[A] splendid debut for Blue Note. ... Backed by a brilliant ensemble of strings, wind and percussion, Cline's guitar creeps stealthily through arrangements elegant and enigmatic, lush and low. [Sep 2016, p.71]

Songs such as "Heels Over Head" and "Van Gogh's Ear"--like Ben Watt backed by John Martyn's fingerpicking guitar--are digitally mutilated with glitchy effects and field recordings, while Emma Smith provides elegant flourishes on Violin and clarinet. There are also a few witty lines. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Cathartic in its honesty but no less depressing for that. [Mar 2019, p.33]

It's as stylistically free as any GAM record - and as exquisite. [Oct 2020, p.32]

These songs feel as if they were written on the fly (which most of them were), their sense of immediacy reflected in the use of skittery acoustic guitar, banjo, and rattling piano. Slim's voice is geared to match. [Feb 2021, p.26]

Layered with cryptic clues, poetic quotes and fragmentary vocal loops, this lush electronic jazz odyssey is an unorthodox curio but consistently rewarding. [May 2021, p.33]

It’s a wonderfully tactile set, pared back to just fingerpicked guitar and voices, their verité approach welcoming informal chatter and ambient sounds of the surrounding high desert. [Aug 2021, p.28]

At its best here, this produces minor masterpieces like the shimmering romance of "The First Day" or "Circles In The Firing Line," a lithe and bristling combination of John Grant and John Misty. [Sep 2021, p.35]

A fairly respectable blend of new and reworked older material, deconstructing vintage 1970s tracks like "Mr. Bassie" into airy melodica ripples and sinewy basslines. [May 2022, p.23]

This album proves that Collins – if she so wishes – still has more to give. [Jun 2023, p.18]

Musically, the tunes blend pop stickiness with sonic experimentation, but there is a strong sense of place. [Mar 2025, p.24]

If this is indeed, as rumoured, LCD's final bout, it finds them a little heavy and tired, but occasionally deceptively light on their feet. [Jun 2010, p.82]

Unique, captivating stuff. [Jul 2011, p.80]

This is noticeably a slightly older, wiser o Age, one aware that the rigours of the age demand a little more than good-times positivity. Certainly, they've seldom sounded better. [Feb 2018, p.22]

Once Twice Melody's greatness lies not in its hugeness - it's in the duo's ability to create music that possesses the same intimacy regardless of its scope. [Mar 2022, p.33]

"My Heart Is In Your Hands Tonight", a fusion of "Needles And Pins", "September Gurls" and "Go All The Way", boasts the signature flair of a Michelin chef. Brian, meanwhile, breaks new ground with the harmonically adventurous closing set piece "Your True Enemy". These "spot the reference" whizz-kids have grown into formalist savants. [Jun 2026, p.32]

Subtle, complex, and not always pacifying. [Mar 2023, p.32]

It’s a vibrant and genre-spanning collection, from the stripped-back piano house of opener “Wanna” via the UK garage flavour of “Waited All Night” (featuring xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim). Elsewhere, there are touches of R&B, disco, pop and electro-funk as the record unfurls with all the grace and flow of a masterful DJ set. [Oct 2024, p.43]

The music flits between rock, folk and jazz, providing an emotional experience that is as affecting as anything you are likely to hear in 2025. [Feb 2025, p.43]

The gravity of his subject matter finds a contrast in Swift's playful musical settings. [Dec 2018, p.33]

Shows off a rare side to Blunt: a soul-baring sincerity. [Sep 2021, p.25]

It's glorious, elevating and energising stuff. [Sep 2020, p.27]

The Derbyshire trio bring a pleasing experimentalism to their second LP. [Aug 2015, p.75]

There are clearly mad skills at work, but silent Earthling is rarely anything other than a simple pleasure. [May 2016, p.81]

The material, largely chosen from recent releases, sounds primal and immense. [Aug 2016, p.83]

Boone's soulful presence in the Delines brings a different slant to Vlautin's characters, her voice transmitting something more hopeful and tender. [Feb 2019, p.26]

There are moments of redemption as songs such as "On Deronda Road" and Weightless" celebrate life's capacity for renewal. But make no mistake: this is a dark record for dark times. [Nov 2019, p.25]

It’s hard to recall a set of songs on which Rhys’s low-key radicalism and unquenchable sense of wonder have coexisted with such ease. [Jan 2024, p.24]

There are several lengthy, furious, deliberately alienating diatribes from the Jamaican feminist poet Staceyann Chin, whole sections in French and Steve Reich-style phase-shifting sound collages. All of this does a slight disservice to some excellent songs. [Sep 2024, p.37]

This latest outing does suitable state-of-the-nation stuff on "Next Generation" and "American Crisis," but the big AM radio melodies in "Everything To You" and "Little Pieces" (plus the unusually lubricious "Leather Dream") show how much fun Mould could still have. [Oct 2020, p.34]

A fast-paced, multi-faceted, furiously entertaining record that reveal hidden emotional depth. [May 2015, p.79]

His obvious poetic and melodic gifts have seldom sounded so compelling. [May 2003, p.108]

A brilliant fusion of no-wave disco, dub-punk, early Factory aesthetics and post-rock technique. [Dec 2002, p.134]

Her best in two decades. [Dec 2003, p.120]

Beam is a master of circumnavigating cliche. [May 2004, p.106]

Perhaps for the first time, The National sound relaxed in their skin. [Jun 2013, p.77]

Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello appear as duet partners, affably resigned to not competing with that unmistakable undimmed voice. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Sprints' debut delivers on thrilling live shows, with singer, guitarist and songwriter Karla Chubb providing a visceral fury, not least on the furious "Adore Adore Adore", unheard since their label released Hole's Pretty On The Inside. [Jan 2024, p.36]

A record nobody could fail to love. [Feb 2005, p.84]

For anyone who enjoys a dash of shimmering disco hedonism with their feminist theory, or who simply harbours a lingering respect for the sun-drenched joy of '90s trance techno, this album offers a richly rewarding dialogue with mainstream pop. Crucially, Hval understands well the strange, seductive, subversive potency of "cheap" music. [Oct 2019, p.28]

While Phasor standouts such as "Flores" evoke Os Mutantes in a narcoleptic fugue. .... On "Colores Del Mar" and "Out There", he strikes an equally deft balance between aqueous abstraction and buoyant, big-hearted avant-pop. [Mar 2024, p.34]

It has its moments. [Nov 2016, p.39]

"Jelly's" languid R&B and the Latin shuffle of "Moonwalk" will seduce newcomers, while the rest--like Juana Molina's recent Halo--is subtle and endlessly engrossing. [Aug 2017, p.30]

Wonderfully dark fourth album. [Jan 2019, p.22]

d'Ecco has become marvellously proficient at channelling the spirits of Bowie, Bolan and Jobriath into riff-forward dance-rock numbers, and In Standard Definition is irresistible trash for anyone so inclined. [May 2021, p.23]

Showcase[s] the melancholic beauty of Zauner's songwriting, her storytelling skills honed across mediums. [Apr 2025, p.31]

As if suddenly unleashed creatively, No Shape finds Hadreas building on Too Bright in every direction at once. ... The queer subtext of Hadreas' work is the source of much of its power. [Jun 2017, p.22]

Lost And Safe is a move songwards, and though this promises greater coherence, it's at the expense of some of the group's wayward charm. [May 2005, p.97]

Cacti is relentless, laser-focused and irresistible. [Feb 2023, p.32]

The likes of "No Sun To Burn" (for brass) or the nine0minute title track, will pull on the listener's heartstrings at least as much as it endorses the composer's process. [Feb 2024, p.31]

Claustrophobic, gripping, uncomfortably frank suite. [Aug 2019, p.39]

Sugar Mountain is a fascinating snapshot of Neil Young at a transitory moment in his long career, for which it also provides an indelible template.

OnOffOn has an incredibly dense, thick sound, and it sags a little in the middle, but Miller can still write terrifically belligerent pop songs. [Jun 2004, p.96]

These songs covey a visceral dread through crashing guitars and her unsettling matter-of-fact twang evokes the no-escape confinement of a volatile relationship. [Nov 2017, p.32]

It's the low-key moments--the astral jazz of "There Was Always Water;" the clunky, piano-led "Back For Me;" the dubby "How Far Is Spaced-Out?"--that hit home emotionally. [Nov 2018, p.30]

It's part folk-rock fantasy, part avant-pop mind trip, and all gorgeous. [Aug 2019, p.32]

Even without the dramatic backstory, heart-tugging earworms like "All Thing New" and "Purifier" work on their own terms as healing meditations. [Jan 2020, p.23]

At first the music seems hermetically sealed; only with repeated listens - and an emphatic twist of the knob - do the subtle splendours burst out of the aural chrysalis containing them and take flight. [Jun 2020, p.34]

Pure musical alchemy. [Aug 2023, p.29]

A highly original band in its prime. [Jun 2005, p.107]

Blood Bitch confirms her singular methodology is now at its most surgically precise and bold. In realising her uncontainable ambitions, one might even suggest it represents Hval's coming of age. [Oct 2016, p.38]

Feels depends on a balancing act between brilliance and whimsy, and some may need convincing that a purposely childlike band... is not twee. [Nov 2005, p.110]

Out of the pain and anger, Moorer has fashioned the finest album of her career. [Apr 2015, p.80]

Here “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has a lovely jug-band lurch, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” loses its country lilt but sounds as if was always destined to be mated with the taut riff from Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right”, and “Queen Jane Approximately”, hung against a latticework of accordion and finger-picked guitars, is almost unbearably tender. [Aug 2023, p.46]

From funk struts to tender touches, Thundercat's ascension continues rapidly here. [May 2020, p.35]

Exploratory, visionary record. [Aug 2022, p.22]

It's a culture manifest in Alpha Mike Foxtrot: encyclopaedic. loving, droll, emotionally candid, often adventurous, but never really as alienating or difficult as the legends might suggest. [Jan 2015, p.90]

The most intense record of Cash's career. [Feb 2006, p.68]

There's much knowingness in his brazenness, and it's a mark of his talent that he stares hubris in the eye and nearly gets away with it. [Sep 2013, p.97]

The demos are undoubtedly this boxset's main attraction. [Apr 2012, p.91]

Nelson's voice has lost none of its wry warmth, his fretboard fingers little of their astonishing agility. And the songs here are terrific. [Jun 2018, p.33]

Just as the absence of the usual guitar fireworks allows the group vocals and rhythmic elements to come strongly to the fore, the shift away from the original's angry spirit opens up a richer well of feeling in Moctar's pleas for a more just world. [Feb 2025, p.37]

Their best for a while. ... An extended, uncharacteristically rocking release. [Nov 2018, p.34]

The result is a varied, disjointed, entirely unpredictable yet utterly singular record. [Oct 2023, p.29]

Everything Everything continue on their quest to make intricate yet seamless electronic art pop. [Sep 2020, p.29]

There is much, meanwhile, to recommend the O’Brien remix, or “deconstruction” as he puts it. What O’Brien has mostly done is strip away the more ornate layers of the Palmer mix and cutting back on the album’s moments of more florid melodrama.

It's a warmer interpretation of Fay's celebration of and concern for the state of the world than on 2015's icier Who IS The Sender? [Feb 2020, p.22]

It's entirely addictive--one fix and you're hooked. [Jul 2018, p.36]

Airy arrangements, wonderfully agile musicianship, songs pooled from numerous sources into flowing ensemble pieces. [Apr 2025, p.33]

She brings Gorecki's great classical prayer to life beautifully, an expression of empathy that feels deep and profound. [May 2019, p.25]

It's beautifully recorded, carefully multi-tracked, but with the freshness and integrity of the live performances feeling intact. Most crucially, it never sounds overcooked. [Sep 2020, p.20]

Pratt doesn't recreate the lo-fi sound of her previous records so much as she elaborates on it. [Mar 2019, p.32]

A rich saturnine, baroque-pop set full of romantic drama. Strings, piano and keyboard combine with muti-textured guitar in songs that, though engaging, tend toward the florid. [Feb 2024, p.30]

Sigur Ros' alien beauty prescribes its own definition. [Oct 2005, p.112]

MCII hits you with the immediacy of a record that you're listening to for the first time but feel like you've already heard a thousand times and yet still aren't bored of. [Jun 2013, p.70]

Moisturizer is a bold, confident blast fuelled by the security and invincibility of a deep love. [Aug 2025, p.23]

A welcome development is Owens' voice: this time, when deployed, it's positioned centrally. [Sep 2020, p.35]

Shields' four contributions are everything you'd hope for. [Oct 2003, p.126]

Waits -- now in complete mastery of his unique art -- knows what he's doing, and the stark, unforgiving brutality is leavened, or granted grace, by passages of purple pathos. [Co-Album Of The Month, June 2002, p.106]

The title of her new album describes its woozy pull. [Mar 2021, p.39]

On The Worse Things Get, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet. [Oct 2013, p.76]

It's a pity that the immaculate construction that is Ghosts now has an extension tacked on to it. [Apr 2006, p.119]

You Belong There is an album rich in moments of beauty and wisdom, even as it confesses that there are no easy answers. [May 2022, p.18]

The songs are rendered sincerely, with elegant, understated phrasing. [Jun 2016, p.69]

Burn Your Fire for No Witness feels like a big step forward from its predecessor, Half Way Home. [Mar 2014, p.81]

Smart, sharp and endlessly stimulating. [May 2022, p.36]

Even if the landscape is occasionally a little too pleasant, the overall trip is well worth taking. [Jun 2018, p.32]

Haunting, bassy and electronic. [Jun 2017, p.35]