As a calling card, it's as close to perfection as the title suggests. [Jul 2016, p.109]

Beauty that can slice down to bone: double-edged and deep. [Jul 2016, p.108]

Only Break's lapse into unreconstructed arena-rock strikes a jarring note. [Jul 2016, p.107]

File under soundtracks to mescaline days and animal sacrifice nights. [Jul 2016, p.104]

It's all a bit of a mess, with even more arresting efforts--Julia Holter's seraphic turn on These Creatures and Swipe To The Right's giddy Cyndi Lauper-assisted disco--sounding like they belong on different albums. [Jul 2016, p.109]

IN Memory he finds his most reflective tone--the hurt still keening, but distant enough now to bring a gentleness and fluidity to his thought. [Jul 2016, p.111]

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]

It's an album that will send you to sleep, and to dreams of another dimension. [Jul 2016, p.114]

The thing that's missing from Detour, though, is emotion. [Jul 2016, p.110]

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

Tahabort, however, soon kicks up a rousigly Fela Kuti groove, and there follow divergent echoes of Saharan folk and, on the band's titular tune, Algerian Rai, to vary up the ever-pleasing dusty meanderings. [Jun 2016, p.112]

The songs become more conventionally meaningful, but less mysterious [on the disc of English interpretations]. [Jun 2016, p.108]

Only the occasional squalling, free-jazz meltdown gets in the way of letting the good times roll. [Jun 2016, p.114]

Aladdin could more properly be called Peter Pan, the work of a boy who never really grew up. It doesn't help that it comes with a sickly, stoner-friendly concept attached. [Jun 2016, p.111]

It's seamless, silly, but seriously good stuff. [Jun 2016, p.113]

This wonderfully sleazy chunk of dirty, dangerous rock'n'roll gets Stuart firmly back in the game. [Mar 2016, p.115]

There is too little variety on show and the lack of breathing space is more likely to induce mild claustrophobia than any genuine excitement. [May 2016, p.118]

This is an album you need to be enveloped by--the louder it is, the better it sounds. [Jun 2016, p.115]

This is magnificent. [Apr 2016, p.105]

Those raised on the Jayhawks' best Work Tomorrow The Green Grass and Hollywood Town Hall, will still go home satisfied. [Jun 2016, p.112]

A supremely confident collection from an artist just gearing up for greatness. [Jun 2016, p.111]

It's hard to recall specific songs once they're over and the tracks not sung in French puncture the atmosphere a bit, but overall, oil lamp projector-lit vibe is an enjoyable one. [Jun 2016, p.113]

The big indie-rock of Sleepy Hallow is beaten in the chirpy stakes only by the vaguely Afrobeat of This Little Sister while McIntyre's melancholy of old takes on Titanic proportions for the pleasing Why Do They Go So Soon. [May 2016, p.113]

Most of these versions bear only the scantest similarity to the originals. [Jun 2016, p.116]

Their most exceptional record yet. [Jun 2016, p.115]

Fever Dream's AOR and folk stylings see Watt picking over the bones of his life, ruminating on such themes of love, loss and family in a wry, wise and unsentimental manner. [Jun 2016, p.117]

The two have a great dynamic--potentially even a special one--its just not fully realised here. [Jun 2016, p.108]

It's easily five songs too long. ... But for the most part this is a nostalgic flashback to Santana's golden age. [Jun 2016, p.115]