Gush's sticky, slightly unsettling sensuality suggest Smith is on a serious mission to get right under the skin if human connection. [Sep 2025, p.84]

Her voice is as irresistible as her songs. [Feb 2004, p.103]

A palpably open and free atmosphere underscores these songs, on which the same exotic and dexterous musical arrangements Rostam honed with his old band allow Leithauser's sandpaper Sinatra to truly swing. true dream team. [Oct 2016, p.96]

File next to the Super Furries' Mwng as a landmark album for Welsh-language pop. [Jul 2014, p.93]

Elevated by Austra's opera-trained vocal, thrilling fluctuations confirms she's progressed from grief to anger, and with serene finale Good Riddance, acceptance. [Dec 2025, p.84]

There are several instant classics here. [Oct 2015, p.94]

Seamus Fogarty's songs are sparse affairs with banjo, guitars, cellos and electronics framing pithy, observational lyrics. ... There's poignancy too. [Jan 2021, p.87]

Neale is imaginative, but she's steeped in songwriting craft and she knows her way aound a whopping chorus. That's more than enough. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Gorgeously sweaty in its simplicity. [May 2005, p.103]

His stark solo work--with an amplified wood board for footstompin'--remains the stuff that'll Hook ya. [Jan 2018, p.102]

Smart, funny, characterful, there’s virtually nothing not to like about this record. [Dec 2024, p.88]

This is largely a quality-controlled treat. [Jan 2007, p.112]

1960s-obsessed power-poppers discover the '70s. Time travel indeed. [July 2010, p. 102]

Much of IM is thrillingly intense, then; a rabbit punch with pop-prog interludes and Devo-like hooks. [Sep 2023, p.88]

Producer/arranger Joel Burton steeps Bock's butterly-rich voice in shifting contours that match the nuances in her words while leaving acres of space. [Aug 2022, p.90]

He's less scattergun and easier to pin down. More crucially, Graham's songwriting has blossomed. [Jun 2021, p.85]

Perhaps the most mellow and settled LP of White's career. ... These slow burns seem good for White. [Aug 2022, p.84]

Its mercurial art-pop is dotted with contrary pulses and unexpected detours. [Sep 2022, p.96]

If the formula is simple, it delivers brutish thrills a-plenty. [Feb 2015, p.89]

As well as Billy Zoom's fuzz-punk rhythm guitar there are psychobilly drums, hints of country and some tangy, Blondie-esque pop melodies. [Aug 2020, p.86]

Wisely not handing over the reins completely to the makeover crew, the new Sangaré is not so very different from the old one--and when you have a voice like hers, it really doesn’t make a lot of difference what knobs are being twiddled in the studio. Sangaré rocks in her own way, and nothing is ever going to change that.

A sonic adventure best enjoyed with very good headphones. [Dec 2022, p.85]

Ultimately, A Sober Conversation amounts to a brilliant and bold record that is all the more powerful for its deployment of life-affirming groves and melodies. [Aug 2025, p.78]

It's hard to imagine a more perfectly realised Wire artefact. [Sep 2002, p.95]

With elements of synth-pop, new wave and blue-eyed soul distilled into a succession of heart-beating hits, Trial Of The Century is a record that gets better with each listen. [Dec 2004, p.99]

While the brilliant closing Murder Of Sunrise delivers a suspenseful 18 minutes of menace via shimmering cymbals, speaker hum and fathoms-deep bass lines. There's beauty here too. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Forget notions of old or new schools: this is an album that blends a kindergarten-level technique with styles that are strictly postgraduate. [Jun 2004, p.116]

Buzzing with delicate analogue warmth, the gamelan rhythms, toy-piano chimes and warped guitar loops or Walking Field are lullingly hypnotic and eerily deja entendu. [Jul 2013, p.87]