“Myopia For The Future” and “No Body” present similar augmentations that make the voice and its simulations indistinguishable from one another in their respective waves of swagger and cheery melody. Meanwhile, warped tones and looping bass melodies lift into the clatter of keys that almost – but not quite – resemble a rhythm in “Swordmanship”. [May 2019, p.59]

The somewhat dated style and sound of Nextdoorland gives it a charm wholly unaffiliated with any current scene or trend. [#225, p.77]

Better, Perhaps, to hear How To Dress Well as the latest in a lineage of lo-fi bedroom songwriting dating back to Sebadoh and Smog in the early 1990s, via Alexis Taylor, Antony Hegarty, Jamie Lidell even, and perhaps as far back as Green Gartside, and his would be soul diva falsetto. [Mar 2011, p.50]

Such excursions don’t amount to the group reinventing their personal wheel, but at just over an hour, this album is about the length of an average Necks performance, and at least as exploratory. [May 2020, p.58]

Deprived of fuzzy riffs, Domenic Palermo’s voice floats naked in a woolly, gentle sound, simultaneously confessing and recollecting. But from there on, they shift into higher gear, injecting doses of anxiety into colourful progressive dream pop and shoegaze bites. [Dec 2020, p.62]

Who Do You Love? may be a tacit admission by Norway’s Årabrot that they can push that sound no further. There’s an unlikely, boisterously garage rock vibe to much of this record, albeit larded with gothic drama by Kjetil Nernes’s vocal approach. [Nov 2018, p.65]

Hebden is a voracious consumer and producer of ideas, although there is sometimes the feeling, amid all this glut and gusto, that they're ideas for idea's sake. [#256, p.54]

Rendering his [Neşet Ertas'] sparse, haunting, saz-led arrangements in Altin Gün's electrified image does require a fair bit of upholstery, but they play with delicacy and poise, transforming "Bir Nazar Eyledim" into a remarkable kosmische pop ballad. [Mar 2026, p.60]

For those who appreciated the rigour of old, the new album might offer a challenge due to its lyrical sentiments and a base literalism that might be ironic. [May 2020, p.60]

EX is flawed yet enjoyable. [Aug 2014, p.56]

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]

The initial impression given by Death Valley Girls’ third album is of a hypertypical Los Angeles band: kinda punky, kinda raucous, but wholly beholden to the rock canon, in the style of past-decade LA outfits like The Icarus Line and The Warlocks. Multiple spins of Darkness Rains don’t refute this, but do reveal an undeniable spirit and likeable energy. [Nov 2018, p.65]

The transitions are typically brusque, though a few feel unsatisfying, creating drops in tension. [May 2015, p.58]

Abomination mostly tweaks the speedy punkoid templates minted by early Wire and Black Flag. It's a challenge to find novelty within this terrain, and one wishes Dwyer had tempered the yobbish bellowing. But "Sneaker" succeeds thanks to Hellman's exhilaratingly woozy bassline and Dwyer's florid synth solo, and after launching in a "Mr Suit"-like blur "Fight Simulator" shifts into a Can-like mantra with sped-up "Vitamin C" beats, guitar scree and warped synth. [Oct 2025, p.59]

The songwriting is strong.

Very rewarding, although Blueberry Boat is perhaps too heavy a tome, lyrically, to be quite the right starting place for those new to the group. [#249, p.55]

Exactly how delicately balanced their chemistry together is becomes apparent on the two solo albums that round out this three disc set. Both are decent in their own right but pale in comparison to the group disc. [Jul 2018, p.62]

The skill and charisma of Mosaic sometimes goes too far.

Though he's lacking some in terms of identity and he'll probably never be a technical monster, he benefits from the same instinctive ability to ride a beat's pocket that rapping producer predecessors like Large Professor and, yes, Dilla himself possessed. [Nov. 2010, p. 66]

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

Filled with ghosts; confessions; jokes; an abundance of Jay-Z features and a prodigal son offering explanations for his disappearance and return. [May 2020, p.65]

Lindstrøm is better able to keep everything the right side of good taste, for better or worse. This continuous set of eight tracks gets into its spooky stride towards the end. ... A darker second hour might have been even better. [Nov 2017, p.59]

It's a bit California slacker, a bit New York dive, a bit Delta blues, and so firs in well enough alongside Woodist alumni like Kurt Vile, Real Estate and Woods. [Jan 2016, p.71]

While the high energy interplay between the players remains solid, their proto-punk edginess is less pronounced. [Apr 2015, p.54]

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]

Black Sun has a broader palette, even if it's not really any lighter. [Apr 2011, p.53]

Sumac's rock thunder becomes more involved as they sink deeper into their own personal spaces, uncorking emotions and letting loose inner demons, while still fully functioning as part of a group experience. [Aug 2016, p.58]

“The Seal” is busy in a different mode – it sounds like it would fit in with the jazzy shugs of Cobra And Phases era Stereolab, until Barrow’s wobbly vocal comes in, like the perpetually lachrymose Peter Jefferies given a bit of a speedy kick. [Sep 2024, p.58]