Booker responds with young and evergreen playing, a typically euphonious mixture of economy, precision, warmth, color and melody on tight groovin' instrumentals. [Jun 2011, p.101]

He is so clearly in his element that you can just hand over the controls. [Oct 2019, p.97]

This is Sign 'O' The Times territory. ... When Prince wanders from the funk path the results are more mixed. ... Yet there's strength in Welcome 2 America's commitment to the idea of the Classic Prince Album. [Sep 2021, p.93]

Though the percussive, struck guitar strings interlude Zilch is perhaps an inquiry too far, caroline's flair for conjuring the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness frequently enchants. [Apr 2022, p.89]

Weirdness and wonder abound at every turn. [Oct 2025, p.81]

A vivid, pulsing rhyme banquet that's out-there, edgy and kaleidoscopic. [Mar 2014, p.96]

Full of curios and cameos, My Name Is Buddy falls short of masterpiece but is dense with wonderful music. [Apr 2007, p.100]

At its best the record soars, but After The Meteor Showers' slight echo of Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" left your scribe cold. [Jul 200, p.97]

The album's eight, unusually varied essays largely eschew sonic wallpaper stereotype, invested as they are with playfulness and a genuine sense of Eastern-flavoured spiritual uplift. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Variously evoking a gnarlier early R.E.M., The Hold Steady, and, yes, Springsteen, other songs here occasionally suffer from over-telegraphed choruses, but Fallon's fervour and gift for an apposite metaphor - "I'm a weatherman watching the skies, trying to read you" - are evident. [Nov 2023, p.86]

Often startlingly brilliant. [Mar 2026, p.85]

In Europe, Manu Chao shifts albums by the millions, but there is little here to make one think Britain is missing out. [Oct 2007, p.104]

Superabundance is a record to treasure. [Apr 2008, p.104]

Mulcahy is a heavy-duty Randy Newman for our times. [Jul 2019, p.95]

Dream On is packed with heartbreak, yet has a deft pop instinct too, courtesy of producer Patrik Berger. [Feb 2020, p.94]

A mostly instrumental set of spiralling guitars and scalp-prickling grooves. [Apr 2016, p.96]

This is a fine balancing of distance and engagement that put the shier back into chill out. [Mar 2012, p.103]

You can see why they've got another Golden Globe nomination for this, although most of the music here isn't in the film and the many highlights get lost in an eternity of approximately similar sonics. [Mar 2012, p.94]

A bijou flashback to a place of quiet nirvana. [Feb 2006, p.107]

For all its romance, this is a record at the sharp end of mortality. [March 2011, p. 96]

Wainwright nevertheless manages to make the songs her own. [Jan 2017, p.96]

A confounding and bewitching set of songs that feels gloriously out of time. [Dec 2011, p.100]

Green sounds in his element. [Apr 2005, p.100]

[Unfinished Business captures her vigour and verve] with its rough'n'tumble mix of R&B, country and rockabilly. [Dec 2012, p.90]

Rekindle the guileless spirit of mid-'90s alt rock in The Alarmist's twilit wistfulness; or Moment's surge of power-chord melancholy. [Feb 2020, p.96]

The record's well-meaning earnestness is a little overwhelming, but it's the stuffed-crust arrangements that really grate, everything happening at once, and often for too long. [Apr 2022, p.81]

If there are few lyrical miracles in these scattershot songs obsessed with sex, drugs and shopping, in this intuitive stylist’s mouth the words themselves are often beside the point.

They can't always resist their old ways, as autumn processional PPP shows, but Legrand's vocals feel sweeter and closer. [Sep 2015, p.87]