Approaches the psychedelic grandeur of Spiritualized or Mercury Rev at their finest while still offering a wealth of carefully placed sonic detail. [#229, p.71]

Given her capacity to align reinvention with a developing maturity, the 13 lucky songs of Stories deliver a complex text. It is certainly less frenetic, as if Harvey is finding new ways to exert her presence. In addition, its thoughtful spaces and pauses suggest room for doubt and manoeuvre. [#202, p.49]

Like remembering the loading sound of a ZX Spectrum or the incidental music of Teletext, the feel of these tracks provokes an odd nostalgia for equipment, now superseded and obsolete. [Apr 2019, p.72]

Sometimes being broad hits just as much as a sharp observation. Allbarone is a fun balance of the two. [Oct 2025, p.51]

Ultimately, [“418 (Stairs In Storms)”] cannot avoid ending with a muscular crescendo, but those preceding moments of tranquillity provide the pinnacle of another excellent Mollestad record.

The various elements at work on these five finely etched pieces rarely settle into any single pattern or vibe, but they also never feel like pastiche. It’s all music for the trumpeter – whose playing has never sounded more mature and exploratory – and every component of the music is as rigorous and evolved as his own vision. [Mar 2025, p.44]

Building a strong, solid foundation for his skyscraper of words, the rapper channels everyone from Malcolm X to James Brown into a mountainous manifesto of beautiful blackness that is reflective of the struggle for dignity and equality, while also working towards the banishment of stereotypes. [Jan 2017, p.61]

Jurado's spare, edgy songs are miniature masterpieces of mood and character. [#229, p.68]

The sonic diversity and range of Magdalene is a marked departure from the breathy triphop of LP1, yet a thematic trajectory is clearly traced from the suggestive sensuality of the first to the combative provocation of its follow-up named after a defamed biblical figure. [Nov 2019, p.54]

Banhart mixes a relaxed bearing and a tense vocal delivery in a fascinating manner. [#245, p.51]

In the end, Vespertine commits its magic by daring to go places more obvious and more human than one would have ever expected. [#210, p.52]

The album is imbued with the expectant, febrile energy that comes with having forged ahead into unknown spaces with out the means or desire to backpedal. [Jul 2015, p.58]

There is still a sense here of a group magisterially marking time, shying away this time round from any grand, rhetorical, countercultural purpose. [Dec 2007, p.63]

Even when the songs aren't motivated by anger or frustration, they have a drive and a momentum that's breathtaking. [#256, p.52]

Throughout the album Nas sounds engaged, and his choices are unbeholden to the whims of the market. [Jan 2023, p.78]

It’s up there with their debut as an introduction to the Goat sound – a sound that seems even more pertinent and gloriously openended the further we’ve come from its first explosion. [Sep 2021, p.68]

A sparkling set that traces a number of lines through Haiti's musical patrimony. [Mar 2014, p.66]

What drives each track home is the tight focus of the playing, riffs and ideas, each one the clockwork fuse on a ticking time bomb. [Oct 2015, p.60]

In many ways this is his finest outing since The Boatman's Call. [#247, p.55]

This could have been camp on a Himalayan scale. Its strength is that it's anything but. [#255, p.51]

As hinted at by the title of its opening piece “Cliffwalk” the album’s forays into new sound worlds suggest Williams is poised on the edge of a fresh chapter, testing newfound powers. [Nov 2024, p.

It evokes so many emotions in a single track, and wrestling with its bittersweetness affects you in the gut. [Apr 2012, p.67]

Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting and vocals have never been more inclusive yet forebodingly sui generis, sealing that simultaneous conviviality and strangeness that makes Big Thief’s music so addictive, and the band have got tighter and warmer from the years of touring that preceded the album’s creation. [Mar 2022, p.42]

Landless’s four singers Méabh Meir, Lily Power, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch spin tightly woven harmonies with crystalline precision over beds of drones. However the album is less doomy than might be expected from a Murphy-produced album – or maybe it’s just that these voices sparkle with light and life, even as they sing about encounters with death. [Aug 2024, p.52]

A thrilling affair. [#252, p.63]

The songwriting and lyricism are strong, but her storied voice elevates the album and invests it with a depth and serenity that few can match. [Jan 2019, p.64]

This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]

The parsimoniously arranged, mostly acoustic sound of the record enhances its projection of intimacy. ... Callahan doesn’t entirely give up his old taste for blankly delivered disturbance; his memory of childbirth includes the blood. But he’s never sounded so open or so genuinely happy. [Jul 2019, p.48]