It's masterful stuff: a full conceptual realisation, filled with great melodies, deep grooves, colourful characterisations and sonic detail that reveals itself over repeated plays. ... A keeper for the decades to come. [Jun 2021, p.84]

An exhilarating record by a band not only thriving under pressure but already finding new ways to adapt to its force. [Feb 2022, p.80]

Impossible Truth is an unusually articulate trip. [May 2013, p.85]

With aid of latter-day Grace Jones producer Ivor Guest, his upbeat tendencies manifest in talk box-voiced electronic funk (think Roger Troutman/Zapp) that is more flattering, particularly when matched to the singer's biting wit on All That School and the MAGA-bashing Meek AF. [Jul 2024, p.86]

Stay Positive has consistently stronger material than its preecessors and, perhaps more importantly, is sequenced to maximum efficacy. [Aug 2008, p.100]

His first LP of complete originals is a thing of profound beauty; deep, sad, wise songs, allied to perfectly crafted arrangements, from a man who's lived long enough in darkness to address the big, heavy questions with a lightness of touch. [Aug 2012, p.96]

Cooder has history in his brain, veins and fingertips as well as a gift for sound collage. [Nov 2014, p.109]

The Beloved Scouse songsmith's virtues are writ large: heart swelling hymns to the common man, irrepressible shanties, imaginatively deployed strings and brass, affectionate songs of booze-love, as unhinged a school-days memoir as you'll ever hear, and, at the closing Adios Amigo, the fondest of farewells. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Some bands arrive as a work in progress. Others, such as Divorce, are fully formed from Birth. .... They tick boxes aplenty. [Apr 2025, p.86]

An exquisite, arresting introduction. [Sep 2025, p.85]

A clearer-headed Goulden has given eight of those under-loved songs the garage verité treatment they needed all along for England Screaming. [Dec 2025, p.82]

Deliver[s] more surreal, neon-psych country rock, in sweet harmonies and super-crunchy six-string riffs. [Oct 2023, p.89]

Gigi's Recovery fully achieves TMC's transformative purpose, its lyrics of unflinching self-scrutiny leading to side two's exhilarating Only Good Things and the thrillingly airborne climactic title track. [Feb 2023, p.82]

Bleach sounds liked a valiant manifesto for something new that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest nightmare. [Dec 2009, p.112]

This new material finds them in [a] more experimental mode. [Oct 2017, p.90]

Occasionally ground down in the past with the sheer weight of sadness, here Songs:Ohia sound defiant, uplifting, and never better. [Apr 2003, p.102]

This is one explosive package no hip hop loving home should be without. [Aug 2004, p.92]

Coheres as well as anything else in their canon. [Jun 2003, p.90]

The Lost Tapes is such an impressive testament to Can's inspiration and questing spirit that without being greedy, one hopes that there may be more tapes sequestered away. [Jul 2012, p.96]

Loyalty retains the humble immediacy of its predecessors. [Jul 2015, p.90]

There's no manifesto here, only an exploration of identity, just as Letissier searches for her place in this decade's pantheon of fabulous poly-musical femmes. [Apr 2016, p.92]

We get to bask in the calm in the eye of Young's wilful hurricane without suffering the trail of destruction that followed it. An intensely enjoyable experience it is, too. [Feb 2019, p.99]

She's at peak power on Faraway Look, expressing feminine vulnerability over immaculate Dusty In Memphis arrangements. [Mar 2019, p.95]

City Pressure, the military-industrial complex, social injustice, ganja and plague/lockdown frustration are soundtracked by city-sized industrial noise and merciless rhythm. [Oct 2021, p.88]

While personal and sexual politics were always implicit within Taylor's bovver girl workouts, her words have grown tougher and sharper. [Oct 2021, p.89]

Delicate yet resolute, Geist is a beautiful spin through the windmills of Lay's mind, unreal in the best ways. [Nov 2021, p.92]

Surely Relentless is how Chrissie Hynde always wanted the Pretenders to sound. [Oct 2023, p.79]

Thrillingly raw, it captures the pair at their most streamlined, visceral and direct, disproving F Scott Fitzgerald's theory about second acts. [Jun 2024, p.86]