Lowly strikes their balances adroitly, but Hifalutin could easily have become another album--one that was more straightforward. [Jun 2019, p.94]

Easy chemistry. ... Glasper and Washington fans may rue their idols merely playing in the back. [Oct 2020, p.94]

Skinner's grown-up musings are more twisty and cryptic than his rascally early work, but no less incisive or well-wrought. Inimitable, humane, flawed, it's good to have him back. [Dec 2023, p.86]

The Future Bites is a great grown-up pop record - knowing and self-aware, but never too much for its own good. [Feb 2021, p.83]

This repeat performance from marginally less familiar names might seem like a poor substitute for a new project. Happily, it's not. [Mar 2016, p.97]

The fire is back in his belly. [Apr 2012, p.88]

A titular palindrome for New Yorkers' covers CD. [June 2010, p. 96]

A much grander affair [than his debut]. [Jun 2006, p.103]

Over nine more filmic songs, a quaint magic unfolds. [Aug 2019, p.93]

Retour Au Champs De Mars oscillates malevolently with throaty, Death Star bass synths; like much of Iris, it uses a covert approach to win you over. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Cold yet compulsive. [Jun 2005, p.106]

It turns to a clutch of its founding fathers and allies for its 14th outing. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Clearly the thrill of hearing new songs in their embryonic state could never be replicated, but as rendered in such pristine isolation even the cavalier back catalogue selections (rarely played early classic 1,000,000;one-that-got-away Romance) fell flat. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

What used to work well just doesn't any more, even though Finn still conjures street stories with a rank, raw conversational truth. [May 2014, p.87]

While outstanding musicianship is guaranteed, it doesn't always go hand in hand with great songwriting, but by its judicious mixing of the avant-garde and smart pop, alt rock and low-slung funk, Patience is always engaging. [Aug 2016, p.90]

The sound a minibus of demons might make stuck in a bank holiday A303 tailback. [Aug 2016, p.99]

The twilit fug of Warpaint is hypnotic, exotic, and rewards the close listening its hushed grooves and harmonies invite. [Feb 2014, p.94]

His offbeat personality and refusal to pound the toad most traveled mark out this wildly talented bearded savant as a potential game-changer. [Dec 2013, p.89]

Isn't quite a match for last year's career-topping Broken Stay Open Sky. [Nov 2019, p.86]

Restless, relentless, righteous: this guru of the primeval groove is once more helming an exceptional rock'n'roll band. [July 2008, p.108]

Let It Die's first six tracks find The Shaky Hands joyously rocking it up - like the less self-consciously arty Wilco, pre-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - while the more reflective mood that settles over the album's second half is a wistful reverie rather than a spiritual malaise. [Feb 2010, p. 102]

It makes for perfect summer listening. [Aug. 2011, p. 101]

Consistently absorbing, as good as any of Foxx's early-'80's benchmarks. [Apr 2012, p.86]

These veterans are already better than The Funkees. [Oct 2012, p.91]

Even for Ron it makes for downbeat listening, but when it really comes together, such as Lost In Thought, his rock-bottom emotions truly reach for the stars. [Mar 2013, p.87]

Harsh but striking. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Bitter-pill catharsis. [Jun 2014, p.89]

It suggest that a future as pullover wearing folkies is theirs for the taking if they fancied it. [Mar 2015, p.94]