The frequently heavy subject matter is brightened musically by flashes of pedal steel and taut strings--meaning things never get too oppressive. When it's over though, you're left feeling you've been touched by something deeply elemental. [Dec 2017, p.109]

She's created an album that discovers an uncanny balance all of its own. [Feb 2018, p.109]

It might be out of time, but it's worth tuning out modern life and falling in with its curious beat. [Jan 2011, p.140]

The Age Of The Understatement is a frustrating thing shot through with clear signs of its authors' gifts, but too beholden to its influences where it should be stidendt and distinctive. [May 2008, p.125]

With the group fermenting a heady stew of gnarled psych rock, the result is as droll as it is challenging. [Oct 2019, p.114]

This doesn't disappoint, adding emotional depth to his complex rhyming and heft to the productions. [Mar 2008, p.103]

It's a revelation from start to finish and up there with Oldham's best work. [Mar 2013, p.107]

His debut album isn't quite as off the wall [as his mixtape], but taps an irrepressible post-Kanye West mood. [Jun 2010, p.133]

The thrilling racket of their live show has been sanded down but not blunted. [Sep 2014, p.110]

Pinkshinyultrablast have lifted their eyes from their laces to the skies. Superb. [Apr 2016, p.113]

Chrissie Hynde still answers to no one and it's a glorious sound. [Dec 2016, p.107]

There are a few missteps along the way--the attitudinal stomp of Wicked being one--but it is otherwise executed with authority. [Jan 2018, p.114]

A lush, soulful and joyous debut that should haunt us for years to come. [Mar 2014, p.114]

It's folk, yes, but with a wickedness instead of a waistcoat. [Feb 2013, p.113]

Hard work but worth the effort. [Oct 2005, p.117]

At times, he thinks as laterally as Pavement's Stephen Malkmus. [Feb 2004, p.102]

It's big and it's clever.

Group Sounds is as good as anything they've put their name to previously. [#180, p.110]

This is the sound of a superstar in the making. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Like his debut, From Every Sphere chokes on moments of indigestible excess. [Mar 2003, p.108]

The five Retina tracks are hauntingly intense....Iris is far warmer-sounding. [Sep 2010, p.123]

Undoubtedly ambitious, drawing on soul, jazz and squalling rock, the best moments keep the focus on Monche's own voice, with Shine's radical poetry reminiscent of veteran firebrands The Last Poets. [May 2011, p.112]

It's transporting enough to leave haunting echoes all its own. [Sep 2011, p.114]

With too much hip hop content to recycle cliches of its own making, it's exhilarating to discover someone out there is still willing to test the limits. [Jun 2009, p.132]

Not for the casual listener, but enormously rewarding if you hanker for some NY loft space in your croft house. [Feb 2014, p.115]

It proves gloriously uninhibited. [Sep 2014, p.117]

The presence of tamp Impala's Kevin Parker in the producer's chair ensures that the sonic differences with his own band's sun-dried sci-fidelia are Rizla thin. However, frontman Nick Allbrook's rapier-sharp lyrics ensure that they still have their own livewire personality. [Apr 2019, p.114]

Mostly the pace unfolds with the urgency of a melting icicle, couching expressions of fear, hope and love amid forlorn synth arcs and just enough fuzz to keep things frisky. [May 2018, p.105]

Offsetting these slightly creepy lyrics, however, are seductive sonics. [Mar 2020, p.122]

Decidedly monochrome, but strangely never dour. [Jul 2014, p.119]

Robust structuring is a blessing and curse: for all the frills and trapdoors, Ex-Hex's workmanlike rhythms eventually get monotonous. [May 2019, p.111]

At 38, Rufus's star moment appears to have finally arrived. [May 2012, p.108]

Oozing with dark passion, Nux Vomica is very Nick Cave. [Oct 2006, p.127]

An incredible album. [Sep 2020, p.111]

A wildly energetic record. [Jul 2005, p.120]

Each of the 11 new songs on Bottom Of The World twinkles mournfully, chamber-country meditations which blend the playful and sinister in his patented fantasia set in the US-Mexico borderlands. [May 2013, p.95]

Comparisons to Marling may linger, but The Staves should soar above them. [Nov 2012, p.105]

They are a band still in search of that one killer track. [Mar 2017, p.108]

Though never matching the otherworldly brilliance of their first two albums, Moonbuilding 2703 AD does at least find these 50-something space cadets still aiming for the stars. [Aug 2015, p.111]

Achilles Last Stand and Nobody's Fault But Mine notwithstanding, Presence sounds as rushed as it was. [Sep 2015, p.121]

This is a wonderful record--involving and irresistible. [Sep 2016, p.105]

Thirty years in NIN sound reinvigorated. [Summer 2018, p.116]

He and his demons haven't come in from the cold just yet, but thankfully, Pearson's muse has caught fire once more. [Apr 2011, p.105]

Brooding is the word for their claustrophobic jams, forged on skeletal guitar lines and smothered in reverb. [Dec. 2010, p. 112]

Moving into attack mode suits the band, most strikingly on the monolithic Superbug and the effects-laden boogie of Mars For The Rich. [Sep 2019, p.112]

Staying true to a 20-year career of uncompromising extremity, it will take commitment to breach this seventh album's walls of noise. [Dec 2009, p. 113]

It's all wonderfully executed. [Sep 2017, p.116]

A smart melting pot of influences and references. [Jan 2018, p.113]

A second album full of ambition and epic arrangements so unexpected it knocks you sideways. [May 2004, p.108]

An album of rich, subtle melodies, championship-level guitar playing and lyrical depth. [Sep 2002, p.115]

Finds them revelling in bursts of noise and awkwardness, but more surprisingly perhaps, taking as much comfort in sweet melody. [Jul 2004, p.124]

She's utterly beguiling, a fresh presence at last in singer-songwriter land. [Jun 2003, p.95]

Whatever it lacks in cohesive identity it more than makes up for in chaotic invention. [Feb 2003, p.107]

An exhausting, emotionally wracked affair. [Sep 2002, p.101]

The six tracks on Take care... are beautifully realised mini-symphonies that invite comparisons with a leaner Godspeed You! Black Emperor, all defined by epic, awe-inspiring crescendos. [May 2011, p.115]

Stunning. [Mar 2012, p. 96]

Playful pop brainteasers from the cult quartet. [Feb. 2011, p. 114]

While his message is clear, the means of conveying it comes up wanting. [Sep 2012, p.98]

Pretty much everything a second album needs to be, it's like Is This It but more emotional, more colourful, slightly better. [Nov 2003, p.102]

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

The title track of their fourth album actually begins with a similarly buoyant vein. [Feb 2013, p.107]

True, few tracks contain anything as mundane as a tune, but this sound of the underground taps an exhilarating energy. [Jun 2013, p.116]

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]

With almost every line a zinger, Wainwright's cocktail of satire and over-sharing remains potent. [Sep 2014, p.117]

The occasional vocals dilute the atmosphere, softening the bionic techno edge of the best tracks, but on Dilate, Vessels sound like a band widening their horizons to impressive effect. [Apr 2015, p.112]

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

The results are rich in impact and surprise. [Sep 2017, p.113]

It's hugely impressive stuff, and in the midst of all the musical pyrotechnics, there's still room for standout melodies. [Jun 2018, p.114]

In the second half, the gloom gradually lifts with dreamlike ballads Midnight Ease and Until You Kiss Me, and some of its predecessor's brilliance returns. [Sep 2018, p.110]

The producer's spectral strand of electro-noir is as seductive as it is unsettling on his debut album. [Sep 2012, p.102]

Getting close to these chilly, inscrutable songs is like trying to hug statuary, but their marbled beauty is impressive all the same. [Dec. 2011 p. 123]

The Voyager finds Jenny Lewis--earthbound for these past few years--readying herself for lift-off. [Sep 2014, p.104]

A revelation, brimming with passion and some of the best melodies Young has penned in the last 30 years. [Jul 2006, p.113]

The songs, driven by their charismatic duets, mix inventive brass grooves with playfully indelible melodies. [Oct 2012, 94]

Nabuma Rubberband is too uneasy, too unsettling, to guarantee a full-blown commercial breakthrough, but otherwise, they've cracked it all. [Jun 2014, p.107]

Glass Animals have mapped out a vivid, intoxicating soundworld of their own. [Jul 2014, p.107]

As her previous two albums showed, Moss is a dab hand at writing about affairs of the heart. [Apr 2016, p.105]

It's an impressive reminder of what made him so special in the first place. [Oct 2018, p.119]

Full marks, then, for ambitions but there's still a powerful sense here of a man trying way too hard. [Aug 2018, p.108]

It's accomplished but hard to love, with many squawking digressions. [Jul 2012, p.97]

Musically, it sticks to bardic folk ramble or--as on the brilliantly bilious Have A baby--bubblepunk aggro, but lyrically, Lewis is still finds new paths zig-zagging through his familiar patch. [Dec 2015, p.109]

His debut is more Will Oldham than Will Young, with hints of Bon Iver, John Martyn and the Buckleys. The best of a beguiling bunch comes last. [Apr 2016, p.104]

Whereas that time [on Off My Rocket At The Art School Bop] the sharp lyrics were backed by memorable tunes, here he isn't pulling up any trees musically. [Nov 2016, p.107]

A collection of wonderful stripped-down folk rock. [Dec 2016, p.106]

Butler's spacey sing-song tones skip across the muddy off-kilter beats, forging a sound that is both immediate and moreish. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Dive in unreservedly. [Jun 2018, p.119]

The Decemberists have never sounded more ordinary. [Feb. 2011, p. 114]

A record whose hooks sometimes struggle to sink their claws in. [Sep 2018, p.113]

These skeletal blues are for addicts only. [Nov 2012, p.98]

Wu-Tang devotees won't be disappointed. [Apr 2013, p.94]

In Search Of works best when swept up in a wave of wistful optimism. [May 2019, p.111]

Love, Death & Dancing finds Garratt charged with a new, bright energy. [Summer 2020, p.100]

Invite The Light reaffirms that Dam-Funk needn't coast on others' charisma when his music has more than enough of its own. [Oct 2015, p.104]

Now it would seem that the 40-year-old is keen to get back to that place, smashing through extremo rockers such as You Get To Rome and enjoying himself so much that he often audibly breaks into laughter. Sometimes, though, it tips over in to jammy self-indulgence. [Summer 2018, p.110]

The focus on Darnielle's wonderfully evocative phrasing makes his songs sound like enigmatic fragments of short stories. [May 2011, p.120]

With its bright shiny sonics buffed by Blur/Smiths producer Stephen Street, it ranks up there with the best of the early Pretenders albums. [Aug 2020, p.111]

All the evidence anyone needs that the 50-something Weller is in the midst of a supersonic prime. [Mar 2012, p. 98]

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