Out of a dangerous, pitfall-laden area of song, she makes a variety of riches. [Jun 2015, p.48]

What's distinctive about Son is that it is more layered and inventive than Segundo and Tres Cosas. [#268, p.58]

The risky juxtapositions that mark his best work are critically missing. [#224, p.51]

Downhome and earthy, cut through with sensitivity and intelligence. [#229, p.58]

One of the year's best releases, remix or not. [#241, p.71]

Sometimes Liars sounds like a group whose previous sonic journeying has inspired a fresh look at the familiar. All too often, however, it's as though, having stepped outside the confines of conventional song, they can never believe in it enough to return. [Sep 2007, p.56]

Sol Invictus is a looser, more relaxed record than its predecessors, occasionally dropping into a lounge ballad mode that suits Patton's vocals. [Jun 2015, p.52]

Most of this material has a tense, enervating effect, despite the haziness of the sonic palette Field-Pickering favours. [Feb 2013, p.60]

Daze's exhilarating intensity is tempered by an undercurrent of grim pleasure in physical discomfort, worming under your skin like Tri Angle labelmate Rabit's similarly caustic "Pandemic." [Feb 2016, p.53]

With this score, Greenwood might have set out in the footsteps of the masters, but he ends up forging his own path. [Jan 2015, p.64]

The dryness of the recording is key, there’s an intimacy to everything that makes even the heaviest moments (“Skin A Rat”) feel like you’re hearing them in a dead room, and the shifts in tone from the punchy (“Sorry Entertainer”) to the plangent (“The Greatest”, “Tried To Understand”) and the gorgeous chorale-like (“Feminine Water Turmoil”) remain utterly convincing thanks to Ashworth’s miraculous voice. [May 2022, p.55]

It’s the genuine connection of Bowles, Toll and McMurry that makes it all bounce, which is hardly what one might expect from a banjo fronted group. [Aug 2024, p.48]

What unites them is the boldness of the material and their treatment of it. [Jun 2014, p.48]

No one, really, has taken their precise marriage of classic rock 'n' roll moves and steely cybernetic deformity further than themselves. [Aug 2014, p.53]

This analogy of applying interdisciplinary approaches to uncover a certain reality carries through to several aspects of the album, where a folding over of electronic and acoustic space circles in on and augments a broader understanding of sound. [Aug 2018, p.67]

The eight pieces here function as a drummer’s showcase, certainly, but Contact’s wilful limitations conceal an eclectic approach. ... Time spent immersed in Contact will reap reward. [May 2020, p.52]

The ten tracks are built on foundations of looped percussion and tight bass sequences, usually based around short, sharp and undeclarative sounds – synthetic rimshots and damped hi-hats rather than snares or kicks. While this can run into staid territory, as on the triphop shuffle of “One Two”, for the most part its subdued hardness accents the drift of Milton’s vocals. His delivery often overwhelms the matter of his lyrics in the best way. [Apr 2021, p.54]

To these ears at least, Rundgren’s finest since 2008’s Arena. [Jan 2023, p.75]

There’s no real sense of ebb and flow in concession to the album format, but Active Agents & House Boys ruts away enthusiastically throughout its 58 minute running time without any hint of flag. [Jun 2024, p.48]

One of the chief sources of the album's power is the value it assigns to the act of witnessing, of seeing and taking account of the most vulnerable. [Apr 2016, p.47]

The album's seven winding tracks, inspired by 1980s country, fit squarely within the impressionistic ambient country movement. But while its influences loom large, the album finds its strongest footing when familiar structures dissolve. [Oct 2025, p.53]

Several tracks differ little from versions on their 1987 Flying Nun debut Brave Worlds, but the instrumental rarity "Moonlight On Flesh" brings a welcome expansiveness redolent of a more modest Echo And The Bunnyman. [Dec 2014, p.57]

93696 is their sixth to date and, in many ways, it still sounds like music made to illustrate a theory. [Apr 2023, p.56]

The desire of the group to progress feels palpable here. [Nov 2015, p.55]

Many of Mike’s verses lost me, but when it clicks, and you can follow a thought through a few mutating bars, the effect is astonishing. [Aug 2021, p.58]

A highlty nuanced album which is at once razor sharp, and rich in new openings and possibilities. [#206, p.60]

He rationalizes the darkness of Trauma with the breeze and bounce of 1998's Rhythmalism, and the results are often downright hilarious. [Jun 2011, p.60]

Somehow unconvincing, it's like beach bar escapism spliced with an incidental tune from the TV comedy show The Mighty Boosh. [Mar 2015, p.60]