It yields mixed results. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Their nostalgic lo-fi jangle and reverb surf guitars sound, weirdly, like a SoCal version of The Coral, with synths. [Nov 2014, p.102]

It's not a groundbreaking record, largely because Tricky himself broke most of the ground here 13 years ago. [Aug 2008, p.103]

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

There's something for anyone with a taste for things multicoloured and marvellously eclectic. [Nov 2008, p.104]

Colonia has nothing like its predecessor's consistency of tone, but Persson strikes gold with two siren calls worthy of the last, desperate, doom-laden Abba albums. [Mar 2009, p.109]

McClure has since retracted his retirement outburst, and rightly so: a third attempt might make him a contender. [Aug 2009, p.95]

The line between hypnotic and tediously repetitive is occasionally crossed. [Sep 2002, p.94]

They only operate in one gear but it;s a sound that's full of passion, piss and vinegar. [Jul 2011, p.115]

It's an appropriately trying listen, far removed from 2010's relatively mannered debut. [Sep 2016, p.92]

If the band's 2012 debut for the label, 119, attracted a certain amount of criticism from early-day fans due to its diversity, then No Peace is a more cohesive record. [Jul 2014, p.86]

It occasionally drifts away but with a subtle pillowy beat or piano, Brun holds it together beautifully. [Jan 2021, p.85]

It's cleaner, but still killer. [Oct 2011, p.101]

[Wolf Parade] stand against the day, insisting, "We can begin again." Doing it less with grand declarations than moments of grace. [Mar 2020, p.89]

The spaciousness foregrounds the band's relentless pulse and frontman Timo Kaukolampi's incantations. [Apr 2016, p.93]

The result is a dazzlingly crafted bunch of hazy, West Coast pop gems stuffed with Santanaesque six-string wizardry. [Mar 2014, p.91]

It's all high drama, dark figures and wild impulses - hugely entertaining, but when Muphy sings "this is the meaning of my life", you don't doubt it for a second. [Jun 2025, p.86]

As ever, McClure's everyman persona is the hook that draws you in. [Jul 2012, p.85]

The excellent concept sometimes outshines the music, but if everyone's a tourist, this is the trip to go on. [Nov 2022, p.88]

EAR PWR have concocted a gorgeous chillwave gem. [Jul 2011, p.115]

Blight is powerful, but hermetically airless. [Nov 2025, p.91]

Anderson's typically earnest, if uncharacteristically earnest, readings of Buddist sutras punchuate proceedings, and a pervading transcendence lingers long after the music has ceased.[Nov 2019, p.89]

Gently atmospheric rather than a disrupter of mood. [Jan 2019, p.86]

Gray returns in strident form with this mature mediation on womanhood, sex and love. [Nov 2014, p.102]

It rarely rises above a sloth-like pace. [Dec 2012, p.86]

Occasionally, delicate folktronica beauty mixes dreamy acoustic music with intense, layered electronics, while at others, the ambient wash leaves so little to focus on it's hard not to wonder if they didn't simply fall asleep in the studio. [Apr 2018, p.95]

Mister Pop is at once an old friend and a stotal stranger. [Nov 2009, p.100]

The duo's valiant attempt to circumvent the buzz-kill of pre-meditation can only take them so far, however, and Arthur Buck is not without the odd dud. [Jul 2018, p.89]

Walker's narratives land like a looser Lucy Dacus or a more skittish Craig Finn (especially on the regret-buckled Bitter Root Lake), her voice shat=ring the fur-rubbed-the-wrong-way scratchiness of Jeffrey Lewis or Kimya Dawson. [Sep 2025, p.85]

Each of the album's 10 songs is a downbeat, dreamy, ultra-melodic yet angular nugget. [Sep 2019, p.90]

Crow sounds wholly at ease, but for all the vocal variety Stevie Nicks, James Taylor and a rueful Vince Gill bring, she doesn't sound wholly inspired. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Heartstrings is a succinct outing that charms. [Jul 2014, p.86]

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]

They remain ridiculous, but thunderingly good fun. [Dec 2019, p.91]

While Wu's trademark kung-fu film samples can't help but sound dated some 18 years after their breathtaking debut similar charges crumble to dust against the renewed evangelism of Ghostface Killah. [Oct 2011, p.104]

One senses New Shapes Of Life will probably mean less to the world at large than it clearly does to its author, but it has moments of intense beauty. [Dec 2017, p.86]

Sounds reassuringly expensive. ... Decent instrumental takes on Lao Schifrin's The Cat plus Fiona Apple's elegant Don't Worry 'Bout Me make this more than the stocking-filler that won't unnerve Aunt Norah. [Jan 2020, p.90]

A sense of growth, impermanence and yearning runs through these songs. [Mar 2016, p.96]

May is less successful on the rockers - not so much through lack of "oomph" or authenticity, but because the songs aren't great. ... Way more subtle, convincing, and apparently deeply felt are the tumbling country soul of Different Kinds Of Love and the lovely Dusty In Memphis vibes of Diamonds. [May 2021, p.80]

Occasionally they get lost in their own jams - the meandering Tripping In The Graveyard definitely overstays its welcome. By contrast, Impermanence And Death captures the at their best. [Nov 2023, p.90]

Their naked intimacy can be hard to bear. [Aug 2020, p.94]

Much of The Ruminant Band comes sunny side up. [Sep 2009, p.90]

Occasionally, you yearn for Disclosure to take a rasp to Energy and roughen its edges, but their knack for canny hooks guarantees they won't be retiring back to Surrey any time soon. [Oct 2020, p.84]

A bloody-nosed hardcore ruckus that makes no bones of its debt to Black Flag's vintage thuggery. [Aug 2016, p.97]

Nelson sounds edgy while Ali Jackson's percussion solo probably looks good on TV but bores aurally. [July 2011, p. 107]

Rubberband sounds too much like jazz's great disrupter chasing black-radio approval via The Human League. ... Rubberband is not a Great Lost Miles Davis Album. But it has a lot of great Miles Davis on it. [Oct 2019, p.101]

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]

There are mimics here but actually surprising few for a tribute. The best salutes to the famously fragile songwriter reincarnate his work in new guises. [Nov 2016, p.87]

At times Little Common Twist seems to misplace its destination, but it's also warm and embracing; not so much ambient as aural amniotic fluid. [Jan 2020, p.91]

'Dancing On Our Graves' pumps out a footstomping rhythm but there's no happiness here, just bleakness, and all the more convincing for it. [Mar 2008, p.112]

A diverse collective taking turns at the canon. [Jun 2017, p.94]

Go some way to subverting stodgy blues-rock gender cliche on an LP that takes off on the Tom Petty-ish title track. [Aug 2020, p.94]

She's clearly still diamond sharp, with a larynx to match. [Aug 2009, p.103]

Inventions contains enough streamlined electronic uplift to force your emotions into an altered state of ecstatic euphoria. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Blends Shimmery psych guitar, spacey grooves and indie-falsetto vocals. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Marshall's irregular flashes of idiosyncratic brilliance impress, though The OOZ's 19 tracks contain many longueurs that merely baffle or bore, so tread carefully. [Nov 2017, p.100]

A meditative, deliciously low-key collection produced by Lee Townsend. [Nov 2019, p.91]

Some of the 22 tracks teeter on the edge of pure corn. [May 2026, p.86]

For all its lofty subject matter, Lost In The Cedar Wood is the raucous sound of modern-day sea shanties. [Jul 2021, p.82]

Surprisingly marginalised on the latest Wu effort, Ghostface Killah proves he's fighting fit on this gritty, organic partnership. [Feb 2015, p.88]

Grace For Saints And Ramblers, from 2013's Ghost On host, is delivered with nonchalant Lou Reed rhythm; 2017's About A Bruise displays a freewheeling agility, while The Trapeze Swingers plus right into Beam's storytelling mode. [Jan 2024, p.91]

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]

By the end, you are left wanting more extreme flourishes. [May 2011, p.114]

Martin-McCormick's vocals remain a deal-breaker, his high-pitched yelp threatening to overheat otehrwise superb, noise-slicked bangers. [June 2010, p. 104]

The falsetto vocals can sound glibly glossy, but as mainstream alternative to Animal Collective they'll go far. [Sep 2016, p.99]

It's hard to imagine droves of converts flocking to so abstruse a musical cocktail, but it's a welcome addition to the Grubbs canon, nonetheless. [Jul 2013, p.87]

A decent album, but perhaps not the one some of us were hoping for. [Nov 2019, p.95]

You sense they need a couple of pure pop gems that the Mary Chain had submerged within the noise to perfect the classic sound they aspire to. [Jun 2005, p.95]

They serve up a tastier morsel with Mary Mary, a slab of tripped-out cosmic disco. [Oct 2014, p.93]

Break Me open doesn't stray too far from his day job. ... When his music rises to match the power of his words - the strings-and-horn-laden crescendo of Crestfallen - the results are stirring. [May 2022, p.90]

This is a formidable leap forward. [Dec 2012, p.90]

The gleeful exuberance of Hey Venus! finds the band refreshed.... If Hey Venus! lacks anything, it's the thumping-heart centerpiece that made SFA's early records so special. [Sep 2007, p.108]

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

The Evangelist is tinged with the voyeur's illicit thrill a Forster spies on his neighbours and loved ones, but these are slso some of the most direct songs he's written. [June 2008, p.114]

Kykeon is an album of simple instrumental guitar rites that, through repetition, drone and variations of melodic line achieve a particular kind of ecstatic cyclic euphoria. [Feb 2015, p.88]

You can fully imagine The Leisure Society penning another hart-rendering minor classic sooner or later. But for the moment, the waiting must go on. [May 2013, p.88]

The Brit School girl undergoes a successful soul-pop makeover. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]

There's more meaty and time-honored blues extractions on the title track and the four-square Zeppelinism of Black Coffee, but somehow, particularly on Fade Out's balladic angular grind, these journeymen lack the emotional oomph to tear your heart out, or, indeed, shake your money maker. [Jul 2016, p.96]

Their third album keeps an open mind. [Nov 2017, p.97]

Though Blue Water is sunk by its stilted piano arpeggios, Lady, the record's other piano ballad, has real substance. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Swaying choruses and gutsy musicianship.... there's life after the circus has left town. [Mar 2014, p.93]

It's all muted lust and seductive Scandi sophistication. [Sep 2015, p.92]

It sags a little mid-show, during the numerous elongated versions of 45:33, but epic, celebratory readings of Losing My Edge and Yeah (Crass Version) are not to be missed. [Jul 2014, p.90]

For every shallow, Banks stirs up a hidden depth. [Nov 2016, p.90]

Comes with the smart lightness of touch that's the Vampire Weekend birthright. [Mar 2021, p.89]

A solid if not spectacular, step forward for a band unfathomably more popular in the Uk than their homeland. [Jul 2010, p.92]

Fire It Up is a slow burner. [May 2021, p.80]

For once, such a retrogressive and deconstructive approach is strangely thrilling. [May 2009, p.104]

With the group of temporary hiatus, Ounsworth spreads his wings here, delivering a solo set that combines his gift for melody with more adventurous instrumentation and stylistic detours, waltzing between deft piano balladry (Holy, Holy, Holy Moses), high-drama orchestral-pop (That Is Not My Home), and lilting, horn-bolstered calypsos (South Philadelphia Drug Days) with grace, confidence and wit. [Jan 2010, p. 90]

A titular palindrome for New Yorkers' covers CD. [June 2010, p. 96]

On their latest LP, the group's influences -- the thrift store soul of early E Street Band, late period Clash, and the besotted rock of The Replacements -- are still worn on their sleeves. [July 2010]

Love Frequency feels overly polished and not entirely convincing. [Jul 2014, p.91]

Gong carry on with positive absurdist elevation via psychedelic jazz rock. [Oct 2016, p.100]

The best thing he's done since [Hard Road to Travel]. [Jul 2012, p.88]

A slightly muted, at times infuriatingly uneven, but ultimately rewarding collection. [Apr 2005, p.89]

It's sweet and vivid, but also a bit messy. [Dec 2005, p.116]

At ease with the mellower cuts... the more aggressive Learnign The Lie and the stop-start instrumental Heji feel more contrived. [Oct 2006, p.112]

[Tallies] inject sufficient Sunday/Cocteaus-ish vocal and melodic bounce to soften even the most calcified indie heart. [Feb 2019, p.93]