While there's throat-shredding fervour, it becomes a crazily overextended blur of goofy anthemics. [Sep 2015, p.117]

The music matches the rhetoric, and it's an undeniable triumph. [Jun 2016, p.109]

Electric is a first-class showcase for Thompson's spine-tingling solos but not the consistent song collection that was 2010's Dream Attic. [Mar 2013, p.110]

This is a record that opens up the time and space to think, picking up echoes, melting them down into something new. [Aug 2020, p.102]

10 tight tunes of heart, soul and intricate craftsmanship. [Dec 2016, p.105]

This is rock'n'roll at its most direct, fun and stupid-yet-deadly-serious. [Aug 2020, p.105]

While lyrically Kings Of Leon remain underdeveloped, how they've grown musically. [May 2007, p.119]

Redeemed, revived, irresisitable: it seems R.E.M. were only sleeping after all. [Apr 2008, p.99]

In the US, Night Time, My Time was the most exciting pop album if 2013. It will be hard to beat this year as well. [Mar 2014, p.111]

The album's dark Heart, though, is Forever, a mesmerising 13-minute-epic.... He's developing into one of UK electronica's most distinctive voices. [Dec 2014, p.107]

This follow-up takes on a conventional band set-up, but it's as impressive, offering a crisply original take on the classic singer-songwriter approach. [May 2013, p.109]

Led by a yearning frontman getting his Morrissey on, it's a debut that's boyishly and buoyantly charming. [Aug 2010, p.126]

This album is as comfortable with skittery beats and strikingly artful arrangements as it is with acid throb and super-sensual disco shudder. [Nov 2013, p.111]

At times her dark warnings about the devil and bluesy intonation sound affected, but full marks for trying out new ground. [Dec 2001, p.127]

Poignant and sincere, this is a Bill Callahan we could do with more of. [Jun 2003, p.104]

Part Jewel-with-tunes, part Tori-Amos-without-kookiness, it noodles, but only rarely.

Mostly brilliant and, most surprising of all, never pretentious. [Oct 2003, p.102]

They might have a shelf life shorter than a pint of milk but, with a good tune underpinning each over-egged slice of rock pudding, are all the more thrilling for it. [Aug 2003, p.104]

The effect is spoiled by noodly, indifferent tracks such as We Meet At Last. [Aug 2002, p.128]

{The Birthday party is ] more like an unfortunate scratch on what is otherwise a miniature jewel of an album and one of those rare side-projects that deserves a long life of its own. [May 2011, p.117]

These previously released 28 masters and 27 out-takes are yet another eloquent reminder that contrary to received wisdom, Presley's '70s were no creative desert. [Nov 2013, p.120]

Caustic Love is a truly excellent modern soul record. [May 2014, p.114]

Throughout, his control is masterful: spry on Make It Up, clarion and clipped on Grief Is Not Coming, familiar and uncanny all at once. [Aug 2017, p.105]

It's splendid listening, probably best appreciated horizontally. [Feb 2019, p.111]

A mix of '70s art-rock, hipster funk and sleek DeLorean pop. ... Shuman's loss is our gain. [Sep 2019, p.112]

The Big To-Do is the familiar mix of big guitars and off-kilter storytelling. [Apr 2010, p.120]

They're still relentlessly heavy, just less hypnotically so. [Jul 2013, p.111]

Fabulously vivid fourth solo album. [Nov 2018, p.106]