Total Dive is that Brown Horse still have many miles in them yet. [Jun 2026, p.91]

The music is sneakily sophisticated, buoyed on a mesh of relentless guitar tracks and driven by motorik drums toward a golden pyschpunk horizon. [Nov 2008, p.106]

Vivid, touch-sensitive responses to a world unravelling. [Nov 2022, p.90]

If 2018's fragile debut At Weddings tended to become lost in the beautifully abstract mists as the Pastor's daughter explored faith and its losses, I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This... navigates using sharper corners and edges. [Jun 2022, p.84]

An immersive audio tour that acts as a kind of Baltic analogue to ambient jazz pin-up boy Jon Hassell's more equatorial excursions. [May 2022, p.92]

The group's fusion of emo-core anguish, riot grrrl rancour and bruised indie-rock is the perfect vehicle for songs channelling heartache, rage and betrayal, but the ban's true gift lies in fashioning this catharsis into well-crafted songs. [Sep 2019, p.90]

A DIY epic whose brief sorties into often spellbinding instrumental territory are pitstops in which to muse upon profound, touching or witty lyrics. [May 2005, p.95]

These intimate hushes and lilts would be remarkable even as instrumentals.... Yet it's Nastasia's voice--and the words that it sings--that really sucks the air out of the room. [July 2003, p.102]

Old Ideas remain a quietly surprising album, full of grace, full of sadness, but also, most importantly, full of life. [Mar 2012, p.90]

They've perfected their emo pop. [Jan 2006, p.132]

The whole thing is furious, funny and, not least in the toy-town conscious reggae of Health Is Wealth, deeply loveable. [Jun 2022, p.92]

Ron Mael's lyrics are elegiac, witty and forensically detailed; Russel Mael delivers them exquisitely and they specialise in ear worms. [Jul 2023, p.82]

This time the music is as rich and detailed as [Finn's] wordplay. [Feb 2007, p.100]

[An] extraordinary beautiful debut. [Dec 2015, p.87]

Wood's most accessible set to date is also her most ambitious, for its Byzantine approach to its concept, but also for her honesty and openness. [Nov 2023, p.88]