I See You is more nuanced and upbeat than their previous records but, perhaps shrewdly, it enhances their blueprint rather than completely redrawing it. [Feb 2017, p.91]

This album is destined to redraw the parameters, thanks to its sheer scale and detail, its recurring themes and imagery, and its creators' refusal to settle for less than they could achieve. [June 2011, p. 90]

Bonny Light Horseman probably could've said just as much over half the tracks, but the fact they had the courage to keep digging ever deeper into their emotional turbulence has bourne spectacular results. [Jul 2024, p.87]

If it has a fault, it is that its relentlessly innovative music can overshadow often superlative lyrics. [Apr 2005, p.102]

Baroness have delivered their masterpiece: an album grounding their cosmic heaviosity with earthbound, compelling drama. [Jan 2016, p.88]

The corners of these songs might not snag quite as dangerously as before, but there's no blunting of the fascination Le Bon's songwriting so expertly exerts. [Mar 2022, p.80]

The centrifugal force is Rosali's calm, deep voice, belying her lyric's nervous energy and drama, balancing vulnerability with resilience. [May 2024, p.88]

Rolls by like a summery blast of mid-'60s AM radio. [Sep 2005, p.89]

It sounds wonderful. [Apr 2014, p.96]

This disc is bloated with anti-matter sing-alongs to savour. [Apr 2017, p.98]

The single-disc edition offers a streamlined look at Cornell's career, cherry-picking some of his finest moments and complementing them with rarities. ... For a totalising retrospective, the 7-LP, 4-CD, 1-DVD box set is essential. [Jan 2019, p.104]

The more upbeat swing to the songs doesn't dull the crispness of her songwriting. [Jul 2019, p.90]

A record that makes the tortured beauty of Tilt appear like a mildly resigned shrug. [Jun 2006, p.102]

Extraordinary. [Aug 2023, p.88]

Funny, bleak, cathartic and brave, with a winning redemption arc, in all but design Weirdo is a blues album - transforming unbearable pain into deeply affecting, original art. [Jun 2025, p.86]

Daunting? Yes. Fun and engaging? That too. [Apr 2026, p.86]

Represents an ultramodern rock masterpiece, low-key yet ominous, offering new yet comforting ways of singing familiar tunes. [Jul 2003, p.98]

Not a crossover record, but invigorating. [Mar 2002, p.114]

Streetcore is an amalgam of all that made Joe Strummer, the musician and the man, so great. [Nov 2003, p.131]

Victoria's wracked, whispery, smoky rasp exudes her inner suffering. [Apr 2019, p.91]

If not every experiment works, Brown's twinkling hook-up with Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt on Really Doe totally surpasses its billing. [Nov 2016, p.89]

Some might find the work's almost wilful-seeming opacity and slight whiff of academia off-putting. Judged on purely musical terms, however, it's a ting of great beauty. [Apr 2017, p.90]

Heartmind is unlikely to break him out of the smoked-glass shell of cultdom. ... Yet this album does display notable lushness. ... It proves McCombs doesn't need any dream machine to induce new visions: 10 albums in, he's more than capable of looking at the world differently all by himself. [Sep 2022, p.84]

Collected together the fear might have been that the sound would be found wanting. yet from 1996's Nenette Et Boni to 2009's White Material here is a sound always pulsing with the same intimate warmth of Denis' films. [May 2011, p.112]

For the most part A World Lit Only By Fire finds Godflesh sounding just as brilliantly brutal as ever. [Oct 2014, p.92]

Power sings in an emotion-laden, ever-modulating voice that summons the spirits of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin as readily as Sibylle Baier or Sandy Denny. [Aug 2016, p.93]

The beauty of Jump On It also lies in how it evolves Orcutt's music rather than compromises it. Start here and work backwards. [Jun 2023, p.89]

When his sturdy tunes do hit the jackpot, one wonders why Kirsty MacColl's hit with A New England is such a rare cover. .... Like all political songsmiths, Bragg seeks to transcend the didactic and stir the blood, and largely succeeds. [Dec 2023, p.101]