Warts, ugly cousins, blazes of greatness and all, however, A Treasure makes a perfect snapshot of this ornery, shapeshifting moment. [Jul 2011, p.98]

[Swim Inside The Moon] consists primarily of intricately constructed acoustic guitar lines and De Augustine's soft, high whisper of a voice. [Sep 2017, p.26]

These are great, clever, slovenly rock songs. [May 2005, p.95]

Clever-clever, emotional-emotional avant-pop. [Jun 2006, p.100]

This may just be [the] finest pop break-up album since [Justin] Timberlake's Justified. [Aug 2006, p.95]

The thoughtful A Beautiful Time finds Nelson in remarkable voice, giving thanks for a life well-lived over songs that feel wise and wily without being overly sentimental. [May 2022, p.30]

The result is a deeply humane record, perhaps the most vivid in Johnson's long career. [Apr 2021, p.29]

It is, in short, a hippy record, and a very good one.

As dazzling as it is diverse. [May 2020, p.25]

Infinite loops and surging crescendos constitute a psychedelic session more about melancholic beauty than foreboding. [Mar 2014, p.83]

For all that Ghosts Of West Virginia is a serious work contemplating a serious subject, there are moments where Earle sounds like he's having more fun than any time since The Mountain. [Jun 2020, p.32]

The Crying Light shows Antony boldly, indefatigably following his own eccentric star.

The bruising "Madder" betrays the influence of Scott Walker producer Peter Walsh, but there are flickers of respite, notably "The Bomb," which tethers its emotional unravelling to a lovely piano figure. [Jun 2018, p.24]

The cherished first couple of French electro burn brighter than at any point in their recent careers. [Jun 2009, p.109]

Here, we find the mufti-instrumentalist in his natural habitat, leading a band in seven pieces that blend Eastern-tinged melody, courtly medieval music and modern composition. [Mar 2012, p.90]

Bold, beautiful and carefully contrary, it's an album by a band in complete control. [Feb 2010, p.77]

In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision. [Feb 2010, p.87]

Gimme Some's relentless melodicism arrives with a harder edge than the dreamy naivete that powered "Young Folks," but the results frequently feel just as fine. [Jun 2011, p.93]

Blessed is a powerful, vivid, highly emotive record. [Mar 2011, p.92]

Williamson is good at painting Hogarthian grotesques in a few brushstrokes. [Aug 2015, p.70]

The result is a highly engaging, emotionally rich debut, where defiant working-class pride anthems like “Dig!” jostle for space alongside the soaring urban blues confessional “This Here Ain’t Water” and the joyously puerile playground chant “Shithouse”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Every one of these songs is a big-hearted meditation on love and sex and faith and especially healing, as though what roots us to our own lands is loss and grief and recovery. [Feb 2023, p.34]

Sodden with emotional profundity. [May 2004, p.104]

A set of drifting piano ballads that allow her rich and profane lyrics to hit home. [Jan 2022, p.22]

These 13 grooving and textural song-poems are his most focused work to date and, although loaded with meaning, Ma never feels heavy or burdensome. [Oct 2019, p.24]

Disquiet is a marathon - it's more than three hours long - but every minute matters. [Nov 2025, p.35]

The new album is singular in its conception and an impressive leap forward in terms of execution. [Nov 2020, p.20]

Tracks flirt with minimalism, spiky synth-pop and krautrock while creating an entirely original sonic language. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

A thrilling racket it is too, the quartet achieving a winning balance of improv and melodic suss on a bunch of hairy psychedelic jams. [Oct 2019, p.26]

An affecting, lyrical record that makes you feel blessed for not having lived through it, but wiser, so graceful for the ride. [Oct 2012, p.74]

With their abundance of charm and good cheer, the performances ensure the patchier numbers still satisfy. More genuinely impressive are "You Get The Feeling" and "Hell On Earth", corkers that demonstrate the creative chemistry that was there since moment one. [Mar 2026, p.37]

What makes The Eraser great is Yorke's singing. [Aug 2006, p.82]

This multilayered and multigenre approach results in an album that is as deeply introspective as it is creatively bold and ambitious. [May 2021, p.25]

Waffles, Triangles & Jesus marks the welcome return of White the singer-songwriter, unpacking reassuringly odd, skewed narratives that offer a surrealist's view of southern life. [Dec 2018, p.26]

A generous and expansive set of sensual pop. [Apr 2017, p.39]

It's his best yet. [Jun 2020, p.38]

Some songs don't quite live up to the arrangements, but the sonic ambition here shames nearly every other major-label release of 2016. [Jul 2016, p.78]

The 11 original compositions here are full of warm compassion and ripe wisdom. [Sep 2020, p.27]

Bruised suburban romance sparkles through the twin jangles of Edwards and James Wignall. [Jun 2012, p.84]

It's worth getting lost in their groove. [Jun 2011, p.93]

The frontman and his septet sculpt grooves and hooks that immediately grab hold. [Dec 2021, p.33]

The Luyas concentrate on sounding endearing rather than epic. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Unsound is a corker, sounding fresh and full of great hooks and ideas. [Aug 2012, p.77]

An affectionate collection of Walker's songs. [Aug 2012, p.80]

On Grace & Dignity is his best yet. [Apr 2023, p.28]

Like a blurrier version of Tame Impala's Lonerism, each listen reveals further pleasures. [Sep 2013, p.91]

This Terrific follow-up is even better, the quartet unloading a clamorous set of songs full of pique, provocation and waspish humour. [Aug 2015, p.77]

Bloodlines and geography figure into every NMAs album, but on Set Sail, Luther and Cody Dickinson make family and setting the conjoined theme. [Mar 2022, p.32]

[An] intense and atmospheric instrumental debut. [Sep 2013, p.92]

That the album never loses it s way is testament to Deacons' fearless approach, his mastery of different genres and from the thrilling sense of urgency that propels it all forward. [Oct 2012, p.75]

A quietly remarkable record. [Aug 2005, p.92]

As ever it's Collins' wonderfully unfussy voice that is the star. [Dec 2016, p.26]

His voice of loss is shrouded in inventive production. [Dec 2015, p.74]

Richly cinematic and more eclectic than recent efforts. [May 2022, p.25]

Running over with ideas. [Nov 2006, p.128]

Most consistently enthralling album thus far. [Feb 2019, p.36]

A vivid storyteller, June approaches traditional music with a similar mix of irreverence and affection. [Apr 2017, p.30]

Together [Dylan and Rick Rubin] have made an austere acoustic album that could've been titled "American Recordings VI." [June 2008, p.87]

Grimly compelling. [Apr 2016, p.66]

Angular oldies like "Map Ref 41N 93W" and Kidney Bingos" still sparkle, and the relentless "Drill" is boring in all the right ways. [Mar 2012, p.107]

The unlikely pairing works precisely because of the contrast between their approaches, as they locate a vibrant middle ground on rawboned yet tuneful rockers like "The Prisoner" and dynamic ballads like "No Sir." [May 2014, p.69]

Cornershop's 2009 incarnation may not have the kinetic energy of the 2002 model, or the accidental pop brilliance of "Asha", but it isn't short on inventiveness.

These are ageless, thrillingly energised devotionals for our secular and fast-moving times, full of euphonious noise and the dust kicked up by their deep-dug grooves. [Aug 2019, p.27]

The nostalgic tug of the earlier, dancier singles remains strong, but as a bonus disc of rarities demonstrates, their experimental side is equally compelling. [Mar 2012, p.101]

This is the sound of a valuable, extravagantly vital band in full swing. [Jun 2011, p.91]

It’s an odd sort of idea: a trio paying tribute to themselves. But even if no new ground is being broken exactly, there’s a pleasure in hearing the old space cadets out on manoeuvres. The music of Apollo is meditative and benign, yet strangely inscrutable; a reminder that while you might be able to visit space, it will never be home.

Joy is both surer and sillier than Hair. [Aug 2018, p.33]

The results is some of the richest, most compelling and least lonely-sounding music of Granduciel's career. [Sep 2017, p.24]

Impressively, it achieves the feat of enghancing Pink's legend with out puncturing his mystique. [Jul 2010, p.105]

"Despierta," released in October 2016 as part of the 30 Days, 30 Songs projects aimed at hindering Donald Trump's campaign. If that did not quite work out, their LP does. [Oct 2017, p.26]

A mesmerising slowdive into the sonic depths. [Nov 2020, p.31]

Swamp Dogg shows how music can speak truth to power on the ballad “Songs To Sing” and rousing “Rise Up”, which features that rarity in bluegrass: a face-melting electric guitar solo, courtesy of Vernon Reid. [Jun 2024, p.39]

Pristine production renders this as vital as anything by Justin Timberlake. [Oct 2004, p.104]

This is an engaging piece of minimalist minimalism: Steve Reich with a battering ram. [Oct 2015, p.71]

Their slickest album yet. [Oct 2015, p.76]

The Wolf You Feed slithers through its dark business with reckless abandon and brute force. [Sep 2012, p.85]

The Outsider is delivered with the forthrightness, jive and firepower of a hip Southern Baptist preacher. [Aug 2005, p.102]

She's made a hugely satisfying album of slinky electronic soul. [Oct 2013, p.71]

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]

Blue & Lonesome feels like a major reassessment from a band, returning to the source and in doing so reminding us why they mattered in the first place. [Jan 2017, p.26]

Kannon will leave other neophytes feeling awed by the complexity and physicality achieved here. [Jan 2016, p.70]

Like its predecessor, the most impressive aspect of The Enemy Chorus is not so much the breadth of its references as the tumescent, head-spinning harmonies. [Feb 2007, p.74]

The Grinderman hat seems to have tilted the basic Bad Seeds stance brilliantly on its side, bringing out a new humour and a grumpy-old-rocker gravitas. [Apr 2007, p.102]

Luminous versions of American folk songs and old English ballads, alongside works by Lour Reed and Joy Division. [Mar 2018, p.35]

Impeccably arranged, the whole thing plays out like an extended, pragmatic version of "A Day In The Life." [Mar 2012, p.82]

There's something bleak about this music, but it is spacious, often epic, too. [May 2016, p.73]

It's an agreeably raw listen. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Introspective and tightly wound. [Sep 2020, p.26]

The invigorating Downey to Lubbock, a record that speaks to both a lifetime of shared experience and the music that inspired them in the first place. [Jul 2018, p.26]

Though occasionally guilty of easy-listening tastefulness, the Haikus rarely sound less than gorgeous. [Oct 2021, p.28]

The result is a deeply eclectic yet remarkably cohesive record that unfurls in pleasingly unpredictable ways. [Oct 2020, p.32]

It's packed with diverse performances. [Mar 2012, p.104]

The overall mood is slinkily, scuzzily surreal. ... It's a deep trip into Murphy's past and future. [Nov 2020, p.33]

Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is soaked in a peculiar English melancholy. ... Best of all is the closer “Particles”, one of Albarn’s finest melodies, a woozy, drumless ballad based around a pretty Wurlitzer electric piano riff and a creepy electronic drone that gives the song a hymn-like quality. [Dec 2021, p.22]

Loving, not by the spoonful but by the bucketful. [Oct 2015, p.80]

The uninitiated may hear only a wonky Julian Cope at 25rpm, but somewhere on Screen Memories is the point where performance art ends and genuine mania begins. [Nov 2017, p.32]

Like The Knife's opera about Charles Darwin, The Unfolding tackles the biggest themes in a way that's awed, never overwrought. [May 2022, p.32]

It's a maddening inversion of all the conventions of songwriting, but a brilliant one nonetheless. [Dec 2006, p.102]