A superb piece of work. [Apr 2002, p.117]

There's no doubting their enthusiasm but it seems Death In Vegas have compiled a list of great cult albums rather than actually making one themselves. [Oct 2002, p.102]

Sounding rusty before even seeing daylight, Deep Down & Dirty is as enticing as those other averagely pleasant 1992 albums currently taking up valuable drawer-space in the back room.

Their voices lock in dense, close harmonies on the likes of Listen, while We Know What It Means is as gorgeous as songs about 3am baby feeding can get. [Sep 2018, p.113]

[The title track] like the rest of this exceptional LP, works fine as one chapter in an elaborate concept opus, but is just as satisfying for those with both feet in reality. [Jul 2013, p.98]

Things go awry soon after ["Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart"], though thanks to a less-than-sparkling production from Brendan O'Brien and Cornell's overly sentimental lyrics. [Nov 2015, p.106]

The sugary 'Fever Dreams' and 'Little Bombs' sound threadbare, while glib homilies would shame the writers of Hallmark cards. [Dec 2007, p.115]

It's when Pentz dials it down that it gets interesting. [Jun 2013, p.101]

It leaves less room for their more usual fluid melodies, though both Nails and Best Friends And Hospital Beds recapture their emotive sensibilities. [Feb 2013, p.104]

You get the feeling even the band think the joke's wearing a bit thin. [Jan 2019, p.106]

The LP's monotonous back half leaves Jackson running to stand still. [Apr 2020, p.111]

Their sixth album has everything you should want from a rock group: riffs, daring ambition, big choruses and a bit with bagpipes in it. [Mar 2013, p.103]

Situatiion finds him returning to his roots, growling out stories like a hip-hop Tom Waits within the framework of an album very loosely inspired by momentous events of 1957, most effectively on the sinuous 'Lipstick.' [Dec 2007, p.112]

This eclectic follow-up finds him embracing the diversity that made Sebadoh so exciting in the '90s.[ Nov 2009, p.101]

Its 18 tracks somewhere between the ghostly dancefloor sway of Fever Ray and modern classical composition. [Jun 2011, p.120]

Fans of Owl City and The Postal Service will relish such good clean fun, quite literally when Dadone warbles, "Don't let the bathwater get too high" on Starring. [Oct 2010, p.107]

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]

While Maya certainly shows no diminution of sheer sonic ingenuity, it suffers from a shrinking of the spirit. [Aug 2010, p.112]

Adele's songs possess an ageless classification. [Mar 2008, p.105]

The songs struggle to cause any real emotional damage. [Nov 2015, p.108]

Fortunately, the game of spot-the-influences swiftly gives way to more complex pleasures. [Apr 2013, p.113]

Eucalyptus is a carefully constructed illusion of random perceptions, an apparently scattered psyche coming together beautifully. [Aug 2017, p.102]

As ever, the Californian threesome's pervasive wackiness is matched by a breathtaking sense of musicality punctuated by Claypool's manic basslines. [Nov 2017, p.112]

Another French fancy, then, though one likely to appeal only to those with more rarefied tastes. [Jan 2014, p.127]

She does more than enough to establish herself as a contender. [Mar 2011, p.112]

Irresistible. [Feb. 2012 p. 107]

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

Largely the results are first-rate. [Jun 2010, p.132]

While Head First more than delivers on its title's promise of instant sensation, like an uncorked bottle of champagne, it inevitably loses its fizz. [Apr 2010, p.110]

There's a sense that he's trying to pass off a lack of ability as some kind of artistic statement. [Aug 2009, p.113]

The result is somewhere between a Badly Drawn Boy and a strung-out Paul McCartney. [Dec 2004, p.135]

Whatever her technical gifts as a vocalist, there remains something chilly and self-satisfied about the woman's brand of soul-baring that makes it awfully hard to swallow. [Jul 2003, p.108]

Instead of the darkness and foreboding that infects Johnson's original '30s recordings, we get a thoroughly gentrified version of the blues. [May 2004, p.100]

Mercifully, the original Let It Be remains on sale. [Dec 2003, p.146]

Mixes his distinctive whinny toothlessly low. [May 2006, p.131]

It's confessional late-night fare but the warmth of Fink's soulful voice is captivating. [Jun 2009, p.121]

Shallow Life finds them adding substance, specifically Evanescence-esque mass-appeal anthems tailor-made for radio. [Jun 2009, p.119]

Ellipse is typically facinating and frustrating. [Oct 2009, p.112]

This Boys Noize-produced return is nothing if not perverse. [Oct 2010, p.108]

With singer Jim Adkin's genuinely inspiring vocals and thoughtful lyrics separating them from the herd, there's much more life here than might have been expected. [Nov. 2010, p. 111]

While they never quite manage to better the decayed teen-idol horror-pop of Deerhunter, another band preoccupied with the thin membrane between dreams and nightmares, at their best they keep the listener from Playing I Spy with their influences. [Mar 2011, p.107]

London "ravestep" duo make vividly raucous debut. [Sept. 2011, p. 115]

Simultaneously melancholy and charming.[March 2012, p.112]

It's still fun scuzzy garage rock, and that'll do for most for now. [May 2012, p.98]

Strange, but strangely compelling, too. [Jun 2012, p.97]

The San Francisco band plum for a gleaming Bright Lights, Big City sound that instead evokes visions of Crockett and Tubbs. [Jun 2012, p.111]

There isn't quite enough to genuinely stand out from the crowd. [May 2013, p.98]

Clearly her reinvention was a step worth taking, though it might have been more radical if she'd truly struck out on her own. [Aug 2014, p.108]

While Black Moth's back-to-basics approach to riffing may invite the term "stoner rock," that implies a lethargy of mood, and of mind, that simply isn't there. [Oct 2014, p.104]

It's imaginative, if profoundly unbalanced. [Mar 2015, p.109]

Theyesandeye articulates a positive, only slightly idealised ecosphere of the sea, birds and vegetation. [Sep 2016, p.111]

This is a warped beach record tailor-made for heads' holidays. [Sep 2018, p.118]

Joyous and rammed with hits: it's worth the wait. [Oct 2018, p.111]

There is a pleasing wide scope to his source material. [Mar 2019, p.116]

Four may be too diffuse and rough around the edges to qualify as a knockout comeback but it shows a band relocating their purpose and promise by changing their habits. [Sep 2012, p.96]

With a surfeit of samey country-rock ballads, Not Too Late ultimately proves rather a long haul. [Feb 2007, p.98]

The feel is of youngish bucks cruelly taunting their 64-year-old granny. [Nov 2004, p.127]

Their first full album polishes some rough edges down to a soft-focus burr as synths eddy away in a fog of sound that is often only given direct form by the haphazard beats beneath. [Dec 2010, p.113]

Pretty much everyone sleepwalks through a cabaret mix of standards and new songs. [May 2013, p.102]

His forth album is accessible, furnishing his glitchy sound with nagging hooks, funky flourishes, and some proper tunes indeed. [Feb 2009, p.115]

Oddly compelling, even if the coldwave atmosphere seldom rises above freezing-point. [Aug 2013, p.101]

Songs swerve through ranting country, Celtic balladry and doo-wop. And you have to raise a glass to anyone who dares defile Like A Rolling Stone by redirecting its venom inwards. [May 2018, p.114]

There are questions over his naive writing, which often relies on hokey wordplay, but the horn-filled arrangements, his driving Stax-fuelled band and that voice carry him through. Just. [Jun 2010, p.131]

The [album] may be icily impressive ... but long before the end you're left wishing that 2:54 would occasionally pull back the curtains and let a little sunshine in. [Jun 2012 p.96]

Nothing scary or difficult ever happens. [Feb 2003, p.96]

Her most rounded album.... However, many lyrics have taken a sudden, baffling turn into mystical territory making this two steps forward and one back. [May 2003, p.114]

Recaptures their hallmark bright-eyed power-pop sound while rarely scaling fresh heights. [#184, p.135]

Lavigne displays a musical guile way beyond her years. [Sep 2002, p.109]

Pretty yet inconsequential, like a collection of half-finished spy film themes. [May 2004, p.108]

A sublime collection that surpasses its predecessor. [Apr 2004, p.121]

There's too much instrumental cleverness to get to grips with the theme. [Nov 2004, p.118]

No longer ahead of his time, he has a deft enough touch to keep irrelevance at bay. [Jan 2003, p.120]

Peace Is The Mission feels like too much of a splurge to be enjoyable right through. [Jul 2015, p.109]

More often than not, The Ponys end up stranded in a morass of pointless guitar static. [Apr 2007, p.121]

Living Thing, equally lovely and contrary, is somewhere between the two [albums, "Young Folks" and "Seaside Rock"]. [May 2009, p.116]

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

While it's less draining than some of his earlier work, it still speaks the language of lamentation. [May 2012, p.99]

They adopt a slightly wider palette of influences on the follow-up, with mixed results. [Mar 2014, p.116]

It's a stripped-down and straight-ahead rock record. [Apr 2014, p.121]

Red Flag is both consistent and memorable. [Jun 2016, p.108]

Holland's fragmentary syntax, rendered in a variety of heavily treated voices, rarely proves as mesmeric as the music. [Aug 2011, p.116]

The fun doesn't always translate to the listener. [Jul 2012, p.113]

It's a good sound, and he has past form here. [Apr 2014, p.120]

Elson's theatrical but appealing voice adds genuine drama to the darkly brooding Stolen Roses, while the title track is a handsome murder ballad. [Jul 2010, p.133]

It's thrilling stuff and a reasonable guide to where the Klaxons are heading with Surfing The Void, this dense, doomy, psychedelic album with its tough punk edge. [Sept. 2010, p. 112]

This wonderfully bleak record exists in a cocoon of early-hours introspection, with melancholy guitars rippling around the pair's half-whispered vocals. [April 2012, p.105]

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]

Step Back is better when Winter plays it straight. [Nov 2014, p.120]

It's all over long before the lack of variety can become a problem. [June 2008, p.148]

Tired Pony have given side-bands a good name. [Aug 2010, p.121]

They've deployed four singers, reined in their more cinematic flourishes and gone for a punchier approach. Those four singers inevitably mean a lack of cohesion. [Feb 2015, p.105]

Some may scoff at the limited musical palette on tracks such as the La's-like Lazy Love, but beneath the bluff exterior beats the heart of a great pop band. [Jun 2018, p.109]

Errol makes the listener work for its pleasures, but they're worth it. [Apr 2020, p.112]

Odludek feels more like a mixtape than a sole artist's work. [Apr 2014, p.107]

The vocalist work fine but instrumentals like Tempest and Velcro demonstrate that Rustie's personality is plenty big enough on its own. [Oct 2014, p.118]

A quarter of a century on, that still holds, right down to the same old ponderous rhythms, Daniel Ash's screaming guitar fuzz and Peter Murphy's ridiculously portentous vocals. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Piano-led ballad rock songs tell their own story of heavy-duty emotional drag but Hansard's voice carries such weight you can forgive him. [Jul 2012, p.102]

On the down side, it's a record that fails to keep pace. [Aug 2002, p.133]