The set is more interesting the more it delves into the songwriter's prodigious output, generally beefing up what it finds. [Jun 2015, p.81]

Although this LA-based Chinese-Icelander gas woven a loose temporal theme through the loungey chamber pop of her third album, it's the waspish lyrical sting in the tail of these songs that sets her apart. [Oct 2025, p.29]

Doldrums' frequently multi-tracked falsetto is the icing on an appealingly irregular cake. [Apr 2013, p.71]

He doesn't have that doomed, hellhound-on-my-trail intensity that makes Johnson's recordings so spooky. But, at 58, he sounds like a man who has faced down more than a few canine devils of his own. [Apr 2004, p.102]

The Leeds-based electro-rock five-piece set their sights shamelessly high on this grandiose second LP, a novelistic collection of characters journeying through a lavish panorama of cinematic sounds. [Mar 2011, p.101]

It's Apple's refinement as a writer that makes this harrowing psychodrama so gripping. [Aug 2012, p.69]

Illumination is already being described by the Weller massive as the best solo album of his career. You'll hear few arguments with that from this corner. [Oct 2002, p.118]

The songs benefit from a sharper focus than the quartet ever achieved before. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Another masterclass in deft guitar picking, smudged with piano, harmonica and a voice like honey drizzled onto a dry creekbed. [Jun 2003, p.93]

Business as unusual for Twig. [Oct 2015, p.83]

Sea Of Noise feels not just formally but emotionally authentic. [Nov 2016, p.39]

The Cairo Gang's superb, weighty, meticulous album still manages to pack a mighty punch. [Sep 2013, p.85]

Without sacrificing urgency, outrage or compassion, Alynda Lee Segarra gives these story-songs a light touch musically, favouring airy, even breezy arrangements driven by insistent drumbeats. [Mar 2022, p.31]

It's a wonderful pop album and there's a genuinely delightful innocence here. [Nov 2013, p.69]

It all sounds closer to 1990s David Bowie studio funk than the man who once went commando with the likes of Sabotage/Live and Music For A New Society. [Nov 2012, p.71]

This pleasing mix of exploratory guitar tones and ever-shifting rhythms that switch between the kinetic and flowing makes for an arresting debut. [Jun 2022, p.25]

The album is tethered by Roberts' spoken-word poetry. [Oct 2023, p.33]

White-knuckle anthemicism is order of the day, and vocalist Elias Bender Ronnenfelt seem to gave grown into his skin. [Mar 2013, p.73]

Price's excellent debut wastes absolutely no energy trying to address her place in the country-music ecosystem, and gets right to telling us who she is, rather than who she ain't.... Her voice is the record's real star: controlled, infectious, and rich with enviable natural twang. [Apr 2016, p.63]

Tennessee Pusher is comfortably up to standard, the demented Dylan pastiche, 'Alabama High-Test' a particular highlight. [Oct 2008, p.101]

Hearing these instantaneous, improvised rituals makes the world feel a little less huge. [Jun 2020, p.29]

Platinum Tips + Ice-Cream sees the duo attack old songs with results both gloriously haphazard and straight-up glorious. [Jul 2017, p.39]

The second album by this East London singer sees her moving away from the orthodox jazz trio and expanding her sonic palette. [Feb 2014, p.77]

"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]

Local Valley is positive, engaged, almost rousing. [Oct 2021, p.32]

Cowley's songs sound lie pulsating Bond themes, funeral laments and the greatest stadium-filling anthems that Coldplay never wrote. [Feb 2012, p.83]

Draws intelligently on its sources, revealing itself as more than mere pastiche. [Nov 2004, p.108]

While Pang!, totalling just under half an hour, doesn't have the conceptual strengths of Babelsberg or American Interior, it's nevertheless a delight to hear Rhys once again embracing the possibilities of technology and harnessing modern, global sounds to enhance his unique vision. [Oct 2019, p.37]

With Ween, nothing is done by halves. [Nov 2003, p.126]

It is short--just over 30 minutes--but it feels sprightly and substantial. [Oct 2015, p.84]

Russian Circles display a welcome eagerness to cut to the chase whether they're crafting gentler soundscapes like "Overboard" or hurtling through the doomy mathcore of "Vorel." [Nov 2016, p.37]

Booker T can still effortlessly access the pleasure principle that transcends musical trends and fleeting fashions, with an instinctive grasp of groove and momentum that speaks directly to heart, feet and head alike. [Sep 2013, p.84]

Fletcher’s and Pursey’s The Catenary Wires offer sweet vocals and dirty guitars on “Wall Of Sound” and Heavenly comrade Peter Momtchiloff jangles in French on Tufthunter’s “Monsier Jadis”, while Secret Shine still pursue shoegaze, Boyracer remain appealingly chaotic, and Sepiasound’s bucolic instrumental “Arcadian” maintains Blueboy’s yearning. [Apr 2022, p.36]

An exploration of what common ground there might be between it and Prophet’s usual métier of deadpan country rock. It turns out to be substantial, as does this album, from the shuffling Colombiana of “Betty’s Song” to the drawling Tom Petty vibes of “Sally Was A Cop” to the near Glen Campbell-ish “Red Sky Night”. [Nov 2024, p.41]

The familiar finger-picking textures and soft-sung romantic paeans of 2019’s Cala have been superseded by an almost ghostly atmosphere, as echo-swathed, lysergic-sounding reveries evoke spellbinding romantic visions. [Dec 2024, p.37]

It is a fitting tribute and resounding success. [Jan 2016, p.81]

Menneskekollektivet's foibles – and the sense that it’s incomplete – are what make it so compelling. [May 2021, p.34]

Mostly Kin is a deeply rewarding immersive experience. [Oct 2012, p.81]

Apply megawatt tunes and career-best performances and you’ve got an album to top even 2002’s criminally neglected "Life On Other Planets."

She crafts tightly coiled rock epics with just a few elements, sounding like The Strokes one minute, Liz Phair the next. [Apr 2019, p.39]

TATE's debut touches on Stooges garage rock, sultry blues, Strokesian pop, all swaddled in opulent Americana. [Mar 2009, p.87]

It's a structurally savvy set stuffed with impeccably wrought pop hooks. [May 2016, p.81]

Dawes come into their own as an articulate, self-assured SoCal rock band. [May 2013, p.69]

Sculptor is the strongest and most assured record of their career. The songs dig deep emotionally--but critically their aesthetics are well-balanced, the voice and instruments perfectly calibrated. [Aug 2018, p.18]

This new 23-track compilation, cherry-picking the back catalogue from 1989's "Box Elder" through to 1999's "Terror Twilight," might help resolve the band's final enigma. [Apr 2010, p.102]

[A] strong final work. [Sep 2015, p.71]

It can sometimes feel a little over the top but that's partly the point, and Fleming's voice has enough sincerity to hold it together. [Oct 2015, p.73]

Yes, they're really that good. [Feb 2022, p.37]

Every moment shimmers with atmosphere, as the rippling melodies and contoured choruses enclose Payseur's knotty ruminations in sun-dappled serenity. [Jul 2023, p.23]

The Lemonheads' sixth album is looser and shaggier than its predecessor; his purpose beginning to waver, though essentially Dando is continually saved nu his songwriting gifts. [Jun 2023, p.47]

The wonder of it all lies not so much on the amount of ground she covers but the way she inhabits her material so convincingly. [Oct 2011, p.94]

Smartly enlisted esteemed producer Dave Fridmann, who illuminates their loose-limbed, self-assured character on kickass Stones-y opener "If I Try To Leave" and the cowbell-powered "Forgiving Ties," with its hooky Harrisonian central riff. [Aug 2023, p.28]

It's more memorable than Mush's debut, simultaneously weirder and more melodic: and the peak of the record, and of this mix of the the strange and the infectious, comes right at the end. [Mar 2021, p.30]

A joy to listen to. [Nov 2013, p.69]

Distracted may be his most coherent album to date. Less prone to abrupt zigzags than its predecessors, it's his smoothest, too. [May 2026, p.35]

This is no desperate grab at nostalgia, then, rather a chronicle of important personal moments reexamined through the lens of time. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Line for line it's her best and funniest album in a decade. [Jun 2026, p.33]

It helps that Karen Peris’s voice continues to convey so much warmth and wonder. Likewise, her lyrics captures the tiniest joys of everyday life in modest but very finely crafted songs. [Jan 2025, p.35]

It's a strikingly bold venture, and a refreshing take on the Roxy soundworld. [Apr 2025, p.29]

Meiburg's troubled tenor is abetted by sinewy arrangements full of the disquiet of that decade. [Mar 2012, p.95]

There's a striking purity to this record. [Mar 2012, p.79]

A typically assured piece of work. [Jun 2020, p.30]

If it sounds suspiciously of coffee table, it is. But the coffee is freshly grounded, and thr table an elegant modernist sculpture. [Nov 2008, p.119]

It’s astonishing that they managed to come up with several of the most thrilling pieces of primal UK R’n’B, before going on to invent the rock opera, following one of the more creatively intriguing examples of ’60s pop’s transition from mod to psychedelia.

A grown-up record that hints at a more excitable wayward past. [May 2009, p.91]

Generous of spirit and cutting-edge sound, Hopelessness is a statement for our times, and one that will not be easy to dismiss. [Jun 2016, p.63]

It's clear we're in for an introspective ride, though the more major-key, upbeat nature of many of the record's arrangements belie these melancholy undertones. [Oct 2021, p.29]

Dan Wriggins brings some of Lambchop's pained soul-baring to his vocals, and the band give him plenty of space while keeping songs interesting and dynamic. [Aug 2025, p.31]

What most impresses is its warmth, dynamism and unforced difference. [Jun 2015, p.84]

With the aid of some of the finest session musicians in Chicago, Hayes concocts a creamy rock'n'soul fantasy that answers the question: what if Jimmy Webb had teamed up with Thom Bell to write for Marc Bolan? [Oct 2009, p.98]

These diorama-songs of a Mayberry gone to seed don't sound to different from what you might hear on mainstream US radio--only much more lovingly observed and finely crafted. [Jul 2016, p.71]

It's striking to hear just how confident the trio now are, and how interwoven their playing is. [Aug 2019, p.18]

A record that achieves a great deal with only a few raw materials. [Jun 2015, p.73]

An album bursting with adventure and originality. [Jul 2014, p.83]

This female-fronted quintet continues to connect the tuneful aggression of Blondie with the SoCal sassiness of Rilo Kiley. [Aug 2012, p.71]

The result is a record that's technically adept, but full of heart, too. [Oct 2018, p.29]

The Animal spirits is earthy and tactile. [Dec 2017, p.23]

Welfare Jazz ratchets up the pizzazz. [Feb 2021, p.37]

It is often reminiscent of auntie's work, but with a solid beat underpinning. [Nov 2012, p.73]

While songs like “Nashville Mess Around” heighten the good-time vibes, Crooked Tree’s often playful manner is balanced by deeper considerations.

They've really only got one trick. But it's a treat, all the same. [Oct 2011, p.98]

The songs themselves range from ringing country-rockers to soulful ballads and vary shades between, thematically weighted between reflection and renewal. [Apr 2026, p.31]

Jump For Joy is a panoramic, magical reverie on the sometimes hard gift of a life in American music. [Sep 2023, p.36]

A set of 12 colour-saturated, avant electronic-soul tracks, where Sumney's extraordinary voice is strong, clear and central to the mix rather than one element of it. [Apr 2020, p.37]

Altogether, a fascinating portrait of a man making sense of both himself and his times. [Dec 2011, p.94]

The band has never sounded better, and Cave seems to have relaxed into the hysteria of his vocal style; like Elmer Gantry singing Leonard Cohen at a tent-revival.

This is inventive harkening, not witless revivalism. [Apr 2008, p.90]

A mood of high seriousness pervades, but Spirit Exit’s blend of spirituality and futurism is often transfixing. [Aug 2022, p.25]

Laura J. Martin's debut album is an extraordinary and eclectic mix of flute, loops, mandolin and xylophone. [Feb 2012, p.92]

2007's Burnt Toast & offerings established her as the natural successor to Lucinda Williams--this does not contradict the notion. [Mar 2012, p.97]

The record prompts leaning in, not least of all for the gentle, cantering insistence of "Have Heaven" and "Our Hearts In A Room", with its soft piano and brush work. [Apr 2025, p.29]

King Gizzard's most cohesive record to date--a hyper-detailed punk opera that few of their peers have matched for intensity, ambition or sheer derangement. [Jun 2016, p.77]

Like The Siren’s Song itself, it feels both ageless and beguiling, a classic record for this or any other time.

The Youth sound rejuvenated. [Jul 2004, p.108]

Relayted manages to be both comfortingly familiar and devastatingly futuristic. [Jun 2010, p.90]

herring's poetic analysis of a recent break-up makes it all a compelling listen. [Nov 2020, p.29]

It comes from a place of vulnerability, but speaks the language of strength and self-belief, with enough to share around. [Oct 2024, p.38]

Adds extra confidence and clarity to the same basic ingredients. [Oct 2005, p.107]