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

Acute while charming, she captures the sadness and silliness of the months when she hightailed it out of Ortonvile, Michigan, pop. 1,442. [Jun 2014, p.95]

The follow-up has richer, dreamier contours, but the mood is gaunter. [Sep 2018, p.94]

These are acutely playful and poignant dissections of his world. [May 2019, p.87]

This rolling membership opens the palette considerably. ... The songs that leave the biggest impression, however, are the raucous yet soulful bangers. [Mar 2020, p.89]

James Hunter may have a new band from New York but they swing like his old one, and it's mostly business as usual here, with Hunter's new batch of songs sounding just like the old songs he's influenced by. [Apr 2020, p.94]

This is as moving and real as Orton has ever been. [Oct 2022, p.86]

Her fiercest offering since 1996's landmark The Way I Should, and a long overdue follow-up to that album's righteous ire. [Apr 2023, p.83]

This is Williams winningly flexing his more substantial songwriterly muscles. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Talking Heads: 77 still feels like a record that is always going to get past you, speeding ahead of the curve. [Jan 2025, p.96]

Simon's new music sounds inventive, surprising and catchy to boot. [Jul 2016, p.94]

The 10 songs here complements mainman Creston Spiers' whisper-to-howl vocals with startling dynamic shifts. [Sep 2008, p.106]

Sounds miraculously unburdened by its conceptual weight.[Dec. 2011 p. 90]

Feels as old as a cracked-leather Bible that's lasted generations and witnessed many secrets. [Apr 2006, p.98]

The unreleased material sustains earlier standards. [Jun 2012, p.100]

An inspired makeover that only serves to complement Weaver's past achievements. [Aug 2019, p.93]

Despite these songs' sensuous abundance, deepened by McEntire's lush, chlorophyll-rich voice, there's a sharp modernity here. [Sep 2020, p.89]

Magic.... Its rhapsodies present a portait of an artist at an early height of his powers. [Feb 2005, p.102]

A lower case delight. [Nov 2020, p.88]

As candid as Steiner can be, this doesn't play like a primal scream: her naked vulnerability makes it a remarkably moving experience. [Apr 2026, p.91]

The songs on this second solo album are more substantive than those of 2017's Wintres Woma. [May 2020, p.90]

In line with the album title, Richard reins it in, as if she’s singing torch songs, but the emotion is palpable, her lyrics freighted with trauma. [Nov 2024, p.87]

Born from Locks' work with prison inmates, the likes of Distance are intricately funky collages, not a million miles away from recent tracks by Billy Woods. [Apr 2025, p.84]

It's the way these sessions are gracefully processed into digitalia that makes the whole thing so cohesive. [Dec 2021 p.87]

Third shows Portishead in the tradition of, say, Fairpoint Convention as much as Massive Attack, and though it might not convert sceptics it is convincing, and occasionally thrilling, demonstration that the wilderness can be a great place to cook up new ideas. [May 2008, p.103]

The results are mesmeric in their stately extrapolation of gloom. [May 2002, p.102]

A more focused excursion. [Oct 2017, p.98]

I Inside the Old Year Dying holds itself at the biting point between old and new, re-evaluation and revelation. What lies on the other side, only Polly Harvey knows, but this is a record she was born to make. [Aug 2023, p.76]