Guitar thrashes, mystic excursions, slabs of heavy blues and silvers of electronica. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Further evolution is needed to forge an identity from the shadows of their contemporaries. [Feb 2016, p.98]

It's no instant hit, but some cracking songs like Moths In The Gas Light and Dancing In The Ruin rise to the top and a brilliantly vivid production keeps you riveted. [Dec 2017, p.90]

Though it's certainly refreshing after the murk of 2002's Evil Heat, the results are still variable. [Jul 2006, p.104]

The singer's second solo album is far removed from VR's ass-kicking hard rock. [Feb 2009, p.108]

Post-techno production adds a depth and sheen to these fragile ruminations on the melancholy minutiae of existence. [Aug 2002, p.110]

Though the detail in these blurred vignettes sometimes upstages the foreground, the moments of magic make the odd longueur worth enduring. [Sep 2004, p.95]

Listening eventually becomes a test of endurance for anyone raised on the true country sounds of a Dolly Parton or Emmylou Harris. [Dec 2002, p.115]

On Trapped Animal they bring that approach to bear on a wider range of styles--dancehall, digi-dub, roots reggae, lover's rock - although the title track and Reject stand out as the most originally shaped punky pop songs. [Dec 2009, p. 95]

Coldplay-style ascendance is entirely within reach. [May 2012, p.92]

He sounds as raw and vital as ever. [Feb 2010, p. 105]

Corgan allows a surprisingly vulnerable side to appear. [Jul 2005, p.96]

The overall effect is like being trapped in a lift with McFly on a sugar-rush. [Apr 2011, p.98]

They return with an album that tries hard to please, its brace of ultra-catchy, bubblegum dance-pop tracks constructed from teh same building blocks as Tom Tom Club's playground. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Yet if neurosis, despair and paranoia remain his materials, here he uses them well. In as impressive voice as ever been. [Apr 2026, p.84]

It's a curiously dated backdrop that, although sitting well with Smith's occasionally pompous lyrics, does no favours to the singer's foghorn baritone; a problem that might have been saved by some radio-friendly tunes, which are notably thin on the ground this time. [Nov 2009, p.90]

Ultimately though, too much of Echo is over familiar. By the end you find yourself longing for some subtlety or more light and shade.

It's the songs on which she distances herself from that occasionally tiresome persona where she really shines. [Aug 2009, p.94]

It's when Duffy and co stop trying so hard that the album fairs best. [Jan. 2011, p. 100]

When it works, it's genuinely exciting, but too often the brave retro-futuristic collision is neither fish nor fowl. [Jul 2013, p.82]

It makes poetic sense but, like many autobiographical songwriters, he knows the stories so well he fails to tell them. [Feb 2008, p.112]

While it might've been more digestible as a single CD, Black strives for a wide scope that makes the album's elegant songcraft, musical telepathy and poetic unpredictability all the more satisfying. [Aug 2006, p.104]

Sounds like one long mobile phone ad. [Mar 2013, p.98]

It delivers drama in spades. [Jun 2013, p.95]

Sweet, then, but you wouldn't eat a whole one. [Apr 2014, p.98]

The new focus on these songs' lyrics proves deeply powerful, a different and profound kind of high. Consequently, The Dark Side OF The Moon Redux is wholly valid, the unnerving, stirring adjunct Waters was aiming for. [Nov 2023, p.87]

Flamingo is, for all intents and purpose, the next Killers record. [Oct. 2010, p. 106]

Sometimes great, often enchanting, and always disarmingly self-aware portrait of a doomed and wounded hero. [Oct 2013, p.87]