Occasionally, his nostalgia curdles into bombast, but there's a fondness to his reminiscences that contrasts nicely with his famously gruff vocals. [Feb 2018, p.32]

The ramshackle, campfire vibe is endearing, bu this is neither a fully immersive experience like Dead Man or a third LP with POTR. [Jun 2018, p.36]

Despite some pleasant enough tunes, she lacks the vocal charisma to stand out from other wannabe Rihannas, Mileys and Dua Lipas. [Aug 2019, p.29]

As is the case with most of his releases the past decade or so, Ringo addresses his own career with a heavy dose of nostalgia. [Dec 2019, p.32]

“Move”, featuring Thomas, is a thrilling mix of swaggering pop hooks and sweltering Latin grooves and the album’s undoubted highlight. Yet, elsewhere, you can’t help wondering if Santana’s fluid guitar playing really needs “help” from such a ragbag of heavy friends. [Dec 2021, p.33]

He describes the album as a “coming of age” project, and at 59 it’s evident he’s still processing the past. [Oct 2022, p.31]

There's nothing here as good as 'Nosebleed,' the standout from 2007's "Our Earthly Pleasures"--but there are still some good points here. [Jun 2009, p.92]

The likes of "22 Days" and "Devil In Me" exist in a world where only John Lee Hooker and The Stooges have ever made records.

The tunes can be slight, and sometimes their spirit of appropriation leaves them rather red-handed. [Apr 2011, p.91]

Everything feels remarkably fresh and unforced. [Apr 2016, p.68]

Their supple, smouldering songs take you back to an innocent, pre-Britpop indie era while retaining the thrust of contempories like Bloc Party. [Aug 2009, p.87]

[The Warlocks] have replaced The Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3 with The Jesus And Mary Chain and Spiritualized as the objects of their affections, and Surgery is significantly less interesting as a result. [Oct 2005, p.110]

There are no songs here to touch past glories, [3rdeyegirl's] excitement in the studio is captured.... They just remind you he's still around; short of a tune, but the unique inhabitant of a purple planet all his own. [Nov 2014, p.80]

Kelly Zutrau's pure voice is full of tiny, yodelling curlicues that sound oddly Appalachian, and the songs have the sturdy melodies and heart-wrenching lyrics we associate with Nashville. [Feb 2016, p.84]

Only on 'Time of Songs' do the Tapes sound more than just another bunch of collegiate slackers with cool record collections. [May 2008, p.111]

Chiefly consists of lumpen and joyless AOR rock, with a few rhythm loops to give an illusion of modernity. [Apr 2002, p.104]

At times he tries too hard, but there's much here to commend. [Nov 2002, p.114]

Eitzel makes the songs his own, re-working them with a degree of affection and passion usually lacking from the covers-album genre. [Jul 2002, p.104]

The clumsy pot-banging campfire folk of his backing band doesn't help make it all any more listenable. Great lyrics, though. [Mar 2009, p.92]

A cohesive album that is simultaneously Big Star-ish (but not slavishly so) and Chilton-like (but not depressingly so). [Oct 2005, p.98]

You'd be hard pressed to find anything to summon the blood and stiffen the sinew among the 14 songs on offer here. [Mar 2007, p.90]

Folds stays true to his career-long mission to whisk up a melting pot of musical styles. [Nov 2012, p.73]

The Mix-Up is the best record collection ever thoroughly digested and re-imagined by a bunch of guys in love with sound.

Not for everyone, but quite a party. [July 2008, p.94]

Too often there's a pileup of overwrought, over-long ballads that struggle to make headway. [Jan 2005, p.121]

The promising flourishes of "Burn It Down" and "Explosions" give way to "Meteorites" and "Is This A Breakdown," mediocre indie rock plods. [Jun 2014, p.75]

This is bustling rock'n'roll that doesn't think too hard about much else. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Destroyed is up there with his career peaks. [Jun 2011, p.91]

It's the bruised and pensive love songs, such as "Broken Thoughts" and "Ninja," and the sci-fi sleaze of "Chainsaw," that stick and make The Ascent a contrived pop product with its heart and mind intact. [May 20113, p.79]

The overall effect is too solipsistic and immature to take you close to the title's imaginative world. [Aug 2006, p.96]

As with their third album, Can and Silver Apples are referenced, but there are additional moments here to please fans of both Terry Riley and Battles alike. [Dec 2008, p.94]

It's all a little too eagerly oddball at times, but generally avoids the trapdoor marked Novelty. [Dec 2014, p.78]

High on aggro but low on ideas, it mimics The Pistols' sneer and The Jam's melodies, while throwing in some inexcusably clichéd lyrics.

A mostly thin and needlessly morose album. [Jun 2002, p.108]

For better, and for worse, this is a band who still haven't figured out who they are. [Jul 2006, p.95]

The album presents the sound of masters at work, not thinking about their legacy, just doing the work. [Nov 2015, p.83]

He falls well short thanks to a dated, home-cooked sound and and the earth-bound mundanity of his collaborators. [Nov 2004, p.119]

Sighing, panting and smouldering her way throufgh a dozen digitized come-ons, she maintains the fiction of a robo-pop nymphomaniac while all around her, Rome burns. [Jan 2008, p.102]

Their second album manages to be full of surprises, while never straying too far from what you'd expect. [Mar 2007, p.80]

The combination of vaulting pop glory and damaged, fractured insecurity has seldom been done better since the early days of Sinead O'Connor. [Apr 2009, p.87]

Banjos, xylophones and 12-string guitars sound oddly unfolky in this context, instead taking an almost symphonic dimension on tracks like the lead single "SDP." [Apr 2010, p.88]

Lyrically, it's business as usual. [Oct 2011, p.105]

"Heaven" is a decent stab at '80s synth pop; "Looking Hot" and "Push And Shove" mix bubblegum R&B with ragga-inspired middle eights; the rest is rather forgettable. [Dec 2012, p.75]

Incompetent satire. [Apr 2003, p.106]

Both sublime and ridiculous. [Jun 2002, p.114]

The entire album is a beauty.... The most adventurous album of their career. [Aug 2002, p.110]

So while it's hard to quote a single memorable line, Yo Majesty's attitude is infectious. [Oct 2008, p.94]

'Half Mast' and the 'Without You' are exquisite pangs of millionaire's melancholy, even if there aren't enough of them to sustain a whole album. [Mar 2009, p.85]

It's an awkward, not entirely likeable mix. [Jul 2005, p.106]

If you’re willing to overlook Simon Le Bon’s always peculiar lyrics and occasionally strained singing, 'Red Carpet Massacre' is actually pretty impressive.

A solid set of songs. [May 2015, p.81]

Vandervelde's second album only really hits its stride in the six-minute centerpiece 'Someone Like You.' [Oct 2008, p.114]

[Perry] rambles--incomprehensibly, as ever--over various trippy soundscapes from Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann. [Sep 2012, p.82]

The results are impressive. [Jan 2012, p.81]

Another blast of super-slick soul. [Aug 2005, p.102]

There's nothing here to rival "Drop It Like It's Hot", much less "gin N Juice", but the results are mostly harmless, even if that was never quite the point. [Jan 2010, p. 126]

Let Them Talk is competent and heartfelt but far from necessary. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Lightweight but charming covers collection. [Jan 2026, p.29]

It suggests there's far more to him than the anonymous middle-of-the-road college rock for which the Americans have such an insatiable appetite. [Dec 2003, p.118]

Pale fire, but fire nonetheless. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Hints of "The Basement Tapes" glimmer through pieces like 'Win Park Slope' or 'Airstream Driver,' while John Martyn and Nick Drake ride again in the mystic folkery of 'Little Pieces.' [May 2009, p.86]

It's a long, convoluted, tiresome listen. [Jul 2021, p.25]

Even a recreation of the harmonica sound from "When The Levee Breaks" on "The Falling Sky" and the same song's famous cavernous beat on "Sacred The Thread" can't help either song stick in the memory. [Sep 2023, p.27]

Ya Know cuts deep, with the best singing and wiliest melodies of his career. [Jun 2012, p.96]

it's full of lovely moments, but it nees more edge to keep you from snoozing. [Apr 2008, p.91]

Keith's interaction with his producers is minimal, and his creative control so thin that vocal parts often sound like samples. [Sep 2006, p.79]

Well; it could've been worse.

Brian Jonestown do this stuff so much better. [Nov 2016, p.40]

It's relentless, formulaic and irritating - and although things improve hugely when they drop the bombast on later tracks such as "where It Belongs", "Blood On The Page" and the gorgeous "Carry On", by then it's almost too late. [May 2025, p.33]

There's emotional violence, spiritual leaps and supernatural powers lurking in the shadows. [Nov 2005, p.96]

Unfortunately it ends up as the kind of glossily produced "perfect pop" you can spin a dozen times without ever remembering a single tune. [May 2011, p.77]

The remaining quintet have lent their cosmic retro-rock both better tunes and more surprising detours. [Jun 2012, p.83]

The results can be ponderous, though Franklin's melodic smarts save things. [Jul 2009, p.93]

The Monsanto Years is occasionally rambling, frequently sentimental and sometimes moving. [Aug 2015, p.68]

You can not fault the passion of the songs or the tasteful nature of the playing, but it's difficult to see what of himself, besides an admiration for Bob or Bruce, he's actually serving up here. [Oct 20101, p.101]

While something could have been made of the contrast between Francis's keening howl and Paley's guttural slur, proceedings are let down by the songs. [Oct 2011, p.95]

Pretty, but pretty vacant. [Aug 2004, p.102]

There's no denying the monstrous likes of "AO" and "Fast Seconds" are well constructed, but they're little more than assemblages of over-familiar parts. [Nov 2013, p.78]

The performances are ahead of the songwriting at this early stage, but the loping "Trojans," the rip-roaring "Electric" and the Police-like "Centered On You" engagingly introduce Atlas Genius' genetically taut sound. [Mar 2013, p.67]

The record's best moments are slow-mo funk cuts like "Laughter" and "Praise" where Jones' silky falsetto finds a sweet spot east of Prince and Earth Wind & Fire. [Mar 2014, p.78]

This new project--fronting a five-piece band made up of mystery members who apparently contacted him on spec--has reined in his more wayward tendencies with positive results. [Dec 2010, p.105]

Guitarist Hugh Harris can still finesse a scintillating riff, but derivative would-be hipster anthems with hip-hop bolt-on "Around Town" and "It Was London" suggest a band aware that their time has come, and gone. [Oct 2014, p.74]

13 avant-pop gems evocative of Pere Ubu and Talking Heads. [Jun 2003, p.96]

There are flashes of sublimity, but too often hideous flashbacks of Jethro Tull and ELO. [Jul 2004, p.102]

This conservative collection feels more like musical air freshener than any kind of statement. [Dec 2007, p.104]

Dirty Glow is packed with playful, occasionally disorienting tracks. [Jan 2013, p.80]

ZW have sensibly resisted the urge to shape their sound for arenas, the gaseous disco of "Coming Up For Air" and the darkly glittering instrumental "Elusive" underlining the poignancy that was always their trump card. [Nov 2014, p.84]

It's the usual earnestly proficient, blandly yearning fare, every song a Hallmark valentine set to a John Lewis Christmas advertisement. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Wood is in his element, delivering needle sharp licks and belting the classic, while a passing Imelda May adds some serious sizzle to "We Wee Hours." [Dec 2019, p.35]

There's still a stertility to their sound on this third album, but laced with sax, treated guitars and memorable choruses, it ranks as their best. [Jun 2009, p.109]

This mass-market music deserves more than a minority audience. [Feb 2006, p.75]

As with her best material, it's an album to lip-synch for your life to. [Oct 2021, p.31]

Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Fnk's cracked baritone is brown sugar-sweet, '5 Years Time' is a hit, and the album's Jonathan Richman-esque gawkiness makes it double endearing. [Oct 2008, p.94]

Green's songs are memorable and his subtle orchestrations effective, while his lovely, burnished, Dean Martin-ish baritone voice glues it all together. [Apr 2008, p.90]

Seems to be his regular melange of jackboot glam and electro-metal spiced up with those endearingly juvenile stabs at pretension and subversion. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Full of fleeting revelations, Calamity is as bewitchingly fractured as The Red Krayola's subversive attacks on pop/rock form. [Dec 2006, p.106]

As the album Latin music fans always hoped Santana would make, Corazon doesn't disappoint. [Jul 2014, p.80]

The Surfing Magazines offer a cinematic surf-themed perspective that adds an interesting layer to a skeleton of spindly indie-pop. [Oct 2017, p.40]