Unfortunately, the disc highlights a new hole: storytelling. [Feb 2006, p.92]

As restless and fidgety as ever. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Evocative rather than vivid in a way that evokes Faith-era Cure's greyscale atmospheres, Everything IS Alive is the sound of Slowdive still holding their impressive earthly form. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Hourglass plays the "I, an artist" card with equal earnestness, a collection of electronic songs that mix dungeon-master sexual predation with angst-ridden introspection. [Nov 2007, p.104]

It's an uneven ride and not without longuers. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Building on the fresh inventiveness of 2017's Uyai, this new album cheerfully chops up and reassembles genres in a way that is seriously funky. [May 2019, p.89]

This debut stands apart, not because it hails from St. Petersburg but for its speedy and electronically iced take on shoegaze. [Mar 2015, p.100]

There is no nostalgia about Living Proof. [Dec 2010, p.96]

Glasvegas retain their open-throated passion, anthemicism and the very distinctive Caledonian character of James Allan's voice, but these qualities are now sometimes a little lost in widescreen--like tears in rain, like synths in multi-track. [May 2011, p.105]

It's difficult to ignore Total's hoovering synths, filtered drums, glam rock rhythms and punkish snarl, such is its fizzing energy. [Jul 2011, p.115]

By the closing traditional, Fair Annie (Child Ballad 62), much of the atmospheric murk has lifted, revealing a radiant kinship with the like of Trees, similarly uncanny folk-rock alchemists from the cusp of the 1970s. [Dec 2018, p.88]

[CD1's] uproar casts most of CD2's over-delicate maunderings in a wan light. [Apr 2006, p.102]

This time around, the radio programmers will be listening harder, but taken as a 68-minute whole, The Electric Lady is quite a trip. [Dec 2013, p.84]

It's a record that reveals previously hidden depths. [Nov 2011, p.93]

The sentiments charm and Cuomo's nose for a tune endures, but the drive-time metal supremacy of Def Leppard and Mutt Lange is never under serious threat. [Jun 2021, p.84]

[James Jackson Toth] fleshes out more whiskey-warmed, heart-sore folk with flashes of humour. [Feb 2013, p.98]

It hard not to be engaged by the restless, cerebral daftness--footnotes notwithstanding. [Apr 2019, p.95]

While the material heads nowhere new, there's a good feeling to all that's happening. [Mar 2015, p.99]

In essence a tonic, The Medicine Show is a little bit more of what the world need now. [May 2019, p.93]

This is intended to be the lighter of the two albums although the stylistic differences aren't great. [Jun 2017, p.91]

Only a few moments--Happy, the Daft Punk-featuring Gust Of Wind and I Know Who You Are--sound truly out of the ordinary. [May 2014, p.86]

When the opening track of this third album features CSN-style harmonising about hotel lobbies, you wonder if they're trying a little too hard to sound like a burnt-out folk rock supergroup from 1971. [June 2010, p. 92]

Though the percussive, struck guitar strings interlude Zilch is perhaps an inquiry too far, caroline's flair for conjuring the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness frequently enchants. [Apr 2022, p.89]

[A] soaring yet engagingly earthly first album. [Nov 2015, p.96]

[Sid Griffin] hurled all bluegrass boundaries out the window as pride of place on this new album. [Nov 2016, p.92]

In places it verges on doodling, as if Barnett is endlessly tuning her guitar, but tracks such as Intro or Tiver sound darkly majestic, like deep, drifting hollowed-out Americana. [Oct 2023, p.78]

You need to pick through the later albums to find some occasional moments of brilliance. although if you unconditionally love well-executed '70s funky-soul, it's all good! [Mar 2020, p.105]

Pale Blue Eyes' debut album deftly executes a type of electro-inclined pop which initially surfaced as the edges of post-punk softened to embrace melody over angularity. [Sep 2022, p.94]