Songs filled with rustic, caught-between-light-and-dark country metaphors. [Sep 2015, p.95]

He's a master of umbral moods, and in this respect at least, In Our Nature is a worthy successor to the phenomenal "Veneer." [Oct 2007, p102]

There's a bit of power ballad journeying but taut pop hooks aplenty too. [May 2017, p.98]

Inventions contains enough streamlined electronic uplift to force your emotions into an altered state of ecstatic euphoria. [Jul 2014, p.88]

It's a messy, vibrant record, and if his palette occasionally blurs into muddiness, at least he's still trying for a rainbow. [Nov 2017, p.102]

As feisty good-time rock goes, the Stones get good and gone and its worth every penny for the duet with Buddy Guy on Muddy Waters' 'Champagne and Reffer' alone. [May 2008, p.103]

Tasseomancy's third album moves with a deceptively breezy sway. [Jan 2017, p.94]

Peaks on Witchcraft, a perfect Bikini Kill-Pendle Witch coven induction song. [Apr 2018, p.96]

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]

Temples aren't stuck in the past, they've glimpsed the future. [Apr 2017, p.94]

All BRMC really have in common with The Strokes is hype and haircuts, but their music lives up to both. [Feb 2002, p.92]

A clumsily executed, ghoulishly self-regarding mess. [Mar 2006, p.94]

Top-down pop that sparkles like a lifeguard's teeth. [Jul 2003, p.109]

1960s-obsessed power-poppers discover the '70s. Time travel indeed. [July 2010, p. 102]

They write about what they know. Once that was dashed hopes and broken hearts, now its families and what sounds like pages from a diary. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Lazy vocals, euphoric hooks and volleys of digital drums. [Aug 2013, p.98]

This potent return affirms Finn heeds his own advice. [Mar 2014, p.90]

Heroic in its scope and shifting moods, it's more performance piece than repeated listen. [May 2025, p.93]

Instead of warm colours they work with a more monochromatic palette. There's darkness, rain, a chill in the air, remoteness, a sense of nature--and more of than not, a very British remoteness and sense of nature. [Feb 2010, p.90]

The Wiltshire-raised, London-based trio respons with an album that feels utterly vital, but--show no desire to climb out of their own particular furrow. [Apr 2010, p.95]

Affirms that Boris can bench-press myriad weighty sub-genres in their sleep. [Aug. 2011, p. 92]

His fourth album isn't quite as rich a powerpop confection as 2002's "Lapalco" but it still shows off songs as sweet and sharp as peanut brittle. [Sep 2009, p.104]

Slaraffenland are a complete surprise. Unfettered yet poptuneful, they harmonize constantly--with a melodic cool, more churchy than surfy--but plough those vocal lines into dense, dynamic texture with fierce drums marching as to war. [Jun 2010, p.103]

Burgess always wanted to be a country soul man, on this album he has done it. [Oct 2012, p.87]

It's chugging, stoner rock riff solace to those bored by the cod therapy of Some Kind Of Monster. [Oct 2013, p.98]

His [Chris Collingwood] Kermit-does-Carole King voice can be too sugary for some, but not for high-spec pop fans. [Sep 2016, p.99]

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

A pleasant way to pass time in transit, but not a destination itself. [Oct 2022, p.82]