Resolution is a furious and unrelenting broadside of searing riffs and invention. [Feb 2012, p.107]

Not without some good moments, but bereft of magic. [Feb. 2012 p. 104]

The 37-minute length is not the only thing about this album that's slight. [May 2006, p.116]

So we get stomping piano pop hits (I'm All Over It), supper-club R&B (a cover of Rihanna's Don't Stop The Music) and finger-clicken' ruminations on the stage of the planet (Wheels, If I Ruled the World). Proof the thrill is in the chase. [Dec 2009, p.111]

Hynes, it seems, can get away with more than most. [Sept. 2011, p. 103]

The acoustic-only, antique-sounding folks songs of Realism are superficially less abrasive than 2008's Distortion, but beneath they still articulate black-humoured romanticism. [Feb 2010, p. 111]

The musical scope is breathtaking. [Dec 2003, p.139]

Much of Love & Life... is a procession of syrupy ballads with added self-help litanies. [Nov 2003, p.113]

Isn't for the meek. [Mar 2004, p.110]

:?q:,ails is much better than a collaboration between a former Luscious Jackson keyboardist and a former Breeders bassist has any right to be.... the surprise derives from the convincing Gallic pop-meets-Brazilian tropical-meets-American prairie blend.

Tender New Signs is full of cracking tunes that help avoid the formlessness that effects-laden atmo-pop often slumps into. [Dec 2012, p.113]

This is easily her best album in 20 years. [Oct 2007, p.105]

Shelby struggles to get her dues outside conventional country circles, but Tears, Lies And Alibis is far from conventional. [Nov 2010, p.111]

Concrete And Gold is a straightforward Foo Fighters album, albeit one that does occasionally fulfill its promise to deliver both aural lavishness and maximum heaviosity. [Oct 2017, p.102]

The album evokes not claustrophobia but space and freedom: an exhilarating screw-the-consequences leap into the bizarre. [May 2010, p.110]

There's no faulting the brilliant playing, but by restricting themselves to exploring a fairly unevolved musical form they forever repeat its limitations. [April 2012, p.90]

While it may be too easy to reach for the word "cinematic," it can't be avoided. [Dec 2015, p.104]

Sound[s] as much half-finished, stoner bumbling as personal offbeat vision. [Aug 2003, p.104]

Joyously propulsive... [Yet] there's little deviation from a straightforward palette of sticky basslines and boom-bap rhythms. [May 2012, p.95]

The band's ability to properly play together more than justifies the album's title, an archaic English word for feeling pleased. [Jun 2013, p.109]

Sleeping Around The Corner is a finely calibrated update of their FM-rock blueprint, while Too Far Gone nods cheekily to Tango In The Night's Big Love. [Aug 2017, p.100]

Amid the dominant electronics, the regular injections of big, sonorous basslines, clattering percussion and discordant jazz tones make for a thrilling ride that pulses with energy and adventure. [Aug 2019, p.112]

Simply, what this amounts to is the best U2 album since "Achtung Baby. [Apr 2009, p.94]

Memphis soul is tapped by JTE ... the regret and pain of his songs harking back to the days when drugs had him thrown out of his father's band. [May 2012, p.91]

While mostly perfectly acceptable as individual songs, the 13 tracks don't really stack up as an album, not one that gets close to his best anyway. [Mar 2009, p.94]

It seems that Ferry's singular blend of elegance and dissolution still hasn't gone out of style. [Dec. 2010, p. 111]

Peaking Lights have sacrificed some of their uniqueness for added lovability. But their hypno-pop still sways to a rhythm entirely of its own. [Nov 2014, p.116]

They're at their best when they keep it succinct, as on I'm Still Believing and Another Dimension. Their longer songs are less successful. [Dec 2016, p.115]

For the most part Christ Illusion is flabby and arthritic. [Oct 2006, p.126]

[An] accomplished work of depth and distinction. [April 2012, p.88]

The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends runs the risk of turning into a cluttered affair, but what unfolds is an atmosphere of uninhibited adventure. [Sep 2012, p.100]

His fourth record tempers his languid synth wavering with a playful classicism. [May 2015, p.113]

With no fresh ideas or strong melodies to lighten the mood, [Sadier's] icy hauteur makes for bland and featureless listening. [Apr 2006, p.120]

Respite is offered up by the lilting Don't Go Outside, which reveals a beating heart beneath the conceptual framework. [Mar 2020, p.120]

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]

While the lyrical freedom of Dear Diary, My Vietnam, and Family Portrait is refreshing, stylistically they are less than revolutionary. [Jan 2002, p.105]

Their debut bears the hallmarks of carefully assembled, widescreen pop-rock.

47 minutes of homogenous power pop...

Too much of Feathers sounds like extended noodling jams. [May 2005, p.121]

More of the same firework riffs and vexed vocals. [Sep 2016, p.102]

More often than not his approach feels too clinical to really engage. [Apr 2006, p.120]

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]

A unique, if impenetrable artists, Vanderslice deserves a wider audience. [Jun 2009, p.132]

It's sprawling beast, but for all its occasional spots of indulgence it's a towering achievement. [Oct 2009, p.115]

The result is gorgeous. [Jun 2013, p.93]

Drew's little-boy-lost whine on the likes of 'Gangbang Suicide' occasionally grates, but the supreme soft-rock anthemics on 'Lucky Ones' more than compensates. [Oct 2007, p.94]

The harsh tones and minimal melodies may not carry universal appeal, but then Kuperus and Miller have always preferred to dance in the shadows. [Jul 2013, p.99]

It feels awkward. [Oct 2006, p.119]

No new ground is broken, but there's an admirable conviction in the way Maximo Park fight their corner. [Aug 2012, p.104]

The music is fabulous, a sublime pulse of Hammond organ, trombone and piano. [Nov 2012, p.100]

Polica have made another good record, but there may never be a Polica album as good as the one inside your head. [Mar 2016, p.112]

For the most part it's a decent but needless reworking of her Compass Point trilogy of albums from the early '80s. [Nov 2008, p.117]

A tough, focused, danceable album. [Jun 2006, p.113]

It's diverting enough but unlikely to gain Sartain significant ground. [Jun 2014, p.119]

The threadbare production which previously stretched ideas to breaking point has been bolstered, adding a warmth to the jangly 626 Bedford Avenue and cocooning the break-up ballad My Japs in plucked acoustics and distant percussion. [Jun 2019, p.111]

Uncomfortably personal, but it sounds irresistible. [April 2012, p.102]

Given an open mind and time to unfurl, Working Out is a wholly absorbing record. [Mar 2014, p.107]

While hopes of stardom might have passed, there are a few minor gems in here. [June 2008, p.148]

Their debut album's secret arsenal comprises frontman Chris Martin's voice - prematurely aged for someone in their early twenties - and some supple, persuasive melodies. That and a great big side order of melancholy.

Only on closing track Myth Me does he give into temptation and step up to the mic, unfurling a quirky, lisping ballad that shows he still can't quite play it straight. [Apr 2015, p.102]

Frustratingly, the tricksy production and Auto-Tuned vocals of the fragmented second-half tend to overwhelm the songs rather than enhance them. [Mar 2016, p.109]

Sounds more fun on paper than it is in reality. [Aug 2006, p.111]

At their best, as on Number 6 single 'Facination,' they are an invigoratingly upbeat experience. But too often they crash through the boundaries of good taste into out-and-out cheese. [July 2008, p.98]

It's a flabbergasting, intense album that demands intense listening. [May 2010, p.123]

Produced again by former Arcade Fire man Howard Bilerman, here spare, lovelorn songs such as zithery vigil The Shore evoke an elegant melancholy, while the more rugged likes of Gold Rush dart forth on galloping drums, fiddles and banjos. [Feb 2010, p. 104]

Reaffirms her gift for big hooks and wry lyrics. [May 2003, p.100]

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

A seedily romantic, kitchen-sink paean to London, We Love The City finds Hefner's previously wan guitar stylings given a coat of production lustre.

While good, clean, hedonistic fun, it feels over-familiar, like somewhere you've visited once too often. [Jan 2002, p.97]

It's a hit-and-miss affair. [Oct 2013, p.105]

It doesn't always work. But overall, The Evens is an engaging debut. [May 2005, p.121]

More depth, and a few metaphorical tidal waves, wouldn't go amiss. [Jan 2013, p.109]

The 15th album of punk-tinged metal has enough spark to show that they can still dance with the Devil. [Apr 2013, p.100]

It works best when these elements are brought to the fore--the shadowy-voyage-into-the-unknown atmosphere of opener Rising or Rain's floating, dream-like synths--creating an eerie, retro-futurist soundworld to get lost in. [Feb 2019, p.112]

An album overflowing with ambition and ideas. [Summer 2019, p.109]

Seventeen years on,... Cake have lost none of their bite. [Feb. 2012 p. 101]

Everything here feels like a Xerox of something that's been done before.[Oct 2014, p.102]

She excels when she stacks up layers of her ghostly choirgirl voice within a more lush framework. [Nov 2010, p.114]

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

But for all their obvious influences, they're as youthfully exuberant as MGMT and surely no band has used echo quite so deftly since interesting-period Jesus ANd Mary Chain. [Apr 2011, p.104]

When he dials down the combative cliches, he remains a powerful, compelling lyricist. [Jan 2013, p.110]

A real jewel from an underestimated band. [Sep 2014, p.111]

It's exhilarating in both its fury and its craft. [Jul 2017, p.114]

It still nods to The Velvet Underground and strung-out '80s pioneers Spacemen 3 and Loop, but chord changes are no longer as rare as Shane MacGowan's teeth, and there's more of a pop sensibility. [Dec 2013, p.117]

Moments of spine-tingling transcendence outweigh those of aimless noodling. [Aug 2017, p.110]

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 quietly beautiful record. [Dec 2012, p.105]

While My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was anchored by Kanye's galactic ego, Big Boi often gets lost in the crowd. [Feb 2013, p.102]

Their densely textured song structures and layered song harmonies reward repeated listening. [Sep 2010, p.120]

There's nothing to diminish his status as a nearly great, albeit mostly unheralded, American songwriter. [Feb 2011, p.120]

It's a record that renders previous comparisons obsolete. [Feb 2015, p.105]

Songs like Harvester cut through the austerity with undercover earworms, providing a melodic relief you'll long for when the anti-pop sensibility finds its logical conclusion in dreary jams. [Oct 2018, p.108]

A bluesy, guitar-heavy record just like they used to make, then. What's not to llike? [Aug 2010, p.124]

Imperfect but never less than interesting. [Oct 2019, p.110]

Broder's lyrics are as evocative as ever. [Sep 2007, p.92]

A perfectly acceptable retrenchment. [Nov 2013, p.105]

Coppola resurrects her pop carrer as Little Jackie alongside DJ/Producer Adam Pallin, who adds hip-hop beats and faux-motown gloss to her R&B tunes. [Oct 2008, p.147]

Chic but charmless. [Jun 2005, p.111]