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]