Ultimately Prisoner is tethered by sturdy, familiar images of tightropes and trains. [Mar 2017, p.94]

Inevitably there's a compilation feel, but Marshall's music brings coherence as it eases goth into the 21st century. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Their guileless sincerity is less wild rumpus than Snow Patrol in its universal simplicity. [Dec 2014, p.102]

With some lyrics on the utilitarian side of blunt, it lack the younger Jobson's poetic delusions, but and elegiac title track, shimmering Refugee and Kings Of The New World Order's halcyon riffola are all powerful statements worthy of the Skids legend. [Feb 2018, p.96]

While not completely immunised against country cliche--I Thought You'd Never Leave has the audacity to reference a pick-up truck--his songwriting is what strikes hardest. [Aug 2019, p.95]

While there's a sense that Jungle lack the invention of Young Fathers, whose vocals they echo, or Thundercat, whose disaffection they share, For Ever's Sunset Strip soap opera is always compelling. [Nov 2018, p.91]

Pedal steel still colours Safe To Run but so do fuzzier guitars; synthesizers are involved, and tributaries are equally pop, folk and rock. [Jun 2023, p.86]

It's a parade of warhorses and they sometimes ride a little wearily, but Winter pepped their steps by four-handed guitar shootouts with Eric Clapton on Don't Want No Woman and Ben Harper in Can't Hold Out. [Oct 2014, p.91]

The injection of vintage jewels that worked so well in-concert doesn't necessarily make for a coherent listen here. [Dec 2015, p.90]

At its best, it harkens to long-lost, dense-sounding riff grinders such as Breaking Circus or Earth, but there's light as well as shade too and Broken Sugar positively twinkles. [Jun 2022, p.87]

It's not an easy album to love. [Apr 2017, p.98]

For all their organic methods, these Animals often come across so robotic and constricted--witness natural Selection's echoes of woozy Chicago house classic Washing machine--stripping those painstaking vocal arrangements of their humanity. [Mar 2016, p.94]

Polished arrangements in a mix of menacing, reverb-drenched grooves and languid shimmer. [Mar 2013, p.98]

A "modular synthesis" of indefinable plonking building to bursts of static joy. [Apr 2019, p.96]

A home-recorded collection of covers that roams joyfully (but not too joyfully) through six decades of songs. [Jun 2017, p.94]

Field recordings of Alphine birds are used for restraint. ... Yet each of the hour-long album's eight interlinked pieces is a distinct entity, and still a song as such. [Aug 2019, p.92]

It's hardly news that soft rock and heartache go hand in hand, but Johansing's version is particularly seductive. [Aug 2018, p.89]

Another Day To heal opens encouragingly. ... Midway through, La La Land derails, as Queen Of Spaces errs into forlorn folky picking, while Slowly On The Wheel opens with one-finger piano and voice. The Chugging Face Eraser and Baba O'Riley-ish Pockets pulls things together. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Unfortunately, on Soft Spot [Eef Barzelay] strays too often into the pleasantly nondescript. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Sounds like an all-girl early Beastie Boys.... The politics, though, are somewhat sounder. [May 2003, p.99]

The songs are rarely more than threads of querulous melody and floaty notions. [Jun 2012, p.93]

Lyrically, beating the odds and ultra-violence remain fecund topics for Lemmy. [Sep 2015, p.86]

He cameos his way through an album of star-studded but largely by-numbers major label rap/R&B without breaking sweat. Yet jewels lurk amid the imitation pearls. [Feb 2022, p.82]

A sometimes-striking record that suggests new ground without actually reaching it. [Jun 2023, p.84]

The interplay between their vocals is tense and compelling, suggesting early Blonde Redhead. Their lyrics, meanwhile, are mysterious knots of angst. [Jul 2023, p.87]

There are a couple of songs hidden away in the backwaters of their patchy debut which hint at something much better. [Apr 2006, p.88]

Gira's seventh solo outing finds his sardonic-toned vocals little changed however, and lyrically, if he's not "walking through fire," he's asserting the "the scars still remain." So no change there. [Nov 2007, p.104]

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

These love songs all sound pretty good. But the feeling remains that she has more, which the respectful hands around her haven't liberated. [Jan 2013, p.95]

Mixture of West Africa and Caribbean influences. Oscar Jerome's glowing highlife guitar opens Dide O, a midway tryptic with Soul Searching (Afrobeat) and We Give Thanks. (soul). [Sep 2022, p.96]

The crystalline vocals hint at either uplifting profundity or overblown pomposity--it's hard to say which. [Mar 2013, p.98]

It's as though they've kept the whole catch, driftwood, prize-fish and all, rather than sorting through it. [Oct 2008, p.100]

Though inconsistent, the quartet have siphoned the best of punk and '90s slacker pop to create an album that couldn't be any more Rough Trade if it tried. [May 2016, p.94]

[An] Ubu-sinister psychedelic LP. [May 2016, p.96]

Even with the bright flickers of Kate Bush-like experimentation and excellent Depeche Mode disco, though, these songs tend to lack the high-definition of 2018's Chris, their earnestly fixed intensity never quite catching from pop smoulder to earth-scorching flame. [Dec 2022, p.84]

Yet for all Doseone's phantasmagoria and keening schizophrenia, there's a melodic richness that miraculously sculpts order out of the panicked disco chaos. [Aug 2012, p.85]

There are moments where the charts could bear being much edgier, and the guest spots are variable. ... In the midst of it, Weller himself sails regally on, in fine-grained voice, and the songs are happily, bomb(ast)-proof. [Feb 2022, p.87]

It will either intoxicate or weigh down on you, or both, simultaneously. [Nov 2018, p.91]

This Giorgio Moroder-soundtracking-Black Mirror approach isn't always successful. ... The slick AOR of Something Human suggests their decision to move away from riff-rock isn't wholly misjudged. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Utopia feels like a diversion, not a destination. A nice place to visit--beautiful, even--but you wouldn't want to live there. [Jan 2018, p.89]

The trio's most accessible. song-based effort to date. Thankfully, it's not at the expense of the rattling rhythms and freeform stylings of previous work. [Dec 2016, p.93]

Trouble Anyway is a much more fleshed-out, even lush proposition [than her 2016 debut, Out Of Love]. [Jan 2019, p.90]

Much will be familiar to JBs devotees... but this time their MOR predilections are more pronounced. [Oct 2006, p.100]

The wig-out-in-wonderland title track has a poppy, Donovan approach before its unsettling phased climax. [Apr 2017, p.99]

Preposterous, but this time knowingly so. [May 2008, p.114]

Play sees Nashville superstar Paisley jam with an array of equally adroit pickers. [Dec 2008, p.111]

If not quite an Ironman or Supreme Clientele, this is Ghostface's most unified, coherent work in years. [Jun 2013, p.94]

Freak Out City owes little to Flight Of The Conchords, but much to '70s US songwriters with a kitchen-sink production. [Oct 2025, p.89]

He stomps or sways along in the nu Seattle folk/rockabilly grave-fun way displaying a sing-the-phonebook grace. [Jun 2012, p.93]

The highs of Fade, Queens and Better Love variously recall Arcade Fire and The Flaming Lips in euphoria mode, while the lows plumb eerie depths akin to Big Star's Third. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Though some things never change, the Serge Gainsbourg-like instrumental Interlude (Wednesday Part 1) and electro-pop winners It's A Beautiful World and She Taught Me How To Fly are invigorating departures. [Dec 2017, p.90]

Although his philosophical ponderings may not be that profound, his seize-the-day positivism and innate command of orchestral tension more than compensate. [Feb 2020, p.89]

[A] selection of sparingly produced wistfulness. [Jan 2013, p.95]

The music's one-dimensional emotional range is the Achilles heels of an otherwise gracefully dextrous affair. [Feb 2013, p.90]

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

Some may fine the ambient, tree-hugging Willow (Interlude) hard to stomach, however, and the lyrical flair that can elevate a debut album is sometimes lacking. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Constant Bop is even more eclectic [than White Denim's music]. [Jun 2015, p.87]

Often beautiful, though as the protagonist of a song fragment say, he could stand to Let Go A Little too. [Jun 2013, p.95]

The Road Part 1 is described by Lavelle himself as having "a foot in modern London"--a link that is at best tenuous. As a melting pot of disparate ideas, however, it's frequently gorgeous. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Lacks the hooks and memorable vocals... that formerly made this band so effective at marrying the pop and the underground. [Sep 2004, p.92]

At times feeling almost uncomfortably personal, i the main these indie-folk confessionals are kept just the right side of maudlin to make Barlow's exposed emotional workings a surprisingly engaging listen. [Oct 2015, p.96]

The LA quintet still sound like 16-year-old boys.... Musically, though, their slick soulful pop-R&B is far more refined. [Dec 2015, p.94]

On her fourth album, Melua does her damnedest to break out of her self-imposed schmaltz trap. [Jun 2010, p.94]

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

No. 4 is a warmer, more cohesive work than 2015's No. 3. [Jun 2018, p.93]

Highly polished, rootsy but gentle rocking with some big hooks, even if the quality wavers a little over 15 tracks. [Sep 2021, p.88]

Half existential joy'n'emptiness, half just empty. [Oct 2002, p.96]

The Birthday Party-esque clamour of Spit You Out further shows what Metz are capable of when they ease off the accelerator. [Jun 2015, p.87]

It delivers drama in spades. [Jun 2013, p.95]

With its Magic Fly synthetic hustle, single Fever pulses with the same reductive pop genius, but doubtless deterred by the laws of diminishing returns the Keys have eschewed ab blanket reiteration--with mixed results. [Jun 2014, p.91]

The tension between philosophical lyrics and the invitingly cosmic fractals generated by the band can hit awkwardly, but this is a striking new shoot. [Jun 2023, p.95]

An uneven and slightly uneasy listen. [Nov 2005, p.112]

Any suggestion of sameness is speedily erased by Alexandra Eastburn's arsenal of skewed electronic embellishments and the breathless exuberance the group bring to the party. [Jan 2016, p.88]

They have emerged with identity still intact, marrying melodic '60s songwriting to Doorsian melodrama and garage rock mentality. [sEP 2007, P.110]

With Keep Your Eyes Ahead Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel have pushed their fringes out of the way to display a new focus. [Mar 2008, p.112]

True, there are some facinating arrangements on songs written during a summer in Berlin. But those songs, bar the first and last track sound oddly wanting. [Sep 2008, p.108]

Synths sway like palm trees, grooves come sun-baked, and nifying message songs flow. [Jul 2020, p.88]

It's a fine entry point into Faust's lineage. [May 2009, p.104]

If Crack-Up falls short of perfection, it inspires hope that transcendence is waiting around the corner. [Jul 2017, p.84]

There's an uncomfortable homogeneity about it all. [June 2002, p.100]

But there is nothing here that will leap out of the speakers to entice the unconverted, despite the Weezer-like spod-rock of Fot Nuffin and Trouble's garage pop stomp. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

A first album since 2006 reflects interim activities. [Aug 2018, p96]

They do sound less corporate, more like their original idiosyncratic selves. [Jun 2024, p.90]

Windy City is a rather safe album. [Apr 2017, p.90]

DFA DJ/engineer's gangshow debut. [Oct. 2010, p. 95]

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

Young's soundtrack to his partner's film is similarly random, but when it hits the right mark, it too dazzles. [Jun 2018, p.88]

Mostly A New Tide is high on big tunes and low on character. [May 2009, p.108]

LLFR! is a skiffle-ish, gung-ho affair built upon driving acoustic guitar and organ. [May 2009, p.102]

A challenging yet rewarding listen. [Aug 2025, p.85]

The indie poppers stay true to their roots with a tuneful balancing of high-tempo and the laid-back. [May 2014, p.96]

More quirks and rough edges would have added tot he thrill, but this is nonetheless a heart-warming set from a cultural treasure. [Aug 2018, p.88]

Not the pinnacle of his varied career, maybe, but not a low, either [Feb 2023, p.82]

They've fleshed out the colourful sketches that make up the bulk of their last album. [Feb 2011, p.96]

There's still no room for the instrumental warm-up, so don't throw out that original bootleg. [Jun 2012, p.99]

The stylistic shifts mean The Tarnished Gold doesn't hang together--it lacks the luster of real gold. [Aug 2012, p.85]

Despite the numerous positions, No Lube So Rude becomes a little no-note. [Mar 2026, p.80]

There's just enough twisted wit among the non sequiturs to redeem this controversial release. [Oct 2006, p.100]