It's packed tight with wayward ideas. [Jul 2021, p.89]

Sun-scorched Californian jams. [Dec 2023, p.87]

Exhortations are soundtracked by languid funk that occasionally stumbles into trip-hop autopilot but is mostly electrified by Peng's restless inspiration. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Everything feels tactile rather than crowded. [Apr 2016, p.92]

It's soulful, spiritually questing--pretty much irresistible, too. [Jun 2017, p.88]

Wonky beats and shimmering twisted tech melodies. [Nov. 2010, p. 109]

The project pushes him into new and different directions, with beat band ballast ('Ate It Twice'), horn-laded soul ('Ready To Pop'), orchestral gloom (the title tracks) and pleasingly weird mini-epics ('Still In Rome'). [Oct 2008]

If Congrats is no less aggressive than its three predecessors, the crisp Neon Dad qualifies as pop and Acidic is a weird kind of joyous electronic ska. [Jun 2016, p.92]

Who Is The Sender? is effectively a set of moving, funeral-paced closing tracks addressing familiar themes--political disillusionment, morality and spiritual wonder. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Anyone seduced by the standout Wounded Rhymes track Sadness Is A blessing will be left winded by the even more sorrow-stricken I Never Learn. [Jun 2014, p.92]

Lamb offer the perfect antidote to all manner of vapid pop-cultural vomitus without sounding pretentious or preachy. [Dec 2003, p.118]

It's a hyper-vivid and intensely musical affair that takes us deep inside Apple's skittish, fretful mind. [Jul 2012, p.82]

Her voice is as earnestly soulful as Tracy Chapman, as deep and characterful as Nina Simone - and, like Simone, when the emotion engulfs her, the results are electrifying. [Sep 2025, p.87]

Hamdan works slowly, but this has been worth waiting for. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Jolting with energy and pitch-black humour, Stardust is a sonic pink'n'mix that finds Brown firmly relocating his psychedelic wildness. [Jan 2026, p.87]

Another epically conceived record from a cult hero who should be slaying arenas. [Oct 2015, p.95]

II offers a litany of brief, mellifluous, vaguely jazzy mood sketches, fluidly mapping a terrain both playful and emotionally resonant like the missing link between Eric Satie's Gymnopedies and Everybody Digs Bill Evans. [Sep 2012, p.88]

This is Joe Ely at his rugged best. [Nov 2015, p.94]

This is repeat-play head music that still manages to hotwire the heart. [May 2006, p.102]

The debut solo album is as ornate as 2009's Veckatimest, with Rossen now playing almost all the buccaneering acoustic guitars, cascading piano lines, cellos and woodwinds himself. [May 2022, p.94]

Remarkably moving. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Remastered with a disc of rarities and curiously, a screamtastic bootleg-quality 1980 show at Tokyo's Budokan. [Apr 2021, p.97]

Road is a hugely enjoyable hoot. [Oct 2023, p.82]

Wraith finds those heterogeneous elements [post-punk, industrial Krautrock and Angelo Badalamenti-like soundtrack atmosphere] fusing even more satisfyingly than [2015's Highly Deadly Black Tarantula]. [Mar 2019, p.97]

In classic Brit-rock style it is this intrepid combo's assembly of these disparate echoes into something of their own that takes them ever closer to the pantheon of greats. Join the Dots is another exhilarating leap in that direction. [Jan 2014, p95]

From the gentle breeze of the Tala Tannam to the howling gale of lead single Chismiten, the little clumps of ambient sound - village chatter, footsteps, maybe a cockerel - hold their ground against every new gust of virtuoso fretwork. [Jul 2021, p.89]

This, one, in its place [Pixies reunion], is fresh and really rather fab. [Mar 2009, p.106]

Reality Tunnels finds the Bristolian beat-master reaffirming known skills while cultivating fresh ones. [Aug 2020, p.87]