Segall's not reinventing the wheel--he's just here to keep the amps humming, as loud and as often as humanly possible. [Apr 2019, p.90]

Their second outing makes no effort to remap their coordinates: they remain riffy, distorted, full of nocturnal energy, possessed of rollicking good tunes, but also open up a more expansive goth-rock strain on indie-radio cuts. [May 2015, p.94]

Warm and hazy liek a day spent in teh summer sun, The Illustrated Garden is a sumptuous honey-hued helping of soft-souled pop, unhurried Americana and the occasional spry rush of pop. [June 2010, p. 99]

A questing, festering record, Face Stabber isn't for the faint-hearted, but its lows are outnumbered by exhilarating highs. [Sep 2019, p.95]

[A] perplexing, 'is it irritating or is it glorious?' album that meshes the oddball with the serious in a quirky, plastic-punk manner not entirely unlike that of The B-52's and Devo. [Mar 2004, p.108]

For this album she as worked with a breathtaking array of collaborators, with varied results. [Jul 2011, p.115]

Purists may wince, but the takes are fresh. [Oct 2018, p.93]

This delicate, intricate web of sounds asks you to lean in to appreciate it. [Nov 2018, p.84]

Ndegeocello doesn't opt for straight covers, adding a fresh, and sometimes unexpected, twist on a 14-track collection that mostly reconfigures Simone's most famous songs. [Nov 2012, p.86]

Solid and dependable rather than spectacular. [Jun 2022, p.91]

Ultimately Prisoner is tethered by sturdy, familiar images of tightropes and trains. [Mar 2017, p.94]

Inevitably there's a compilation feel, but Marshall's music brings coherence as it eases goth into the 21st century. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Their guileless sincerity is less wild rumpus than Snow Patrol in its universal simplicity. [Dec 2014, p.102]

With some lyrics on the utilitarian side of blunt, it lack the younger Jobson's poetic delusions, but and elegiac title track, shimmering Refugee and Kings Of The New World Order's halcyon riffola are all powerful statements worthy of the Skids legend. [Feb 2018, p.96]

While not completely immunised against country cliche--I Thought You'd Never Leave has the audacity to reference a pick-up truck--his songwriting is what strikes hardest. [Aug 2019, p.95]

While there's a sense that Jungle lack the invention of Young Fathers, whose vocals they echo, or Thundercat, whose disaffection they share, For Ever's Sunset Strip soap opera is always compelling. [Nov 2018, p.91]

Pedal steel still colours Safe To Run but so do fuzzier guitars; synthesizers are involved, and tributaries are equally pop, folk and rock. [Jun 2023, p.86]

It's a parade of warhorses and they sometimes ride a little wearily, but Winter pepped their steps by four-handed guitar shootouts with Eric Clapton on Don't Want No Woman and Ben Harper in Can't Hold Out. [Oct 2014, p.91]

The injection of vintage jewels that worked so well in-concert doesn't necessarily make for a coherent listen here. [Dec 2015, p.90]

At its best, it harkens to long-lost, dense-sounding riff grinders such as Breaking Circus or Earth, but there's light as well as shade too and Broken Sugar positively twinkles. [Jun 2022, p.87]

It's not an easy album to love. [Apr 2017, p.98]

For all their organic methods, these Animals often come across so robotic and constricted--witness natural Selection's echoes of woozy Chicago house classic Washing machine--stripping those painstaking vocal arrangements of their humanity. [Mar 2016, p.94]

Polished arrangements in a mix of menacing, reverb-drenched grooves and languid shimmer. [Mar 2013, p.98]

A "modular synthesis" of indefinable plonking building to bursts of static joy. [Apr 2019, p.96]

A home-recorded collection of covers that roams joyfully (but not too joyfully) through six decades of songs. [Jun 2017, p.94]

Field recordings of Alphine birds are used for restraint. ... Yet each of the hour-long album's eight interlinked pieces is a distinct entity, and still a song as such. [Aug 2019, p.92]

It's hardly news that soft rock and heartache go hand in hand, but Johansing's version is particularly seductive. [Aug 2018, p.89]

Another Day To heal opens encouragingly. ... Midway through, La La Land derails, as Queen Of Spaces errs into forlorn folky picking, while Slowly On The Wheel opens with one-finger piano and voice. The Chugging Face Eraser and Baba O'Riley-ish Pockets pulls things together. [Feb 2023, p.84]