It's tasteful, but not much more. [Feb 2007, p.78]

There are moments--notably 'You Can't Count On me'--but the band behind him are wringing diminishing returns from their polished country-rock. [May 2008, p.92]

Two years of constant touring, countless festivals, a loss of a member (bassplayer Ira) and the addition of Gwen Stefani's producer, and something's gone awry.

Make the most of these subtly funked-up arrangements with their horns and clarinets and bebop percussion. [Jun 2003, p.104]

It's a sweet-natured and seemingly uncynical exercise which, while pretty enough, brings nothing new to these well-worn ditties. [Jan 2012, p.101]

Her repetitive riff in the early section teeters on the ponderous, and some of the electronic production is mere promotional muzak--but there are stunning passages here. [Apr 2013, p.65]

Less ambitious than the album that spawned it, but a worthy companion piece nonetheless. [Nov 2013, p.71]

The eclectically banging result is an invigorating circuit-workout through righteous rage, swinging from livid EDM beats with Steve Aoki and Rise Against's Tim McIlrath, to furious rap with Big Boi, Killer Mike and Bassnectar. [Nov 2018, p.28]

The sheer depth of ideas is impressive, but the result is exhausting. [Jun 2020, p.33]

Frequently lovely but a fair few steps short of compelling. [Apr 2005, p.112]

The best moments tend to come where the reggae is at its most full-on. [Jun 2014, p.80]

Faun Fables sound more shamanistic than ever. [Sep 2016, p.74]

Sensibly, Sumner steers clear of Caucasian reggae on her surprisingly strong debut, opting instead for polished, sullen synth-pop with husky, La Roux-style vocals. [Nov 2010, p.93]

It's a grim assemblage of cliche from the title downwards. [Feb 2011, p.90]

[Robinson] has certainly indulged his preference here, mixing M83-style synth-pop with Daft Punk/Justice bangers and adding assorted nu-rave and EDM tropes, to end up with not much to call his own. [Sep 2014, p.76]

The devil is in the detail--and Skinner's devilish side is his most appealing.[Oct 2008, p.108]

Manicured cuteness, trite melodies and a tendency to banal, genial navelgazing leave an impression of carpet-bagging slackers contriving decorous but vapid Tourist Board pop. [Mar 2013, p.79]

Manson can still whip up an appealingly vengeful turn of phrase, but they retain a tendency to sound stiff. [Jun 2012, p.73]

The occasional glint of mandolin and fiddle fails to alchemise Time's glossy LA rock, or excuse some shocking lyrics. [Jun 2013, p.79]

Perfect background music for those late-night venues that tend to overdo the ultra-violet lights. [Mar 2008, p.96]

Not wonderful, but certainly frightening. [Jul 2013, p.75]

A heavy trip indeed. [Apr 2015, p.71]

"1832" is a departure, with emotional unease preserved in glowing folky amber, but it's an inspired curveball on a largely routine course. [Jan 2017, p.32]

The standout tracks reject slick studio polish. [Aug 2017, p.38]

Over 11 tracks the formula admittedly feels a little one-note and limited in scope, but the pair's gift for melody shines nonetheless. [Mar 2018, p.25]

It would be unfair to expect a "Whipping Post" from Devon Allman, Duane Betts and Berry Duane Oakley on their first outing, cut live to tape in Muscle Shoals, as they seek a comparable energy, but they manage to capably shoulder the responsibility rather than sinking under it weight. [Aug 2019, p.25]

As the strident piano ballads and flatly aggressive production pound on, though, it's more AGT than Kanye. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Pocket Symphony drifts inconsequentially along. [Apr 2007, p.92]

All The Roadrunning isn't quite the success they would have hoped. The problem, perversely enough, lies in the disparity of voices. [May 2006, p.126]

These boys have genuine pedigree--guitarist Jamie's grandpa was Ewan MacColl--and the confident acoustic textures and fingerpicking styles on display here show a real affection for folk traditions. [Aug 2010, p.77]

Not all of it works--the ballads sag, and the reggaeton-influenced "Paradise" is ill-advised--but much of Miles's playing is on fire. [Oct 2019, p.45]

Things degenerate into a dreary stream of self-pitying/self-mythologising ballads. [Sep 2003, p.106]

There are missteps--the tinny horns of "fanfare," or the mantra of "Vitriol," which is silly in the same way Kula Shaker were silly. Straighter Moments hit, though, largely thanks to drummer Greg Fox's athletic disposition and some mighty crescendos. [May 2015, p.76]

Beneath The Skin is further proof that the Icelandic music movement is a near-unstoppable force. [Aug-Sep 2015, p.79]

Unfortunately, every note is so restrained as to verge on the apologetic, resulting in songs capable of being forgotten even while they're playing. [Oct 2009, p.101]

Despite the laudable ambitions of the arrangements, Fray's mundane eye-witness vignettes become wearying. [Mar 2010, p.82]

All round, it's more than the sum of its parts, if not quite the event that is clearly hope for. [Feb 2017, p.40]

The subject matter sits somewhere between Wagner's Götterdämmerung and Led Zep. ... Yet the sounds owes little to either as flute and mandolin lend a folk-rock ambience and John O'Hara's keyboards and Jow Parrish-James' guitar essay '70s prog tropes like they never went away. [Jun 2023, p.31]

In truth, only an uncharitable curmudgeon could fail to appreciate Tim Rice-Oxley's vastly improved pop songwriting. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Very pretty but as predictable as Haven's guaranteed elevation to the Indie Premiership before the summer's through. [Feb 2002, p.118]

A tangy taster for their album proper in 2004. [Dec 2003, p.126]

It's an energetic and clattering punk listen, topped by Ada's louche vocals, but suffers from over-exhuberance in its production. [Jul 2009, p.101]

"We return to find a pile of broken kitten bits" they trill on 'GOOJFC,' which may be as succinct an image of their fractured whimsydelia as you'll get. [Sep 2008, p.85]

Fistful Of Mercy itself is certainly Fleet of Fox, but it's also strong of cheese. [Jan 2011, p.98]

This finds Richard Melville Hall seemingly going through the motions. [Mar 2008, p.96]

Runddans is 39 minutes of continuous music, most closely related tot he percolating grooves of Lindstrom's Where You Go I Go Too. [Jun 205, p.81]

Only the sub-Marilyn Manson riff-slammer "Mars Needs Women" stand out in an otherwise generic batch of spoofy "Rocky Horror" lyrics and painful superfluous drum solos. [Mar 2010, p.107]

It's the no-frills productions like 'Not As We' which stand out, although these are marred by the lyrics--a mess of self-help-manual platitudes and environmentally minded bollocks. [July 2008, p.104]

If last year's engrossing, infuriating Blueberry Boat revealed the Friedbergers as a uniquely strange and perversely ambitious proposition, Rehearsing My Choir, remarkably, trumps it, striking a chord of real feeling alongside the pell-mell fabulation. [Dec 2005, p.110]

Mancunian hipsters will shudder in disbelief. [July 2002, p.101]

A fierce, defiant record. [Apr 2003, p.108]

A decent album of roots-tinged songs that showcases his terse guitar style and detached vocals to solid if unspectacular effect. [Nov 2002, p.122]

Clanging rockers, elegant ballads, and yearning epics are testement to their diversity, while James Walsh has almost managed to lose the bleat in his voice that used to drive Starsailor's critics to distraction. [Apr 2009, p.99]

Work is less dramatically monochrome than HTRK's debut, the Coil-like angst replaced with a more subtle existential uncertainty. [Oct 2011, p.89]

Doyle shines as a singer and lyricist. [Dec 2014, p.78]

Generally these doomy, comatose soundscapes all sound drearily similar. [May 2015, p.78]

While much of this is somewhat sentimental, notable moments include Michael Kiwanuka and Kevin Morby's respective takes on the standards "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" and "I Only Have Eyes For You." [Jun 2017, p.26]

Excessive emoting is unfortunately typical of the record's exhausting inclination toward overwrought histrionics. [Sep 2014, p.74]

This album is made with care, love and expertise and it shows on every song. [Mar 2012, p.80]

It all adds up to an immaculately composed, if soft-centred, avant-pop proposition, and suggest Frank might just turn out to be the British Justin Timberlake. [Aug 2009, p.92]

As brave as it is diverse. [Oct 2006, p.104]

Grainger's first solo outing swaps the lascivious intensity of his former outfit for a rakish new wave ramalam somewhere between Cheap Trick and The Strokes' "First Impression of Earth." [Apr 2009, p.86]

This is a "Talk Of the Town" of the mind, and he is clearly in his elemnt. [Dec 2008, p.100

With Gotan Project's Philippe Cohen producing, the sixty-something plunges into assorted weirdness here. [May 2013, p.73]

The band's second album features a few middling faux-Europop numbers, but the best are real growers. [Jul 2015, p.71]

Sole's fast and fluid rhymes deal with a wide range of socio-political concerns, but are saved from sounding like diatribes by his sly wit. [Apr 2005, p.114]

It's a long time since a debut album forged its influences into something quite as fresh and rich as this. [May 2011, p.87]

[An] affectionate charity project to benefit the victims of floods and fires in Tennessee and Texas. [Dec 2012, p.95]

Folds' third solo album is filled with songs about breakups, laced with some low-key experimentalism and, of course, a lot of keyboard pounding. [Nov 2008, p.94]

In places she sounds surprisingly like Andrea Corr, but she;s a winningly melodic songwriter. [Aug 2015, p.78]

The absence of imagination here is a tad dispiriting. [Dec 2016, p.30]

The pair unleash a succession of hallucinatory soundscapes that feel hermetically sealed yet confrontational, as if daring us to fire up a fat blunt and allow this sleek beast to burrow into our frontal lobes. [Oct 2013, p.71]

Little more than a bunch of B-sides in search of a point. [Mar 2004, p.87]

The band utilise new instruments--saxophone, brass and more--in a too-blantant attempt to convince us that they are more than goths. [Aug 2009, p.101]

While the LP is patchy, some of the miniature studies for circuitry, essayed by Flanagan and collaborator Dean Honer, are beguilingly eldritch, and the second half's run of pop songs are joyous and odd in equal measure. [Nov 2012, p.72]

The new versions are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the old versions, they're just more so, if that makes sense.

The likes of "Born Disco; Died Heavy Metal" and a jitterbugging "New York Minutes" are revealed to be much more robust tunes than was initially obvious. [Mar 2015, p.73]

No-one would argue this is the equal of his '70s production heyday, but he remains indefatigable in his energies. [Nov 2016, p.35]

[French Touch] feels like a soft option. Yet there's no denying the chic sophistication with she delivers stripped-down versions of hits associated with Patsy Cline, The Rolling Stones, Tammy Wynette, Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, the Clash and Abba. [Nov 2017, p.24]

Clever, costly videos prove the couple painfully hip, but close your eyes and it could be Mel & Kim. [May 2011, p.91]

The shock is that Goddess In The Doorway is really rather good. [Dec 2001, p.114]

It's a calmer, less ambitious album than 2001's All This Sounds Gas, but no less beguiling. [Mar 2004, p.92]

Anyone still reeling from Chan Marshall's sultry and imperious covers collection, "Jukebox," will find further thrills on this six track mini-album.

Hookworms twist "The Sky Of all Places" into a Mary Chain approximation of Metal Machine Music and Factory Floor make desiccated disco mincemeat of "sink," while Loop guru Robert Hampson, Death In Vegas's Richard Fearless, Ride's Andy Bell and Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite demonstrate the oldies' appetite for deconstruction.[Apr 2016, p.79]

Lurking beneath the placid surface is an undertow, subtly stirring the songs and arrangements. [Oct 2017, p.32]

The whole oddball exercise is almost rescued by "Pinky's Dream." [Dec 2011, p.89]

Scandinavian accents add to the sense of pop era unmoored from its time and place, and reconfigured into one coherent record with cool precision. [Feb 2008, p.78]

No shocks here, perhaps, but their fractal Technicolor pop is always a joy. [Jul 2011, p.87]

Shadowed by a might past, in Ersatz GB, this is a strictly prefabricated Fall. [Dec 2011, p.82]

You're left wondering how much more impressive Wilson's stroking pipes might sound with less gauche material. [Feb 2012, p.92]

Sugar, by comparison [to "Wrecking Ball"], feels laboured. [Sep 2010, p.91]

A highly unoriginal record. [Mar 2007, p.86]

An LP that once raved shamelessly now shuffles, twitchily. [Oct 2009, p.95]

Removed from the comfort of his own musical constructions, they often sound like a collection of rasps, croaks and burrs optimistically corralled in to what just might be words; Latin has never sounded more like a dead language than when Dylan sings in it on "O Come All Ye-Faithful". [Dec 2009, p. 87]

From the Top of Willamette Mountain sounds more confident than the UK debut he released earlier this year.

Argentinian rockers Los Enanitos Verdes turn "Travelin' Band" into a turbocharged burst of bilingual tropical rockabilly, and Spanish singing star Bunbury adds a thrilling salsa dance workout to "Corre Por La Jungla." [Nov 2016, p.40]

Enjoyable solo debut. [Nov 2017, p.30]

[They] now sound more immediate, but seem to have forsaken some of their delicacy for caffeinated fuzz-pop, minus hooks. [Jun 2006, p.120]