Marks a radical departure in its scope and overall sound.... Unwound have reinvented their music as Progressive hardcore, framing abstract conceits in rock solid structures. This brave, ambitious record retains its edge in a blur of invention. [#206, p.76]

Female defiance and desire in a glossy, dystopic package. [Jan 2018, p.77]

Gabriel’s not trying to be clever here, he’s being sincere. And because I favour savoury over sweet, I can strongly recommend the Dark-Side Mix which has more room to breathe, a fatter bottom end and weirder edges all round. [Jan/Feb 2024, p.84]

Production wise, [Have] You In Wilderness is a touch too diaphanous and gauzy, a few tracks in, you start craving something solid to hold on to amid the clouds of billowing strings.... It's a testament to Holter's songwriting ability that this doesn't fatally mar the album, but it would be appreciated if her future work demonstrated a greater sense of its own physicality. [Oct 2015, p.54]

She mostly succeeds at marrying that [transcendent black pop] to a sound that’s broader and more accessible than anything she’s put out to date. [Jul 2018, p.53]

Fetch sinks below the high water level of conscious synapses firing to collapse perceptions of time and warm the sheets of the subconscious. [Aug 2012, p.48]

Across the album woodwinds and brass establish the atmosphere, allowing Callahan to revisit some darker parts of himself with the safety of knowing that everything will be fine. [Dec 2022, p.64]

GNX plays like a extended victory lap. None of the year’s singles are included, references to the beef are scattershot and subliminal but its embers suffuse every preening boast and putdown. There’s no need for big conceptual flourishes of previous albums. This time around Kendrick is the concept, his creative intensity manifested as weaponised normality. .... From thereon [“Wacced Out Murals”] it’s a rap masterclass. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.86]

Ultimately, these elements mostly serve to contextualize some beautifully conceived programmed music within an edgier club culture. [Jul 2012, p.62]

Throughout In These Times McCraven displays a preternatural ability at composing outside of 4/4 time, his oddly metred pieces built upon ear-catching melodies and dynamic rhythmic interplay. ... In These Times encompasses the fire and natural eclecticism found in the best contemporary jazz.

Time Indefinite feels closer to a documentary soundtrack than a regular solo album. And it tells a poignant story. [May 2025, p.63]

It is a fine, unnerving album. [Mar 2016, p.45]

MBV is a successful return. [Mar 2013, p.49]

Circle’s ability to fuse distant or disparate modes and styles is part of what makes their music so compelling. Where attention might before have been generated out of the way it all fitted together, the tension here is more about viscerality, more about the vocal and guitars tearing through your body than seeping into your brain. [Sep 2017, p.48]

When she laughs that she’s never read Robert Greene’s self-help manual 48 Laws, not only is she declaring her album a bullshit-free zone, she’s redefining priorities for 21st century grown-up rap. On this form you have to hope her approach prevails. [Nov 2017, p.70]

It’s a joyful noise, for sure. [Oct 2023, p.50]

Finlay Clark and David Kennedy ride a similar wave to improv duos like 75 Dollar Bill or Orcutt/Corsano, recalling their own thrilling work on 2020’s Fast Edit. The sliced mayhem of that set is missing here: instead, the group seem to have spent the years working on stitching themselves ever more tightly together. [Jun 2024, p.58]

The sum is Ocean’s most thorough reading of his world to date. [Oct 2016, p.65]

Albums like this serve as a stark reminder of the UK scene’s capacity for reinvention in place of stagnation. With a start as strong as this who knows what direction Glacier will take next? Whichever way she goes, we should gladly follow. [May 2025, p.67]

Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sees Cave at his wittiest and most relaxed, though perhaps also most detatched. [Apr 2008, p.53]

There may only be nine tracks here, but it’s like there are worlds upon worlds to explore; Strom had a knack for making every note feel special. [Feb 2021, p.55]

The record is a meditation on masculinity, both lyrically and musically. But it is a sombre, barely lustful masculinity that growls and shrieks and howls and tells stories here. [May 2017, p.52]

Cocoon Crush is, partly, the album that you’d imagine Future Sound Of London’s Lifeforms might have become if they’d had a million times the processing power at their disposal. Poised and composed. [Dec 2018, p.45]

A general choogle drives most of the songs, the production tends to suppress any heavy metal impulses, while the dense arrangements also neuter Dawson’s gnarled improvisational guitar style, so extremes are essentially cancelled. It’s the most normal sounding record I’ve heard from either party, but the singer can’t help but entertain even within these surprisingly prim surroundings. [Dec 2021, p.48]

There have been so many reissued and remastered releases throughout The Beach Boys’ career that even the most dedicated completist might grow weary at the prospect of another. However, the tracking sessions on the third and fourth discs, and the alternate versions and rarities on the fifth, are significant additions to the band’s officially released discography. [Sep 2021, p.69]

While Haram was a bit heavy on the neo-noir vibes, Test Strips bustles with dynamic turns, and guests inspired to step out of character. [Oct 2023, p.51]

The trio crowbar open new fissures in metal’s ever-shifting tectonic plates with five astonishingly powerful songs, each imbued with its own magic and mystery. [Jun 2021, p.54]

Despite its self-effacing title Workaround comes not as an afterthought to the above, but as distillation and progression, its 14 tracks at once crisply compelling and filled with playful delight, honed by minimalism and absorbingly complex, a constant 150 bpm that’s the opposite of metronomic. [Feb 2020, p.46]