He’s got a trippy sense of humour (sampling a bong hit on “MORBUD4ME”), but there’s a pervasive melancholy running songs like “In The Clear” and “Gild The Lily”, as though what he leaves behind is just as important as what he discovers on that endless highway. [Jan 2024, p.40]

Contains some of their most objectively beautiful songs. [Jun 2025, p.41]

Loaded: Reloaded stands as a lavish sequel. [Nov 2015, p.92]

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]

I kept wishing I'd been there that night, 45 years ago. [Mar 2020, p.42]

This fruitful collaboration between k.d. Lang, Neko Case and Laura Veirs succeeds largely because it makes room for all three distinctive voices and songwriting styles, alongside sublimely blended three-way harmonies. [Jul 2016, p.71]

They're bummed to learn that adulthood breeds more angst than adolescence, which inspires a sharp-edged '70s hard rock, with songs celebrating kink and demanding equal pay and full-body autonomy on "Big Trouble". [Sep 2023, p.23]

Their masterpiece. .... They've matured- not like a fine wine, but maybe like a magnificently ripe Wensleydale. [Jul 2025, p.20]

[A] darkly compelling new album. [May 2017, p.24]

Wildflower does a robust job of reiterating core skills rather than offering radical reinvention. [Sep 2016, p.66]

The Remote Part is Idlewild Mark II--sleeker, bolder, better. [Oct 2002, p.107]

Another truly wondrous record. [May 2004, p.99]

Like Ill Communication, it's a superbly paced album, its felicitous stylistic juxtapositions the product of judicious cut-and-paste. [Jun 2011, p.89]

Drew's desire to be all things to all 'hoods is the weakness of the soundtrack to his debut movie. [Oct 2012, p.86]

Alternating between acoustic ballads and full-on roots rockers could have created a disjointed feel, but it works splendidly with the salty, blue-collar honesty of his dustbowl voice providing an emotional cohesion on vivid, affecting songs such as "Heart's Too Heavy" and the warmly nostalgic "American Flags In Black & White." [Feb 2016, p.78]

The parade of fretboard styles Cooder brings to the album is masterly. [Jun 2018, p.22]

There's a biting political edge to the off-kilter "In The Desert," which savages Bush and Blair for instigating the Middle East crisis and its attendant horrors. At the same time, this wouldn't be a Mekons record without a fair dollop of humour. [May 2019, p.26]

Add sublime dimensions to James's already impressive canon. [May 2022, p.36]

Thrills and dazzlement abound. [Dec 2025, p.33]

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

Dreamy, trippy and filled with elegant hooks, it's his best yet. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Black Encyclopedia... is less abrasive but no less urgently meaningful [than 2016's Fetish Bones], a fusion of experimental hip-hop, soul, poetry and jazz-etched beatscapes that ebbs and flows around the concept of an Afrofuturist universe. [Oct 2021, p.29]

It would be reductive to simply label this as just ambient electronica, even though it fits the bill, as there’s a level of depth, texture and nuance that belies its deceptively straightforward delivery. [Review of the Year 2024, p.30]

Their selection is most impressive during climactic moments - the opening double whammy of an explosive "2=2+5" and impatient "Sit Down. Stand Up" a frantic "Where I End And You Begin", a thunderous, almost unhinged "Myxomatosis" - but quieter moments like the skittish "The Gloaming also flourish. [Nov 2025, p.50]

This is an excellent album that manages to be both a mature summary of an artist’s career and something completely fresh and new.

The result is something abrasive but controlled. [Jul 2013, p.83]

Rose said she wanted to make an album that reflects the oscillating extremes of her personality--Loner is that and much more. [Jul 2018, p.34]

Elegiac and otherworldly. [Jan 2022. p.25]

Arrangements are denser and somehow tenser than the relaxed studio recordings, with “Partition” building to a fervent drone and “Natural Information” riding a wild groove kept in check by Callahan’s steady vocals. [Oct 2024, p.33]

Only Frozen Sky Anyway is a seriocomic meditation on the absurdity of humanity, unfailingly generous in music and spirit alike. [Oct 2025, p.32]

With Orange his style cuts loose and shifts around, relaxing into large, at time echoey spaces while recalling '70s Bowie and Lenon and The Verlaines, though not entirely forsaking jangle. [May 2026, p.37]

Skying, The Horrors' third, again brilliantly confounds expectations. [Aug 2011, p.76]

Bristles with the unruly energies that enlivened their younger incarnations. [Mar 2021, p.32]

It's a decidedly sparser backdrop for his erudite, torch-like confessionals. [Dec 2012, p.76]

The knotty, punky, Squarepusher-style edges of its predecessor have been smoothed down, with a little too much perfumed whimsy in the mix. [Aug 2013, p.77]

Lisbon instead makes defiant virtues of under-ambition and overindulgence. Short on hooks but long on atmosphere, the songs suit Hamilton Leithauser's Dylan drawl. [Nov 2010, p.110]

The Ghosts Of Highway 20 is vast, thoughtful and profound. [Feb 2016, p.81]

A strong set of big band compositions. [Nov 2017, p.23]

A complete rethink has resulted in the most uninhibited and visceral album of her career. [Jun 2014, p.78]

A bold re-statement of artistic identity. [Sep 2022, p.25]

Presley's righteous fury and mordant wit burn even brighter on this follow-up. [May 2017, p.28]

Bock’s solo work takes a subtler but no less arresting approach, weaving in melodic passages for strings, organ and woodwind and rhythmic calls to her Brazilian heritage in ways that only fully reveal themselves with repeated listens. [Aug 2022, p.25]

In both rhythm and spirit, Yowzers is slippery and free. Yet where the record coalesces into songs, it tends to speak the raw, direct language of soul music and the blues. [Aug 2025, p.36]

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

Eye Contact works because its bolshie drum patterns and metallic synth stabs, influenced by Jamaican dancehall and UK bass music, anchor it firmly in the near future, while Lizzie Bougastsos' strong and inventive melodies help make light work of what could come across like a pretentious muddle. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Pick Me Up Off The Floor hangs together wonderfully. [Jun 2020, p.33]

Haunting songs rooted in old-time country, Southern Gothic and humming electric ambience. [Mar 2016, p.72]

The band's newfound eagerness for moodier tempos and treatments allows frontman Elias Bender Ronnenfelt to dig deeper into his Gun Club fetish on "under The sun" and make like he's stumbling out of a Kurt Weill musical on "Showtime," a stunning piece of punked-up cabaret. [Jun 2018, p.28]

These cuts are glorious on their own merits. [Jun 2012, p.92]

This arrestingly adventurous debut is a densely layered mash-up of shudders and drones, narcotically twisted beats, gospel-infused vocals and surreal wordplay. [Mar 2014, p.85]

In a field of her own. [Feb 2016, p.79]

Even on songs which tap into more difficult territory, such as "When Your Heart Is Broken", he delivers it with such a seamless knack for melodic songcraft, that he even turns heartache into foot-stomping riffs and sing-along choruses. [Apr 2025, p.30]

An amazing album. [Mar 2007, p.75]

The blues remain a touchstone--the album's first line is "Woke up this Morning"--but Grinderman 2 prefers to prowl rock's perimeter with Amon Duul II, Suicide and contemporary drone practitioners like Wooden Shjips. [Oct 2010, p.86]

Occasionally, N*E*R*D edge a little closer to staccato nu-metal than fans fo their inventive music might appreciate. [May 2002, p.105]

Another relaxed but enigmatic foray into modernist roots territory to stand alongside records by Gillian Welch, Laura Veirs, Sparklehorse and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. [Jun 2004, p.98]

At a time when all things punky or funky with an NY zip code are the peak of chic, Talking Heads ought to be lauded as authentic pioneers. [Jan 2004, p.118]

Rarely has contrived weirdness sounded so utterly bewitching. [Jun 2004, p.85]

There are some pleasantly elaborate, wayward songs here... Forays into funk and Tom Waits' scrapyard are cringe-inducing, though. [Sep 2004, p.110]

She's far bolder, singing in a strange, little girl's voice over a solitary Chet Baker-style trumpet or chanting mantra-like over a bubbling African rhythm. [May 2008, p.87]

Difficult to pin down, Hidden is even harder to forget. [Feb 2010, p.104]

It manages to top those two finely crafted albums [2013's Time Off and 2014's Way Out Weather]. It's more streamlined in its playing, more confident in its writing, more determined in its mission. [Jul 2016, p.72]

House and Land is first and foremost a vocal album, full of rough-hewn and exquisitely discordant mountain harmonies---like The Carter Family for the 21st century. [Jul 2017, p.32]

What unifies these wildly disparate modes [political satirist. self-loathing lothario, celebrity stalker, Cali yacht-rocker, and Nilsson-like romantic crooner] is Baxter's musical sophistication, which puts him closer to the witty elegance of 10cc than the alt.country label he's been slapped with. [Sep 2018, p.26]

Epic debut, an emotionally rich and stylistically broad mediation on homeland, exile and identity. ... A lavish feast of an album. [Nov 2019, p.30]

This anniversary reissue is less concerned about the album as it is and more curious about how it might have sounded. ... Arguably the most revealing aspect of this reissue is Scott Litt's bold remix of Monster. [Dec 2019, p.40]

Out Of My Province retains the earthen quality of her previous works, but with an added confidence, her words enunciated with a newfound assurance. [Apr 2020, p.22]

There's a gorgeously somnambulant yet softly romantic feel to these 10 songs. ... And it benefits from masterfully subtle arrangement touches. [Dec 2021, p.27]

There’s certainly an abundance of good ideas – often several within the course of one song, with hooks emerging from the fog before dissolving as quickly as they came – but the band seem to work through them in perfect harmony, on the way to even greater things. ... Their best album.

Pure pleasure with an experimental edge. [Oct 2024, p.34]

Sitting somewhere between alt.rock, indie-pop and a singer-songwriter album, it’s a neat balancing act that feels personal and intimate yet also sonically ambitious. [Dec 2024, p.37]

Richard Koch's trumpet and Shards' choral vocals on the spooky "Human Range" confirm his quiet urge to defy expectations. [Feb 2018, p.27]

More inward-looking than her conceptual debut, its emotive lyrics lending themselves to a more tightly focused musical palette. [Apr 2022, p.36]

Her quirky homespun arrangements have been toughened and broadened, adding a knowingly retro girl-group stomp and echo-drenched Spector-ish grandeur to windswept heartbreak anthems. [Apr 2011, p.85]

It's a heavy trip, with the exotic/erotic minimal techno of Ricardo Villalobos overlaid to intoxicating effect with the eerie hauntological manoeuvers of The Focus group. [Feb 2011, p.82]

The No. 1 slot will continue to elude him, but a strange, dank pop corner remains his and his alone. [Mar 2018, p.26]

A dazzling set that even outstrips 2020’s Source, with the bearing of a modern classic. [Oct 2024, p.34]

[Fear Fun is] packed with sardonic, self-effacing songs that recall the finest traditions of harmony-soaked West Coast folk-and-country influenced rock'n'roll. [Jun 2012, p. 68]

A cappella shanty "Poor Old Horse" is a working class hymn with real bite, while muted electronica gives "As I Roved Out" a thoroughly modern sheen. [Feb 2018, p.35]

Past Life Regression is a perfect distillation of Quever’s aesthetic – 10 hook-filled tracks that bring to mind vintage Paisley Underground excursions, Barrett-era Floyd and jangly C86 moods. [Jul 2022, p.31]

Listening to the ramalama of "Slow Drip" and "Hot Tubes" you can't help but cheer them on. [Nov 2010, p.102]

Anhedönia's gifts for storytelling - part Flannery O'Connor, part David Lynch - are compelling enough, but the music is equally stunning, a mix of shoegaze, gothic country and doom metal. [Sep 2025, p.29]

These 12 songs have a resonance that's deep and wide, examining intimate/romantic connections and their power to wound and confuse, as well as relationships in the broader contexts of existential identity and being fused to a genealogical history. [Apr 2019, p.38]

Their angsty post-rock elements have been largely superseded by quivering/rousing chamber pop reminiscent of early Arcade fire and Florence + The Machine, yet a weird emotional intensity remains - along with a talent for self-mythology that inspires audible devotion in an excitable crowd. [Jul 2023, p.23]

This sequel similarly mixes hard country and mountain music, memorably on Harlan Howard's "Busted" and a plaintive "Half Over You." [Feb 2010, p.93]

A surreal sense of the macabre in everyday life remains their MO, from "Skunks"' shuffling crawl space inhabitants to the winged appetites of the softly intoned "Mothballs". [Oct 2023, p.29]

As steel guitar groans and floats away like dying stars at the close and Raymond bends drones to her will, John Cale's singular Welsh spirit feels near. [Oct 2025, p.32]

The record's feel, like West's College Dropout, offers a rich jukebox of gospel-tinged R&B flavours over which Common scatters his gems. [Aug 2005, p.97]

While there is some noodling with electronica, it's the understated melodies that linger. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Soul Time! is another thrilling homage to the glory days of Motown and Stax. [Dec 2011, p.87]

Producer Ross Orton helps sharpen their attack, and the quartet are at their very best on "White Rooms And People's" fierce synth-funk, the Suicide-like "Tomorrow" and the thudding grooves of Valleys." [Nov 2020, p.37]

It's the smoother, almost surfy, tones of tracks like "Deep Infatuation" and "Earl & Duke" that offer a pleasing change of tone from the familiar indie racket. [Dec 2020, p.29]

It's a nuanced handling of some of her recent song obsessions. [Jan 2021, p.27]

More pastoralism wouldn't go astray, but Centralia is very charming. [Feb 2013, p.77]

The songs, reworked with producer Patrick Hyland over a three-year period, shapeshift in time to the lyrics. [Mar 2022, p.32]

This is a stunning album, bristling with astute and funny words, glorious tunes and delivered in performances all the more impressive for sounding so utterly effortless. [Mar 2008, p.80]

The Hunter feels purposely immediate. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Another triumph for the post-classical scene. [Oct 2011, p.81]