The Understanding raises their game, mainly with its careful attention to one key musical detail: great tunes. [Aug 2005, p.132]

Replacing buoyant guitars and boy-girl dilemmas with dark themes of religion, parenthood and death, this [album] is a bridge to grittier material, albeit that with a glittering pop-rock handrail. [Nov 2011, p. 143]

Get What You Give is angular, immediate and littered with booming breakdowns. [Aug 2012, p.102]

At times, all this loose-limbed craziness can become tiresome but like an excitable friend dragging you onto the dancefloor by the sleeve, they make it very a=hard not to join their party. [Apr 2013, p.97]

Heroic. [May 2015, p.100]

While there are sprightly, smooth-cheeked moments--the bumptious riff of Blue Velvet, for example--there's a draining lack of invention or novelty. [Sep 2014, p.106]

The problems are compounded by the sheer awfulness of some of Jones’ lyrics.... What often redeems them is the music. On that front, Stereophonics have undoubtedly progressed...

[A] measured and thoughtful set of intelligent pop tunes. [Oct 2003, p.114]

Despite a clutch of well-crafted songs, the results are hit and miss.

The quality often drops, making for an intermittently engaging album. [Nov 2002, p.100]

Slipknot make one hell of a racket, an abrasive amalgam of death metal blastbeats and bestial grunting. [Oct 2001, p.130]

An epic backdrop for that next Pacific Coast Highway road trip. [Jun 2005, p.102]

The best record of the three record of the three recorded with his new and far younger band Promise Of The real, it veers between raw fury an tender melodies. [Feb 2018, p.110]

For the most part, this is a pastoral, frequently beautiful folk record, spiked with the odd unexpected diversion. [Feb 2013, p.112]

Much of the incidental music fulfils its purpose by occupying the background, but the band manage to inject real drama into the majestically discordant, Sonic Youth-influenced 'Spearing The Sunfish,' while the peaks and troughs of 'Boy Vertiginous' should appeal to Mogwai fans. [Jul 2009, p.117]

They're much more at ease losing themselves in power-pop harmonies on Lazy Bones and embracing '60s garage on Stop When The Red Lights Flash. [Jan 2013, p.108]

As rock, soul and funk steep together, the overriding sense is that Kravitz would prefer to be the leering loverman than the seer. [Oct 2011, p.124]

It's lacking some of his scabrous wit, but this is Merritt's most enjoyable album for years. [April 2012, p.101]

By its very nature, Father Of All... is slight compared to a sprawling magnum opus such as 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, but it's close to impossible to emerge from its rapid-fire near-half-hour without a smile on your face. [Mar 2020, p.112]

Bainbridge reveals himself here not as an exhaustingly pseudy hipster but rather a songwriter of singular depth and emotion. [Nov 2014, p.114]

Monstrously heavy, full of tense, nervous energy. [July 2011, p. 120]

A constant sense of discovery makes Colored Emotions an easy record to keep returning to. [Apr 2013, p.107]

The music itself, a combination of gentle piano and tremulous, echoing synth, is mesmerisingly samey, like scenery rushing past your car window on a long road trip. [Aug 2017, p.102]

Crazy as ever, then, but still just about in an endearing way. [Sep 2016, p.108]

At times The Ship's Piano seems like one long love letter... laced with sentiment and heartfelt thanks for life's greatest gift. [Nov 2011, p. 135]

Hardly new territory, but there's enough melodic might here to suggest the six-piece might find success on a path already well-trodden by The Killers and others. [Nov 2013, p.105]

It's a sound that can be as unsettling as it is melodic but at its best its hypnotic and all their own. [May 2014, p.108]

Enigmatic, but still worth puzzling over. [Feb 2016, p.111]