A confidently tuneful if nostalgic set. [Aug 2020, p.87]

Their music palette may be limited but their style knows no bound. [Dec 2016, p.92]

An album that nails its subtle-but-tenacious hooks with dignity and maturity. [Nov 2004, p.94]

Filled with tearful ballads and ragged-trousered country, the Avetts' playing may not be the most technically accomplished but the feel they bring to Never Been Alive and Another Is Waiting is alone worth wading through their previously misfiring albums. [Jan 2014, p.96]

Reveals another eclectic, kaleidoscopic world. [May 2005, p.106]

We get strings, care-worn piano, and lots of subtle detail, the last deepening the listener's relationship with the excellent, lyrical mature songs over repeat plays. [Mar 2011, p.97]

Not a bad song on the album. [Oct 2013, p.96]

When harnessed, Taylor Hawkins' energy is the right stuff. [Jan 2020, p.85]

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

Even the Hey Jude-y crowd singalong works. ... The album as a whole also has a coldness that threatens to undermine the point that Everything Now strives to make. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Innovative it ain't. [Jan 2006, p.132]

Profoundly disappointing. [Jan 2005, p.105]

As an experiment in revisionism, the results are mixed. [Nov 2012, p.85]

Nobody expected him, at 65, to be the street-walking cheetah of '73, rather just to raise his game, to try and bring that corrosive voice forward, commensurate with his age, the 2010s and, dammit, The Stooges. In short: he hasn't. [Jun 2013, p.87]

His throaty, gnarled vocals--best showcased on the meandering, Dilla-esque Cloudlight--lend his music a gothic mood. [Nov 2010, p.109]

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]

Closer in quality to [his] five immeasurably influential '70s standard-bearers than anything from Wonder's '80s or '90s catalogue. [Dec 2005, p.102]

It is her once feral voice, now markedly more controlled, which proves most impressive here. [Jun 2012, p.88]

Young, smart, pissed-off, ultra-basic, but also competent and powerful, these youngsters fire off brisk, bubblegum tunes in proud thrall to Da Brudders, and, by extension, girl-groups of the '60s. [Dec 2009, p.96]

Explores Incubus' inner jam band. [Feb 2004, p.94]

No one's about to mistake them for Sonic Youth, but the sheen of easy listening has been stripped away, and they sound all the better for it. [Oct 2008, p.110]

The group's double-messages coalesce most finely on the few occasions they pause for ballads, like th aching I Can Change. But the nostalgic melodicism, and relentless pep, of the rest will thrill even those who miss what lies below. [Jun 2018, p.91]

Just as you're thinking "so far, so generic," they wrong-foot you, as their debut album starts to incorporate seemingly random elements of knock-kneed white reggae, snotty hardcore punk and snatched bar conversations. [Mar 2014, p.94]

It is Kweli's diligently intelligent worldview, dextrous wordplay and often breathtaking flow that enrapture. [Jan 2005, p.96]

What, on the face of it, is an understated and straightforward folk fringe album, is actually, thanks to the guile of Flynn and long-time collaborator Adam Beach, an extremely clever and nuanced record. [Nov 2013, p.84]

Hymns is worthy if never quite stratospheric heir. [Feb 2012, p.102]

With songs of fake rock 'n' roll, magical dogs, lost minds and love, this is pop with wobbly wheels and new found joy and optimism. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

Yet for all Doseone's phantasmagoria and keening schizophrenia, there's a melodic richness that miraculously sculpts order out of the panicked disco chaos. [Aug 2012, p.85]