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

Although the listener doesn't expect dynamics in this kind of music, there is little variation in either its colour and timbre. [Aug 2020, p.89]

The musical density doesn't quite complement the elegiac lyrical flow, and a change of pace might have meant another way forward, but there's tenderness to spare. [Feb 2022, p.90]

Best savoured as a whole, a magical mystery of Pollard's pop-obsessed, haphazardly-filed subconscious. [Feb 2006, p.107]

Sex Change continues their move away from arena bombast towards streamlined Euro grooves. [Mar 2007, p.103]

This trick of balancing heavy and light serves Mercury well. [Jul 2022, p.88]

It lacks the gargantuan personality and all-encompassing throaty bark of FU's leader Damian Abraham to give it a USP, but Falco, as frontman, does a decent job of stamping his own marker. [Jul 2020, p.84]

The singer's second solo album is far removed from VR's ass-kicking hard rock. [Feb 2009, p.108]

At it's best, II packs a winning, sun-scorched lethargy. [Jun 2017, p.88]

Occasionally overwrought but never dull. [Sep 2017, p.96]

The Amazing Snakeheads have delivered an album bristling with unapologetic rock'n'roll invective. [Jun 2014, p.91]

Gentle, Andrew Bird-style ballads bump alongside histrionic prog pop and four-to-the-floor beats on Ritalin-phased second LP. [Jun 2014, p.98]

If you're mad enough to be planning a Breaking Bad-themed barbecue you've just found the perfect soundtrack. [Sep 2016, p.90]

Don't head here for untrammelled novelty, but Idlewild is a record worthy of the name. [Nov 2025, p.89]

Blood proves to be another mixed bag. [Aug 2015, p.92]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Manuel Menuck and Mat Ball of Big Brave joined guitar forces to make music that stood up to the Montreal cold. The heat generated by the band (completed by Jonathan Downs and Patch One of Maine post-rockers Ada) isn’t entirely the kind you huddle around for comfort, though. [Nov 2024, p.87]

This radiantly executed effort is also, curiously, Childish Gambino's most anonymous. [Feb 2017, p.92]]

Fate Of The faithful is ostensibly No Quarter, Meeting The Master is Thank You, and The Falling Sky cribs a Robert Plant-style harp solo so perfectly that GVF can likely taste his spit. Be in no doubt, however, that frontman Josh Kiszka's Olympian wail can part the waves of cynicism and make the scales fall from your eyes. [Sep 2023, p.88]

While reining in the triumphalism, Demonstration suffers from an overbearing sense of its own importance. [Jan 2014, p.97]

The live album of the film of his 2014 Scottish road trip reveals Moffat's irreverent take on his nation's folk songs. [May 2016, p.96]

More coherent than some rejigged castoffs ought to be. [Oct 2022, p.84]

Heartbreaker Please expresses its title in the most literal terms; it's broken and pleading. At the same time, the music provides a through-line to the 43-year-old's singer's past, striking his usual balance between Buddy Holly simplicity and Roy Orbison sweep, with a dash of Memphis horns tossed in. [Jun 2020, p.89]

While it's sometimes hard to shake the feeling one is listening to the soundtrack to some twee mobile commercial, it's harder still to deny the seductive charms of tracks like the twilit Ilsa Drown, the haunting Triangulated Heart, and the album's deftly magical closing song, Loom. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have knuckled down alongside relative newbies Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer to make a half-decent rock'n'roll record. [Nov 2009, p.90]

An intriguing partnership that fails to entirely live up to expectations. [May 2012, p.86]

For all his sour wit, however, Zevon remians a musical craftsman who's happy to leave the lyrics to others. [July 2002, p.102]

Two distinct personalities: Death LP (dark and groovy) and the titular short film soundtrack (disjointed and upsetting). [Aug 2017, p.96]

Imaginative, derivative and warped. [Nov 2016, p.93]