Crushing riffs and ancestral memories of hardcore. [Aug 2015, p.98]

For Gahan, Angels & Ghosts is another opportunity to repeat his therapeutic cycle of guilt-shedding and redemption. [Dec 2015, p.88]

The record's familarity is nourishing rather than revelatory. [Jun 2009, p.99]

US party band !!!'s fourth is a holiday record, full of movement and heat and things that feel tired and cheesy at home, but are good, sleazy fun when you're away. [Sep 2010, p.98]

Lyrically, he may occassionally jar but it's hard not to be uplifted when he lets rip on the opener 'Setting Forth' or when he and Sleather-Kinney's Corin Tucker chime on 'Hard Sun.' [Dec 2007, p.100]

It's quite a departure from their trademark psychedelia. [Apr 2015, p.98]

An album to make you happy feeling sad, Scratch My Back gets better with each play; it might just turn out to be the best surprise present of the year. [Mar 2010, p.88]

Deez is revealed as a one-trick pony in the nine variants that follow. [Jun 2010, p.102]

Starts strong and finishes weak, but it's forgivable considering the gems contained in this 12-song set. [May 2004, p.97]

The tunes dry up alarmingly. [Jun 2007, p.108]

[The album] is diverse in the songs' styles and themes. [Oct 2012, p.96]

Heading South On The Great North Road drags, and Pretty Young Soldier, a tale of gender confusion in the military, is slightly laboured. However, most of 57th and 9th has a youthful energy suggesting that Sting hasn't faded yet. [Dec 2016, p.90]

The results are too eccentric and sprightly to squash the music's potential. [Oct 2014, p.89]

Those fans who jumped on with 1994's breakthrough album Dookie should rejoice: your favourite slacker-punks are, briefly, back. [Oct 2012, p.82]

Nothing here is ever structurally predictable, nor is it all cacophonous. [Mar 2014, p.98]

Lightbody's perennnially love-lorn, tear-in-eye songwriting benefits from a more exotic sonic wardrobe than Snow Patrol would feel comfortable in. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Robertson sings each with a parched intimacy that seems unaffected by the passing of time. [May 2011, p.111]

Eyes Open hardly furthers Snow Patrol's rote one guitar attack, and repetition exposes Lightbody's interpretations of love's little hiccups as a tiring experience. [Jun 2006, p.108]

This Rev record is another triumph in which all is dream and this sometimes symbolism, the overall effect trippy, though less dark than of yore. [Oct 2008, p.102]

While brutally impressive, if it's subtlety you're seeking, look elsewhere. [Mar 2011, p.100]

11 songs thematically linked by a search for realty in an increasingly virtual world. [Sep 2018, p.90]

Its music delivered with an understated, glacial splendour. [Jan 2014, p.97]

Plenty of nightmare visions of Skid Row LA, but really no fun at all. [Jan 2013, p.93]

Its 11, quietly assured alt-rock growers let Ben Gibbard's appealingly detached vocals and quality-controlled lyrics do the heavy lifting. [Apr 2015, p.94]

Though the Vivs pride themselves on DIY charm, they're becoming scarily cogent. [May 2011, p.110]

More euphoric indie fits and starts from Hooray For Earth's Noel Heroux. [Mar 2016, p.100]

This muscular, everyman rock could have been produced at any time in the past 35 years, but has charm and character nevertheess. [Apr 2008, p.104]

Major General plough's The Hold Steady's punk-pop narrative furrow almost to the point of surrealism. [Sep 2009, p.92]