The simpler numbers--sun-dappled Dust On The Dancefloor, sweet love ballad Our Hearts Burn Like Damp Matches--are much better. [Jun 2011, p.100]

This is less organic, more brittle, and electronic than before and begs to be opened out in a live setting. [Jul 2015, p.93]

[The album is] spare, poignant, dark and dry. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Occasionally, the album threatens to go Spinal Tap-ish. ... But when Dwyer steeps the prog in garage frenzy, the pot boils. [Sep 2018, p.92]

A varied, febrile affair more often than not in pursuit of the lunatic. [Feb 2004, p.93]

The more experimental efforts have a real impact. [Sep 2012, p.97]

In spite of its two-headed musical harmony, the personal disharmony in The Civil Wars is all too evident. [Sep 2013, p.94]

More tension in the style of Fumbling Prayer's churchy organ and escalating coda might have widened Unfurl's visceral impact, but as music-for-bedroom goes, Ry X is king. [Mar 2018, p.91]

On record, it's nutty maze-rock with hair-raising highs and the odd dead end. [July 2008, p.112]

Pro-synth voluntaries like Znaniya (Falkor) can jar, but the highlights foreground Atwood-Ferguson as a widescreen visionary in the David Axelrod and Charles Stepney tradition, with a Rolodex of jazz hitters to call on. [Dec 2023, p.89]

Melds the LA band's sonic fuzz with mellifluous recent LPs, sombre dispatches, ambient and wistful pop. [May 2019, p.96]

It's certainly brave. Whoosh! is superior when guitarist Steve Morse and keyboard player Don Airey slip their leashes. [Sep 2020, p.85]

A delicate affair sometimes too wistful for its own good, even with the added colour of Dede Sampaio's bird sounds, Extended Vacation is a complex exercise in delicate melodies, field recordings and repetition. [Jan 2010, p. 100]

Teen Dream is a lovely album, but there's more to admire here than to actually love. Oddly, that may not be a problem. [Feb. 2010, p. 94]

In all, more a series of disconnected building blocks than a cohesive album. [Nov 20, p.89]

With many of Paisley's songs dealing with people struggling between places, timeframes or lovers, such unforced, reflective songwriting deftly grounds these unsteady experiences, an arrangement that simply works. [Apr 2023, p.85]

It's a more downbeat affair than their 2009 debut and best envinced by the stuttering tech soul of Gita. [Sep 2013, p.95]

Corgan's ear for pop-hooks is keen throughout, but save for Knights Of Malta, with its piano, strings and backwards lead guitars, the music on Shiny And Oh So Bright... seems a tad under-imagined for its portentous title. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Foster[s] a reflective, bonfire-on-the-beach spirit. [May 2021, p.88]

Elegant and haunting as the individual tracks may be, it's difficult to remain engaged throughout 75 minutes of music with such a uniform mood. [May 2020, p.89]

Allison's verge-of-tears delivery is another sign that Clean's grown-up vibe can't hide the vulnerable teen within. [Apr 2018, p.94]

It puts ZZ's impeccably-tuned engine room under the microscope, their "just us and the music" gambit paying off. [Aug 2022, p.90]

By shedding some of their rock'n'roll excess, though, it feels as if Primal Scream finally have some idea of what they want to be when they grow up. [Apr 2016, p.90]

Those Libertines comparisons are a distant memory on Emergency, an album that ditches any tentativeness felt on last year's "Wait For Me," the band and producer Stephen Street going for Yorkshire-patented, Kaiser Chief-sized choruses, and Arctic Monkeys' kitchen-sink philosophising in the verses. [June 2008, p.102]

The piano-led 'New Beginnings' is one of several sombre mood pieces on what is the most ambitious work of the band's 40-year career. But fear not, headbangers: 'Revelation,' all chugging rifferama and panto villany, prove that Priest are still mad for it. Metal, that is. [July 2008, p.100]

If he fits a lot into a brief span, it can also seem like a selection of raw sketches for works still to be fully realized. [Mar 2012, p.103]

The veteran's authoritive amber croon and psychedelicised, occassionally spectacular axework imbue this mid-tempo set with a grace and economy often lacking in the genre. [Apr 2009, p.107]

A genteel album, more for mellow reflection than dancing on ceilings. [May 2015, p.93]