Like Go-Kart Mozart or Billy Childish, Argos fashions lyrical witticisms from the commonplace. [Jan 2019, p.17]

Feels like a decisive clean break. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Buck 65 returns to abstract hip hop, but injects it with cool, psych jazz and '70s cinematic funk. [Dec 2007, p.86]

But though folky numbers like "I'm Thinking" are obviously heartfelt, there's sadly little on Goodnight Unknown that matches the glory of Barlow's best work. [Nov 2009, p.81]

Amid all this weirdness, the sleek disco banger "The last Dance" stands out like a beacon in a cave, lighting the way towards a more sustainable reinvention. [Feb 2022, p.34]

Ford's transporting voice is let down by tunes that are anything but. [Aug 2010, p.92]

An immersive blend of the symphonic and electronic, this absorbing album taps into a noble lineage stretching from AR Kane's lysergic avant-pop to sci-fi jazz alchemist Flying Lotus. [Jun 2011, p.94]

It's never indulgent, always exciting. [Oct 2010, p.114]

Aside from the squelchy hypnotism of "In The Air," it's often a little aimless. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Where MIA escapes the club and returns to the wider world, there's an overwhelming sense of diminishing returns. [Aug 2010, p.89]

Veering between faux-soul and Hoxton hipness, Adele simply hasn't found her own voice yet.

It can sometimes feel a little over the top but that's partly the point, and Fleming's voice has enough sincerity to hold it together. [Oct 2015, p.73]

What raises Between Places above simple pastiche are the electronic flourishes and surges of pounding drums that pepper the album. [Apr 2013, p.79]

The result is a disjointed, jarring mix of washy atmospherics, bleary electronics and half-baked songs. [Sep 2017, p.23]

Though the arrangements here are thinner and the longer pieces feel overstretches. [Dec 2017, p.30]

This is desert blues that doesn't just trudge into the horizon, but stops to admire the sunset. [Feb 2013, p.69]

Blitzen Trapper's rock-solid eigth boasts a pair of instant grabbers. [Dec 2015, p.69]

A restorative step, perhaps, and we await his next move with interest. [Jan 2014, p.78]

The content is often too light and derivative to suggest they really are saviors in waiting. [Feb 2012, p.89]

A world away from their ladrock roots, you might say.

Results range from sumptuous to the exotic and baleful, while Mark Lanegan's climactic swansong as post apocalyptic lounge lizard provides a stylish send-off. [Jun 2010, p.106]

From a band as previously as stylishly provocative and adventurous as Goldfrapp, these knowing cliches and lush pastiches suggest a band playing it distinctly safe. [Apr 2010, p.88]

Damned meets JAMC with a snifter of So-Cal pyscho-country-surf--on a series of hip, heady, lo-fi tunes, a large number of which seems to have the word "goth" in the title. [Aug 2009, p.95]

All in all, an admirable comeback. [Nov 2004, p.108]

She's still a class act. [Jul 2003, p.118]

He doesn't have that doomed, hellhound-on-my-trail intensity that makes Johnson's recordings so spooky. But, at 58, he sounds like a man who has faced down more than a few canine devils of his own. [Apr 2004, p.102]

If you really want to hear folk-blues played with rock'n'roll attitude then go back to Boomer's Story or Into The Purple Valley. [Oct 2003, p.111]

It's not exactly transformed into a classic... but the new Let It Be is punchy, full of presence and powerfully involving. [Dec 2003, p.136]

The best tracks... are almost as good as Television's monumental Marquee Moon. [May 2006, p.100]

It's fine, quietly captivating stuff, all the same. [Jun 2009, p.86]

Nonsensical, inventive and captivating. [Sep 2009, p.89]

He reins in the Liberace-meets-Lenny Bruce schtick on his sixth album, a curiously anodyne effort helmed by Berlin electro buccaneer Boyz Noize. [Oct 2010, p.89]

It's a stylish dark, literate affair. [Feb 2011, p.94]

It's a lovely document of Higgins' loose, rambling songs. [May 2011, p.88]

The stand-out, though, is the epic "The Little Death (In Five Parts)" which mixes AC/DC pyrotechnics with a sexually charged rhythm section. [May 2011, p.80]

This singer-songwriter neatly balances the darkly troubled with the charmingly childlike, acoustic clunkiness with intricate finger picking. [Mar 2012, p.98]

Black Is Beautiful is their strongest yet, so cognitively disorienting it's hard to figure out what they're up to. [Jun 2012, p.69]

A Hal Wilner-produced collection that is witty and engaging and confirms her as one of the most singular, if erratic, R&B divas of our time. [Aug 2012, p.71]

Lambert sings his heart out over finger-picked electro-folk, odd industrial interludes and exhilarating, jittery pop. [Feb 2013, p.75]

A different male duetting partner graces each track, with outstanding contributions from Jackson Browne and Willie Nelson among others. Yet all take a back seat tot he preternatural clarity of Collins' own soprano voice. [Nov 2015, p.73]

A quietly eloquent, simply persuasive record that chimes well with the current taste for bucolic abstraction, and moves Rhodes forward. [Aug 2016, p.79]

The Hanging Valley blends whooshing motorik drums, a lyrical archness reminiscent of Wire, and a love for repetition that borders on the pathological. [Sep 2016, p.71]

The tunes seem to have lost a little of their punch, producer Ken Coomer setting Milia's pale voice against folk-pop arrangements that often feel strangely bloodless. [Mar 2017, p.30]

There's a little bit of everything on this largely instrumental solo album by Wobble. [Oct 2018, p.37]

Full of eerie trembles and trills, Camila De Laborde's voice is similarly ethereal, if sometimes numbed, and she and Daniel Hermann combine to create glistening, immersive soundscapes. [Jan 2019, p.19]

Breezy and agreeable though it all is, it mostly reminds how nice it would be to hear something new of The Lemonheads' own. [Mar 2019, p.30]

Cold but somehow comforting. [Jun 2019, p.27]

The mini-album finds this talented duo running in place. [Feb 2020, p.30]

Krieger's fuzzy, sustain-heavy guitar solos drift along pleasantly. [May 2020, p.28]

Not everything hits the target, partly due to strangely sluggish pacing, but impassioned weepies like “Work Today (And Tomorrow)” and the sarcastic, agreeably sloppy “Everybody’s Somebody” showcase an impressive vocal and emotional range. [Apr 2014, p.31]

Baby Man is an impressive display of unfettered emotionality, but you may miss Johnson's usual luminous band arrangements and bass-driven grooves. [Oct 2025, p.27]

The songs are assured, strident and catchy, but often fairly cringeworthy too. [Sep 2012, p.73]

What's especially daring about Not Too Late is the degree to which Jones and [producer Lee] Alexander trust their songs and her languorous voice to hold the listener's interest. [Feb 2007, p.75]

Much of the album lacks cohesion, and even seems lazy. [Nov 2004, p.109]

A gooey, iffaintly sickly, treat. [Nov 2010, p.101]

Nelson being Nelson, this lackadaisy tends toward the affable and charming more often than not. [Jun 2013, p.76]

This third album sees her come into her own as a songwriter with a seductive collection of slow-burning synth-funk. [Aug 2016, p.80]

Lambs Anger zig-zags from the sublime to the silly. [Feb 2009, p.89]

Cements FOW's status as the savviest modern-day practitioners of both Beatlesque pop and Steely Dan's cool precision. [Jun 2007, p.94]

While there's pleasure to be had from the band's exuberant MC5-meets-AC/DC racket, their dubious tales of salt-of-the-earth hookers, as found in "Call Girl Blues," and drunken lechery, outlined the willfully crass "Hungover And Horny" takes the retro vibe too far. [Jun 2013, p.71]

Talk of golden snakes, white hands of grief and stalking vultures is somehow steered clear of quasi-mystic cliche, marking out Rose Windows as promising contenders on the psych-rock block. [Jul 2013, p.80]

It would be satisfying to hail A Productive Cough as Titus Andronicus' equivalent of Who's Next--but sadly it's more "What the hell?" [Apr 2018, p.37]

Ringo Deathstarr here reveal their maxi-cranked, MBV/Jesus and Mary Chain adoration in full. [March 2011, p. 99]

A fascinating document... Only select morsels, though... will make your GBV mix tape. [Jan 2006, p.120]

Its cavernous production, Massed campfire guitars and rolling melodies conjure prairies, river and mountains from shore to shining shore. [Feb 2013, p.75]

Slow-shifting movements and droning textures show McCombs choosing familiarity over fresh adventures. [Feb 2003, p.75]

Remarkable less for the tunes than the sheer, punchy exuberance on show. [Dec 2001, p.120]

Documents a continuing decline. [May 2004, p.93]

The band's trademark cracked songcraft... is here in spades. [Nov 2004, p.99]

A hugely inventive collection. [Jan 2003, p.119]

The cartoonish skank of "Too Original" is business as usual, but Peace Is The Mission is often reflective. [Aug 2015, p.76]

Historically confused it may be, but the simple pleasures of Turn The Lights Out are hard to deny. [Apr 2007, p.115]

The vocals feel a bit hammily gothic at times but it’s a small complaint compared with the album’s intoxicating density. [Jul 2021, p.33]

With so many bases cases covered, there's something for young folks and old folks--even if suspicious folks will still need some convincing. [Apr 2009, p.93]

Fun, but unless you're seven, not essential. [Mar 2011, p.93]

His band know their way around '80s-influenced bluster-pop, and carry it off through sheer deadpan lack of irony on this strangely beguiling second album. [Mar 2014, p.79]

There's a strangely disarming quality to Rose Windows' second album. [Jun 2015, p.80]

Drums Between The Bells captures Eno in versatile and intricate mode. [Aug 2011, p.82]

It seems pretty much like business as usual. [Jul 2012, p.63]

Ferraro pulls off the trick of sounding cheap and luxurious all at once. [Feb 2013, p.73]

The result can be a thrilling hybrid of Muse and Magazine, but also a bit of a dog's dinner. [Sep 2010, p.96]

The loss of drummer Ryan Sawyer has gutted their alt.rock muscle, making Out of It less visceral, but ultimately more singular, affecting and timeless. [Apr 2012, p.87]

It creates more cohesion than on previous Chicano Batman albums, but it also has the consequence of watering down the band's dynamic aesthetic. [Jul 2020, p.29]

This 15-track album is daft, sprawling, naive and full of contradictions--but rarely less than entertaining. [Jun 2018, p.37]

Enjoyable stuff. But you have to wonder how this really aids our understanding of what Hendrix was up to, other than by reminding us that whenever he rehearsed, he recorded the session. [Apr 2010, p.108]

It's a blazing set for a 70-year-old, but Winter gains traction from his fretboard duets/duels with Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Perry, Brian Setzer et al. [Oct 2014, p.80]

No shocks here, but a laudably short and sharp effort. [June 2008, p.94]

The Place We Ran From is bloody and dense and dark, and not in the least like a pastiche. [Aug 2010, p.85]

The samey pace and understated mood can drag, but Pena strikes gold with the light-touch dance-pop arrangements. [Oct 2012, p.81]

At times it can get a little overheated but the pair are more than capable of reining it in when they want to. [Mar 2014, p.85]

Restriction certainly has its moments, but you have to wade through a lot of dross to find them. [Feb 2015, p.73]

Laibach's most pop album to date - five tracks are co-produced by Richard X - and at least as curious and contrary as any of its predecessors. [May 2026, p.32]

If the audio quality is a mite cleaner this time, it seems the band have made the songs a little more prickly. [Oct 2009, p.112]

Here, the 35-year -old is once again joined by co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who provides settings that ate mostly empty, the better to allow Holland's mystical persona to fully inhabit them, as she sings in an elongated East Texas Drawl that curls like smoke rings. [Aug 2011, p.90]

An album that is startling as it is likeable. [Apr 2014, p.74]

It is a wispy thing, not always easy to grip. But its more soulful moments can be quietly transcendent. [Aug 2013, p.74]

It sounds alive and kicking almost to its own detriment. [Mar 2008, p.83]

Other versions are so microscopically different from the originals that you wonder why they've bothered. [Dec 2013, p.71]