At her best she's thrilling and her hits with Timbaland, 'The Way I Are' and 'Scream,' still cackle brilliantly, but at 70 minutes there's too much flab and the ballads drag horribly. [Jul 2009, p.124]

There's stirring emotion to 'Pale Horses' restrained mournfulness and the soulful vocals on the minimal 'Walk With Me,' though it can sound as if has a button on his laptiop that wafts this stuff out automatically. [Aug 2009, p.108]

It's exhausting but charming. [Aug 2009, p.104]

All We Need is a lot more powerful, and a heap more fun, when it aims for transcendence. [Dec 2015, p.112]

There are also welcome flashes of their own identity. ... At 14 songs, however, that saccharine sheen starts to grate a little. [Aug 2020, p.102]

Whether Faust is actually music has been debated since their 1971 debut, but whichever side you take, it's brilliant to have Peron and Diermaier still asking the question. [Jan 2015, p.125]

A wasted opportunity. [Dec 2016, p.109]

Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine is still their touchstone, with dreamy vocals almost obliterated beneath washes of distoortion on "I Just Want To See Your face" and "Reprobate!," but they also thorw curveballs. [Apr 2010, p.119]

Duets guns unerringly for lounge-y stasis, swerving any trace of the funk, grit or bile which make Morrison such a unique treasure.... Criminal. [May 2015, p.108]

Sometimes his curious fusion works. ... Sometimes it doesn't. [Feb 2020, p.115]

For every riveting set piece... there are meandering nonentities such as the title track. [Mar 2005, p.98]

This ragbag of an album suggests the tying up of loose ends before impending reinvention. [Jan 2008, p.118]

It's pulled down by too many mid-paced ballads and inordinate length. [Aug 2017, p.104]

Long-awaited debut from the sweary Brooklyn collective. [Feb. 2011, p. 120]

Music this uplifting, this inspirational, belongs among the stars. [Dec 2011, p.120]

The orchestral pieces with their abrupt phrasing and lumpen scales, merely sound like one of those conceptual "jokes" no one except artworld insiders are in on. [Apr 2014, p.105]

As ever, songs veer between the nigglingly infectious and cliched slush. [May 2003, p.109]

Old school, but somehow not old hat. [Feb 2009, p.113]

1990s show more ambition on the follow-up. [May 2009, p.107]

Lyrical concerns are accordingly way less uptight and conceptual. [May 2013, p.99]

Catastrophically, she's given up her trademark fruity sex rhymes, which leaves just mundane braggadocio and an unhealthy obsession with her ex-lover, Notorious BIG. [May 2003, p.109]

Predictable, but not unpleasantly so. [Feb 2007, p.105]

It's atmospheric and even moving, but sometimes feels like drowning slowly in a flotation tank with The Bends playing on repeat shuffle. [Sep 2016, p.111]

Sadly, Better Nature is the sound of a band barricading themselves into their own comfort zones. [Apr 2016, p.115]

A sombre listen, but a rewarding one. [Apr 2013, p.103]

Just Because, Youth and Poverty and the simmering Finale show there's genuine craft here too. Thrilling. [Feb 2011, p.117]

West Coast eccentrics' second ambitious offering. [Sept. 2011, p. 104]

The result is a mighty leap forwards. [Jun 2010, p.128]