Most of these 12 songs... fall within the wistful to enchanting range. [Oct 2006, p.96]

Clean, reverbed electric guitar chime and twang gorgeously and the production is simple and simpatico, but it's Berman's strange yet archetypal-sounding tales of gulible skinsmen and prisons built from sweets that keep you coming back for more. [July 2008, p.108]

The end result just about captures the riotous, magical bustle of their live shows, so seek it out. [Jun 2009, p.101]

Those of a certain overcoat are assured a Proustian rush: distorted guitars, windswept austerity and Butler's rasp set to Triple Action Strepsil. [Jun 2020, p.95]

[A] deft combination of emotional intimacy and musical ambition. [Oct 2005, p.108]

Kids In The Streets sounds joyous, reflective, nostalgic and even grateful in places, with an upbeat swagger that comes from knowing you're making the album of your life. [Jul 2017, p.89]

Retains the gum-tingling pop harmonies and guitar-throttling riffs of previous albums, but their reedy punk sinew has swollen into rock muscle. [Jun 2004, p.112]

12 fascinating electro-symphoic constructions informed by dubstep and Delia Darbyshire's BBC Radiophonic Workshop experiments. [Nov 2011, p.103]

[The album,] at first, seems suffused in the same late-summer glow as The Beach Boys' low-key '68 LP Friends. But this brightness soon fades, the album becoming a beautifully solitary journey into night. [Feb 2014, p.95]

A tad more conventional than Liz Harris's ongoing work as Grouper, despite roots in C86 shambling and early-90s shoegaze, Helen's hazy, half-grasped songs are still several left turns from any standard indie fare. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Working '80s influences like Sade and Loose Ends into highly textured romantic anthems set in a London town shimmering in high summer. Stacked vocals, keyboards and old-school synths underscore the plentiful solos. [Aug 2025, p.84]

Lovely. [Nov 2007, p.102]

There's no mistaking this advent of a genuine original, the woozy, whacked-out linguistic precision of A Sufi And A Killer resisiting all efforts at summary. [Apr 2010, p.105]

Desire Lines is the immaculately conceived album they've always threatened to make. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Nas's fifteenth is a heap of comfort food for old-school rap fans. [Apr 2022, p.90]

Singing with a sweet weariness, Kline can seem bemused by her melancholia, her resigned acceptance given an appealing warmth by a band whose gentle sway lends her pop miniatures depth. [Aug 2025, p.78]

Ripped + Torn attests to the sophistication of their songwriting with this brutalist form. [Aug 2025, p.80]

Part 1 veers from the abrasive, Stooges-style rock that characterised much of 2015's What Went Down. [Apr 2019, p.86]

Smelts the classic rock canon (Madness, Blur, Bowie, Small Faces) into an infectious, head-spinning punch. [May 2005, p.109]

This Is The Sonics emits the same primal heat that's inspired successive generations of garage-dwellers, from the Cramps through Mudhoney to The White Stripes. [May 2015, p.90]

It's exquisite ghostly piano and hypnotic loops transport you to a gauzy, fantastical netherworld. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Tries to understand where to go, and whether he's already there. ... Life is a casket. And it's golden. Both are true. Brock apparently has figured it out. [Aug 2021, p.80]

After the laboured Driving Rain, a welcome return of that definitive, love-it-or-hate-it McCartney effortlessness. [Oct 2005, p.98]

What Orton has sacrificed in terms of post-clubbing appeal she has replaced with grit and poignancy seldom heard since the LA canyons were in their pomp. [Mar 2006, p.96]

Brass blasts and strings reveal cinematic vistas. [Jun 2017, p.95]

Hendra might deal with life's compromises, but there's no disappointment here. [May 2014, p.92]

Allison's verge-of-tears delivery is another sign that Clean's grown-up vibe can't hide the vulnerable teen within. [Apr 2018, p.94]