Hook-packed mini-album, direct first-person narratives are sung with knowing sweetness over sunny guitar classicism. [Sep 2017, p.96]

This may not be the '70s cosmic cowboy of Nelson in his prime, but wise old grandpa Willie is as sage and poignant now as he has ever been. [Aug 2020, p.85]

This is room-shaking, gut-quaking stuff. [Apr 2009, p.106]

Expanding on the rolling grooves of 2009'a Song Of The Pearl, The Gathering is a sonic monster. [Apr 2011, p.101]

An earthy, beat-oriented album... It ain't '3 Feet High'--or even 'De La Soul Is Dead'-- but it ain't half bad. (Sep 2000, p.96)

Sometimes, the abiding mood is one of grand interstellar drift, an ancient exhausted spaceship cruising through deep space, leaving rippling waves of a strange blank intensity in its wake. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Younge's Axelrodish take on orchestral soul dominates. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Lina bringing the tradition, Raul Refree adding experimental soundscapes for her to play in. [Sep 2020, p.89]

Another album of homages, jammed fast and loose in early 2025 at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in the wake of a cancer diagnosis for the singer’s father Chuck – who died soon after on March 29. The urgency and catharsis in these tracks makes sense in that context, but there’s something else here: a deep connection with music, felt in every groove and texture. [Jun 2026, p.89]

Capture/Release's clanking guitars and shimmering melodies meld the abstract and the earthy with a Mark E Smithian panache. [Sep 2005, p.102]

An album of considerable weight. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Close To The Glass is full of charming, understated yearning. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Destroyer shifts up a couple of gears for a less cosmic,more hard rockin' thrust, complete with headlong NWOBHM riffs and even shredding. [Jun 2019, p.90]

Ane Brun has never before sounded so alive.[March 2012, p.98]

This fourth album's a gas. [Apr 2015, p.86]

Garvey's poetics have acquired more acuity. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Shine A Light is a labour of love and a personal indulgence for its two creators, but it's always welcoming. [Oct 2016, p.93]

[An] engaging, likable, thoroughly listenable, and indeed, sing-along album. [Feb 2013, p.96]

There's no arguing with the brilliance if New Partner or I See A Darkness, though the sweetness of Oldham's mature voice and the impressionistic arrangements tend to detract from their ominous gravity. [Jan 2019, p.84]

Blight is powerful, but hermetically airless. [Nov 2025, p.91]

Bada$$ proves a natural born rhymer on a deeply rewarding showcase of advanced level lyricalism. [Feb 2015, p.89]

It's been worth the wait. [Oct 2010, p.103]

Buzzing with delicate analogue warmth, the gamelan rhythms, toy-piano chimes and warped guitar loops or Walking Field are lullingly hypnotic and eerily deja entendu. [Jul 2013, p.87]

A gloriously nuanced embellishment of the band's timeless virtue. [Apr 2015, p.91]

This mini-LP ladles grooves on PDS's stripped post-punk. [Jul 2015, p.96]

An electro-edged nerviness also surfaces but, overall, the fresh stylistic excursions result in an album which, fittingly considering its backstory, does not quite hang together. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Tatum adds to the mix tropical pop textures, shimmery synth-pop gloss and twangy guitar solos that could melt hearts. [Oct 2012, p.88]

Highly entertaining, though best consumed a few songs at a time, Quickies is more than a novelty record, though certainly novel. [Jun 2020, p.90]