The album doesn't just bludgeon. There is an attention to detail, an appreciation of dynamics at work. [May 2003, p.108]

An album that proves he's worthy of the legacy he cherishes. [Apr 2002, p.102]

The tense chemistry has been, to some degree, recaptured. [Oct 2014, p.68]

Pearl Necklace seem to be honing their edge, not losing it. [May 2013, p.75]

It's a poignant, occasionally awkward addition to their catalogues, pitting Stills' earthy burr against Collins' soaring soprano. [Apr 2018, p.35]

This time out, the band wants you to have an experience, and that's what you get, on a record that's over the top, wildly inventive and satisfying in the ever-deepening way of landmark longplayers from the last century. [Nov 2010, p.89]

Lerner's voice--pale and uninteresting, rather than poinant--allow his songs to sag. [Sep 2009, p.96]

Madonna's 12th album has a good title and a nice cover, but that's almost as much as you can say in its favour. [Jun 2012, p.77]

The Stills remain a little too anonymous. [Dec 2008, p.116]

As a studio album it's dull and rather pointless. [Dec 2008, p.116]

An uneven listening experience, to put it mildly. [Feb 2010, p.90]

Like The Fall, PSB are always different, always the same. [Mar 2012, p.97]

It's a reflective set, enlivened by joyous offerings from The Civil Wars and Carolina Chocolate Drops. [Feb 2013, p.75]

The dentist-drill whine of Klachefsky's voice will scare off all but the hardy, but Boats rock regardless. [Jul 2013, p.71]

There's no dazzle here, but that's precisely the appeal of the Glen Campbell-like "Searching For The Sun," "You And I" and the high noon mariachi of "I'm A Man." [Jul 2013, p.81]

These 18 short tracks comprise a refreshingly un-self-conscious reinterpretation of lo-fi punk, '90s slacker rock, shoegaze an d bedroom electronica, but each one dodges categorisation. [Mar 2014, p.78]

Quality levels are high, with Cate Le Bon's sleek Krautpop chanson "Gallant Foxes" and Claire Tchaikowski's aqueous ambi-folk ballad "That Fever" helping to excuse a small handful of underpowered, over-polished numbers. [Mar 2014, p.73]

The listener is left longing for a change of texture and pace. [Sep 2015, p.81]

Jimmy Hall's vocals are unremarkable, but it barely matters; it's a guitar album and Beck still sounds as innovative and virtuosic as anyone. [Jul 2015, p.71]

Stein mostly carries an air of pleasant politeness, which rather fails to convey the darkness beneath tales of gambling addicts and bottles of bourbon in the fridge. [Aug 2017, p.38]

The title track veer uncomfortably close to cookie-cutter sloganeering, but there's more focused spikiness to the manic pop charge of "One last Chance," while "Up On the Moors" ticks all the pogo-anthems boxes of the band's glory days. [Feb 2018, p32]

Abrasive album. ... Tracks like "Pleasure Seeker," "Oblivion" and "Power" demand the listener either sit up and take notice or run screaming for the hills. [Mar 2019, p.26]

The stripped-back production adds a sense of immediacy and places focus on the fine vocals of hall and Golding, plus guest vocalist Hannah Hu. [Oct 2021, p.33]

His sixth solo album has some decent uptempo moments. ... Less compelling are the albums world-weary ballads, but one old downtempo number, "Foreign Sand," benefits from a stripped-back acoustic treatment. [Nov 2021, p.35]

McKenzie tries to have it both ways, peppering Freak Out City with schlocky tunes like the title track and "Too Young" that fail to deliver comedically or musically. [Sep 2025, p.33]

Funplex consists largely of a series of witless retreads of school disco hit 'Love Shack,' with Fred Schneider's deadpan "woo!" recalling an increasinglt weary holiday rep. [Apr 2008, p.83]

Korn are too lumpen to handle 'sophisticated.' [Jan 2006, p.102]

As is generally the case with Loaf's oeuvre, the ridiculousness of the enterprise is redeemed somewhat by a recognition of its own absurdity. [Jul 2010, p.112]

Curiously short on atmosphere. [Nov 2005, p.100]

The results may lack the stamp of originality, but the likes of "Silver Living," "Giving Out," and "I Know It's You" are vibrant, brimful of melody and lots and lots of fun. [May 2013, p.71]

Like most of their work, it all sounds teasingly familiar. [Jun 2005, p.97]

System is like travelling backwards to a time when Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson ruled the earth, except this time the studio overlord is Madonna collaborator, Stuart Price. [Jan 2008, p.100]

Return To Form's one of their better efforts. [Mar 2010, p.90]

A gift for deadpan couplets alone can't quite elevate him to [Rufas Wainwright or Pet Shop Boys'] league, [but] this album offer signs that, if he want to, Robbie might escape the neurosis of celebrity and mature into a genuinely witty songwriter. [Dec 2009, p.121]

[Like Rats proved] Kozelek could turn his wry tone to any old thing and make it lovely. [Mar 2013, p.73]

GVF strut and swagger through a sweeping hard-rock extravaganza that propels them from emulators to inheritors of a rich legacy. [May 2021, p.27]

This is a conventional effort, featuring four-to-the-floor rock and likeable disco-indie. [Aug 2010, p.102]

None of it is in any sense inspired, and Hammond tries his hand at that Swiss-finishing-school skank once too often, but many tracks here could comfortably make it onto First Impressions of Earth.

La Costa Perdida brings them full circle, back to their Californian roots. [Feb 2013, p.80]

While no reinvention, Paper Gods is both entertaining ad typically Duran-esque. [Oct 2015, p.75]

For some of the mercifully brief 33 minutes and 43 seconds of this album there is some merit in the messiness of this L.A. four-piece's palette of punk powerchords and sustained hoarseness. [Jan 2008, p.88]

There's a self-indulgence at play when can become aggravating. [Nov 2006, p.128]

Anderson's songs still find him leading a herd of misunderstood waifs but offer little to tempt the uninitiated. [Oct 2011, p.81]

They only really have one kin do f song and tempo, rollicking yet melancholy, but they write them very, very well. [Oct 2011, p.84]

This follow-up tries too hard to prolong the high. [Apr 2009, p.80]

Dross Glop sounds a long way from Battles themselves. [Jun 2012, p.69]

Even if the production pores over old memories, when they fire on all cylinders the combination of their best MCs creates more than a nostalgia trip. [Dec 2017, p.33]

There are more fine moments--"powder Man" is softly somnambulant, and the cinematic soundscape of "Kubrick" is an intoxicating affair--but self-editing is notably absent. [Apr 2019, p.39]

Ultraista never quite shake off the sense of a session-muso studio supergroup dressing down in indie clothes. [Dec 2012, p.78]

Mullins is a solid, occasionally platitudinous songwriter whose rustic tales don't approach the wry, wise gifts of similar artists like Johns Prine and Hiatt. [Mar 2006, p.88]

Although RTR are more than copyists, they cleave to a proven hybrid of speed metal, grungecore and emo. [Oct 2011, p.86]

In a world of fast thrills, WAS remain admirably opaque. [Apr 2008, p.109]

What's here feels a bit decaffeinated, downbeat Moby-ish electronica over which Lynch speaks or sings in a shaky blues croon. [Sep 2013, p.91]

For the most part this is classic fuzzy heavy rock, bordering on self-parody but all done in good spirit. [Nov 2009, p.96]

It's a subtly affecting record, hushed, austere, grasping for simple peace of mind with gorgeously rendered standards. [Feb 2011, p.93]

Jones' considerable composing,guitar and vocal strengths are marshalled effectively. [Apr 2013, p.78]

Too much here feels diaphanous and directionless. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

It’s too blunt, messy and reverent to be up there with their best, but you hope that it also serves a secondary function: to clear the decks for one last magnificent tilt at rock deification on album number ten.

A spirited response to their detractors. [Nov 2005, p.106]

Sparhawk builds on the melodic sensitivity that frontman Dave Simonett revealed on his Razor Pony EP. [Sep 2014, p.79]

For The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon, the original scally mystic has orchestrated a selection of old songs with a missionary zeal. [Nov 2018, p.27]

Basic, sludge-grey power pop that makes Weezer sound as kaleidoscopic as The Flaming Lips. [Nov 2002, p.128]

Electro-guru Jim Abbiss... can't salvage much from the band's often tedious three-chord bustlings or Molko's lamely repetitious lyrics. [May 2003, p.90]

The problem... is that size seems to be used as an excuse for the lack of musical ideas. [Nov 2006, p.102]

It must be said, [Rip This] lost some of the garage band magic that made [the debut] so memorable. [Dec 2014, p.71]

Liars' aim is to challenge the listener with their gruelling strangeness. [Apr 2004, p.101]

The lack of urgency makes it feel like we're eavesdropping on a well-heeled Britpop Survivors Group rather than the site of fresh rock'n'roll alchemy. [Jun 2005, p.98]

His long awaited debut sees him adding endless waves of muzzy kosmische, softly burred guitar loops, Fripp-like trippiness and heavy psych/space-rock grooves to his arsenal. [Mar 2011, p.83]

The absence of Kim Deal--who left in 2013--continues to be felt: her natural warmth and goofy charm would add welcome nuance here. [Oct 2016, p.37]

While the programmed beats are generic, his fleet-fingered guitar work shimmers with the high-end wit that powers a batch of hooky, sharply drawn tunes. [Oct 2015, p.75]

The album is less of an indignant affair than you might expect. [Sep 2006, p.84]

It's a rather bloodless and oddly dated set. [Aug 2015, p.76]

Preparations smudges the distinction between Herren's Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas aliases, and shares with Golden Pollen, his summer S&S release, a listless drift. [Dec 2007, p.101]

It's ambitious, triumphantly executed stuff--melodically, lyrically, Tim Oxley-Rice is a vastly superior songsmith to Chris Martin--and will doubtless shortly be inescapable. But you can't shake the dispiriting feeling it might have all been expressly commissioned by Dave Cameron for the opening night of London 2012.

Their first album doesn't quite match the hype, but is still an appealing piece of go-ahead indie-[pop, with a certain charismatic bagginess and wit that points to a bright future. [Apr 2009, p.91]

With Lisa Milberg sounding like a cross between Nico, Bjork and Yoko Ono, WYWH is one deep, dark, sexy reinvention. [Dec 2010, p.87]

Starting with irresistible lead single 'Pork and Beans', a chunk of Weezer’s sixth album delivers the band’s trademark combo of crushing power chords, pop-culture references and a healthy dose of ironic self-ridicule.

The gravel voice and self-penned songs are distinctive, and though he's not beyond over-emoting, this stakes claim on a wide territory in a bold manner. [Jul 2009, p.95]

Fire Away makes an energetic fist of recapturing in the studio their raucous collision of salsa, hip hop, funk and R&B. [Aug 2010, p.91]

Smoothes the edges between Jamaican sound-system bass, calypso rhythm, Middle Eastern melody and vintage soul. [Apr 2006, p.110]

Rhymes hasn't sounded this energised in years. [Sep 2006, p.76]

Her lyrics lack both Wino's wit and realism, and her orchestral-pop backdrops are pallid. [Feb 2008, p.89]

The standard is so consistently high, sides so conclusively split, even after six years' familiarity with his schtick, that genius is the word. [Jan 2005, p.116]

Taken together, the songs constitute a potent set of surging alt.rock euphoria and more sombre ambience. [Jun 2019, p.24]

Is often guilty of over-earnestness and sentimentality. [Oct 2020, p.27]

The songs are raunchy and resentful, idealising and vocally aching for a lover, or wrestling with more complex feelings. [Nov 2022, p.26]

The record is as intimate and low-key as an evening home with friends. [May 2015, p.84]

Phil Manley's first solo album presents as a homage to the spirit and sound of mid-'70s German Electronic rock. [Feb 2011, p.90]

For all the dazzling dynamics, much of it recalling the '90s from shoegaze to Sonic Youth, the writing leaves little lasting impression, and Brian Aubert's affected vocals drag things down. [Jul 2009, p.97]

He's lost his way a little bit here. [Jun 2009, p.109]

Fandango, their fifth album, is built of the same stuff [as 2011's Buffalo], though with a grander sense of scope and ambition. [Jun 2013, p.78]

A solo album that sounds like a series of song sketches. [Feb 2009, p.89]

The lighter moments are more endearing. [Dec 2016, p.28]

Life Processes sounds like mice playing Hundred Reasons covers. [May 2008, p.95]

It's rich, beguiling stuff. [Mar 2009, p.78]

They've wrangled a tougher, just weird-enough synthesis, with "Trails" borrowing Yeah Yeah Yeahs' brio and "Perfectly Crystal" likely to impress fans of both Pet Shop Boys and Flaming Lips. [Mar 2011, p.83]

We've heard too much of this before. [Jan 2003, p.119]

The good news is Young has found himself a different kind of voice and some fresh inspiration. [Sep 2003, p.116]