Here across 11 instrumentals, it's a totally entrancing journey as grooves are saturated by horn swells, eerie organ, bad-trip backwards guitars and drum breaks ready for sampling. [Nov 2020, p.83]

Weather is so deftly under-produced that you turn it up; so hazy and intimate you're drawn in close. [Jan 2012, p.98]

The album is at its rawest and most dynamic on such garage tracks as I Gotta Get Shorty Out Of Jail and One-Eyed Jack. [Aug 2012, p.90]

It's easily their best work. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Where the previous LP put them on a higher plane and widened their audience, this broadens the palette and consolidates their status. [Sept. 2011, p. 92]

In Just Lie Down, grief gives way to wrath and post-hardcore freakery. While Soft Stud and Sam, A Dream have more blissful guitar codas that signify a resolution to her woes. [Nov 2018, p.94]

The tunes are all there but the mood is woozy, the arrangements spare and programmed to hypnotize. [Oct 2011, p.98]

In sterling voice throughout. [Apr 2021, p.84]

Live, the band’s urgency and spaciousness transform their fondness for cavernous arena rhythms and antiquated synths from clever re-appropriations into something that teases transcendence. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Blissed-out analogue synths, the swell and drone of ambient rock and epic, beatless, drawn-out melodies characterize the debut. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

Moving from deliciously tense cop-show rhythms to echoing guitar feedback and pure-signal electronic buzz. [Jan 2013, p.98]

Singer Barbora Patkova's soulful charge that brings a tighter focus to a set of roiling, otherworldly jams whcih sound like Can and Funkadelic getting high on Sun Ra's unfettered jazz supply. [May 2020, p.93]

The stage is small, the set short, but as ever, The Bad Seeds contain multitudes. [Jan 2014, p.96]

A little strange, a little strained, Mercy still rings with its own truth. [Jun 2021, p.88]

Hackney Diamonds feels like a self-aware, historically mindful party, Jagger’s remarkable vocal thrust utterly unimpaired.

It benefits substantially from the synergy that the potent presence of Charlie Musselwhite helps to create. [Feb 2013, p.90]

A very fine, if long-gestated, debut. [May 2020, p.93]

Los Angeles already feels like a destination record, Lee, Tolhurst and Budgie putting their decades of world-building expertise to excellent use. If the world they have built is on the brink of collapse, it only adds to the thrill. [Dec 2023, p.85]

The next must-have pastoral American sensation, from Oklahoma.[Sep 2011, p.97]

A transporting treat, tapping both the personal and the universally political. [Jun 2020, p.86]

This double LP has sonic coherence across 65 minutes of taut, sinewy but ever-unpredictable compositions, with a subtly altered sound palette. [Feb 2024, p.86]

This second volume maintains the high standard. [Jul 2018, p.104]

At 12 years' distance, these Papists sound anything but straightforward, ably navigating a compositional logic every bit as nutty as Debaser or Cactus, just with the sonic derangement notched down, and the odd deft pedal-steel lick chipped in. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Great punk-funk (Faith), but the real triumphs are her alliance of Le Tigre-level sass and superior tunes. [Oct 200, p.94]

Parr's front porch vocals and mesmerising guitar pickings mingle with mouth harp, backing vocals, piano, electric guitar and fiddle on an album full of wonder and love for the unloved. He really should invite friends round more often. [May 2024, p.91]

The Cherry Thing is quite a brilliant combination, with its creepy, freaky sound and clever reinventions. [Jul 2012, p.92]

It's a daunting but ultimately rewarding listen. [Jan 2022, p.92]

An image-rich rumination on Scotland past and present. [Aug 2014, p.86]