It's an excellent record that both hits immediately and gets better with repeated listens. [Summer 2019, p.112]

Another triumph, brimming with soulful, languid grooves, deft samples and well-chosen guest singers.

It's almost worth it for the titles alone. [Dec 2009, p. 136]

The results are spellbinding. [#361, p.111]

Deftly deploying percolating electronica, natural instruments and overlapping vocal lines all the more emotionally gripping for the studied semi-affectlessness of Georgas's intimate delivery, Walsh transforms good songs into a great record. [Aug 2016, p.112]

A unique and thrilling voice forging a new folk tradition. [Jun 2014, p.122]

Each of its 11 songs luxuriating in an unhurried, pillow-soft airiness that draws you in, as opposed to giving up secrets too willingly. Free of expectation, Shura's found her own pace. [Oct 2019, p.108]

Exuberant party-banging love songs. [Sep 2015, p.116]

The oddball rapper with the humdrum name is carving out a space all of his own. [Nov 2016, p.102]

Playing almost everything himself, his command of sounds and styles feels masterful, seamlessly gliding between MOR-ish pop funk, stacks of gothic choral harmonies and the dreamy future-psych of Tame Impala. [Dec 2019, p.106]

Entertaining and informative. [Jan 2018, p.117]

More often than not, this is pop punk as it should be: direct, streamlined and raucous but of enough substance that preachy points are made within nagging, urgent choruses. [Oct 2012, p.93]

Tatum's sonic upgrade pays off handsomely. [Mar 2016, p.118]

Ward continues to set a standard few other artists can match. [Jun 2020, p.106]

So some bad habits die hard, but on every other level Viva la Vida... is an emphatic sucess--radical in it's own measured way but easy to embrace. [July 2008, p.95]

[The band] hasn't compromised the pitiless bleakness of Scott Hutchison's lyrical vision from their previous output. [Mar 2013, p.99]

Superior to both the last two Mode albums and [Martin] Gore's recent solo effort, Counterfeit 2. [Jul 2003, p.103]

He's beginning to develop his own sound as well as his own voice. [Mar 2004, p.111]

It might just be Everything Everything's most human record to date. [Sep 2017, p.107]

Highlights here include the disorientated '60s pop of I Can Recall It All and the snappy, Troggs-like title track. [Oct 2019, p.106]

What remains unbroken doesn't need fixing. [Oct 2018, p.119]

There's a real craftman at work here. [Nov 2015, p.111]

It's fantastic stuff. [Sep 2006, p.107]

Rateliff is writing about his own vulnerability again, rather than telling other people;'s stories, all delivered in a hog-calling bellow that helps set him near the top of the enormous singer-songwriter pile. [Apr 2020, p.113]

Simultaneously disorienting and seductive. [Jun 2020, p.106]

It's pleasing too, this time, to hear Adams singing unadorned and less accompanied; it lets the melody run uncluttered and those brilliant lyrics step forward. [Apr 2016, p.101]

In its own fragile way, a delight. [Mar 2003, p.111]

The Ealing doom merchants come of age. [Feb. 2011, p. 110]

It's a record that draws you in, first with its story, and then with its songs. [Aug 2020, p.106]

As a daring experiment which flies in the face of the derivative tendencies evident in the modern music industry, it succeeds. [Dec 2004, p.140]

Like every era of electronic music all balled up together, CCTV and subways, excitement and fear. [Jun 2014, p.123]

And the Anonymous Nobody delivers. [Sep 2016, p.104]

A bright, bold new talent just got bolder. [Oct 2019, p.106]

It finds them in rejuvenated form. Their lyrical seriousness is present and correct. [Nov 2017, p.115]

Faith In The Future continues this rich work [of short story narrative in song], but with a new feel of quiet sobriety. [Oct 2015, p.107]

The music is stripped-back but always eclectic. [Nov 2018, p.104]

An album that repeatedly pulls you back in to try and decipher its charms. [Nov 2015, p.111]

The obscurity of some of what's here might seem almost comical, but the love that has gone into the whole package couches most of the tracks in a sense of lost treasure. [Mar 2018, p.116]

This restless, shape-shifting experimentalism might have been something Mason's been working on now for two decades, but it's rarely sounded better than it does here. [Mar 2016, p.118]

Tearing At The Seams more accurately captures the feel of Rateliff's stirring live performances. [Apr 2018, p.112]

While lately the LA quartet's output has largely been preoccupied with reclaiming their crunchy alt-rock sound, The Black Album often exorcises it with synth and piano. It works superbly. [Apr 2019, p.118]

At the infernal din's core are some excellent, urgent songs of anti-fashion disillusionment. [May 2013, p.98]

Noel Gallagher-approved Alberta Cross's first offering fulfils the promise of 2007's "The Thief & The Heartbreaker" EP. [Oct 2009, p.105]

Mark this down as the point which we can say with certainty for the first time Devendra Banhart is here for the long run. [Nov 2009, p.113]

Slick samples and buoyant melodies are in, dissonant atmospherics pretty much out. [Feb 2002, p.111]

There's an unmistakable, tightly drilled quality to all his [Tony Esposito's] work. [Sep 2015, p.117]

The sonic invention---fast-cuts between moods and styles, washy layers of aural colours--never gets in the way of the songs and the result is a triumph. [Nov 2019, p.116]

Worth every second of the wait. [Oct 2015, p.108]

A quiet storm of a record. [Nov 2015, p.111]

Her debut LP is a Story Book Forest of weird instruments and enticing sounds. [Feb 2012, p. 108]

On this voodoo-inspired record of unfettered ambition, Foals have achieved a rare magic. [Mar 2013, p.100]

It's very good indeed, throwing in splurges of psychedelic colour, a hatful of great songs and some almost baggy grooves. [Apr 2014, p.105]

These 20 songs unfold with mostly spartan acoustic guitar and voice arrangements, near-segueing from one to the other But the cumulative emotional impact is profound. [Summer 2019, p.117]

Thankfully, there are no extraneous Latino musical quirks tacked on, instead she is at er best at her most intimate, albeit with a new gust of openness from her far-flung adventures. [Aug 2017, p.110]

[A] measured and thoughtful set of intelligent pop tunes. [Oct 2003, p.114]

[Hollow Bones] is Rival Sons' finest work yet. [Aug 2016, p.115]

A record that occupies the exact mid-point between the ghetto sass of her Puff Daddy-produced debut and 1999's poised, soulful Mary. [Oct 2001, p.117]

Melody rarely comes easily, but this is a flamboyantly musical record that creates the perfect backdrop for Cave's theological, metaphysical musings.

O'Rourke revisits the lush orchestration and dreamy atmospherics he pioneered in Gastr Del Sol, but hanging out with Thurston Moore also appears to have had an effect. [Dec 2001, p.128]

Adams is such a contrary character you daren't use the phrase "career comeback," but that's what this is. [Oct 2014, p.101]

It's full of compact songs that steal your heart and leave. [Dec 2018, p.107]

Reflections proves Diamond is so much more than a two-dimensional pop project. [Jan 2020, p.111]

At 22 tracks - including a spoken interlude by Eminem - there's a lot to digest here. But, Crucially, a lot worth digesting. [Mar 2020, p.120]

What sounds antagonistic in premise actually proves to be a brilliant odyssey through the eclectic backwaters of Keely's imagination. [Feb 2016, p.112]

By turns thrilling and blissful. [Mar 2016, p.115]

Thrilling, thoughtful and unrestrained by existing rap templates, Grey Area confirms Little Simz as an artist who is increasingly difficult to dismiss. [Apr 2019, p.115]

If there had been a disco episode of Star Trek, then Phenomenal Handclap Band would have provided the go-to floor-fillers. [Feb 2012, p. 109]

Seriously good stuff. [Jun 20009, p.134]

She's made an album that deserves to linger in the limelight--passionate, powerful and possessed of real star quality. [Feb 2012, p.98]

Those who think that somewhere, a liberal arts college is missing its creative writing teachers, might not be surprised this is a clever record. It's also, however, one that glows with tangible human warmth, heartbeat never failing to keep pace with its brainwaves. [Jun 2013, p.91]

Gloominess is nothing new in traditional American music, but Wolfe layers the sorrow with a compelling sense of urgency. [Oct 2019, p114]

Part Sly Stone, part raving Baptist minister, Cee-Lo proves he's every bit as exceptional as his neighbours. [May 2004, p.100]

This is the sound of a man doing exactly what he wants, rather than what everyone expects and it's totally compelling. [Nov 2019, p.115]

[An] entertaining tribute to the supreme genius if baroque music. [Oct 2015, p.108]

This is high-pedigree pop-soul in the style of Costello's 1982 song Tears Before Bedtime. ... Gostello's lyrics are subtle, penetrating and often written from a woman's perspective. [Nov 2018, p.107]

Rub reboots the elements that made The Teaches Of Peaches the essential electroclash album back in 2000. [Nov 2015, p.113]

An expansive journey into a singular imagination. [Dec 2018, p.107]

It's like 10 years of treading water never happened. [Jun 2006, p.118]

This box set may be a dizzying experience at times, but it shows a superstar-in-the-making working out where he wants to go, and contains all the excitement that promises within. [Jan 2016, p.116]

For every screamed verse there's a genuinely soft melody. ... The Garden's uniquely garbage kind of glamour is far better than their clownish antics would suggest. [Jun 2020, p.100]

It's honest, uncomfortable and bonkers, but therein lies its charms. [Apr 2016, p.115]

His remarkable Warp debut follows a series of effective "folktronica" albums on the US independent Mush. [Jul 2009, p.117]

The results are vintage sounding yet wholly fresh. [Feb 2003, p.98]

On Mine Is Yours they take flight at last: the distinctive Willett is excellent throughout and the songs almost all snap and bite. [Feb. 2011, p. 114]

It's 10 years since MHS were hailed as the next big thing, and with this album MacIntyre may finally repay those hopes. [Feb 2012, p.108]

It's their best album in nearly 20 years. [Aug 2016, p.112]

If a brace of previous albums hinted at genre-defying transcendence, Obrigado Saudade attains it. [Mar 2004, p.107]

No one could have expected the four Stooges reunion tunes to sound so young and furious. [Nov 2003, p.120]

Requiem is Goat's most acoustic and folksy release to date, but their greedily promiscuous approach to pilfering beats from all pints of the globe is undiminished. [Nov 2016, p.107]

Rarely has he sounded so consistently vulnerable. It suits him. [Nov 2017, p.107]

Reassuringly, Gilmour's cool and composed vocal delivery and liquid guitar solos dominate throughout. [Nov 2015, p.113]

The results are psychedelic, frequently surreal and occasionally brilliant. [Mar 2008, p.99]

It's a record of quiet confidence, its brightness dialled down but its impact still fierce. [Jun 2020, p.100]

Exorcism Of Envy not only has to be heard to be believed, it just has to be heard. [Feb 2013, p.111]

[Bryan Ferry] corkscrews the concept in an instrumental tribute nit only to the very first cocktail'n'cocaine era but also to his own serpentine melodic gifts. [Mar 2013, p.101]

It all adds up to an album alive with lyrical purpose, bookended by outright classics, and plenty of interesting moves and grooves in between. [Apr 2015, p.92]

Their debut turns out to be a lovely slice of Americana, tastefully underpinned by warm harmonies, acoustic guitars and a melancholy yearning for lost youth. [Oct 2009, p.118]

Atlanta Millionaires Club radiates a warm Muscle Shoals glow. ... Yet there's the unmistakable shape of '90s R&B and gloopy modern-day hip-hop moving beneath the more classicist surface. [Summer 2019, p.116]