His most intimate work to date. [Jan 2015, p.68]

There is, in the end, something vaguely nauseating about a bunch of popular entertainers in middle age creating state-supported art inspired by the deaths of countless young men caused by an act of state-subsidised slaughter. [Jan 2015, p.61]

For the most part, the album makes a convincing argument for Sleater-Kinney's continued relevance. [Jan 2015, p.63]

If Wilco have deliberately stepped back from the brink in recent years, the quality has been maintained, and one feels the door is always open for their return. [Jan 2015, p.80]

Her taste--for beats at least--isn't that expensive, but is certainly sophisticated, perhaps pointedly so. [Jan 2015, p.74]

The mish-mash of styles wouldn't be an issue if it sounded like Pateras and Patton were surrendering to something other than themselves, but what comes across instead is a desire to demonstrate mastery. [Jan 2015, p.70]

It scores over its predecessor with a refreshing spontaneity and an illustrious guest cast. [Jan 2015, p.65]

A Better Tomorrow feels trapped by history, an impotent reflection versus a proposed resurrection. [Jan 2015, p.65]

His sermons are always memorably provocative, but in playing to the crowd sometimes subtleties get lost. [Dec 2014, p.60]

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]

A World Lit Only By Fire finds Godflesh on pleasingly resolute form. [Dec 2014, p.57]

The prevalent mood is restless and defiant, with the vulnerability found on earlier albums swept along by a sense that this time they're both lovers and fighters. [Dec 2014, p.57]

The tracks here, presented with the intention that other will use them as a creative starting pint, nevertheless feel fully realised, evoking a succession of fleeting states and ambiguous atmospheres. [Dec 2014, p.57]

This is the sound of two mature rap gentlemen throwing it up for one of hiphop's most enduring, if not always endearing, charms: utter immaturity. [Dec 2014, p.54]

It's not just Hertz's technical nous that makes Flatland so compelling, but his commitment to forging something lucid, plastic and expressive, music that blurs the line between hyper reality and the topsy-turvy world of imagination. [Dec 2014, p.51]

It's a startlingly consistent album--dazzling, baffling and sprawling in the same way that Russell and his work was. [Dec 2014, p.50]

Much of the album's faults are down to Smith. Rather than steering the collective ship, his voice, slurred to the point of incomprehensibility, barely connects with the others. [Dec 2014, p.48]

The result is streamlined and raw, but still with their customary flourishes of melodic invention woven in. [Dec 2014, p.48]

Unforced, almost conversational asides give the music an intensely focused off the cuff feel. [Dec 2014, p.46]

With Hell Can Wait, he inches logically towards a modernisation of the chaotic wall of noise formula that defined Public Enemy than immediately pulls back from it. [Nov 2014, p.76]

Nehru is essentially indistinguishable from any number of bedroom rappers clogging Soundcloud with their freestyles to Doom's decade old Special Herbs instrumentals. [Nov 2014, p.76]

The impression left by The Hums's buzzing, keys-assisted pseudo-punk is that of a heavier Clinic or even Scottish also-rans Magoo. [Nov 2014, p.72]

Singer's Grave feels like an exercise, something which never be said for the work released under the Palace banner in the 1990s. [Nov 2014, p.72]

It moves with a tighter, more mechanistic gait than 2012's similarly relentless Sagittarian Domain, but it's no less transfixing. [Nov 2014, p.72]

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]

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]

The music--hums, clangs and muffled booms--wields an ominous, oppressive power, especially on headphones, that can create a feeling of queasy horror even for those unaware of the record's backstory. [Nov 2014, p.68]

This is still a grand, holistic statement, superbly structured in its 38 minutes of ebb and flow. [Nov 2014, p.66]