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]