Joan Shelley has a trick, at least, of making time disappear, her stately clear voice a rock at which the world flings itself in vain. [Jun 2017, p.86]

His strength is his honesty. He couches his anxieties in simple but poetic language as his band find the sweet spot between country and rock. [Jul 2017, p.90]

[Album opener Civil Servant is] sonically inventive, with vocoder interludes and a rousing final call of "Refuse! Refuse!," but its on-the-nose swipes at "Bus-fulls of meat...staring at phone-screens" can't avoid the patronising tone of 95 per cent of all songs about "the workers," written by those otherwise employed. ... Far better are songs where Dawson locates the misery and mystery of life in smaller worlds and stranger vignettes. [Nov 2019, p.90]

There's no easy niche in which you can place this new statement: like Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, it ventures into a doomy, mythological area, where the directions are muddied and the heartbreak is total. [Jul 2001, p.98]

It's an album that is, by turns, melancholy and unsettling, tragic and nightmarish, unfolding with a creeping narrative dread. [Dec 2018, p.93]

Immersive and thought-provoking record. [Apr 2019, p.87]

The Afro-beat timbres peeking through also reveal more about who Vagabon is, and what she is capable of. [Dec 2019, p.95]

Even though it's only eight tracks long - a rare example of the band having some chill - their fifth album feel like it's operating on a cosmic scale. [Nov 2022, p.92]

The bass-fuzz stomp and chain-gang holler of 'Grounds for Divorce' couldn't be more immediate, Guy Garvey refusing to let emotional intelligence blackball a decnt tune. [Apr 2008, p.106]

Africa Express score by proffering a raw immediacy and innovative spirit that instantly expels any whiff of imperialist musical tourism. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Super-barbed, electro-pub rock. [Jun 2015, p.96]

A fascinating pleasure and a 21st century classic-in-waiting. [Aug 2016, p.95]

Rarely can the lute have sounded quite as threatening as it does here. [Nov 2016, p.93]

Closer listens reveal small universes of movement, tension and suspense pulsing just beneath the surface. [Dec 2019, p.88]

On Sunset will not be remembered as Weller's most immediate record, or the most musically even, but it's certainly one of the most rewarding, and powerful. [Jul 2020, p.76]

Linthicum's guitar adds texture and twang, as the interplay between the trio delivers their Plastic Bouquet close to country perfection. [Jan 2021, p.86]

Yorkston is one of our finest talents, still stretching out. [Feb 2021, p.82]

Proof that inventive, envelope-pushing indie rock hasn't disappeared off the map just yet. [Apr 2021, p.83]

This may be the best album of their 50-plus years together. Bonkers, yes, but quite brilliant. [Jul 2025, p.84]

Kammerkonzert's immediacy and dynamism feel more like a concert recording than studio album, powered by the incandescent energy of its creator. [Jun 2026, p.93]

Reverberant secular folk, with spectral guitar and magic-realist vocals. [May 2026, p.93]

Their most piercing and autobiographical yet. [Sep 2020, p.82]

This is a raw and acutely personal document. [Mar 2018, p.93]

The result might be Orcutt's most beautiful album, a phantasmal union of folk, blues, rock and country visions that crackles with the intense fire of his own country's turbulent history. [Jan 2020, p.89]

Reveals a confident desert punk classicism. [Sep 2020, p.94]

On Fenian they back that shrewdness with songs of depth and substance. [Jun 2026, p.90]

It's a record best consumed in a semi-recumbent position, in order to match the loping, laidback pace of the music and Cox's stoned, oak-aged vocals. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

Jet Plane And Oxbow pulls together crisp, motorik grooves, dirty great guitar riffs and arms-aloft choruses. [Feb 2016, p.90]