The Drones whip up a heady storm of garage-bred blues, post-punk intensity and Crazy Horse-style amp overload, in which they couch fevered narratives worthy of Nick Cave. [Nov 2006]

Random Access Memories manages to maintain a core of sense and sobriety. [Jul 2013, p.83]

Here lies much of the album's magic: whatever ornate turns the music takes, at its heart is the primal stuff of great rock'n'roll. But God, is it big. [Apr 2007, p.94]

The results here are extraordinary. [Jul 2015, p.88]

A masterpiece, exactly the sort of record that your average sentient pop genius should make in 2002. [May 2002, p.99]

Stick on the nine minutes of opener Lufuala Ndonga, turn the bottom end up and stand back. What happens next is unbelievable. [May 2005, p.98]

A record that feels warmer, wiser and less forced than any of his albums so far. [Jun 2022, p.88]

John's piano at the Festival Hall brought a stentorian new dimension to a sped-up Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) and the demos offer the sense of a band working out how to get the best from John's freewheeling melodies. In the end, they turned out to be just what was required. [May 2023, p.101]

Those who want their Emmylou full of sweet, sad longing will play a quarter of this album to death.... Elsewhere, there's righteous anger and an assertiveness and sexuality to the love songs. [Nov 2003, p.128]

The Roots have created another masterpiece. [Jan 2003, p.100]

Wolves can still rip jagged and vicious amid the befogged ambiance. [Nov 2011, p.95]

At 16 tracks Bowler Hat Soup is possibly a little overlong but what is youth for if not indulging a wealth of ideas? [Dec 2013, p.87]

Perrett might not have been having fun before, but even factoring in a song called Do Not Resuscitate, this finally sounds like the real thing. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Cocoa Sugar is an audacious high-wire act which captures them at a potent peak. [Apr 2018, p.91]

For all its intimations of rootless drift, The Suburbs finds Arcade Fire back home, and so much happier for it. [Sep 20110, p.90]

Seb Rochford's drumming gives songs such as Kouma an unavoidably non-traditional kick, and the guitars (primarily by the singer herself) have a crunch missing from her early recordings. [May 2013, p.85]

In Colour really comes into its own when Jamie xx gets abstract and confounding; where his ability to conjure something wonderful from mosaic, non-linear paths is most evident. [Jul 2015, p.84]

A seamless, melodic blend of psychedelia and C&W... the songs and instrumentals here hang together beautifully. [Nov 2004, p.95]

Beam's evocation of elemental themes and dramas is too profound and affecting to deny. [Jan 2003, p.92]

There's all kinds of going back on Robbie Fulks' eleventh and maybe finest collection. [Oct 2013, p.95]

[Painted From Memory is] a beauty. ... [Taken From Life is] a treasure trove within a set that defines how well collaborations can work. [Apr 2023, p.94]

It sounds so authentically mid-to-late 1960s that Dear Patti - a song about missing an opportunity to play on the same festival bill as Smith - could almost be a lightly warped vinyl pressing from the era. [Aug 2025, p.76]

The vital spark that graced Fleet Foxes' debut is back. [Dec 2020, p.80]

So sweet is the harmonic construction that awareness of the ecclesiastical niceties of such as The Transfiguration... is incidental to falling under the divine spell. [May 2004, p.105]

Defiant cosmopolitanism doesn't come much more feisty, or compelling than this. [Sep 2007, p.104]

This reissued debut reminds, they were a band better informed--and more thrilling--than most. [Jan 2013, p.106]

These six albums attest to the depth of Fela discography, and to the diversity of his message. [Feb 2018, p.104]

Fade is a tease that she could do out-and-out pop if the mood were ever to take her, but there are too many strange and good ideas for anything quite so prosaic. [Oct 2023, p.81]