Some of the lyrics that should sound like cliche feel more legit as we hear Segall wade earnestly into the aches and joys of existence. [Sep 2019, p.90]

A band who aim foolishly high but always return, wings intact. [Sep 2004, p.92]

Glenn Jones's repeated trips to the well of John Fahey's American Primitive legacy seem to yield even more refreshing results. [Sep 2018, p.90]

Interesting as the Wallace mixes are, the band is most compelling thrashing through Talent Show and I Won't, live in Milwaukee. [Nov 2019, p.102]

The Cardiff-LA pairing might be creatively equal, but the sound they make is beautifully out of balance. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Carla Dal Forno's newest release sounds strangely fragile and vulnerable. ... Interspersed with exquisitely forlorn Eno-esque instrumenetals. [Nov 2019, p.95]

This is easily Battles' best album to date, the one you've always hoped they would make. [Oct 2015, p.95]

Beautiful and potent stuff. [Oct 2020, p.89]

Kwabs' effortless ability to glide through genres and attract ungrudging royal endorsements will, one suspects, give his moving debut serious legs. [Oct 2015, p.96]

Five solo LPs in, The Mighty Several vouches for his continued worth, fostering unity and empathy in divided times. [Nov 2024, p.88]

High Noon Hymns is possibly the Ryders' most directly activistic LP of all, from the title itself through to the anti-Trump sentiments of Four Winters Away and the T. Rex-powered Stand A Little Further In The Fire. [May 2026, p.87]

Consistently engaging. [Nov 2012, p.87]

Studded with sardonic, Pavement-y wit. [Dec 2017, p.96]

This eponymous offering once again demonstrates his effortless, and seemingly innate, ability to make the familiar feel fresh and enticing. [Feb 2017, p.90]

What's new, though, is how Taylor has pushed his music's most rousing dimensions to the fore. [Oct 2023, p.84]

It's a giant leap forward for one of the most original voices around. [Mar 2020, p.84]

Not every number here reaches its perfection, but 'twas ever thus with the works of Raymond Douglas Davies; warts and all, and even the warts are interesting. [Dec 2007, p.109]

With an occasional propensity for mindless wigouts slightly curbed, it's windswept anthems a-go-go on their best album for years. [May 2017, p.96]

Rave Tapes does not find Mogwai colonising new territory, but that seems fair when their own stretch of land is still giving up such gold. [Feb 2014, p.89]

The title track, inspired by views of County Antrim's scenic Rathin Island, is an exercise in crepuscular melancholy that inexorably yields to uplifting chordal beauty - shafts of sunlight dispelling the Gloom. The four tracks that comprise The Liquid Hour, meanwhile, evince Tiersen's skill as an electronic orchestrator. [May 2025, p.91]

Highlights include Richard Youngs' wistful Summer's Edge, with Sugden deadpan amid a splashing keyboard fountain. [May 2018, p.97]

The results are largely persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Diviner came out of post-band convalescence and a spell of recalibration, yet for all the intense, cocooning introspection in these songs, Thorpe is obviously more than ready to face the world alone. [Jun 2019, p.93]

The 62-year-old Bradley, meanwhile, has all the marks of the soul greats who have gone before him; the testifying smart Syl Johnson, the grit and gusto of Otis Redding, the raw power of James Brown, the smoulder and shudder of James Carr. Together they make an intoxicating sound, one that would have fit in perfectly at Twilight in the late-'60s.

Do It Afraid doesn't sound quite as home-made and fingerprint-smudged as Bey's lo-fi previous recordings, there's still no-one who sounds like her, no-one chronicling the agony and ecstasy with her unguarded and resonant vision. [Aug 2025, p.81]

Parish underscores his composing skills wit these uneasy instrumentals and tight-wound songs. [Jul 2018, p.98]

Evoking the ramshackle psychedelia of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Cryk nonetheless shows Le Bon following her own path. [May 2012, p.88]

If these tracks often sound like bejewelled, undiscovered relics then much of that is down to the tough musical palimpsest on which Bratten worked. [Aug 2019, p.93]