The star throughout Joyland is Spedding's guitar, but the record isn't entirely all his own show. [Apr 2015, p.111]

The slower numbers, built around pneumatic electro basslines and memories of Giorgio Moroder soundtracks, aren't as slick, though 58BPM's is a stylish, slow-motion homage to the neon-lit world of '80s synth-pop. [Apr 2014, p.120]

Adamson's not abandoned the scary swing tunes that made David Lynch a fan... merely added another gear. [Oct 2002, p.100]

By turns magical and maddening, it's with the house-tinged ambience of singles Breath and Love Can Damage Your Health that they excel.

It's DIY-spirited, non-conformist and humourous, making this punk-war veteran's return a flavoursome treat. [Apr 2011, p.109]

When they're not trying to be someone else, these lavishly layered, exquisitely crafted songs add to the mystery of why The Veils keep missing out. [Jul 2013, p.112]

An afterhours ambience attending his salty evocations of vintage soul, R&B and rock and roll. [Jul 2014, p.117]

For all of its typical craftsmanship you can't help but wish it had more moments like the stark despair of My Rock, My Rope. [Oct 2018, p.119]

What raises Big Station above the ordinary is the ease with which Escovedo explores his place in the world, whether through love's hard fought redemption or life's barrel-scraping moments. [Aug 2012, p.97]

Midway through, the sound of Lowery and co's batteries running down becomes almost audible.

Having survived some rough patches, they've made adjustments and becomes as warm, robust and satisfying as a cuddle in front of the TV. [Dec 2016, p.111]

Recalling Kate Bush and the enigmatic chamber music of Penguin Cafe and North Sea Radio Orchestras, the way is full of mystic visions, and the deathly conclusion is bittersweet. [Nov. 2011, p. 127]

There's enough here to satisfy the faithful, if nothing to enlist new recruits. [Oct. 2010, p. 108]

Kaleide proves a little formula tweaking goes a long way. [Sep 2010, p.120]

The Western Lands is a little like My Bloody Valentine with the sound down low. [Oct 2007, p.109]

Not quite as organic as they seem, their perfection lacks taste despite its polish. [Jan 2014, p.117]

Compared to the Puppets' ornate '60s pop, Rascalize is straight Arctic Monkeys indie-rock, with echoes of The Coral. [July 2008, p.108]

It's a sound they now seem utterly at ease with, and the album is all the better for its confident, super-relaxed approach. [Apr 2015, p.111]

A sense of dread pervades throughout. [Mar 2013, o.101]

She's sometimes bogged down by her own weightiness, but Paradise won't stall her slow but steady climb. [May 2017, p.104]

Maybe it's simpy the case that, Cash and Rubin having done similar things together so often in the past, the magic and power ro move have worn off, only to be replaced by an uneasy feeling of exploitation. [Apr 2010, p.108]

At times the sound of Peter Hook eating himself, at its best - the epic, Hook-sung It's A Boy - Monaco display a powerful combination of emotionalism and bombast all their own.

He's let down by an anaemic production. [Jul 2014, p.118]

Pop Etc manage a couple of well-aimed arrows towards the heart. [Aug 2012, p.108]

The songs pound like jackhammers, there ate big choruses everywhere and mischief to spare. [Nov 2016, p.108]

Ultimately, Powell's capricious nature gets the better of him and as soon as he settles into a groove, as on the Factory Floor-like Junk, he sabotages it with a discordant sample-crash like Gettin' Paid To Be yourself. [Dec 2016, p.113]

A bold experiment with plenty of flavour. [Dec 2016, p.105]

A nice enough idea, but being much quieter and more pastoral, it is also somewhat anti-climactic. [Aug 2005, p.128]

Comes across like a refresher of the best mood music of the last 40 years. [Aug 2006, p.110]

Black Rainbows is the right album at the right moment. With its rich, layered sound and its hugely enjoyable preening, it is unashamedly Suede-esque. [Nov. 2011, p. 127]

The best parts of Hawk, where Capbell's voice slips around Lanegan's like a membrane and the duo assumes a single, menacing persona. [Sep 2010, p.121]

It's a solid return. [Nov 2007, p.137]

Hynes can't resist tinkering with the formula and a pair of incongruous rap cameos disrupt a sketchy second half during which the feeling develops that Hynes is still holding back some of his best ideas for stars of a greater magnitude than himself. [Jan 2014, p.118]

Now in his 78th year, all that know-how has been meaningfully brought to bear on this collection of vintage, Depression-era blues. [May 20009, p.112]

Admirably fresh, but perhaps too long. [December 2002, p.97]

Enjoyment of this LA tribute act's wilfully non-PC parody of '80s hair metal entirely correlates with one's familarity with Poison and Faster Pussycat's liking for double--often single-entendres. [Jul 2009, p.117]

Yet whatever they're singing about, be it bad donkeys, clouds or river snakes, they make a spine-tingling noise. [Mar 2011, p.106]

More often than not, the discordant swamp of cacophony Leonard has long brought to his work threatens to overwhelm the freeform joy of his compositions. [Dec 2018, p.111]

An album that seeks to pull you under from the off and that, by and large, succeeds. [Jan 2017, p.112]

From sterling ballads to punchy rockers, it's a classy set. But the initail post-Obama musings of Welcome To The Future already seem dated and, as ever, it's hard to know where the buyer will come from. [Aug 2010, p.124]

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]

Almost worth getting a hangover for. [Jan 2014, p.119]

This isn't an album that's really imbued with the sound of his own travels. that said, it's a warm, optimistic pop'n'roll record that is hard not to like. [May 2018, p.108]

He mostly enchants, squaring literary pretensions with the band's happy fate as indie-rock comfort food. [Jun 2018, p.113]

While 'Pop Art Blue' strays a little close to coffee table pop, it's an absorbing jouney. [Oct 2009, p.119]

It all makes for a strangely seamless collection, with enough moments of brilliance to excuse the lack of progression. [Apr 2011, p.114]

If there's a touch too much retrospective pastiche, there's also wit and mellifluousness. [May 2014, p.115]

Rising from the ashes of Nashville's junior punkers Be Your Own Pet, Echo Kid is a gloriously daffy collection of primal rock 'n' roll nuggets. [Dec 2009, p. 127]

Don't bet against them lighting up the indie firmament in 2011. [Mar 2011, p.106]

He still keeps the listener at arms-length, though, strung-out drones and an odd lack of projections suggesting this remains a work of intense introspection. [Jul 2014, p.118]

In The Lonely Hour starts promisingly.... The second half declines into self-pity, windy balladry and squeaky-strings-as-authenticity cliche. [Aug 2014, p.110]

Everything here sounds like a happy accident and that's part of the appeal. [Nov 2015, p.108]

Sande's second album doesn't always sound quite so revelatory [as her debut]: anguished intensity often masks a lack of musical spark, the draggy acoustic trawl of Give Me Something sounding like her namesake Adele at her least bothered. She is much more engaging when she operates at full-grown throttle. [Jan 2017, p.113]

Pleasant but unremarkable. [Apr 2006, p.116]

It's an atmospheric and absorbing piece, a deep, dark pool of music. [Mar 2017, p.108]

This needling sense of disturbance is impressive, but it's still a relief when they break the mood more dramatically on the choral interlude Tender Shoots or the swamp-dark swing of The Monaco, reassuring signs they haven't yet become too set in their monochrome ways. [Dec 2014, p.106]

This improbable return could almost be a relic excavated from their mid-'70s heyday. [Dec 2012, p.110]

Rejoice is sparse, just drums and bass, with Masekela's flugelhorn providing the fluidity and freshness that elevates it above the park kickabout it might've been. [May 2020, p.100]

It's good, but he's better as part of the Gang. [Jan 2014, p.119]

Not oversold, sensitively handled and direct, consider the tribute a success. [Feb 2014, p.112]

Though probably not the best place for the uninitiated to start exploring the work of this often brilliant and evocative musician, at the same time, songs such as the aching South rank up there with his best. [Jul 2019, p.110]

They've decided to jag in a radically different direction, aiming here for a shimmering gloom that's reminiscent of early Cure records. By and large, it works. [Jul 2016, p.106]

Outside Love presents a collection of dramatic, heart-on-sleeve love songs. [Jun 2009, p.130]

Hebden has a rare ability to make his delicate instrumentals engaging and unpretentious.

As a result, She Rode Me Down thunders along like a flute-propelled express train, Black Smoke is a foreground as they've been since their moment of near-glory Travelling Light and they somehow prised the elusive Mary Margaret O'Hara out of obscurity to duet on Peanuts. [Feb 2010, p. 112]

Instead of setting alarm bells ringing, One-Arm Bandit manages to be both playful and innovative in a '70s prog-rock kind of way. [Mar 2010, p.110]

There's something pleasingly nostalgic about this second LP from the Wirral's Hooton Tennis Club. [Dec 2016, p.1109]

Packed with lovely, unusual and attention-grabbing intros. ... Less heartening are his lyrics. ... Much of the record consists of its maker bragging about his sexual conquests with a dead-eyed disdain. [May 2020, p.106]

There's a compelling quality to mainman's Dave Simmonett's lonesome laments that ensures the attention rarely wavers. [Sep 2014, p.115]

Even when the spare, fractured arrangements seem a bit aimless, the girlish harmonies keep on charming. [May 2008, p.126]

His first album in five years is a very musicianly affair, stronger on feel than memorable songs but still a fitting vehicle for one who turns 60 later this month and has nothing left to prove. [June 2008, p.148]

Hedley makes no apology for his love of country's golden age, ad where naysayers might cry "pastiche," plenty more will be happy kicking up their heels on the hayride. [May 2018, p.91]

Here they lean too heavily on space-age boogie-rock. [Jul 2019, p.110]

On this debut LP they layer Britpop cheer with glam, funk, electro and Beach Boys harmonies, in a manner that's both tuneful and arch. [Jun 2009, p.123]

While Heartbreak Warfare and War Of My Life chug pleasantly along in their Police-lite way, and Taylor Swift makes the briefest of cameos on the bittersweet half Of My Heart, true inspiration, as ever, remains a conspicuous absentee. [Jan 2010, p. 120]

Settle Me Down is an elegantly executed ballad and Dark Waltz evokes Creedence Clearwater Revival at their finest, but the unspectacular Another Night gets bogged down in sub-Springsteen-isms. [May 2014, p.115]

Wiggy, long-sought after 1976 LP utilises the trills, parps and hums of the pre-digital modular synthesizer to walk the circuit board between easy listening and ambient weirdness. [Aug 2019, p.119]

The two-part "Metal Bird" is genuinely thrilling. They don't scale such heights elesewhere, but this is still an album that rewards perseverance. [Mar 2010, p.108]

She's A Witch's tumbling harmonies, the tessellating grooves of Dark Star and Bushe's surrealist lyrical skew help cast a dazed spell. [Jul 2015, p.106]

Having been dumped by their label, and in turn voluntarily dumped this scheduled third record's first draft, Simon Franks and Tom Disdale have taken their time, entice Madness's Suggs and Mike Barson into cameos and emergwed altogether stronger. [May 2010, p.112]

The Ataris transcend the four-square melodic thud of their contemporaries with a gentle melancholy and poetic ambition. [May 2003, p.98]

Alternately dreamlike and arresting, they've discovered a formula that realises the sonic sorcery always suggested by their name. [Jul 2014, p.119]

The tracks are all short, sketching atmospheric outlines before vanishing. [Aug 2018, p.116]

If his production has lost a little funkiness it's gained buckets of emotive power. [Aug 2013, p.100]

Snow Bound continues to showcase a jangled set of nerves and guitars. [Nov 2018, p.105]

Its best moments--Around The Bend, Traveller--are all about Wainwright, her elasticated voice and deft melodies. [Jan 2017, p.115]

Much of it is an inventive, hio-hop-inflected delight. [Jul 2006, p.112]

Big Troubles' flair for offsetting a gritty riff with a mesh of melodies is showcased throughout. [Nov. 2011, p.127]

The pattern continues, as vocal tracks alternate with instrumentals, building toward the 33-minute title track, an opus that contrives to be both ambitious and aimless. [Oct. 2010, p. 121]

This good-humoured set is sometimes a little too comfortable, but it's hard to gripe when they play Hoagy Carmichael songs 'Stardust' and 'Georgia On My Mind.' [Aug 2008, p.140]

They try full blown techno, then revert to indie dance type, suggesting they are still too esoteric to cross over, but, even so, this record widen their appeal. [Feb 2012, p.111]

There's a mesmeric quality to the layering of divergent sonic textures. [Mar 2009, p.98]

In other words, the man's a ham, but a terrific one. [Aug 2009, p.109]

Occasionally it drifts a little too aimlessly, as if recorded under the dulling influence of Prozac, but when she gets it right, she can be entirely, weirdly riveting. [Jun 2009, p.131]

Here Mascis's guitar playing remains as distorted--and dextrous--as ever, but here his songcraft burns as brightly as his fretwork. [Jul 2009, p.121]

Veteran art-punks reinvent themselves 35 years on. [Feb. 2011, p. 125]

It is lighter sonically than the Hendrix classics and laced with a handful of instruments that, despite spotlighting the guitarist's jaw-dropping fluidity, might be of limited appeal. [Apr 2010, p.127]

A record of elegantly woozy street-level songwriting that highlights the links between Dire Straits and Television. [Jul 2015, p.104]