Soul is only as good as its rhythm section and Drive-By Truckers are just not up to the job, obliterating subtle originals and OutKast and Tom Waits covers with bashing, crashing drums and plodding bass. A missed opportunity. [May 2009, p.97]

It makes a terrific album, stronger than Interpol's last two, with enough detail in the arrangement to separate Banks and his day job. [Nov 2012, p.95]

This follow-up to The Aliens' debut "Astronomy For Dogs" keeps the faith. [Oct 2008, p.109]

Ultimately, in a sea of indentikit singer-songwriters, Sproule's willingness to push just a little bit further counts far more in her favour than against it. [Jun 2011, p. 102]

The Straight Hits! is front-loaded with positivist rockers, but these are ramshackle. ... The second half mercifully reverts to Pearson's true calling as a funereal balladeer; even then, the transition's too jarring to cohere to the conceptual/titular framework. [May 2018, p.90]

Sex Change continues their move away from arena bombast towards streamlined Euro grooves. [Mar 2007, p.103]

Half existential joy'n'emptiness, half just empty. [Oct 2002, p.96]

A perpetual guilty pleasure. [Jun 2004, p.107]

Kurt Cobain-worshipped Glaswegians' break 20-year silence. [Oct. 2010, p. 92]

Take The Crown plays it safe. [Dec 2012, p.85]

[Bridges] convincingly inhabits a batch of mostly self-penned story songs that radiate a weary gravitas and wry existentialism. [Oct 2011, p.96]

The spell of this balmy Southern atmosphere is only broken when Presley drops the ball on the writing front... but otherwise this is an elegant, beautifully realised work. [Jul 2012, p.88]

Fade-outs on six of the songs suggest a studio-jam approach that works well, but some of the best tracks are the ones that shirk blues idioms. [Aug 2014, p.90]

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]

Lee is so commanding that guests Lucinda Williams and Willie Nelson are drawn into top-of-the-range duets and still don't take over. [Feb 2011, p.96]

Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus have used a familiar creative trope--the artist in residence... Fittingly, Nitzer Ebb's Douglas J. McCarthy, whose own dislocated, radical electronica feels like an overt influence. [Apr 2017, p.97]

These sweetly sad songs of grown up, imperfect romance reach their height with a jazzy version of Hawley's own 'Coles Corner,' where dreams and reality intermingle around Sheffield's now-demolished romatic rendezvous of the same name. [Dec 2008, p.100]

Krautrock-tinged, distortion-clouded synthpop covered in soft blankets of breathy, post-Cocteau's vocals... Just breathe it in. [Dec. 2011 p. 98]

Even if elsewhere the electronic elements occasionally err toward the passe, ultimately, this is as spirited as it is an unexpected cavort through altered sonic pastures. [Jun 2016, p.94]

It's hard to imagine CRB ever re-inventing the wheel, but boy do they know how to roll. [Sep 2016, p.96]

But despite its mining of a bygone age, Cosmic Egg has two clear 21st century counterparts. Far Away and Violence of the Sun are the sort of pristine epics found on Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy., while lysergic piledrivers 10,000 Feet and the title track could easily have appeared on Kasabians' West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

They're more likely to be judged on face value, but that shouldn't do them any harm. [Sep 2009, p.95]

These guileless, well-hemmed songs could use a few more frayed edges. [Dec 2012, p.96]

Unfortunately, much of the rest veers from lightweight to teeth-grindingly irritating, suggesting a private joke that perhaps would have been best left in private. [Sep 2009, p.93]

Swaying choruses and gutsy musicianship.... there's life after the circus has left town. [Mar 2014, p.93]

The elements that make up Best Of times were all there before, but even the band concedes that they have finally found their true sound. [Apr 2014, p.90]

It's a mixed affair. [Feb 2015, p.91]

Octopoidal, Milford Graves-style fee jazz, miraculously achieving a sort of zen clarity. [Jun 2024, p.92]