Cults' combination of mid-'60s girl-group and cusp-of-the-'90s shoegazing is still bewitching but takes a more stripped-down form here, and packs more of a thwack. [Jan 2014, p.120]

Glam folk never sounded such a good idea. [Mar 2015, p.105]

It's the contrast between lo-fi production and brilliant musicanship that makes Expressions special. [Apr 2010, p.116]

More varied stylistically, it offers a powerful reflection of the band's consistently bleak worldview. [May 2014, p.116]

An absolute masterclass in thoughtful, emotional songwriting. [Apr 2003, p.104]

An astonishing reassertion of relevance for Plant. [July 2002, p.118]

The follow-up to 1997's Lipslide proves worth the wait. [Jul 2015, p.104]

Fallen street poet gets remixed by rising street urchin. Result: comeback complete. [March 2011]

His voice is the one constant, a symbol of defiance against overwhelming forces. [Nov 2018, p.109]

With its prowling, piano-led menace and barely contained fury, Extraordinary Machine offers ample confirmation that Apple is far darker than your average singer-songwriter. [Jan 2006, p.126]

[The album] works best when vocal-free, telling its story through tone, not text. [Nov 2015, p.111]

Fresh-faced wunderkind aces his debut. [Oct 2011, p.118]

It's practically impossible not to fall just a little bit in love with both the singer and her beautifully fragile music. [Jul 2012, p.112]

Masterful and poignant, it reveals Mason to be a heavyweight talent. [Apr 2007, p.119]

However much they conjure up campfire laments, you're rarely more than a few minutes from kick-ass riffs and percussive abandon. [Mar 2017, p.115]

Lucky, then she's so musically warm and, like its predecessors, Safe Trip Home takes comfort in a sound that almost masks her unrest. Almost. [Dec 2008, p.127]

This follow-up goes the whole hog. ... Frank Ocean's Blonde reportedly influenced the tech-driven songwriting process, but there are echoes, too, of U2 at their more exploratory, and, on the twisty-riffed In Waves, last year's QOTSA album. Olympian. [Jun 2018, p.110]

Those raised on the Jayhawks' best Work Tomorrow The Green Grass and Hollywood Town Hall, will still go home satisfied. [Jun 2016, p.112]

With A Celebration of Endings, Biffy Clyro prove beyond doubt that they've got the idiosyncratic sewn up. [Sep 2020, p.112]

Part 1's eight deluxe country rock essays all impress. [Feb 2004, p.98]

The chill out crowd, and anyone else unbothered by such walk-ons, will happily drift off to the rich, inevitably orchestral backdrop, thinking it ever so classy. Which, of course, it is.

Though its concept may remain opaque, Carnival Of Souls compels. [Oct 2014, p.116]

They haven't completely severed links with the past--the bruising Wonderful Life comes with a cameo from Cradle Of Filth squawker Dani Filth-- but mostly it's a bold leap into the future. [Feb 2019, p.108]

Overall this is never less than an engaging listen. [Dec 2012, p.112]

It's a beautiful set of sweeping prairie ballads. [Jan 2014, p.122]

Excellent, soul-infused debut. [May 2019, p.112]

Most of what's here is great melancholy rock, but sometimes held back by Wilson's willingness to play the perennial prog-rock boffin. [Mar 2015, p.118]

Jesso's winsome melodies and gorgeous chord changes never fail to hit the spot. [Apr 2015, p.103]

Steeple is a big, old hairy beast capable of stirring the most primal of instincts. [Dec 2010, p.115]

The View appear to be growing up. Forever, of course, is a very, very, long time. But on this evidence, against all odds, The View look set to run and run. [Apr 2011, p.99]

The result is a return to the giddy highs of their heyday. [Aug 2017, p.107]

Radiohead's ambitions are so modest that it's hard to tell whether this is just creative throat clearing or the quieter path they've settled for. If it's the latter, well, Radiohead sound calmer and more content than ever. [May 2011, p.106]

More downtempo delights from Rhode Islanders. [March 2011, p. 106]

If there's a weakness, it's that the fulid, four-MC set-up masks a lack of lyrical depth.

The Trump nightmare goes on, but these otherworldly lo-fi lullabies provide the perfect tonic. [Nov 2018, p.111]

An album that yields more with each listen. [Nov 2016, p.111]

The way they shift from the blues-y swagger of Let The Record Play to the percussive march of Pendulum and the R.E.M.-evoking country twang of Yellow Moon is a sure sign that they belong in the lineage of great American rock bands. [Nov 2013, p.108]

The Carpenter's appeal lies in its gentle tempos and heartstring-tugging melodies. [Dec 2012, p.100]

Come Around Sundown is the sound of them trying to wrestle its relationship with fame back under control. On a musical level, they've succeeded--they've scaled back the ambition with out throwing the baby out with the bathwater. [Nov 2010, p.102]

He achieves an almost architectural sense of scale. [May 2018, p.115]

It's a quintessential extra-curricular album, straining every which way, but an excellent and oddly coherent one. [Apr 2015, p.97]

Terse songwriting and Hutch Harris's emotionally strained vocals create a liberating sense of urgency--and there's something both modest and succinct about a 32-minute album in the age of infinite MP3s. [Dec 2010, p.115]

A beguiling, constantly surprising record. [Jul 2019, p.113]

An assured second outing, Fast Food is a full realisation of Shah's noirish visions. [May 2015, p.111]

This brilliant, OutKast-like fusion of synthetic electro beats and surreal rhymes form a skewd tribute to the US state of Georgia. [Aug 2009, p.107]

This is gold for fans. Worth the £18 for the definitive version of lost classic Lift alone. [Aug 2019, p.119]

Sigworth is Moyet's musical soulmate and this is her best LP in decades. [Jun 2013, p.103]

Each of these fine songs could be sung by a blowsy, bruised Blanch DeBois. [Aug 2015, p.109]

It's impulsive and scrappy, lyrically uncomplicated and musically crude, yet each strange, hypnotic composition turns a quiet epiphany into a revelation. [Sep 2018, p.113]

Vigorous and wise, this is dance music for grown-ups, with Cook keenly aware that any number of spritely garage and trance chancers have stepped in while he's been away making babies. Rather than match them in the disco stakes, he's re-grouped and drawn on previously concealed depths instead.

Same Emotions, meanwhile, sounds like a lovingly recreated homage to the soft rock of Journey, Toto, et al. Best of all is his deeply personal tribute to the late Jason Molina. [Aug 2014, p.113]

A trash-conscious blend of craft and humour gives them the sass, style and balls to sound like no one else around. [Mar 2004, p.111]

While rough and a little patchy, it's a cracking debut nonetheless. [Aug 2003, p.108]

Intriguing abandoned avenues and sketches towards masterpieces. [Nov 2018, p.115]

A calmer work than its harrowing semi-classic prequel, Blinking Lights... is also less startling or focussed. [May 2005, p.109]

This sumptuous riddle of a record is a celebration of everything but normality. [Oct 2014, p.100]

The effect is brilliantly female and forceful. [Nov 2015, p.115]

It's a stunningly assured, deeply romantic and already one of the year's best. [Dec 2018, p.113]

Frontman Brian Fallon serves up a mostly restrained and as a result more resonant set as an opening salvo for The Horrible Crowes. [Oct 2011, p.123]

The result is persuasive, likable grown-up pop without that off-putting jazz-hands factor. [Nov 2012, p.99]

Bracing stuff. [Oct 2006, p.127]

Pushes the DBT envelope a little further and for a band whose catalogue boasts more double-albums than single ones--at 43 minutes it's extra punchy, and fully fit for impeachment-fuelling purpose. [Mar 2020, p.117]

They make modern life's drain and strain exhilarating. [Mar 2020, p.120]

Seeds is not 1000 per cent their best work, but it's not far off. [Dec 2014, p.108]

Its riveting, yarn-spinning intimacy enhanced by the singer's dry patter. [Feb 2014, p.113]

They are gorgeous recordings, never over-polished but bringing out the bright force of Staples's guitar and the grainy sweetness of his voice. [Apr 2015, p.111]

Yak shoot from the hip with an impetuous first-timers' racket that's rarely short of breathtaking. [Jul 2016, p.113]

While tracks such as This Day Is A Loaf could be straight out of an album by Stevens himself, it's when the band stretches out, on the gentle but unsettling Hosanna In The Forest, that they really excel. [Apr 2011, p.101]

What TEEN have fashioned here is heady stuff. [May 2014, p.117]

This is guitar music at its most acerbic and romantic. [Aug 2017, p.110]

It's a hugely entertaining album. A musical travelogue whose breadth of styles fits the vast nation it eulogises. [Summer 2018, p.107]

The giddy result of years spent twisting and caressing orchestras of samples into a living, breathing organic whole, There Is Love In you brims with a playful sense of wonder, never more so than on centerpiece This Unfolds. [Feb 2010, p. 109]

Another slug of moonshine and a rootsy rock from the Georgia sextet. [March 2011, p. 108]

Their second album has much to recommend it. For the most part, songs fizz by succinctly. [Aug 2015, p.106]

This is Black's strongest set of songs since 1994's second solo selection, Teenager Of The Year, largely because the trademark wit and weirdness is back.

Jigga may have the edge right now, but on this evidence Nas looks the better bet in the long run. [Mar 2003, p.112]

The whole thing is one long hazy delight. [Nov 2015, p.115]

Her most natural fit. [Feb 2006, p.102]

Two Wounded Birds are an exotic rarity; a band that performs pastiche without sounding anything other than utterly authentic. [Jul 2012, p.112]

Both inspiring and inspired, Godfather completes Wiley's reclamation of self brilliantly. [Mar 2017, p.110]

It's this urgently speculative spirit ["Is it human to ask for more?"] that make Adore Life a compulsive and substantial thrill. [Feb 2016, p.117]

Each song is like a little journal entry, lent emotional heft by Ashworth's use of repetition. [Apr 2019, p.114]

For every moment of immaculate pop, there's a moment of strangeness. [Jun 2018, p.116]

His latest spin-off project sees Steele's musical wanderlust pay dividends. [Mar 2009, p.98]

Poignant and powerful. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Wolf Alice is fiendishly difficult to pin down, bu they're full of inspired ideas rather than lacking direction. [Jun 2015, p.115]

A delightfully different gang of fuzzy funk rapscallions. A solution worth soluting. [Jun 2010, p.118]

Director's Cut succeeds, however, by axing the star cameos and thrusting some of her most powerful songs back into the spotlight. [Jun 2011, p.115]

Ultimately, the accord reached between Mark Ronson and the quartet is that there's nothing wrong with the Black Lips formula; merely that their exuberance sometimes needs a calming hand on the shoulder. [July 2011, p. 115]

Hardcore sounds defiantly re-energised, like a band starting over. [Mar 2011, p.112]

A vigorously thought-provoking record. [Aug 2014, p.113]

There's a real elegance, even a joy, to the way he mixes his dark materials. [Nov 2019, p.112]

He shows off his instrumental chops. [Nov 2015, p.106]

The Walkmen are inching closer to the mainstream, while remaining utterly distinctive. [Jul 2012, p.112]

Snow Patrol are on their way to becoming essential. [May 2006, p.120]

By eerie last track 80 Ondula, all moody Vangelis synths and bad-acid vibes, there comes the realisation it's actually the sinister undertone that lurks beneath all Jenkinson's esoteric soundscapes which makes them so compelling. [Mar 2020, p.122]

It's stunning stuff. The bar for the next Grizzly Bear album, already high after Veckatimist, is raised another notch. [Nov. 2011, p. 128]

ChesnuTT's thrilling unorthodoxy remains in off-kilter arrangements and strange details. [Dec 2012, p.101]