Has a spare, homespun feel with its simple folk guitar. [Sep 2023, p.82]

Echoes of Aphex Twin, Nils Frahm, Arvo Part and Biosphere swirl around a deeply personal but sonically seductive piece of work. [Jan 2016, p.94]

Hozier's audacity can feel outsized and overbearing, but his tandem of earnestness and eccentricity here is more winning than not. [Sep 2023, p.91]

Another excellent installment. [Jun 2021, p.87]

The cascading ping and pop of 35 Summers and arpeggiated digital melancholy of Unbank is evidence of Plaid's empathy with this most beguiling of music forms. [Nov 2011, p.103]

Though some Lemon Twigs fans might miss Michael's edgier, thornier songwriting, big bro's serial melodicism and multi-instrumentalist nous across everything from penny whistle to cello slays. [Apr 2025, p.80]

It stretches out the crashed edits of 20120's Suburban Tours, to something more diffuse and soulful. [Feb 2012, p.97]

He's written better collections of songs, but for fun, warmth, vigour and power, it' sup there with his best. [Mar 2013, p.86]

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

Her gift for unearthing colourful material and then delivering it with both swagger and soul is compelling. [Mar 2016, p.99]

The Allstars have that same dynamism plus a similarly brutal rhythm section, which sounds like a billion wasps playing Sister Ray in your brain, but they have found some missing ingredients, such as melody and variation. [Sep 2008, p.112]

Gibson's captivating, narrative postcard songs are bolstered by a cast of Brooklyn musicians. [May 2016, p.96]

The sound has been filled out. ... The burnished folk rock accentuates the intimacy of Power's voice and her writing. [Jul 2020, p.80]

Even though it's only eight tracks long - a rare example of the band having some chill - their fifth album feel like it's operating on a cosmic scale. [Nov 2022, p.92]

Carrie & Lowell has an air of insecurity underlining the sophistication of the music. [Apr 2015, p.84]

The results so far, as on 2006's martial piledriver "Empire," have both been levitating and gut-level, as befits a group who count DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" and Oasis's "Definitely Maybe" among their musical epiphanies. These same virtues are all over "West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum." [Jul 2009, p.93]

Krautrock surrogates get expansive on fourth album. [March 2011, p. 96]

III is third time lucky in all senses other than sadly-departed guitar visionary David Hackney being around to share in the joy it brings. [May 2014, p.87]

Pulsing with youthful rebellion, PV sound wildly bacchanalian. [Jun 2015, p.96]

In its own way, Time is as pleasingly surprising as Bowie's re-emergence. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Through the hypnotic, J Dilla produced Love to the ghostly Incense, the short skit You Loving Me to the skittish jazz of Agitation, it's the sound of an artist in full, uncensored flow. [June 2010, p. 93]

Her beautifully compassionate songs are cradled in gentle, melodic arrangements from ever-inventive producer John Vanderslice. [Aug 2015, p.94]

Amanda Shires has made the year's most emotionally raw album. [Nov 2025, p.86]

Bonny Light Horseman probably could've said just as much over half the tracks, but the fact they had the courage to keep digging ever deeper into their emotional turbulence has bourne spectacular results. [Jul 2024, p.87]

She keeps the mood focused and the music softly funky. [Mar 2005, p.92]

Callahan is back on track. [Jun 2005, p.104]

Beyond box-ticking cameos from Snoop, Nas, Eminem and Busta Rhymes, horror film-stringed posse cut The Vow (with relative unknowns Mad Squablz, J-S.A.N.D. and Don Pablito) shows LL at his sharpest, “movin’ chess pieces like telekinesis” and stretching his elasticity to ridiculous extremes. Call it a comeback. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Easily their most accessible album, Algiers is also Calexico at their most expansive and very, very best. [Oct 2012, p.94]