No band should by rights sound as sharp, melodic and funny more than 50 years into their career, but Sparks are no ordinary band. [Jun 2020, p.113]

An inescapable sense of conviction makes it transcend nostalgia. [May 2016, p.106]

There isn't a song here that isn't a low-key delight. [Jun 2016, p.111]

Everything I sNew is an inspired volte-face that gives second albums a good name. [Jul 2009, p.128]

From start to finish, it's moving and beautiful stuff. [Jun 2015, p.105]

Relatively speaking Home Economics finds a much warmer and more colourful band at work. [Jul 2015, p.112]

It'd be easy to throw the "emo" tag at them, but Matt Pryor's approach has more in common with the disarming honesty of Weezer's Rivers Cuomo than mere whinging. [Nov 2002, p.100]

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

There's plenty of regret and "emotional disgust," but it's applied with piercing guitar lines that resemble a soppier Interpol. [Mar 2004, p.112]

This is a record that demands what's left of your time. [Aug 2015, p.107]

The result is his slickest and best-produced record yet: all warm beats, electric piano and weeping, reverb-y pedal steel. [Nov 2018, p.113]

It's one still stamped with his own sound, a sonic approach that, even at its most drowsy, threatens to blow the walls down. [Oct 2014, p.104]

Politics seldom sound this heartfelt and honest. [Oct 2017, p.108]

Music of stark, placid beauty. [Apr 2005, p.121]

For such a heavenly record, an all-star cast makes perfect sense. [Jan 2020, p.108]

The first section--an intoxicating invocation of sea voyages and Bacchanalian rites--is richly instrumental, the second an otherworldly swirl of chants and ecstatic song that couldn't have been made by anyone but them. [Jan 2019, p.106]

A rousing and defiantly modern revolution in sound. [Mar 2020, p.119]

It never sounds over-considered or a grab for mainstream success, but rather the joy of an artist relishing new territory. [Feb 2019, p.106]

The tension between invigorating, often exhilarating joyful music and disconcertingly bleak subject matter may be one hardwired into hip-hop tradition, but J Hus's innovative, genre-defying style and evocative, elliptical lyrics prove it can still be an intoxicating combination. [Apr 2020, p.107]

This is a record marked by its elegance, pace and excitement. [Jun 2015, p.110]

Beneath the hazy romance, California sunshine and chamber-pop sheen lies something less blithe and breezy. ... Quite the trip. [Sep 2020, p.108]

These are deftly executed songs that regularly throw out unexpected curveballs within their Gorky's Zygotic Mynci-like bounce. [Sep 2017, p.109]

It's angry, piss-yourself funny, bursting with ideas and endlessly quotable. [Aug 2015, p.107]

Unlike their forebears, they are never guilty of over-stretching their songs, ensuring Syd Arthur supply lushly brocaded pleasure throughout. [Jul 2014, p.102]

Overall this is brain music of remarkable potency. [Aug 2003, p.102]

What could so easily be just another folky Americana album is lifted high above the norm by the sheer strength of Porterfield's quite brilliant songwriting. [Aug 2013, p.96]

Unlike other wannabes, Pink shares Madonna's two best assets: a keen eye for the next collaborator to further her cause and the ability to sound like Pink no matter what shape her cause takes. [Dec 2003, p.133]

An exhilarating workout for mind and soul. [Dec 2015, p.103]