The rest, it must be said, is extremely dull. [May 2011, p.108]

Volta bristles with life. [Jun 2007, p.102]

An effortless conflation of over-amped belligerence and feisty pop mellifluousness. [Mar 2012, p.94]

If aging has robbed the 86-year-old of anything, it's not audible here. [Aug 2019, p.96]

San Francisco art-rockers deliver the perfect prog-pop hit. [Feb. 2011, p. 100]

Swearing At Motorists are drunk'n'roll successors to The Replacements and Guided By Voices. [Mar 2006, p.102]

It's a scream, as we would expect from a musical humorist ranking only behind Randy Newman on the LOL-meter. And rivaled only by Tom Waits as a gloves-off DIY soundscapist in wood, steel, and string. [Sep 2012, p.87]

No duffers here, never a dull moment, satisfaction guaranteed. [Jul 2005, p.100]

The Strokes come across as a world-sized band that's tethering itself.... Nonetheless, this record is good. [Nov 2003, p.124]

Fizzing with energy and invention, distilling influences into vibrant new hybrids, this is a must-have insight into an ever-fertile, increasingly global scene. [Jun 2013, p.92]

OOIOO create a continually changing mandala of sounds somewhere between Boredom's sky-high orchestrations, Can's idiosyncratic ethno-experiements and the world-jazz fusions of Don Cherry. [Aug 2014, p.88]

With musical modes brilliantly elevated by his occasional producer David Mansfield, Wainwright nails the exigencies of old age through the medium of rockabilly, the quest for parking spaces in Manhattan via cabaret klezmer, and the gloating joys of i-ding a faithless girlfriend dead in a deep freeze with cheery Vaudeville sing0along. [Aug 2014, p.90]

The results are largely persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Black Rivers is an excellent surprise. [Mar 2015, p.94]

Musically simpler and less baroque than The Graceless Age, the album's autobiographical arc is conversely harder to glean, its lyrics more oblique. Murry's greatest ability, however, is to make the listener wince uncomfortably while peeking through their fingers at his captivating, compulsive honesty. [Aug 2017, p.88]

Admirably obtuse, Slug put the odd into prog odyssey with style. [Jun 2018, p.93]

It hangs together and, indeed, convincingly documents fragmentation of the individual. [Sep 2018, p.94]

As always, S&R stress character studies, from the envious and deluded guy in Mississippi Nuthin' to the broke-down elder in Hammer. [May 2019, p.94]

Her songs are beautifully, tentatively constructed, the arch quirkiness of her early albums now replaced by the lush writing of songs. [Nov 2020, p.88]

Despite omitting anything from FFS, their career re-booting alliance with Sparks, this is as good as introductions get. [Apr 2022, p.95]

The best moments - Where The Water Clears The illusion's untethered vocals, for example - come with an edge of unease, pushing Prochet onwards, upwards, and out of her beautifully suspended animation. [May 2022, p.86]

Nelson's trademark rough vocal edges suit the rustic vibes of this Southern folk music and yet the ensemble also ventures into more experimental newgrass turf. [Feb 2024, p.88]

It's to the band's credit, then, that Only You Left spins in its own unpredictable orbit, pulling out new mysteries from their off-centre helix of goth, shoegazing and post-punk. [Apr 2026, p.85]

Throughout, Starr’s drumming is reliably great, and while he may indeed have travelled a long long road, here he sounds 85 years young. [Jun 2026, p.86]

The glitchy future R&B of Playing House is evidence of Active Child's depth, but it's the emotional blood-letting of tracks like dark hymnal Way Too Fast which gives this record a gravitas most popular music never achieves. [Jan 2012, p.92]

The old fight is there on the unrepentant The New You, but a sense that she's over thinking these songs lingers. [Aug 2014, p.94]

For all its cryptic lyrics and melodic complexities, the revelation it constantly seems to promise never quite arrives, but repave remains a grand gesture. [Oct 2013, p.95]

And the songs? Urgent, instant, bolshie mostly, with a stronger individual melodic sense than, say, Greendale, but without the intense beauty of, say, Ohio. [Jul 2006, p.112]