There's precious little subtlety, but plenty of brutish hooks. [Jun 2021, p.88]

Middleton here surely approaches full brilliance. [July 2009, p.96]

The lovely Jaakko Eino Kalevi, the most coherent album so far from the former Helsinki tram driver, is a gem.

The latest dispatch carries on its immediate predecessors' good work with familiar Wire tropes all in place. [Apr 2017, p.91]

Its dozen tunes about finding love, rejecting losers, and criticising corrupt systems are a patchwork of assorted American pops. [Sep 2023, p.83]

Three decades on, the Mekons are a veritable institution, but as Natural proves they're a still-evolving and effective one. [Sep 2007, p.105]

But from the off, the sounds here always convince. [Oct 2010, p.96]

It could all be so much MOR easy-on-the-earwash but Gardot's silken voice, musicality and knack for a telling lyric exude class. [Jun 2012, p.92]

Some tracks occasionally feel more like fillers--but at its best, Legacy feels like tuning into a magical mid-dial shortwave station, where all the neighbouring broadcasts gave fallen into an exhilarating synchronisation. [Jul 2013, p.88]

More than the sum of its parts, the whole is wonderfully fresh and quite lovely. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Johns and his Black Dogs shine throughout. [Jan 2016, p.90]

Through the overdriven riffage, juggernaut rhythms and starey-eyed James Cox's foghorn yowling, some proper and highly dynamic songcraft does emerge. [Apr 2019, p.93]

A fitting, touching elegy for a bewitching talent. [May 2019, p.87]

Beat-less but involving standouts like Memphis Helena, with its plangent lead line intimately tracked by Nelson's hushed hazy intoning, and elegiac, rippling acoustic guitar-propelled Muriel Spark are as inexorable and immersive as a high summer sunset. [Dec 2019, p.92]

The Sisypheans is measured and reflective. [Dec 2019, p.91]

What we get more of are melodies that stick. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Escapology is frequently, characteristically unsettling. [Sep 2022, p.86]

King fulfils his promise. ... His honey-rich voice and whipsmart guitar playing are the standouts here. [Sep 2022, p.86]

If her 2023 breakthrough Anarchist Gospel was sparse and brooding, haunted by break-ups and deaths in the family, Armageddon In A Summer Dress bristles with Tom petty guitars, skinny-tie keyboards and a hard-won sense that - despite the miserable treatments of the have-nots - humanity might still be worth saving. [Mar 2025, p.87]

High Noon Hymns is possibly the Ryders' most directly activistic LP of all, from the title itself through to the anti-Trump sentiments of Four Winters Away and the T. Rex-powered Stand A Little Further In The Fire. [May 2026, p.87]

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

A giddy chaos of fuzz-noise and thundering drums ensures these sclectic experiments still sound like no one else but The dirtbombs. [May 2008, p.114]

An effervescent, ebullient record. [Mar 2014, p.97]

Funky as early-80s Judas Priest, the title track and Trouble's Coming will become era classics in lat-out over-amplified party music. [May 2021, p.82]

Glasgow Eyes' liberal use of electronics is a renewing force, and a kind of homecoming too. .... Glasgow Eyes is a positive twist in the sage of these negaholics synonymous. [Apr 2024, p.86]

This is possibly the most optimistic album about depression ever made. [Mar 2007, p.98]

His newest group find hum as ever ricocheting between rusty rock'n'roll and perfect pop melodicism, the title track to their debut album adding string-adorned country-psych to his CV, while the rest of his contributions finding him on his strongest form. [Mar 2011, p.1010]

While there's a surprisingly low glam quotient, Fudge Sandwich finds odd harmonies between funk and anarcho-punk, plus more predictable psych. [Dec 2018, p.84]