Laced with a shot of self-doubt that has it coming on almost like an electroclash Exile On Main Street. [#244, p.69]

This is a complex, affecting work by Ishibashi, but listeners are advised to seek out the film to experience it in context. [Jun 2024, p.50]

At the heart of the album is a propensity for pop, memorable and simple – but Vanishing Twin are at their strongest when this impulse collides with an equally powerful drive towards texture and sensation – witness the propulsive “In Cucina” for example, or the furtive “Tub Erupt”. [Oct 2021, p.56]

Lighten up and wallow in aural filth as Siifu and Liv.e preach on keeping shit clean. Allow such a space for the exquisitely sloppy breaks and moans to work their magic and sudden bursts of clarity, urgent insights. [Jan 2021, p.87]

This is a synth album of considerable finesse, a soundtrack to imaginary films. [Nov 2016, p.67]

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]

It's spiritual chamber music, mythopoetically encrusted, captivating and terrifying at the same time. [Sep 2014, p.55]

Ultimately, the album aligns more closely with the 1990s power pop and alt rock of Sugar – and those influenced by them, such as The Thermals and Ted Leo – than the posthardcore of Hüsker Dü, but easily bests all of Mould’s previous releases that did the same. [Apr 2025, p.55]

Oh Death snaps them back on track right from the opening, where drips saturated with fuzz and wah on the sizzling “Soon You Die” are flung forward by a swirling guitar solo. Meanwhile, the group’s vocalist becomes a proper mistress of ceremonies. ... The chiming piano and guitar licks of the closing “Passes Like Clouds” suggest that Goat have finally rediscovered their true selves. [Dec 2022, p.54]

Lamp Lit Prose sparkles with ideas even as it gets its groove on with a more developed version of his electronic R&B album last year. Everything here should be too much but with several albums under his belt, somehow Longstreth can as easily shift from one style to another as run them both at the same time. [Aug 2018, p.65]

It's one of the most personal recordings from any of the three collaborators. [Sep 2012, p.63]

The production on Carnival OF Souls is particularly vivid. [Sep 2014, p.58]

The Beach Boys and Merseybeat stylings are still present, only without a single note wasted; every gesture, shaker, blurp of synth, bubble of spring reverb feels deliberate and functional. The songwriting benefits from this directness, striking an effective balance between chipper pop hooks and more introspective, often sombre lyricism. [Apr 2025, p.56]

This new album manages to project an even simpler and more accessible surface with extraordinary depths of reference and feeling, even a track dedicated to Begum Rokeya, the Bengali feminist educator and author of the extraordinary genderswitching utopian fiction Sultana’s Dream. [Dec 2022, p.57]

It’s not just that this set feels way more focused and streamlined than the debut; the band have also been sharpened up by incessant live work to the point where Lally and Canty are murderously diamond-tight, and Pirog is flat-out incredible, encouraged by the sheer precision of what backs him to fly into some gloriously discordant fuzzed-up psych and post-punk abrasion. [Nov 2019, p.56]

Once this inward looking tendency was a strength; now it seems safe. [Nov 2016, p.68]

Screen Time is comprised of ambient guitar music, more often than not disinterested in rhythm and more focused on creating a feel and vibe that’s both haunting and cinematic. [Mar 2022, p.52]

Like every track on this EP, it's an incredibly precise and convincing reconstruction of mid-80s electro-pop that is nostalgic with out the obfuscating murk of H-Pop. [Nov 2011, p.70]

The album is the product of a consistent vision, synthesizing hip-hop's beat architecture and sound manipulation with bespoke funk playing. [Sep 2010, p.50]

We find reflective confessionals that are powerful and unexpectedly confrontational in their bareness. This is aloneness as selfcontainment rather than avoidance, honest emotions as seeking communion rather than victimhood. [Aug 2018, p.65]

For whatever accessibility that might be lost in the decision to eschew English lyrics is balanced by a fresh emotional immediacy. Arrangements are sparse and pristine, each sound serving a purpose. ... An album that witnesses Deerhoof at their most vulnerable and volatile. [Apr 2023, p.52]

Some of the tracks are dead ringers for math rock, but in Bishop and Chasny's hands that ornate form attains gut-level thrust. [Sep 2012, p.64]

One of the most intriguing aspects of the artist’s work with drones is their anticipatory quality, which makes it feel like time is standing still. Even in its noisiest, most overwhelming moments, Natur renders the world in slow motion. [Aug 2024, p.52]

Susanna's lucid singing shines through the thematic murk, and her instrumental settings are well-defined and ingenious. [Apr 2016, p.58]

Twelve Reasons deals in broad strokes rather than the collection of synapse-sparking details we've come to expect from this consummate trickster. But even in two dimensions, Ghostface is a phantom force to be reckoned with. [May 2013, p.57]

Triplicate’s greatest triumph is to strip cheap sentiment from the poetry by dimming the lacquer of the brass and muting the swagger of the singer, leaving the songs to crackle like revenant vignettes in the wireless of the mind. [May 2017, p.63]

Like her otherwise innovative Couldn’t Wait To Tell You, the 41 minute album has its inevitable longueurs (the abstract “Snowing!”). Otherwise it moves along with purpose and confidence. [Apr 2023, p.56]

Producers of Stranger Things, look no further: we have that second series soundtrack for you. [Nov 2016, p.70]