Superficially, Lovage is a continuation of the Handsome Boy Modeling School aesthetic that collides HipHop, rock and electronica into an ironic hipster epic. [#213, p. 59]

Banned is brimming with great ideas and fascinating sound – moments of gorgeous melodicism and soulful playing, all dressed in vivid sonic poetry. Lightman and Jarvis’s voices blend, stack and play off each other beautifully. [Aug 2021, p.58]

Extra Playful lives up to its title. [Oct 2011, p.63]

Every lick of synth, guitar or bass, let alone the vocal lines, is an earworm. [Nov 2014, p.63]

The slippery polyrhythmic music is a difficult terrain for MCs to conquer. [#253, p.57]

Ready To Die, in essence, a solid hard rock album, with all the good and bad that implies. [May 2013, p.59]

This extended incubation period has paid dividends. [Nov 2010, p.65]

[He] sticks to the basic formula: modernizations of the sort of proto-trap Memphis riot music that defined his early career... but never transcendent. [Nov 2013, p.66]

It's on tracks like the ethereal, 15 minute "Oh Shadie" where the group's acid washed sound really takes off. [#232, p.74]

A return to form, of sorts. Shifting from the dappled sunshine warmth of the psychedelically swamped “Away From You” to the black stoner sludge orgy that is “Shadow Of Skull”, the direction guiding LφVE & EVφL twists and turns like a bucketful of electric eels. [Dec 2019, p.43]

The unit sound tight and integrated. [May 2012, p.62]

This is Pole at his most expansive and communicative. [#233, p.69]

It's carefully constructed music that makes few demands but rewards close attention. [#244, p.69]

Earth Junk won't top any end of the year polls, but as another clue in decoding exactly where Hagerty is heading, a scrap with which to re-assemble a much bigger picture, it's essential. [Sep 2008, p. 51]

On paper, it's a strange fit. On record, too. [Jul 2013, p.52]

The jazz moments here are thin, singsongy, almost marcato melodies. [Oct 2012, p.64]

Abstract hiphop-heads might be turned off by the slick machismo, but others will have some good dirty fun. [Oct 2011, p.65]

It all makes for an album which is strangely boring; the baroque detailing becomes an inaudiable blur. [Dec 2008, p.65]

Sadly their rather airless space rock doesn't really lift off beyond a certain Ambient politeness. [#244, p.66]

Not enough of Drukqs confidently breaks new ground, and too often James falls back on the all too familiar dysfunctional jitterbeat which has typified Aphex output since 1996's Richard D James album. [#212, p.55]

As it is, Have Fun With God is never less than listenable but seldom more than vaguely pleasant. [Feb 2014, p.44]

Not a satisfying record, nor a fully rounded one, but one that suggests so much future exploration. [Oct 2018, p.56]

Musically, Ace Of Cups remains more or less faithful to the instrumentation and stylistic idioms of the place and time in which the band formed. ... Other songs on this sprawling debut tend toward the folksy, bluesy and disarmingly earnest. [Feb 2019, p.55]

Possibly their best.... Brave, bleak yet compassionate. [#225, p.77]

Crazy, tender and occasionally corny, Rundgren remains defiantly unpredictable. [Jul 2017, p.60]

Far from consistent, its best tracks are those unconcerned with hooks or choruses, maintaining a stealthy pace but humming with all the frantic, pristine detail of the best Future tracks. [Dec 2017, p.64]

Ultimately there's more to gnaw on here, and for all his admiration of astral jazz, the album title is apt. Ras may be gazing up at the stars, but there is solid ground beneath his feet. [Sep 2011, p.56]

Sadly few of his spiels impress solely on the strength of their content. [#235, p.55]

Le Tigre make a convincing case for synthpop as an instrument of liberation theology. [#248, p.58]

Promise Of The Real can't match Crazy Horse's lumbering majesty, but their youthful energy and sweet harmonies are infectious. ... The attempts at collage are pretty corny, with crows, pigs and bees all wandering into the mix. [Aug 2016, p.58]

Occasionally it threatens to work. [Jul 2014, p.63]

Rather than the sound of people battering against existing structures, Social Climbers exude comfort. [Sep 2011, p.58]

“Carapace” is one worth returning to, an agitated Pixies-style rocker that pogos up and down for three energetic minutes. Equally enjoyable is the kosmische inspired interplay wired into “Lurk Of The Worm”, together with the bolts of grunge that light up “Where Have You Been All My Life?”. Elsewhere some of Pollard’s songs can be compared to those of Peters Gabriel and Hammill, two distinct guiding voices who can occasionally be heard whispering in the hull of this inflated blimp of a record. [Mar 2019, p.52]

If nothing else, these [political] elements give Liberation a darker hue. [#240, p.67]

Good, clean fun. [Oct 2008, p.71]

The tracks here, presented with the intention that other will use them as a creative starting pint, nevertheless feel fully realised, evoking a succession of fleeting states and ambiguous atmospheres. [Dec 2014, p.57]

This album certainly achieves a kind of elaborated decorative wonkiness, but one wonders, as with Creed's paintings, what there is to return to after the novelty's worn off. [Mar 2014, p.52]

Z-Machines' output is lifted above the realm of gimmick by music producer Kenjiro Matsuo gathering a selection of artists to compose for them. [Apr 2014, p.62]

Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst sings over roughly half the album, but his melodies are about as memorable as weak tea. [Mar 2013, p.64]

With 16 short compositions across 40 minutes of running time, many of these pieces feel sketchy and structurally underdeveloped. Yet, there is a pleasing rawness to Bowness’s DIY production, which skews towards electronic pop, flavoured with post-punk and industrial. Bowness’s honeyed voice brings a measure of vulnerable gravitas. [Nov 24, p.55]

Moore responds by occasionally holding on to his riffs, exploring their textures before returning to chop and grind mode. Such moments help break up the pair’s machine-like momentum, which in places makes tracks blur together; some actually sound like reprises of each other, somewhere between natural motifs and a well of ideas running dry. But the thrill of Moore and Hayward’s best right hooks and body blows justify the amount of punches thrown. [Dec 2017, p.55]

The only problem with Politics of the Business is that there are too few of the loose ends and lateral leaps of, say, Three Feet High. [#232, p.69]

Get Lost is no worse (and no better) than 2010's Living With Yourself. [Oct 2011, p.56]

The more they change, the more ADULT. sound the same: pared down electro pulses, synth jabs with industrial elbows, and Nicola Kuperus’s passive-aggressive post-Slits lilt. [May 2017, p.61]

Despite their brevity, each track articulates a complete piece; they’re eventful miniatures, not sketches. But while they are sufficiently eventful to engage, the lack of someone to play off of deprives this music of the sense of an emotional stake that arises from White’s decisions to challenge or facilitate someone else. [Jun 2024, p.57]

While this collection of songs is indeed tremendously soft, too many vibrations are swept under the rug of Taylor's voice. [Aug 2014, p.58]

Hitting (unintentionally?) a vein of 1990s retro, evoking Beth Orton/Andrew Weatherall/William Orbit and inventing Highlands Balearic. Campbell only really pushes the envelope on a couple of tracks scribbling fluorescent acid bass through "Weeping Roses" and stitching AFX escape velocity linear drum programming under "220Hz". [Sep 2025, p.63]

Much of this fascinating, infuriating record is defined by his commingling of HipHop, Electro, dancehall, and, most problematically, stadium alt.rock... Some of it is just odd enough to work. [#209, p.62]

This album does suffer a mysterious drop in its energy levels midway in. [#249, p.50]

Tracks like "Huis Clos"... can drag... And the garage rock of "(I Wanna Be) Waiting For My Plane" is an unwieldy cross between early Sonic Youth and Two Lone Swordsmen's axe-men incarnation. [#253, p.69]

There's a subtle psychedelic twist in these phony hits that somehow renders the best of them compulsively listenable. [Oct 2012, p.64]

They're entering into new territory now and have yet to push as far out as they need to. [Nov 2016, p.62]

It's an extremely listenable record, full of stray moments of delightful mischief, but it's as innovative as a favourite old armchair. [1/2001, p.63]

A beautifully realised collection, Around is remarkably ego-free -- perhaps too much so. [#266, p.67]

They most definitely lack a soloist. Yet the way in which these sunkissed survivors pull together is touching. [Jun 2012, p.42]

The closing title track is a full ten minutes of ethereal synth drift. Tucked between these are a couple of neat facsimiles of the kind of mellow handclap bounce heard on Dance Floor Corporation’s scene-setting 1990 Ambient House compilation. But there are some clunkers too. [May 2023, p.54]

[By "We Dream Free"] it all starts to loosen up and swing a bit more. But even here it ends up treading water. [#269, p.42]

Off The Record's off the cuff feel would probably appall his former comrades but it lends the music an appealing immediacy. [Mar 2013, p.48]

Regional Surrealism has a quality familiar from Ghost Box releases and from Boards of Canada's discography. [Jul 2012, p.70]

A tight action trio who have screwed their collective anger and frustration into a balled musical fist and let fly. [Feb 2019, p.58]

More than a covers album, this is a cathartic reminder of pop’s revolutionary power. [Oct 2021, p.55]

Some handle the group's distorted guitars with a squeamishly light touch in the pursuit of sleek House and Techno. [Apr 2012, p.68]

The Saga Continues is a somewhat unwieldy collection of Wu offcuts with seemingly no concept. Less an album than a collection of outtakes. [Dec 2017, p.64]

Much of Lil BIG Pac concerns his experience behind bars. It would be eerily prescient if the criminal system weren't so predictable. [Aug 2016, p.63]

A series of one-dimensional tracks, produced by Dean Hurley, that at their best sound like a karaoke outsider artist running though some vocal exercises. [Aug 2013, p.54]

For the most part it works, weaving a dark atmosphere of foreboding and dread through the songs. [#240, p.68]

Preparations is a tediously uneven listen that drags on despite its 31 minutes running time. [Oct 2007, p. 63]

The moody bits are surrounded by so much that is abstract that their affective properties seem a matter of happenstance rather than expression. [Mar 2015, p.46]

Bozulich's gloom is top quality gloom, as far as that goes, but nothing here lights up the heart like [2008's] Voyager's blistering "Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space." [Sep 2011, p.51]

For all his power as a motivating force it’s perhaps inevitable that Ye proves weakest of the first four. Left to his own devices West sounds bewildered, somewhere between awe and exhaustion. [Aug 2018, p.63]

The overall effect may be part shamanic dance to the thrum of the universe part 1980s arcade game, but All The Way exploits the transcendent powers of both. [Sep 2008, p.50]

Drift is thoughtfully and firmly wistful, an acoustic fireside plainsong with odd interference from a distant radio and neurotic strings (“Sleep”) or, in the vein of a Yankee Tindersticks, practising delicate odes to the simple pleasures of touch, free time and, perhaps, the timefree. [Mar 2018, p.50]

Drumming that starts off in a motoric groove warps into something way more minimal and amateurish, something undanceable, yet difficult to resist at least shrugging along to. [Aug 2016, p.59]

Though it may not feel exactly pleasurable, it most definitely connects. [Sep 2014, p.72]

This is classic David Grubbs--which is to say a joy, but also that it's unbashedly disparate. [Apr 2013, p.50]

There’s a kind of manic, excessive inventiveness here, as if the song needs just one more bridge or a doubling of the refrain to sustain its ideas. Yet on closer inspection they are often internally samey. [May 2020, p.53]

Measurable, replicable perfection has never been Smith's raison d'etre and Re-Mit--their 30th studio album in 37 years--possesses all the eccentricity of the group in their early pomp. [Jun 2013, p.49]

The skill and charisma of Mosaic sometimes goes too far.

The result is an often awkward assemblage of trial and error decisions that either allow the tracks to keep their era’s verve or attempt to punch things up in a modern sense, where the cut-off date is the mid-90s. ... All is not lost, though. It’s insightful to hear where Davis was heading with sleek arrangements such as “Give It Up” and “Maze”. [Dec 2019, p.65]

Even in the midst of the fairly wretched Phase Two there are gems but you sure have to dig for them. [Feb 2016, p.54]

It's a series of blows that fail to connect.... Taken on its own terms, divorced from the genre to which it owes its existence The Ark Work's dogged pursuit of incongruous juxtaposition can be hugely entertaining. [Apr 2015, p.53]

These heavily layered, smoothly produced compositions emit occasional warmth, but coolness is the prevailing order; the intricacies of arrangement demand admiration but fall short of engendering a more heartfelt response. [#204, p.68]

What's lacking on Date Of Birth, though, is any sort of excitement. [#212, p.75]

Work (work, work) is a sophisticated response to a reality paralyzed by consumerism. [dec 2011, p.56]

Those who find Anticon's selfconsciousness and self-flagellation a bit hard to stomach may be able to digest Odd Nosdam's maddening instrumental collages. [#230, p.71]

They were the first on the block with this particular subgenre and are still in front of a massive paxk following in their wake. [Dec 2008, p.72]

Keef [has] formidable talent for writing hooks (and tracks) that are both naggingly catchy and strangely joyless. [Feb 2013, p.61]

Crazy Clown Time is like a sound painting of oddball modern USA done in the style of Old Weird America. {Nov 2011, p.62]

The group's love and knowledge of folk and psychedelia is really to the fore on this collection, as they unravel both and knit them back together in bolder, even wiggier patterns. [Jun 2011, p.57]

Some might find the group's repetitive grooves too smooth a match for all Smith's spewing. But his bark infects everything around it. [Nov 2011, p.58]

Like Urge Overkill or The Velvet Monkeys at their grossest, Trans Am's genre exercises don't stand up to close scrutiny, but as a dim soundtrack to your next beer bust, you might want to bring it on. [#220, p.66]

Given the sprawling length, naturally it's not devoid of a few stray gems and curiosities. [Oct 2011, p.60]

It all sounds very loose and off the cuff, but any positive sense of spontaneity is sabotaged by a delivery so careless it borders on the sloppy. [#229, p.68]

Aside from the odd flurry of inconsequential Afrobeat-inflected guitar, the style of Someday World is middlebrow session fare. [May 2014, p.61]

Some of street rap's brightest new talents appear--Chief Keef, Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan--and wear their Gucci Mane influence proudly, each in their own distinctively warped ways and yet all brimming with exactly the joy that their progenitor has generally lost to age. [Jul 2013, p.68]

They stick to their strengths--menacing songs about breaking peoples noses and such. [Jan 2012, p.70]

Hebden is clearly striving for dancefloor impact--but Reid's drumming is so untethered and, frankly, messy, that it sucks the explosions out of whatever bombs Hebden's trying to drop. [Dec 2008, p.60]

Those who lost interest after Tha Carter III may want to start paying attention again. [Sep 2015, p.57]