Focused and fighting fit, My way is proof that at 46 Ian brown is nevertheless prepared to go all 15 rounds. [Nov 2009, p.108]

A brisk 11 tracks and not a duff moment on it. [Summer 2018, p.106]

Biophilia is a wonderful record in the most literal sense; it overflows with wonder. [Oct 2011, p.111]

The songs themselves, again sung in English, are often cryptic to the point of obscurity.... But the drama here is all in Arnald's delivery. [Oct 2014, p.102]

Rather than merely bashing out folk takes on [the songs of Wyatt and Antony], they've remodeled them, retained the sense of gravitas and added a fan's love. Gorgeous. [Feb. 2012 p. 111]

Plastic Anniversary is flexible, addictive and, ultimately, deeply disturbing. [May 2019, p.115]

Endless Boogie isolate the kind of grinding blues rock riffs you'd hear on AC/DC, Canned Heat or early Beefheart records and cane them relentlessly. [Apr 2013, p.100]

By the end, Lopatin has captured the uneasy calm of a mind unhinged by information overload. [Jul 2018, p.115]

Pop doesn't get much more gloriously trashy than this. [Apr 2003, p.108]

This cracking 19-track collection, plus extensive 24-page booklet, cherry-picks the area's best club music from the mid-'70s, an exuberant, carnival-esque mishmash of local carimbo and siria styles with big-band brass and frenetic Afro-Latino percussion. [Summer 2019, p.119]

As radio-friendly as Radiohead are not. [Sep 2001, p.120]

In its focus and eccentricity this debut keeps Khan's own vision front and centre. [Sep 2018, p.114]

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

10 tight tunes of heart, soul and intricate craftsmanship. [Dec 2016, p.105]

Keeping close to Chasny's vision, Burning The Threshold offers a beautiful way into his far-out world. [Apr 2017, p.119]

Authoritative, direct and exhilarating. [May 2020, p.100]

A reminder why she's adored by many. With Palmer's dramatic piano and piercing vocals offset by lush orchestration, it's short on whimsy but long on Big Topics. [May 2019, p.115]

In between there's much else to savour, from smooth slow jams to Won't Trade's terrific blast of rap meets '60s soul. [Jan 2009, p.123]

The Big Other is a pure and unexpected delight. [Apr 2013, p.101]

Daft, complex, and beautiful, it's also his best yet. [Jul 2009, p.133]

These 13 songs do the simple things, but do them wonderfully well. [May 2005, p.106]

At its best, Other Worlds is sublime. [Nov 2012, p.106]

A wild indulgence, of course, and a big investment of time, but like 1999's 69 Love Songs, well worth it. [Apr 2017, p.115]

An expertly fashioned LP from a duo who know how to add style to substance. [May 2019, p.115]

It's a minor-chord menace, their darker surf-steeped vibe driven by steady percussion and hypnotic basslines. [Apr 2013, p.101]

A refreshing listen. [Dec 2009, p.120]

In upbeat mode, he's made of stirring stuff, but the real wonder here is to be found when he drops a gear into hushed beauty and sun-dappled loveliness. [May 2012, p.101]

More accessible than Animal collective, weirder than MGMT, this is otherworldly pop music to make the head spin. [Mar 2010, p.103]

[Dandy is] not even the best thing here, as Fingers Crossed continues Hunter's chain of excellent 21st-century albums. [Oct 2016, p.107]

Showcases her luminous vocals, rich lyrics and subtle arrangements. [Sep 2005, p.120]

This is a great album first, and a great Christmas album second. [Feb 2017, p.115]

These are big, stately songs, packed with rue as much as brio. [Dec 2015, p.103]

A deranged and thrilling experience, there's been nothing from them to touch it since. [Dec 2012, p.122]

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]

Me and Armini isn't an immediate record--it's too opaque, too guarded for that--but as it gives up its secrets, it slowly moves its stuff into your mind, a strange cuckoo in the musical nest. [Oct 2008, p.151]

What Kasabian lack in orginality they more than compensate for attitude and exhilarating hysteria. [Jul 2009, p.112]

The bed springs chez Wegg-Prosser are clearly creaking. [May 2014, p.121]

Like a musical Bill Hicks, Snider's easy humour expresses his nonetheless serious message with a grace and poignancy few can muster. [Jun 2012, p.96]

If the songs on St. Catherine are remarkably pretty, there's also a lurking sense that their beauty isn't built to last forever. [Aug 2015, p.104]

Everett comes on here like a less grizzled Tom Waits with a side order of Kurt Weill. [Apr 2006, p.113]

All [the tracks] are powerfully intimate. [Aug 2006, p.114]

[Start Together] reveals a remarkable output across punk, pop and rock for a band that you can't help but feel still had much to do, As of now, they still may do it. [Dec 2014, p.124]

As warm, strange and enchantingly off-key as the title suggests. [May 2007, p.127]

The sound of a band renewed, Always Ascending fizzes with the energy of a first album and lets Franz Ferdinand start all over again. [Mar 2018, p.106]

Robyn Hitcock, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and, taking the female characters' voices, Becky Stark and Shara Worden, are among those fleshing out the band, but all are no more than support to Colin Meloy and his very singular vision--and what a glorious big, bold and entirely bonkers one it is. [Apr 2009, p.104]

This mix of fearlessness, craft and believability is irresistible. [April 2012, p.90]

Truelove's Gutter is a beautiful album. [Oct 2009, p.113]

A far more rounded proposition than 2000's water-treading Chocolate Starfish. [Dec 2003, p.132]

A darkly uncompromising and often difficult record: uneasy, sinister, scored and scarred with sonic detritus and, in layman?s terms, a bloody racket.

Ultimately, it's Tool's experimental, borderline progressive, edge that proves most rewarding. [Aug 2001, p.141]

All the things he once did well, he's still doing here. [Oct 2011, p.112]

Bought To Rot is, then, something of a palette cleanser: both wider in scope and lighter in tone. [Dec 2018, p.108]

A thrilling joyride through reggae's golden era and beyond. [Jan 2020, p.117]

If last year's Spanish El Turista was Josh Rouse embracing his new European home with a vengeance, this time around he's deployed his resources with more subtlety and made a better record. [Nov. 2011, p. 140]

The result is an album designed for the feet as much as the head. [Mar 2020, p.106]

A fourth disc of out-takes shines a light on alternate versions and work-in-progress songs that would surface on later albums. [Dec 2014, p.123]

The likes of Umbrella Beach, Cave In and Vanillla Twilight blend bittersweet longing, wintry elemental imagery and melodies that worm their way into your consciousness with effortless aplomb. [Apr 2010, p.119]

No Shame is a reminder that this is what Allen does, and she does it very well. [Summer 2018, p.111]

With Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons have made a career-defining album that will resonate with anyone who has ever spent a night with their head in the speaker stacks and gone home marvelling at the ringing in their ears. [Nov 2009, p.106]

While there's lots to admire in this clearing of the creative pipes, 48:13 is ultimately proof that great albums are all about the numbers. [Jul 2014, p.98]

Thanks to their guileless sincerity and boundless invention, The Lemon Twigs manage to pull it off. [Sep 2018, p.111]

The albums are interchangeable, neither one being the stylistic leap that was Is A woman in comparison to its predecessor, Nixon. [combined review of both discs; Mar 2004, p.112]

It's the perfect balance of serious pop and pop that doesn't take itself too seriously. [Dec 2019, p.107]

Some tracks are more outre than others... but throughout his sustained, idiosyncratic vision is absorbing. [Dec. 2001 p. 123]

Forster's songwriting is crisply understated, his salt-and-pepper voice perfect for the succulent storytelling for No Fame and Life Has Turned A Page. [May 2019, p.111]

Like a violent assault by a Moshi Monster, it's fluffy, frightening and utterly overwhelming. [Apr 2014, p.105]

Hope Downs shows how jangling indie should be done. [Summer 2018, p.114]

It really is hard to distinguish between the eight tracks here, but when a theme's this good, the variants are never going to be a problem. [Mar 2003, p.113]

Part Jewel-with-tunes, part Tori-Amos-without-kookiness, it noodles, but only rarely.

Dinosaur Jr producer John Angelo coaxes dreamy harmonies from their skewed sound. [Sep 2011, p.114]

It may be too late for the big breakthrough, but Harcourt has given himself a fighting chancce. [Jul 2010, p.133]

With a singular perspective though, Hand Habits are in a lane of their own. [May 2019, p.111]

It's a trawl through pop's murky subconscious, all mangled electronics, lurching beats and warped mantras. [Nov. 2010, p. 116]

The Noisettes have done a stylistic handbrake turn for the follow-up, and come up with an intoxicating blend of pop, soul and disco. [May 2009, p.116]

A couple of the songs are grunge by rote, but the art-rock sensibility gleaned from Weiland's old David Bowie albums is evident in the whispered Hell It's Late. [Oct 2001, p.130]

This is nervy, restless music for turbulent times. And all the better for it. [Aug 2018, p.113]

An utterly furious assault of gritty doom riffs and whisky-addled power, chugging, twisting and thundering with an energy the band have not found in years. [Jun 2012, p.100]

Old Rockhounds Never Die is ceaselessly exciting. [Sep 2018, p.118]

His production helps Malkmus's fifth post-Pavement album roll buy with a supremely confident West Coast looseness. [Sep 2011, p.116]

Altogether, it's a wholly surprising musical development from a criminally overlooked talent. [Sep 2013, p.107]

Badu shines a light on less frequently explored areas of Kuti's back catalogue. ... One of music's undisputed heavyweights. [Jan 2018, p.116]

It's a long, hard haul, but this is an outstanding talent at the top of her game. [Mar 2007, p.116]

Both instantly appealing and dazzling inventive. [Apr 2020, p.113]

Truly, Believers is nothing short of divine. [Dec. 2001 p. 123]

The New Yorkers' fourth album is grounded in frontman Claudio Sanchez's personal life, making it accessible and hugely appealing. [Nov 2007, p.137]

The Prodigy's fifth studio album sounds just like The Prodigy should. Only leaner, harder, and even faster than before. [Apr 2009, p.96]

Musically, it's still dense and intense, with funk, jazz and electronics rubbing up against bumpy hip-hop. But the heavyweight line-up brings with it a welcome focus on songs. [Jul 2019, p.110]

Everyone will say this sounds like Beck, but at the last count Beck would be lucky to sound like Eels.

This Best-Of encapsulates a remarkable career built on fearsome imagination and creativity. [Apr 2014, p.123]

The heart-breakingly poignant cello hum of Opening (White Material) typifies the rightness of the association; when you add Stuart Staples's beguiling baritone, it elevates to another level altogether. [Jun 2011, p.123]

A record you never dreamt you needed, but which leaves you craving more. [Sep 2016, p.109]

They are by turns wistful, quirky and very, very beautiful. [Aug 2013, p.100]

It sets out the stall for Tinariwen's most rewarding, mesmerising effort to date. [Sep 2011, p.118]

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

Everything is invigorated by both the quality of songwriting and singer Adam Stephen's wrenching trouble-he's-seen vocals. [Nov 2012, p.108]

Combining jazzy looseness, rustic picking and an undertow of drugular mind expansion, this is one head cocktail that leaves no pain after it hits. [Apr 2015, p.113]

There is a uniform strength to its material... Wrecking Ball doesn't have a dud. [April 2012, p.92]

It's on the mighty 'Collemboles,' however, that all the angles, time-signature switches and gigantic choruses come togerther, and it's the finest moment on an album packed with delights. [May 2009, p.115]