Reflection Of Youth swoops through grandiose, visceral and skeletal arrangements (producer-engineer Nick Rayner is a revelation): Full-tilt rock on I Wanna Dance; warped folk bleeding into orchestrated glitch on Christine; steely, shivery ballad Survived. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Minimal beat-logic and a new-age-ish ability to work below pop's usual emotional horizons sets them apart. [Sep 2018, p.96]

It reframes familiar, comforting songs of joy, innocence and goatherds within pitiless orch-industrial rock and suspicious pop softness, rediscovering the original's Nazi-assailed gravity and reflecting on a divided Korean peninsula and the international power relations beyond. [Jan 2019, p.84]

This still requires a certain kind of listener: namely, people who find Michael Cera's movies charming. [May 2011, p.109]

The result is as good as anything Cale's delivered in years. [Nov 2012, p.91]

This hour-long excerpt inevitably loses that multimedia narrative heft, yet its marriage of dronescape synths and Chinese libretto - voices alternatively soaring, skittering and sorrowful - still casts an otherworldly spell. [Feb 2022, p.84]

The pace is relentlessly uptempo, but the sheer feisty spirit and conviction with which it is delivered ultimately brooks no argument. [Feb 2008, p.102]

Though not without the odd turkey, it is arguably their most satisfying work since 1978's Some Girls. [Oct 2005, p.100]

This is too much fun to be a one-off. [Apr 2024, p.82]

Plays like a budget price homage to ELO and early '70s Beach Boys, full of pocket symphonies and childlike wonder. [Jan 2006, p.132]

Third album proper for San Fran psych quartet. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Originally intended as a YouTube offering, The Palace Guards teeters between alt country and folk rock in a diverse and totally appealing manner. [Jun 2011, p.103]

This album is a punchy, lyrical and moving set. [Nov 2011, p. 103]

Waterhouse's 2012 debut, Time's All Gone, combined strong songwriting with an impressive, hard-voiced approach, and this follow-up does the same again. [May 2014, p.94]

Each song seems like an effort to atomise their grief and frustration, with frequently clarity amid icy electronic noir. [Mar 2019, p.99]

Best tracks are the most acid. [May 2020, p.96]

The melodies and fire return in Baby I'm Coming Home, but held up against their past triumphs, Dropout Boogie often sounds half-cooked. [Jun 2022, p.84]

Meticulous, inventive record. [Jul 2026, p.86]

Except for hitting the odd unfamiliar note, as on an exquisitely lap-steel and fingerpicked Galveston, the singer's vocals sound unchanged, still keening and honey-pure. [Aug 2013, p.89]

A mellow, tender, easy album...

The dejected vocals and mesmerising mood of the music are in place, making this an album for long lonely winter nights. [Feb 2009, p.115]

The trio's vocal harmonies have lost none of their warm-blooded magic. [Nov 2018, p.96]

The Stockholm-based composer edges into metallic wave-like dissonance, using organ and guitar to explore points at which sonic clarity starts to mess with our spatial awareness. [Sep 2019, p.91]

The economy and velvet touch of Efterklang's music-making have survived, except the finesse is now allied to a newly arresting, wistful songwriting style that carries with it echoes of the early Coldplay.

It works as a powerful artistic statement. [Oct 2018, p.88]

With little in the way of banjo now, nearly every song comes steeped in acoustic piano, while the vocals are pitched to eke out every last chunk of substance from well-honed lyrics. [May 2010, p.93]

It's not easy to make Sabbath-style proto-metal sound fresh, but Black Mountain have a way of writing songs that go to the places you hope they will without descending into cliche. [Oct. 2010, p. 92]

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