Sirens may be the most acutely personal and deeply unnerving music Kevin Martin has ever made. [Jul 2019, p.30]

A rich, absorbing listen. [Apr 2020, p.33]

Nelson's paeans to familial bonds form a loose song cycle that frequently surprises and is capable of effortlessly lifting the listener's spirits. [Sep 2021, p.29]

British Sea Power are still without a 'Wake Up' or a 'Float On' but Do You Like Rock Music? is exhilarating in its ambition, full of songs that will warm the cockles at whichever National Heritage site they choose to play next.

This quartet have honed thier lumbering heaviness into something both glorious and at times funny. [Aug 2010, p.82]

Each song seems subtle, even sparse, but with repeated listens the complexity of the arrangements starts to astound. [Jan 2022, p.14]

The Next 20th Century contains a bunch of songs – “Goodbye Mr Blue”, “We Could Be Strangers”, “Buddy’s Rendezvous” – that go right to the gut with their instant melodic charm, and a bunch more – “Kiss Me (I Loved You)”, “Q4”, “Only A Fool”, “The Next 20th Century” – that are deeply striking a few listens later thanks to their sumptuous arrangements, exceptional playing and emotional pull. [May 2022, p.24]

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]

Modern nature is an explicitly English affair: unbluesy, unassuming and slightly uptight (in a good way). [Sep 2019, p.36]

It's noisy, riotous, guttural stuff - old-school noise rock to its core - that very much picks up where the band left off. [May 2025, p.33]

Worth the price alone is the inclusion of their peerless ’97 Nurse With Wound collaboration “Simple Headphone Mind”/“Trippin’ With The Birds”, half an hour of sublime Neu!-sozzled psych as Steven Stapleton caresses the ’lab’s “Long Hair Of Death”. [Oct 2022, p.48]

Pleasingly, the most difficult thing about the album is its name. [Dec 2008, p.116]

Donald's back in his self-referencing sweet-spot, and all's right with the world. [Nov 2012, p.69]

[Graves reinvents] himself as wistful purveyor of psych dream pop. It happens to suit him. [Jun 2018, p.27]

The record itself isn’t angry, fizzing instead with a creative fire. There’s a looseness and joy to songs like “Make It Right” and “Homewrecker”, rooted in the extended jam sessions in which Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner birthed the record, the bold lyrics an extension of that passion. [May 2021, p.32]

His latest is less complex and makes a strong move to the dancefloor, without ditching the intrigue. [Apr 2022, p.26]

This is a beautifully executed love letter to the eternal pop rush. [Jun 2012, p.82]

At first, Fade sounds like more of the same--which is no bad thing. Stick with it, and the influence of producer (Tortoise') John McEntire becomes apparent. [Feb 2013, p.81]

Her third album finds her developing her instrumental palette, often allowing moody strings rather than piano to dominate arrangements. [Jan 2017, p.28]

A joyous album, one that doesn't wander off along unnecessary tangents and keeps their indulgence in check. [Apr 2020, p.29]

The music is bewitching enough to seduce even those with the severest crystal allergy. [Jun 2020, p.36]

Pedigo is often plugged in, his nimble fingerpicking surfing waves of sludge guitar. But there are moments of unlikely beauty too. [Nov 2025, p.31]

There is a gentle healing touch to Angel In Plainclothes. [May 2026, p.29]

Tourist In This Town fairly fizzes with the excitement of striking out alone, and justified confidence that hers is a voice worth hearing. [Mar 2017, p.26]

Generally, the album has a frantic, acidic, raggedly glorious feel. [Feb 2005, p.85]

The album finds Escovedo veering between anxiety and celebration. [Feb 2017, p.26]

Light Verse rejoices in its playful details. [May 2024, p.35]

Turner's observations and the way he relishes a smart turn of phrase bring these vignettes to life in a way that's almost frighteningly vivid, even when his circuitous melodies don't always land. ... Much like For Your Pleasure or Gaucho, The Car functions both as intoxicating advert and withering critique. [Dec 2022, p.24]

These days Chacon can't stop telling it like it is - and long may he do so. [Jan 2025, p.32]

Just Us Kids in part repeats the forumla, targeting SUV drivers, filthy corporations, and Dick Cheney, in an affecting but familiar preach to the converted. [June 2008, p.97]

A refinement of the country/folk/reggae/rock amalgam The Mekons have pursued for years. [Oct 2002, p.108]

A modern new-age gem. [May 2016, p.79]

Authoritatively cements the status of Granduciel's Philadelphia-based sextet as the best American rock band to emerge in the 2010s. [Jan 2021, p.33]

Steve Shelley and Lee Ranaldo were impressed enough to pitch in, helping form a warmly familiar yet still sometimes thrilling debut album. [Sep 2022, p.24]

A tantalising exploration of modern-day kosmische. Seemingly liberated by technology, these two fiftysomething blokes conjure the kind of utopian panoplies dreamt up by Harald Grosskopf and Neu! on the 24-minute “A Yellow Robe”, a swirling, burbling journey that also nods to recent experiments by Roman Flügel and Peder Mannerfelt. [Sep 2022, p.27]

Even if restless shape-shifting sometimes blunts strong melodic ideas, standout tracks like the epic freakout "Cosmo" and the goth-dub inner-space odyssey "Whammy" showcase a small band with big ambitions. [Aug 2024, p.39]

Both share an inclination towards the transcendent, and Totality offers further proof they're operating on much the same wavelength. [Jun 2025, p.35]

This is the Slowdive you've been waiting for. [Oct 2023, p18]

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

Jazz remains the root of his sound, with Washington’s saxophone as bold and vibrant as ever. But the grand orchestral sweep of albums past is pared back, replaced by adeeper engagement with hip-hop, funk and soul. [May 2024, p.41]

It's a work of elegant simplicity--a suite of wistful and slightly breathless songs set to dreamy tropical guitar and muted lo-fi beats. [May 2019, p.23]

Under Tweedy's almost imperceptible guidance, Shelley has learned to trust her contradictory impulses. Her shyness is amplified, the words more direct.[Jun 2017, p.32]

The Nashville Sound sees Isbell swaggering confidently along the rockier edge of his range--as usual--he's at his best on the reflective ballads. [Jul 2017, p.32]

Dawson's most direct album to date. ... It's hard not to conclude that 2020 is the record we need now: a state-of-the-nation address for a nation in a bit of a state. [Nov 2019, p.20]

Thom Yorke's Suspiria might not be to everyone's taste--but it feel enough, for now. [Dec 2018, p.20]

Cosmopolitan, anglophile, afrobeat--Vampire Weekend are in an Ivy League of their own.

It feels in some ways much more of a post-Lambchop album than FLOTUS. [Apr 2019, p.24]

Space and darkness area constant among these eight tight songs, but there’s also plenty of punch. [Oct 2022, p.36]

The album works as whole--beginning with an eruptive blast of noise and ending with the gentle farewell that is 'Friend Of Ours.'

A facinating treatment, and really rather groovy. [Sep 2008, p.89]

As a collection of friendly collisions, an impulsive document of how music can bring people together over musical and cultural boundaries, it's well worth the visit. [Feb 2014, p.79]

The rough-and-ready songwriting is all part of the conceptual high-jinks. [Jul 2015, p.81]

A moving tribute to an unsung talent. [Jan 2016, p.75]

[Xenia Rubinos] often extract the maximum impact from a startlingly nimble rhythm section that disregards any boundaries between soul, rock, jazz and salsa, plus a voice that evokes Sarah Vaughan, Joyce Moreno and--on the brilliantly squelchy R&B of "Black Stars" and "right?"--Erykah Badu at her wildest. [Aug 2016, p.81]

This is Cretan folk music played with a rock'n'roll intensity that is truly immersive. [Nov 2016, p.36]

It's a punishing and rewarding experience. [Nov 2016, p.28]

Sprawled across 40 years of high and lows, A Very British Synthesizer Group is inevitably bumpy in quality, but still rich in pleasant surprises, and shot through with the bloody-minded punk genius that defines so much music from the People's Republic Of South Yorkshire. [Jan 2017, p.38]

If its pace is funeral, though, its mood is elevating. [Jan 2020, p.31]

On Sunset demonstrates that complacency remains his greatest fear and most powerful muse. [Jul 2020, p.24]

Each of these three artists brings out something new in the others, prodding them slightly out of their comfort zones. [Jan 2021, p.16]

The immediacy is obvious, and the band stretch Yorkston's reassuring vulnerability in new directions. [Feb 2021, p.37]

Its heady and timeless distillation of dub gospel, disco excursions, molten psych rock and soulful swagger sounds more like back to the future. [Jul 2025, p.37]

The results are as striking and challenging as you'd expect. [May 2026, p.35]

Arbez not only shatters the risible notion that dance music is currently unwell, he also presents thrilling new ways of approaching pop, folk and rock'n'roll. [May 2005, p.100]

They could afford to take more liberties with the musical cliches thereof: listening to Gaslighter is a bit like eating 12 courses of dessert. [Oct 2020, p.29]

This is a focused trio who boast a superb drummer and feature lovely, unshowy harmonies, able to balance the melancholy of Nils Edenloff's lyrics with a euphoric, confident delivery that feels like a brilliant form of catharsis. [Jan 2018, p.26]

Thankfully, Williams' effort to emulate that bygone sound is too sophisticated and idiosyncratic to be mere pastiche. [Mar 2018, p.35]

Following on from a 2017 album of standards, this chiefly replaces covers with original compositions and adds a meaningful, Slint-like loitering on chord to his repertoire of shattered blues licks. [Nov 2019, p.30]

They're still loud and angry - exploring themes around national identity, solidarity and challenging political establishments - but there is greater musical depth and breadth. [May 2025, p.32]

Dreamy, classic-sounding pop nuggets, sung by Cox with a wry, casual authority. [Jan 2011, p.79]

The result: Meiburg's finest album to date. [Feb 2016, p.80]

It is arguably more satisfying [than his debut, Queen of Denmark], in its artistic courage, its refusal to meet expectations and its willingness to paint a brand new picture of gay demi-monde where the triumphs and tragedies have a deeper resonance than simple melodrama or camp. [Apr 2013, p.70]

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

Quiet Life enabled Japan to get from B to C, and from D to E, and from there to wherever they went next. ... A third disc, recorded live at Japan's Budokan, captures the band at full tilt. [Apr 2021, p.45]

The addition of a horn section brings pleasing texture to the likes of "Hotel" and "Revisited," but it's rarely enough to lift The Antlers out of their willfully wounded torpor. [Jul 2014, p.69]

An electrifying collision of cosmic jazz and squalling psychedelic rock, all tumbling grooves and frenzied collective euphoria. [May 2019, p.34]

Like such fellow travellers as Horse Lords and Still House Plants, the band often seem hellbent on inaugurating a post-rock revival. [Nov 2025, p.39]

Despite these potentially dour themes, Running Out Of Love is far from a gloom-fest, couched as it is in disco and '80s-influenced electronica. [Nov 2016, p.35]

The gauzy, indistinct vocals of Neil Halsted and Rachel Goswell continue to weave their shoey magic. [Jun 2017, p.27]

The live setting and frontman Joe Talbot's inter-song exhortations heighten the feeling of being sucked into communal catharsis. [Jan 2020, p.26]

A little more forward in the use of bouncing rhythms. [Mar 2021, p.28]

The people in these songs are losing their listeners, memory or love, suffering partial erasures. And yet this melodic music holds them close with familial warmth. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Though the motherlode of unreleased music found on Slanted And Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain’s reissues is absent, many of the extra tracks here are worth checking out. ... The rest of this set shows that it’s still a station very much worth stopping at, now more so than ever. [May 2022, p.42]

This soulful, spiritual, experimental collection is a rich testament to the chemistry of collaboration. [Oct 2023, p.26]

Porterfield has a way of entwining lyrical detail and broad sentiment that is compelling and original. [Sep 2012, p.76]

I Know I’m Funny Haha is her most seamless melding of urban country, warm ’70s soul, gutsy classic rock and introspective indie-pop, as she settles easily into the cracks between categories. ... I Know I'm Funny Haha could only been made by no-one else but Faye Webster. [Jul 2021, p.16]

Producer Robert Glasper adds a jazz sensibility lacking from Fele's original albums, while Carlos Santana shreds on Black Times, but it's the Egypt 80 big band who are the stars. [Apr 2018, p.29]

A spectacular return to the tower of song and the game he plays best. Brimming with memorable melodies, swooning arrangements and smart lyrics dreamily sung. [Aug 2020, p.39]

12 pummeling songs of Black Flag-like thump, laced with bleak humour. [Mar 2013, p.76]

The sense of naive wonder evident recalls the bewitching power of Sigur Ros. [Apr 2011, p.75]

The DIY production can smother their delicate melodicism, and those parping horns can sound distinctly cheap and shrill. [Jan 2002, p.131]

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

"Say Valley Maker" and "Rock Bottom Riser" are hypnotic highpoints, but best of all is "Diamond Dancer," an incongruous slice of hillbilly funk on which he channels his inner Gil-Scott Heron. [Jun 2010, p.83]

The ferocious cauldron of funk guitars, stinging horns, simmering grooves and incendiary, politicized lyrics departs little from Fela's trademark style, but is delivered with a spiky aggression that entirely justifies the album's title. [May 2011, p.94]

A refreshing badass entry to a genre whose purveyors tend to be overly mild-mannered. [Jan 2014, p.79]

It's an inspired rather than gimmicky conceit. [Feb 2015, p.71]

Compton is a solid reminder of both Dre's skills and the depth of his contacts book. [Nov 2015, p.75]

Jambu is the best starting point, a genuinely revelatory voyage through the mythic sounds of the Amazon. [Aug 2019, p.90]