Strong new jams. [Feb 2020, p.96]

Black Messiah is an exquisite realisation of what D’Angelo does best.

Still adept at spectacular, if somewhat opaque intimacy, he enchants on My Red Little Fox, with its baroque recorders. [Nov 2023, p.85]

What separates this album from the 14 he's made before is the involvement of Adam Granduciel, who produces luminously, plays guitar, synths and more, and enlists his bandmates for much of the remaining instrumentation. [May 2025, p.87]

This is LaVette's album, start to finish: heterodox song choices, rearranged verses, tweaked lyrics--none of it gratuitous. [May 2018, p.90]

A melancholic late-night album, then, but one that really sounds beautiful. [Mar 2014, p.91]

It's a perfect mix of expertise and lightness of touch. [Jul 2025, p.87]

It doesn't equal their Back Stabbers/Ship Ahoy period but it comes close. [May 2019, p.90]

It sounds so authentically mid-to-late 1960s that Dear Patti - a song about missing an opportunity to play on the same festival bill as Smith - could almost be a lightly warped vinyl pressing from the era. [Aug 2025, p.76]

Heaves with harmonic charm. [Oct 2003, p.111]

There are gothy antecedents here – Baby Blue Movie sounds like the ’80s Cure over-medicated in the Hollywood Hills – and if it sustains a certain moodiness, X’s adheres to a tonally one-note atmosphere. [Aug 2024, p.82]

This is Toumani's best work since 200o8's The Mande Variations. [Jul 2014, p.88]

These songs have an impressive vehemency, whether showcasing uncanny AI balladry on Soul With Me, industrial wall-of-sound on Speak To Me and People Are Good, electro-pop dissociation on My Favourite Stranger, or hydraulically pumped Brel-drama on Don't Say You Love Me. [May 2023, p.85]

Doomed to the shadows of Flying Nun's more famed exponents, this box set should finally rehabilitate the band. [Sep 2015, p.103]

[A] rich and complex album. [Sep 2012, p.95]

English subjects his ghostly pastoral chorales and haunted organ tones to crashing interrogations of harmonic distortion, transforming old worlds of meditative calm into a new decaying landscape of soaring despair. [Sep 2014, p.91]

End Of Everything surface gloss barely conceals a raw intensity. [Jun 2023, p.90]

A rich, bright sounding record, albeit etched with Ward's lyrical ruefulness and voice of crumbling, lugubrious regret. [Oct 2006, p.111]

A powerful mix of dramatic, slow-moving sound and Walker melodies and narratives. [Nov 2014, p.99]

They remain wholly beholden to Liam Fray’s songwriting, but they’re assisted by contemporaries: upwardly mobile Scottish soul singer Brooke Combe offers depth-giving harmonies on Sweet Surrender, as does Pixey on the unusually sweary First Name Terms. Solitude Of The Night Bus skirts too close to Arctic Monkeys, but Fray is developing apace. [Dec 2024, p.85]

A crop of high quality songs and instrumentals played with dazzling finger-picking. [Mar 2017, p.90]

Signs & Signifiers is an utterly irresistible, slicked-back triumph. [Jun 2012, p.82]

Another damn good album from the Texan, as convincing on songs of country heartache as on roadhouse swagger. [Aug. 2011, p. 97]

Nuanced writing, full of tender challenges to lost souls, and Shelly's warmest sound yet. [Jul 2022, p.92]

This fifth album, produced by Dan Auerbach in his Nashville studio, captures The Clams' girl group sound with soulful feeling. [Apr 2018, p.92]

Second time out, they've all but eradicated the gauzy abstractions, in favour of a cards-on-table, powerpop sound, which, i tandem with impressive melodic directness, should make them on e of 2018's hastiest crossover bands. [May 2018, p.90]

Slowdive is a surprisingly joyous return to the fray. [May 2017, p.90]

Alight Of Night is devoid of current context, making for a weird timelessness. A treat. [Mar 2009, p.108]