Earth Junk won't top any end of the year polls, but as another clue in decoding exactly where Hagerty is heading, a scrap with which to re-assemble a much bigger picture, it's essential. [Sep 2008, p. 51]

Gendron’s penchant for vintage phrasing gives the record a mid-20th century folk revival vibe that even the guest squalls of guitarist Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba cannot dispel. Gendron’s singing alternates between French and English; the pitch of her voice is low, but its place in the mix is high, held aloft by her unhurried guitar picking. [Jun 2024, p.57]

Monument Builders itself could do with some of that malfunction, some warped colour and cathode ray snow. [Dec 2016, p.69]

It fizzles out in places – there's none of the languor of previous work nor the melancholy that collaborator Jeremy Greenspan perfected in Junior Boys – but at its best this is aural champagne, chill, crisp and delectable. [Aug 2020, p.66]

The album becomes more experimental and confident as it progresses. [#236, p.59]

Combining tight dynamics with the blurred intent of an impressionistic backwsh, some tracks rush by like vast landscapes, with individual features suddenly highlighted in freeze-frames. [#228, p.59]

Admirable in its candour, if at times hard to swallow. [Dec 2018, p.56]

There is a mellowness to the album, underscored by Albini's older, deeper voice, that suggests their edge has been lost. [Nov 2014, p.68]

Pastoral serves to expose the casual but forceful villainy of Robinson and his ilk while emphasising one of folk horror’s core themes: that people are the scariest monsters of all. [Oct 2018, p.53]

The results are tougher and less poised, less prone to pastiche or ironic self-identification. But in the process he’s become a bit workmanlike: you feel he could knock these tunes out to order and they’d all be creditable, but not much more. [Oct 2016, p.63]

This collection, and its atmosphere of sharing a bench with the 20th century’s Mozart as he explores still nascent songs, is an appropriately seductive tease to what will doubtless be a decades-long unearthing of the vault’s untold treasures. The songs themselves, as they’re presented here, really are secondary to this feeling, something like finding a just unearthed message from a departed loved one. [Dec 2018, p.69]

The results may not be especially unpredictable but they sure are fun, the trio milking the testosterone-fueled power-trio/supergroup set-up for all it's worth. [Nov 2014, p.72]

The closer “World” is the culmination of these trials, in which fragments of sound--runs of keys with the uncanny quality of speech, shadowy static, heavily abstract synthesized choirs--drift in a deeply organic and warm silence. [Feb 2018, p.58]

These are elements that need time to present themselves, on an album that requires a retreat inward. It’s the kind of mindquietening escape. [Oct 2018, p.55]

The hi-hats and furiously brushed cymbals of Badalamenti’s pseudo-jazz cues outline these tracks, along with heavy but oddly affectless arco bass. He performs Lynch’s lines, describing scenes of unearthly violence, banality and menace, as if growling the menu of a New York Brooklyn trattoria. What guides the album away from this rather dated aesthetic, apart from the glaring crispness and pitch-black texture of the mixing, is the quality of the noise. [Dec 2018, p.69]

This is no simplistic exercise in cross-cultural groove making--Dyrdahl has responded more to gamelan's harmonic stasis than to its rhythmic insistence. [Jul 2011, p.60]

The slippery polyrhythmic music is a difficult terrain for MCs to conquer. [#253, p.57]

At times, as on “For Stars Of The Air”, they sound like an electronic post-punk project a la The Soft Moon. At others, they become the band in a spaghetti western saloon, soundtracking impending demise on “Last Resort Of The Gambling Man” with sun-drenched rock moves. [Oct 2024, p.52]

The music is sungura, an upbeat modern pop relative of chimurenga, but the Gonora Sounds take on the style is somewhat more rugged that most. Isaac’s drumming is a downpour of rolls and patters, while his father’s guitar drips cascades of fireflies. [Feb 2022, p.60]

Souleyman’s most recent excursion is seriously upfront music. The Syrian singer’s electro-hype dabke burnouts seem to have been ratchetted up to a degree that makes his own past efforts seem quite mellow. [Feb 2018, p.59]

Ripatti employs a panoply of dynamic breaks and styles without sticking to anything for too long. The results are both claustrophobic and entertaining. [Aug 2022, p.48]

The Invisible Way has Wilco's Jeff Tweedy behind the faders, and he superbly captures the concentrated simplicity of Low's aesthetic. But sometimes the restricted palettes can be a little cloying,[Mar 2013, p.56]

It's far from perfect record--the guests are phoned in, the beats sometime out-cheese pre-breakdown Kanye at his cheesiest--but it has more than a few perfect moments. [Jul 2013, p.68]

Donaldson’s lyrics tend towards the observational, and are often delivered with a wry turn of phrase that can be laugh out loud funny. ... The Town That Cursed Your Name juggles pathos and bathos throughout. [Apr 2023, p.58]

Their stew of disparate aesthetics may be lumpy, but it’s never mushy, and the quartet’s stylistic mix-ups are consistently engaging. [Jun 2024, p.57]

Sifting through these hermetic songs is like coming across a cobwebby box of photographs in an empty home. Tiny fragments of narrative emerge, only to be drowned by ambiguity and absence. [Oct 2018, p.58]

Toure's tone is richly sonorous, his vocal strength such that he actually buttresses and strengthens the tracks... It's a great shame that the sound quality falters on the later tracks. [Jul 2015, p.58]

His voice is better suited to confiding, but it's slapped on top rather than properly featured, and this seems symptomatic of the muddy arranging, But the aim is to swagger and excite, and the group's ragged fervour is not in doubt. [Jun 2015, p.50]