Death And Vanilla lack only a little warmth to make submersion in their pre-digital pool irresistible. [Jun 2015, p.92]

In merging the intimate with the majestic, The Kissaway Trail have achieved a rare, and subtle, balance. [Apr 2010, p.92]

At times things get wincingly experimental; but mostly, it's claustrophobic and deeply magnetic. [Aug 2017, p.96]

Toweringly camp singles like the slinky Perfect World and an album to enjoy on shuffle. [Jun 2012, p.92]

Keeps a glossy electropop trajectory, but there's a precarious tilt to the shoegazing rush of Do You Still Believe In Me? or the startling heartbroken lyrics of Dolphins. [Feb 2026, p.87]

No Treasure But Hope is further refinement of what they've been doing in the past. [Dec 2019, p.89]

Overjoyed suggest not only Half Japanese's own past abut also the pre-Television, Richard Hell-overshadowed Neon Boys. [Oct 2014, p.89]

All intriguing and unique, but as the concluding third settles into shapeless moodiness, Hesitation Marks could've done with some pruning. [Oct 2013, p.87]

As an experiment in revisionism, the results are mixed. [Nov 2012, p.85]

Leeds psych-metal quintet sound suitably grinding and progressive. [Dec 2014, p.102]

It doesn't always land, but the DJ Shadow-esque glitch-hop of Peak Again- with Low's Alan Sparhawk on vocals - reflect James's desire to conquer new territories. [Jun 2026, p.93]

A moonstruck Frankenstein builds percussive layers, then juxtaposes classical, opera and jazz samples in shadowy odes to the night. [Mar 2020, p.96]

The "sonically exploratory" nature of Hurley occasionally serves Weezer's boredom threshold better than it does the songs. [Nov 2010, p.103]

Notwithstanding the occasional banjo and flute intrusion, in essence this remains flamboyant, '60s-tinged guitar pop, forever poised equidistant between accessibility and inscrutability. [Apr 2015, p.93]

Bouncy production keep things light; Pharrell-ish Feel It Still, soulful So Young; but perhaps too light. [Jul 2017, p.96]

There's little obvious mind expansion in these long-haired ruminations on modern living, but Rose Windows still have the power to lift listeners far out of the everyday. [Jun 2015, p.92]

While her writing is often flattened by the ungainly toil of navvying away for the Big Idea, the flame of toriamosness burns through at times. [Nov 2002, p.114]

The set includes some tender spots, but dire wins the day. Thankfully, it's on occasion leavened. [Feb 2018, p.94]

Ranaldo and Refree are content to leave holes throughout, letting sounds do the most interesting work, nestling or scraping together. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Anyone turned off by conspiracy theories may shudder, but allow Brown his free-your-mind gnostic-in-designer-streetwear stance and entertainment wins out. [Mar 2019, p.88]

At their best, as in 'Sometimes,' they drag you into their circling obsessiveness and measured rhetoric. But, too often, Yoav's cleverness feels calculating--unless it's the reverse that, over-tasked. [May 2008]

No one's about to mistake them for Sonic Youth, but the sheen of easy listening has been stripped away, and they sound all the better for it. [Oct 2008, p.110]

The songs often begin like standards then vanish beneath noise creeping in from the sides. .... Before the music returns to the foreground, triumphant. [Aug 2025, p.83]

The fourth LP is blisteringly confident as the band evolves toward maturity. [May 2015, p.94]

The results is mixed, but at times instinctive and powerful. [Apr 2010, p.93]

It's a judicious match-up. [Jun 2018, p.96]

A welcome departure. [Jun 2004, p.114]

This joyous, head-spinning dash to beyond the end of the yellow brick road audaciously fuses the chamber chorale, folk, the theatrical and torch song to create an album which could soundtrack a cabaret hosted by the Wizard of Oz himself. [Sep 2016, p.98]

Short it may be, but Happenings is full of ideas. [Aug 2024, p.83]

William Bensussen mashes up cavernous hip hop beats, 8-bit electronica, West Coast psych and glitch. [Oct 2012, p.95]

The results are too eccentric and sprightly to squash the music's potential. [Oct 2014, p.89]

The album is diverse: lovers rock meets gospel hymnals and Parisian waltz-dirges. [Feb 2020, p.94]

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

A gentle, spartan album overflowing with straight-forward songs and harmony vocals, which evoke Emmylou Harris as much as Margo Price. [May 2025, p.87]

His throaty, gnarled vocals--best showcased on the meandering, Dilla-esque Cloudlight--lend his music a gothic mood. [Nov 2010, p.109]

Its 11, quietly assured alt-rock growers let Ben Gibbard's appealingly detached vocals and quality-controlled lyrics do the heavy lifting. [Apr 2015, p.94]

Destroyer shifts up a couple of gears for a less cosmic,more hard rockin' thrust, complete with headlong NWOBHM riffs and even shredding. [Jun 2019, p.90]

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

Tapir!'s considerable world-building skills impress, even if seven-minute closer Mountain Song seems a little directionless. [Feb 2024, p.88]

Electric piano and pedal steel-caressed intimacy rules the day, keeping attendant preciousness almost, if not completely, at bay. [Aug 2004, p.99]

A relentlessly effervescent electro/dancehall mash-up. [Jun 2013, p.89]

It can't shake off the usual curse of live albums: an underlying sense, in the context of Reed's studio catalogue, of inescapable superfluity. [Apr 2004, p.114]

de Graaf is repositioning herself in a mightily crowded market, but the sometime human rights lawyer triumphs via intense lyrics about coming-of-age awareness, loneliness in the big city, life's unpredictability and, on Water Stains, the old chestnut of time's passing. [Mar 2023, p.87]

Walls is not a lovable album but if Kings Of Leon would rather be taken seriously these days, instead of simply being adored, they have put down a solid foundation. [Dec 2016, p.89]

There are moments where the duo sounds unfortunately like Muse. Yet for the largest part, this collection of tightly wound, riff-oriented rock makes for an exciting debut. [Oct 2014, p.90]

If Man Alive! treads a post-Ooz water, it's deep enough not to matter. [Apr 2020, p.95]

The considered Heba is not immediate, but it worms its way in. [Apr 2017, p.95]

It sounds like the soundtrack to an odd dream about a Western film. [Mar 2013, p.96]

And while White Rabbits' wild Americana and freaked folk makes for a varied and vivid sprawl of sounds, their knack for addictive melody and honed songcraft delivers a beguiling, coherent and memorable whole. [Feb 2010, p. 97]

No boundaries are being broken this around, but Living Colour still hold their own. [Jan 2010, p. 102]

Even while eschewing the much-loved spacey dub demo interludes of earlier releases for a kind of metaphysical hard rock, all but one of these tracks are worthy additions to a now capacious legacy. [Jun 2015, p.90]

Picks up where 2002's Impasse left off, with Buckner at large in a dusty, wide-screen landscape of brushed guitars, weeping pedal steel and decorous strings. [Dec 2004, p.114]

Structurally, melodically and harmonically some of the material is formulaic but the sublime quality of Stone's vocals - especially on shimmering ballads such as Maybe and Tell Me - save the day. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

There's undeniable joie de vivre to the airpunching I want To dance but his "doing it for the kids" rhetoric and propensity to wallow in rose-tinted nostalgia gets a little corny. [Jun 2013, p.92]

Despite a blip of vital signs, this 4-CD sprawl does The Cure's reputation no real favours. [Feb 2004, p.106]

The new blood broadens the Sand's vocal palette and, along with some of Gelb's sharpest writing in some time - gives Tuscon's 19-song sprawl more energy and focus than any Gelb LP since 2000's Chore of Enchantment. [July 2012, p.89]

For every two triumphs there's a setback like the overwrought glitchy electro Eat Rich, yet it's hard to deny the imagination that fuels these flights of fancy. [Oct 2014, p.90]

They're doing nothing radical, but the band, now in their 35th year of playing together, are tight and the results pleasing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

The rest can't quite compete [with the 18-minute The Dripping Tap], and is at its best on the contrasting Magenta mountain and Presumptous. [Jun 2022, p.84]

The music still mainly tilts around their Coil-Anohni Axis. ... As always with Xiu Xiu, though, it's a lot, two heads just as intense as one. [May 2021, p.85]

The World is Yours falls too short. [October 2007, p.102]

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

An album of melancholy and heartbreak that's at its best when the songs fall between all-out country rock ballads and bare bones ballads. [Apr 2012, p.84]

The resulting album is, as expected, old school chest-beating man-size heavy rock. [Jul 2009, p.104]

This is a brave, bold, inevitably flawed record from the kind of talent we should be esctastically happy to have around. [Aug 2009, p.92]

There's a first-take feel, which the Horse are known for, and a whole lot of background harmonies, which they're not. [Dec 2022, p.84]

The only drawback is that 16 tracks and 55 minutes feel too long for a set of minimalist adventures. [Jun 2015, p.91]

A gloriously unviable alternative to dullard R&B/X Factorism. [Jun 2012, p.92]

A pleasant appetiser until ZZ Top bring out another main course. [Nov 2018, p.86]

Her ideas and unabashed sexual allusions, certainly, are a good deal more interesting than her inflexible retro-electro rumble. [Oct 2015, p.92]

Occasionally, the lyrics veer into fuzzy abstraction, but the music never does. [May 2021, p.82]

Less niche cartoon-rave abroad, more classic-rock and baggy/disco. [Jun 2017, p.86]

Juliette Lewis's third shot at crossing over from award-winning actress to respected songwriter appears to br gatherng pace. [Oct 2009, p.98]

FramesPerSecond is an atmospheric introduction. [Aug 2017, p.90]

Despite the eclectic material, the slow tempos and monochrome tone gets wearing. [Sep 2017, p.94]

Sometimes their brutish irreverence works.... But Audio Bullys' vignettes of suburban lad-life can't quite equal Mike Skinner's deft way with a lyric. [Jul 2003, p.106]

The group's fourth album confirms that their default setting is a bit four-square nuts-and-bolts punk pop. [Jun 2012, p.92]

For all its neo-classical leanings, Frahm's music engages emotion as much as intellect, these sketches and fragments offering a meditative respite from a world far more chaotic than this music. [Jan 2022, p.83]

An often winning fusion of power-pop, electronics and blue-eyed soul. [Nov 2017, p.103]

It's impressive stuff, full of craft and invention, but there are moments when there could be more mellow - and a touch less pyrotechnic indie-rock Roman candle. [Sep 2024, p.91]

While perhaps not as momentous as Joni Mitchell's similarly intentioned Travelogue, the gentle, surprising pleasures throughout Simon's autumnal tinkering with his oeuvre make for a rich and nuanced listen. [Nov 2018, p.86]

While ably constructed, particularly on the wistful The Old House, these songs feel slight - a starting point from which Konschuh's own individual voice may blossom. [Oct 2024, p.84]

Spectral Lines tries to come at hurt, loss and destiny afresh, with Ritter's dexterity with universal themes often paying dividends. [Jun 2023, p.86]

With this first album, Stealing Sheep join that weird and wonderful place inhabited by Warpaint, Bat For Lashes and The Raincoats. [Oct 2012, p.94]

Some are enchanting. [Oct 2014, p.90]

Nervy, fragile set. [Feb 2018, p.99]

If you can get past the redundancy--and what a redundancy it is. [Jan 2016, p.106]

Sadly, there's little to propel them to radio ubiquity or challenge the Britrock big hitters, but then, maybe, that's the whole point. [Mar 2007, p.95]

Protest and dissent rarely sounds less strident than on Widdershins, but any resistance to the dark tide is an inherently good thing. [Mar 2018, p.96]

A bit shambolic, then, but Thao has enough charisma to sustain hearing it all in one sitting. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Segall's not reinventing the wheel--he's just here to keep the amps humming, as loud and as often as humanly possible. [Apr 2019, p.90]

Their second outing makes no effort to remap their coordinates: they remain riffy, distorted, full of nocturnal energy, possessed of rollicking good tunes, but also open up a more expansive goth-rock strain on indie-radio cuts. [May 2015, p.94]

Warm and hazy liek a day spent in teh summer sun, The Illustrated Garden is a sumptuous honey-hued helping of soft-souled pop, unhurried Americana and the occasional spry rush of pop. [June 2010, p. 99]

A questing, festering record, Face Stabber isn't for the faint-hearted, but its lows are outnumbered by exhilarating highs. [Sep 2019, p.95]

[A] perplexing, 'is it irritating or is it glorious?' album that meshes the oddball with the serious in a quirky, plastic-punk manner not entirely unlike that of The B-52's and Devo. [Mar 2004, p.108]

For this album she as worked with a breathtaking array of collaborators, with varied results. [Jul 2011, p.115]

Purists may wince, but the takes are fresh. [Oct 2018, p.93]

This delicate, intricate web of sounds asks you to lean in to appreciate it. [Nov 2018, p.84]