It's another cautious portion of well-made, moderately experimental not-quite-rock. [Feb 2013, p.49]

On occasion, stupidly fun. [Sep 2015, p.44]

One And Sixes brings a welcome edge... Unusually for Low, the lyrics are where One And Sixes falls down, frequently dealing less in acutely felt emotions than in questions and negotiations. [Sep 2015, p.47]

There Is No Year is a mixed bag of disparate musical styles, played out as an intelligently composed accompaniment for Fisher’s complex political rhetoric. [Mar 2020, p.58]

It's a tribute to Dilla's imagination that every track here has at least a spark of some interest, but ultimately Dillatronic is, like so many exhaustive archival box sets, a dry reminder that brilliance is usually the result of a drafting process. [Dec 2015, p.66]

Musically, in other words, Strange Mercy delivers plenty of interest. What's not so convincing is the songwriting, specifically the lyrics. [Oct 2011, p.60]

The cumulative effect of these strange patchwork songs as in the end ambivalent. [Sep 2015, p.48]

State Of Ruin is a typically pristine offering from Planet Mu’s UK roster of trap and grime inspired producers, at once displaying high definition composition of dynamic bass pressure without really producing anything hugely exciting. [Apr 2019, p.50]

It lacks something crucial at its centre: definition, precisely. [#221, p.66]

Car Alarm strips away the exotic and the curious. [Nov 2008, p.70]

Vol 1 collects the same tracks as the bonus disc from 2002's Luxe Reduxe reissue.... It's a little bizarre. [Aug 2015, p.67]

The music is immaculately performed and produced, yet lacks the divine spark of inspiration that might elevate it above the status of demonstration reel. [Dec 2012, p.65]

As a collection, Psychedelic Pill is spotty and, at times, sleep-inducing.

This album certainly achieves a kind of elaborated decorative wonkiness, but one wonders, as with Creed's paintings, what there is to return to after the novelty's worn off. [Mar 2014, p.52]

It's an uneven set, relying strongly on her performance to carry the songs forward. [#229, p.68]

This album does suffer a mysterious drop in its energy levels midway in. [#249, p.50]

A definite mixed bag, Pink Bikini is best when its songs feel fully formed in their own right, rather than semi-scripts set to music. [Aug 2023, p.56]

The astounding pressure of emotional ambivalence in Herndon's 2012 debut Movement--what belonged where? with whose porous body should the listener identify?--is half lost on this EP, which feels too sketchy to develop their immanent tension. [Feb 2014, p.56]

Colors II is musically all over the shop, offering an experience that’s akin to being on a sonic rollercoaster that’s scarily still under construction. But for all that it’s still one hell of a ride! [Sep 2021, p.62]

With 16 short compositions across 40 minutes of running time, many of these pieces feel sketchy and structurally underdeveloped. Yet, there is a pleasing rawness to Bowness’s DIY production, which skews towards electronic pop, flavoured with post-punk and industrial. Bowness’s honeyed voice brings a measure of vulnerable gravitas. [Nov 24, p.55]

“Playing Chess” brings us to a smug, detached and ever so slightly creepy close. Big set pieces aside, however, there are gems aplenty amid the dross, from his rapport with Burna Boy on the menacing “Masculine” to a rare moment of meditative vulnerability wondering “Crazy how a murderer used to be a cuddler” on “Comeback”. [Oct 2023, p.60]

'Corporate Cannibal' is the exception, and Jones, a miracle of nature at Meltdown, proves more fallible on Hurricane. [Nov 2008, p.64]

Though you'd be justified in hanging this writer for conflating person and persona, you're asked to contemplate the uneasy positivity that chacterizes Paper Trail's three mot popular songs. [Dec 2008, p.74]

While Gunn gets in some liquid licks, they’re brief asides, never trips that’ll take you somewhere on their own, and they’re often folded into gleaming layers of keyboards and harp. While the drums occupy considerable sonic space, they are frustratingly unemphatic. ... He has never sung better. However, every time he solos, one wishes he’d keep going a bit longer. Here’s hoping that Gunn can figure out how to showcase his voice without doing so at the expense of his instrumental gifts. [Sep 2021, p.52]

Moments of levity arrive in "Cherry Blue", "DIS" and "Waterfalls" but overall the album's evenhanded pacing creates a strange unease. It seems governed by the temporal logic of its samples, as if Lopatin were intent on preserving their integrity rather than reshaping them. The emotional resonance that usually grounds Lopatin's work feels somewhat displaced by this formal precision. [Dec 2025, p.54]

I found myself wishing [the booklet] was three times longer and the music three CDs less. [Nov 2011, p.60]

Live From KCRW suffers from the stilted atmosphere that plagues most live radio sessions, with the audience, Cave and his Bad Seeds all on their best behavior. [Jan 2014, p.59]

Danger Mouse constructs decorative, melodic beats that don’t really bang, resulting in a hazy, slightly funky and psychedelic quality reminiscent of late 1960s pop. ... It’s frustrating to see him [Black Thought] shut off that aspect of his creativity in favour of “bars as hard as Angola’s”. ... Cheat Codes is compelling enough, but one wonders where it’s all going. [Sep 2022, p.42]