It's Buffalo, New York-born David Stith's turn now to fashion a brilliant, hermetically sealed world that makes unabashed emotional connection. [Apr 2009, p.109]

Reid offers up dreamlike meditations on pained experience possessed of a quiet rhythm and disarming lyrical beauty. [Apr 2017, p.91]

While the playful spirit and precise progressions of his previous albums linger, it's demonstrably darker entries that capture Gonzales's disarming craftsmanship best. [Oct 2018, p.91]

With every album, Jacklin is finding more of herself, strengthening her voice. It's complicated, but Pre Pleasure is a joy to hear. [Sep 2022, p.88]

Their anarchic cut'n'paste confections can baffle on first exposure, but with repeat listens the inventiveness of their compositions come to the fore, savvy hooks materialising from the seeming chaos of loops and samples. [Jul 2023, p.84]

Time Ain't Accidental has a blazing confidence. [Jul 2023, p.84]

High-end reference points for a record that spectacularly reconciles micro-detailed improv with deep-listening ambience. [Nov 2023, p.90]

The songs are often slow (Boise, Idaho and One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Night with You) are lovely), sometimes more upbeat (smile-inducing Tonight With The Dogs I'm Sleeping; waltz-time Guns Are For Cowards) occasionally Doomy (Is My Living In Vain?). and all backed by a rich ensemble of Nashville "cats". [Mar 2025, p.90]

The Great Bailout is a grand, artistic and political statement in an age when such vision is too rarely attempted. [Apr 2024, p.87]

A further suite of touching vignettes, choice observations and killer lines. [Dec 2003, p.122]

The heritage soul signposts multiply with almost hallucinatory rapidity. [Aug 2005, p.104]

Songs draws itself into clearer focus through Lenker's sweet, freshly-cut voice. [Nov 2020, p.83]

Snaith is increasingly confident in his own voice. [Mar 2020, p.86]

This is straight-ahead folk-Americana, often gentle and slow (Lorelei; The Season) sometimes spirited (Ram-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong), with Lenker duetting or backing up his dusty cobweb voice. [Nov 2024, p.85]

It gets on the dancefloor to create some bona fide hits of its own. [Aug 2013, p.89]

Here and elsewhere, Vampire Weekend's growing self-assurance serves the needs of the song without playing to their perceived strengths. [Jun 2013, p.84]

Ounsworth's slurred vocals are a dealbreaker. [Feb 2006, p.92]

As a triple record, there are tracks that are less necessary than others, but remarkably it all flows as a cohesive whole, and never loses the listener's attention. [Nov 2025, p.80]

Gendron places her gorgeous songs on a far more uneasy footing, seeking out new, strange routes for these ancient folk roots, resulting in an album that us both comforting and confounding, and depthless in its strange beauty. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Musically, it's the richest record of Pulp's career.... We Love Life isn't perfect, but it is vital. [Nov 2001, p.96]

A phenomenal album.... As always, Wire embrace the technology of the day while always sounding somehow out of time. [May 2003, p.91]

Elbow... have let new-found bliss propel them to yet loftier heights. [Sep 2003, p.106]

It transcends gender and genre. [Apr 2003, p.98]

Focused, melancholy, modern ghost blues, these 10 rough-hued duets move from jeremiad to elegy, from love ballad to lament to scream. [Jan 2019, p.91]

Under~Between moves with a whisper from avant-garde chamber works to beguiling voice exercises and delicate percussion pieces, as if Hunt were creating ambient chamber scores for utopian landscapes, where birds chatter like computers, and passing cars sound like small sad jazz trios. [Apr 2021, p.85]

An auspicious new singer-songwriter, not afraid to broaden her Horizons. [Dec 2021, p.90]

These witches are still burning. [Jul 2023, p.88]

This is music of compelling intensity. [Jun 2015, p.92]