The album is consistently fast-paced, a simple but effective trick to amp up its pop thrills. [Mar 2022, p.46]

Diehard metalheads will continue to grumble, but Opeth are never going back to their old sound, and with Sorceress they’ve proved the wisdom of their choice. [Oct 2016, p.57]

The only drawback to this semi-collage approach is that many tracks are too brief. [#256, p.51]

Double Figure is as good as anything they have done. [#207, p.65]

It's the most vibrant and vital he's sounded in a long while. [Nov 2014, p.64]

It's not just Hertz's technical nous that makes Flatland so compelling, but his commitment to forging something lucid, plastic and expressive, music that blurs the line between hyper reality and the topsy-turvy world of imagination. [Dec 2014, p.51]

Rich and resonant. [Oct 2016, p.61]

Washington can flirt with bombast and kitsch, but his commitment is undeniable and the tunes are great. [Oct 2017, p.68]

Where Tuttle takes a more detached standpoint he’s less successful. Perhaps attempting to mimic corporate blandness, “Cambridge Drive Shopping Centre” mixes field recording of shoppers with a dogged guitar motif to fast diminishing effect. For the most part however he keeps cynicism at bay, a welcoming guide to his kingdom of everyday beauty. [Jul 2020, p.53]

A remarkable turn in the road for a remarkable composer. [Mar 2021, p.55]

Where NO was extreme in its attack, W opts to let the group dream, as a more acoustic angle is explored – with Wata’s ephemeral vocal being an ever present guiding spirit force that trails like incense smoke through the songs. Things eventually kick off, however, with “The Fallen”, a time-tested metal guitar dirge with an electronic sting in its tail that effortlessly reverts back to Boris at their amplifier worshipping best. [Feb 2022, p.58]

What makes this Johnson’s most compelling album to date is its unexpected emotive clout. In submerging the melodic substance of the songs in rolling drones, it is able to approach almost undetected and slink away with guile. [Mar 2022, p.50]

Smith and Unthank magnetise throughout with their combined vocals, even on unaccompanied songs such as “Captain Bover” (the story of Tyneside press gangs), melodically entwined, but contrasting soft and rugged. [Feb 2023, p.59]

Thankfully it offers something much more than the sum of its parts and references. It speaks to our present moment with a yearning generosity and the kind of deep knowing that only comes with age. [Mar 2023, p.51]

Lines like “History repeating itself” and “She never lost hope/When life was so hard” feel a bit generalised – the sentiment might have benefitted from a more nuanced or poetic approach. Overall however the decision to give the heroic and celebratory a wide berth is a sound one, making way for something much darker and more unsettling – a reminder that doing the right thing in times of widespread fear and conflict is seldom easy. [May 2024, p.49]

With nowhere to hide, her voice is revealed as an equally fine instrument, informed by previous interpreters such as Sandy Denny, Anne Briggs and Jacqui McShee, but with an earthier, softer edged quality. [Mar 2025, p.48]

While it was surely a blast to see Styles hoofing it in person, the busy clatter of the tap shoes translates to an audio recording with only limited success. .... The seven Monk tunes presented are well chosen favourites, tackled with wit, verve and a subtle sense of invention that never strays too far from their origins. [Mar 2025, p.45]

Small images ground these drifting, elusive, probing songs, providing moments of recognition and stillness, before they push off again into the mist. [Aug 2025, p.54]

Kamaru expertly composes in a broad field. The sounds he favours are expansive on their own, but together they narrate an impossibly vast space, offering a lingering glimpse into the composer's ability to work within constraints. [Mar 2026, p.52]

Sounds as if it could have been recorded in the city 50 years ago with a hotshot producer like Bones Howe or Curt Boettcher at the helm. ... “If You Don’t Know Now, You Never Will” might be the best example of this delicate balance, with the track “Fools” being the second; even though that song sometimes leans into mid-1970s schlock territory best left to Boz Scaggs or Andrew Gold. [Jun 2019, p.65]

A further cover from that era, Corrosion Of Conformity’s “Loss For Words”, features alongside three previously unheard songs by the teenage group: “Methematics” stands out as a twisty prog-thrasher with shades of Voivod. It still amounts to a bit of a frippery, and one doesn’t have to look far to find a fan of the band cheesed off at Mr Bungle doing this rather than writing a follow-up to 1999’s California, but they don’t owe anyone anything. [Dec 2020, p.52]

It builds on themes and ideas introduced earlier in a clear and discernible way. ... No Era Sólida is more organic and less definable. [Sep 2020, p.49]

Their second album offers something new and exciting. Their music is intricate and complex but also intense and fierce with bold, contrasting sections. [Aug 2021, p.55]

This is the first music that feels genuinely post-referendum. [Jan 2015, p.68]

Armed Courage, while enjoyable, isn't really a record anyone's gotta hear. [Sep 2013, p.50]

Dense, frustrating, perplexing and fun on record, Demdike's sound works best when bleeding osmotically into strange visuals. [Jan 2017, p.63]

Written on a piano and organ instead of guitar and featuring a 24-piece ensemble of strings, winds and brass, -io is the purest realisation of Fohr’s pop sensibilities. [Nov 2021, p.50]

Volume 3, produced by Ben Frost, shades closer to songwriting in places, as Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and other guest on harmony vocals. [Apr 2013, p.57]

Never merely texture, just noise or dumb repetition, but always, instead, living and intelligent music. [Nov 2011, p.63]

The Caretaker's music works best as a static pattern amidst digital flux. [Feb 2012, p.56]

Borders is Emptyset’s Fury Road--both heavier and cleverer than the trilogy it follows. [Feb 2017, p.47]

Somehow the music manages to be deeply exotic and familiar at the same time. [Jun 2014, p.50]

Bachman probably spent more of Almanac Behind’s production time processing sounds than strumming strings. [Jan 2023, p.61]

As Quelle Chris reverts to esoteric form on Deathfame, one can’t help but miss the sustained melancholy of Innocent Country 2. But there are plenty of delights here. [Jul 2022, p.53]

Where the previous two explore themes around rebirth and grief, Trappes’s vocal fills Penelope Three full of redemption and hope. On “Red Yellow”, synth lines swoop and sink despondently into the mix, but Trappes’s vocal is ascendant and bold. In places, this ability to draw striking emotional clout from delicate shoegaze-y soundscapes recalls Sophia Liozou’s 2020 album Untold. [Jul 2021, p.69]

The methods of its creation are the most interesting thing about Melk En Honing, but the music has impact and staying power. [Aug 2015, p.48]

A terrifically engaging collage of incompletion and one of the most blazing returns of 2021. [Dec 2021, p.59]

Big Joanie have developed immeasurably since their debut and it’s a joy to see them, if not quite reaching their full potential, then imparting a genuine sense of what that fulfillment might entail. [Jan 2023, p.62]

Children's voices soften and lift the sound, not with nostalgia but with unvarnished purity. Even the darkest tracks have this sense of movement: "Endgames" trudges on a low, stubborn pulse until bowed strings and harp flourishes nudge it into tentative radiance. The album becomes a procession, carrying its own weight into a brighter place. [Jan/Feb 2026, p.88]

A perfectly pleasant pop record that at its best recalls the likes of Glassjaw (“FKA World”) and Hurl. [Oct 2023, p.56]

It is psychedelic in the best sense of the word, evoking constant movement, but a motion that is always interior, burrowing deep into the psyche of listener and player alike. [Mar 2017, p.52]

When the beats are sparse he shines, but the album bloats in its middle with too many R&B assisted dramatic gestures and not enough dead eyed and cracked crack music. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Just as these wise, bittersweet, intimate and wry songs and poems about love and the everyday have a life of their own beyond being haunted by the Nick Drake legacy, so too The Unthanks’ quietly scholarly interpretation of Molly Drake has a distinctive and nuanced self-assuredness. [Jul 2017, p.54]

By the time you’re through to the end of the album, Negro’s precise refusal to have bullied you with his ideas means you’re happy to return to the beginning and let that sunlight in again. Central heating for kids. Lovely. [Mar 2019, p.57]

The results are gorgeous. [Apr 2019, p.54]

Infinite Love itself feels like the sonic equivalent of the iTunes Visualizer: pulsing forms, growing in complexity, before turning in on themselves and shooting off in another direction. [Nov 2010, p.62]

Oh Me Oh My is at its strongest when exhibiting an everyman quality comparable to that of his street level sculptures. [Mar 2023, p.52]

The utter rubbishness of Britain, its cruelty, inequality and blatant cultural crapness is once again perfectly captured by Sleaford Mods, a couple of middle aged blokes who are as grizzled and worn as the stuff Williamson shout-sings about. [Apr 2017, p.57]

Some of the lesser tracks are near indistinguishable from other over-hyped post Hypnagogic Pop projects.... But such fumbles are rare. [Sep 2013, p.52]

Musically and lyrically, A Ghost Is Born is translucent, weightless, supernatural, capable of drifting back and forth across rock'n'roll's state lines at will. [#246, p.61]

The combination of Robert's artistry and the exemplary ensemble backing him means the album succeeds in being a renewal. [Jan 2013, p.63]

Despite the dubious company he keeps, McMahon's ambient folk pop remains beguiling. [May 2014, p.70]

Released on their freshly launched record label Keck, Giant Swan is a front-loaded beast. ... The second half of the record loses momentum, danceable rhythms outweighed by slow motion drones and jagged noise

These are songs with enveloping atmospheres that dramatise their lyrics with crisping, gasping, blinding, thundering, quietly screaming sound design. [Nov 2022, p.60]

Cale remakes Nico’s trademark harmonium sound using electronics, imagining a future or celestial version of her. The effect is both moving and ghostly – a highlight of this typically imaginative album. [Feb 2023, p.46]

The prevalent mood is restless and defiant, with the vulnerability found on earlier albums swept along by a sense that this time they're both lovers and fighters. [Dec 2014, p.57]

Pastoral serves to expose the casual but forceful villainy of Robinson and his ilk while emphasising one of folk horror’s core themes: that people are the scariest monsters of all. [Oct 2018, p.53]

Sweet Heart Sweet Light isn't the best thing to bear the Spiritualized name but when Pierce aims for epic emotion as on "Get What You Want," his affectingly plaintive vocal sandwiched between Visconti strings and buzzing organ, the continued potency of his vision is evident. [Mar 2012, p.65]

Lyrically, Mm.. Food is the best of the three albums released by Daniel Dumile this year. [#250, p.73]

I Phantom could prove to be one of the most consistently rewarding HipHop records to land in 2002. [#223, p.52]

A pleasurable collection of comfortably played, understated, slightly skewed songs with smart lyrics. [#214, p.52]

Poorly sequenced instrumental epics and rap cuts leave Something Wicked sounding disjointed. [#217, p.56]

The Omnichord Real Book isn’t for Me’shell Ndegeocello new jacks or the musically light hearted, but for listeners who aren’t afraid of taking a musical journey with no straight path. [Jul 2023, p.58]

Moments of levity arrive in "Cherry Blue", "DIS" and "Waterfalls" but overall the album's evenhanded pacing creates a strange unease. It seems governed by the temporal logic of its samples, as if Lopatin were intent on preserving their integrity rather than reshaping them. The emotional resonance that usually grounds Lopatin's work feels somewhat displaced by this formal precision. [Dec 2025, p.54]

The gift that this record has offered him is the gift of being who he is once again. [Jul 2012, p.59]

Others have their own versions of slow, simmering beauty, but rarely with so many other approaches and conceptions integrated. [Jun 2012, p.54]

Charged with relatable warmth and an emotive, human energy that’s close to 2003’s For Octavio Paz or a less melancholy version of 2005’s School Of The Flower. [Dec 2021, p.47]

Springtime’s music feels free, but never carefree, full of spontaneity, acidity and momentum, sputtering in a thousand different, noisy directions at once. [Dec 2021, p.56]

Not a radical departure, then, but a very satisfying development of Reich’s totally distinctive stylistic approach. [Jun 2022, p.52]

The vibe is hedonistic and dancefloor oriented, blending influences from techno, house and electroclash. The songs are horny, with lyrics occasionally stepping over the cringe line (“Oh yeah, you want it?”). Fortunately the album is also full of bangers. ... Diablo is a fun listen, but you might want a shower afterwards. [Oct 2022, p.40]

Pitiless, but ultimately forming a sanctuary for Xiu Xiu’s irredeemable sadness, Ignore Grief might just be their most startling record to date. [Apr 2023, p.63]

His curatorial vision is matched by vocals which have never sounded so assured and impressively soulful. [Apr 2023, p.58]

Dreamy stuff for sure, but tinged with a lingering sense of nightmare. [May 2023, p.60]

[“Vapours”] is brilliantly executed and, in places, genuinely frightening. Yawning drones and hissing percussive swells open the gates to chaos in “Of Shadow And Substance”, an epic 21 minute churn of layered tape loops, cello and bass strings, harp and percussion. .... The piece is more haunted and atmospherically dense than its predecessor, however both pieces share a remarkable sense of immediacy.

The resulting blast of raw energy successfully sucks the air out of the room to leave a hard rock sound that has been stripped to the bone – in a studio performance that deserves to be lauded as the UK equivalent of The Stooges’ Metallic KO aftershock. [Jul 2025, p.61]

He spins an engrossing narrative in short spans of time, packing songs with layers that are felt when they're not immediately perceived. [Nov 2011, p.63]

Although some of its best tracks are undeniable, PLAY ME's signs of the times are for established Gordon-heads only. [Mar 2026, p.50]

It's pervaded by numbness, claustrophobia, pain intensified to the point of dissociation. [Jun 2012, p.49]

Offend Maggie is the sound of a group mind at work, deep in spontaneous collective play--but a kind of play taken very very seriously. As it should be. [Dec 2008, p.58]

On their sharply delivered follow-up, they delve into darker realms of the genre utilising the combination of abrasive though sparsely used guitars and dub inflections to exhibit something similar to This Heat, or maybe even present day British noise rock collective Gnod. [Jun 2019, p.65]

This is Smith’s most essential non-Fall work since his collaboration with Inch back in 1999. [Apr 2020, p.60]

Although Lee Perry’s name will probably sell more copies of Guide To The Universe, New Age Doom are what makes this album worthwhile. ... With everyone involved recording their parts remotely, the result is impressively coherent and live-feeling. [Dec 2021, p.54]

To expand simple love songs into extravagantly gilded showstoppers is to risk lapsing into bombast. But for all their love of musical saws and [Jonathan] Donahue's quavering voice, Mercury Rev are unashamedly grandiose, and their references may be too in thrall to the rock hegemony for some. [#210, p.60]

Closing track “Alone Together” is the exception, with its laidback 70s groove. Otherwise there is a rich sense of eerie detachment, more Eno than disco. Not a desolate one but a widescreen richness of field recordings, sweetly echoing synth tones, spoken word interludes, plaintive wheepling of birds and clarinets, ghostly acousmatic sounds and layered vocal harmonies. [Mar 2025, p.46]

[Bachman] offers a pretty good idea of where he's coming from. If it sometimes feels like the stream of America pimitivist fingerpicking artists is neverending, Bachman does at least apply his digits to a variety of instruments. [May 2015, p.56]

There’s no stridency, special pleading or chewing of scenery, just gentle enactments. This is what folk music used to do before Volk became toxic. Malkmus represents his characters via traditional techniques. [May 2020, p.54]

Musically, the songs favor stripped-down and straight ahead garage rock production values, often driven by organ chords. [Jul 2013, p.65]

The sonic scribbles of Kid A are far more stimulating than their regular grind.... Along with Primal Scream's Exterminator, Kid A is a vital work. Anyone remotely interested in contemporary music should listen to it at least once. [#201, p.59]

This recording attests to their powerful rock credentials. [#201, p.63]

Everything about the record--the pacing, the choice of sounds--reveals a mature, careful hand. [Dec 2012, p.77]

Something about its balance between geometric elegance and genuine emotiveness gets at the heart of what makes him a great composer. The playful movement lends a sense of humanity to the structure, and the structure lends rigour to the dance. [Apr 2018, p.60]

Xiu Xiu’s music compels you to empathise even if you cannot fully relate to it. The poignant, pulsing curves of “Piña, Coconut & Cherry” bring this perspective into focus: “You must love me, love me, love me, you are mine, this is mine”. [Oct 2024, p.60]

Immaculately interwoven electronics and the care with which each beautifully recorded track unfolds recall Chicago post-rock. [#254, p.53]

It's a genuine pleasure to hear an ensemble this aesthetically united working at such a high level. [Nov 2016, p.61]

Gojira once again let loose their own brand of fury on the world. Fortitude is a tightly executed example of the way their songs are propelled as anthems – emblazoned metallic sound banners flapping loudly in the gale they have summoned up. [Sep 2021, p.62]

I Shall Die Here's meeting of stark electronic textures and rhythms with monstrous guitars evokes Godflesh's Pure. [Apr 2014, p.63]

Sonnet isn't as compelling as Hymnal, with its fine balance between abstraction and form, but it's an illustration of Meluch's abilities as a skilled purveyor of rural psychedelia. [Jun 2015, p.52]

Equal parts joyous and depressing, Distracted is a painfully timely exploration of the psychological and social implications of our tech and media-saturated world. [Apr 26, p.58]