Top stuff. [Mar 2024, p.25]

All round, it's a remarkable electronic musicanship. [Apr 2010, p.124]

He pulls a few originals out of the bag. But it is the sideways eviscerations of "Ol' Man River" and "Over The Rainbow" that resonate the longest. [Sep 2017, p.35]

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

Ireland shows the breadth as well as the depth of the scene. [Dec 2025, p.37]

A beautifully composed record that feels alive with texture. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

While the programmed beats are generic, his fleet-fingered guitar work shimmers with the high-end wit that powers a batch of hooky, sharply drawn tunes. [Oct 2015, p.75]

If last year's engrossing, infuriating Blueberry Boat revealed the Friedbergers as a uniquely strange and perversely ambitious proposition, Rehearsing My Choir, remarkably, trumps it, striking a chord of real feeling alongside the pell-mell fabulation. [Dec 2005, p.110]

The angry bricolage of noises, voices, stabbing guitar and jittery programmed drums sounds like the world splitting apart, the first of a series of scarified dubscapes created by The Pop Group and their perfect collaborators. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Aided by sympathetic vocalists, Wasylyk consolidates a multi-instrumentalist's multiple interests - from New Classical to lounge jazz to lo-fi-pop - into a coherent style. [Apr 2026, p.37]

Ornery eloquence. [Aug 2023, p.34]

Self awareness and self-loss are finally balanced, especially on Portaling. [Nov 2011, p.97]

Minus the lovely, stoned air, Another Fine Day doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but there's plenty to admire. [Aug 2006, p.106]

It's less gonzoid than previous efforts and more effective for that. [Mar 2007, p.79]

Long Wave Home is full of innovative arrangements and quirky vocals, but it's equally stuffed with great songs. [May 2026, p.30]

It's a culture manifest in Alpha Mike Foxtrot: encyclopaedic. loving, droll, emotionally candid, often adventurous, but never really as alienating or difficult as the legends might suggest. [Jan 2015, p.90]

She has, it seems, reached an accommodation with herself, with her doubts and her strengths. The two worlds co-exist beautifully here, the soft Power and the raw.

Feels like the work of a man who's finally found his calling. [Apr 2017, p.28]

He's rarely sounded so utterly engaged. [Oct 2010, p.99]

This push-pull between melody and twisting beats, veering back and forth between dark and joyous moments, is the crux of this excellent album, one that glides snappily between acid electro, synth-washed indie, crunchy pop and dance-floor rippers. [Aug 2022, p.36]

This captures The Cure at their crowd-pleasing best, an ageless band reveling in their past. [Feb 2012, p.83]

The rhythmic, melodic and thoughtful After The Disco stands as impressive proof of the strength of their partnership. [Feb 2014, p.74]

The songwriter’s takes on treacherous relationships come with a Vampire Weekend-ish talent for a multi-part melody and Phoebe Bridgers’ ear for pertinent one-liners, the stately “Underwater”, “Move Me”, the title track and bedsit-ABBA kiss-off “Cold” all deep, powerful, overwhelming. [Sep 2022, p.23]

These are beautiful songs with a murderous heart. [Feb 2012, p.90]

The Great Pretenders inhabits that dreamy lysergic terrain staked out by The Flaming Lips and early MGMT. [May 2015, p.77]

There's an effortlessly freewheeling quality to the 10 songs. [Jul 2019, p.34]

Disarmingly playful, deceptively gripping, its songs at first seem wayward, erratic, but soon enough reveal their own internal title song. [Nov 2009, p. 83]

Somedays is full of great, blues-tinted folk songs. [Nov 2009, p.102]

A Doug Sahm/CCR vibe runs through much of this debut. [Jun 2015, p.71]

[A] darkly beautiful tour de force. [Jun 2016, p.75]

Everything's fuzzy, fractured and out of focus, which makes it all the more mesmerizing. [Jun 2012, p.74]

The songs boast a quality of spaciousness and delicacy that was rarer on 2018's otherwise very fine Lionheart. [Sep 2020, p.32]

As ever, you wish they'd stretch out and jam a bit more in the studio, but this might just be the most satisfying CRB set since 2012's Big Moon Ritual. [Sep 2017, p.37]

Songs like "of Lucky Hand" and "Deathwish Blue" see him shed the more chameleonic nature of last year's Full Circle Nightmare and more fully establish his own raggedly glorious sensibility. [Aug 2019, 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]

Among The Ghosts is Lucero's most cinematic album. [Sep 2018, p.37]

The film blurs lines between horror and ink-black comedy, and Krlic's score, texturally vast, moodily versatile and unnerving without being bombastic, moving deftly with it as one. [Oct 2019, p.29]

A big, baroque fusion of sharp garage, paisley pop and '70s sleekness, finished with a coating of Terry Jacks sentiment. [Jul 2004, p.104]

Amid the cheap preset funk and curdled interludes, Bouaziz enchants with moving pieces such as "Heartbeats" and "Hero." [Aug 2014, p.74]

Whereas so much downtempo leans heavily on two-note, oceanic synth washes, Blue States are masters of detail. [Sep 2002, p.111]

A most welcome return. [Dec 2025, p.31]

Young Americans is one monster hit album, but stripped of "Fame," the record's pre-Lennon form as The Gouster makes an immersive, alternate take on Bowie's Sigma sessions. [Nov 2016, p.49]

Though Requiem doesn't quite match the free-flowing intensity of some of Goat's earlier work, it's continually enriched by a fervent sense of joy and abandon, and an infectious eagerness to get lost in music. [Nov 2016, p.28]

The set ebbs and flows, Cave alternating between charming and cajoling, vulnerable and scathing. [Jan 2026, p.24]

A startling album. [Aug 2005, p.98]

Until The Colours Run casts a spell which lingers. [Oct 2013, p.71]

They still sound unique today. [Jan 2019, p.41]

Ashes & Fire is an understated gem. [Nov 2011, p.96]

Strummer sounds mostly like he's having a blast. [May 2021, p.44]

Chubbed Up+ feels like a bit of a stopgap between this year's Divide And Exit and a new album scheduled for early next year, but it nonetheless has much to recommend it. [Jan 2015, p.92]

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

Her technical brilliance remains stunning; it's now matched by her maturity and modernity. [Jan 2013, p.74]

These five expansive tracks forgo punk rock sloganeering in favour of themes of mystery, sorcery and spiritual jubilation. [Jun 2017, p.34]

Infectious, silly and even a little dangerous again. Through it all — even on the two quieter tracks, which stick outa little awkwardly among the Killing Joke fuzz — Brett Anderson is the consummate guide, vocally at his peak. [Oct 2022, p.34]

The results are exemplary. [Jun 2019, p.26]

The Liberty Of Norton Folgate--a title which makes sense in context but is otherwise unlikely to be jamming up the ringtone sites--is Madness in both their pomp and their prime.

DNA plus inspiration can be a potent combination. [Apr 2014, p.69]

Mutilator is very much in the vein of a 2013's career-topping Floating Coffin. [Jun 2015, p.83]

All told, a class act still in their prime. [Sep 2003, p.97]

If Definitely Maybe still sounds pretty much as Noel envisaged, that's certainly to do with the quality of the songs, the delivery and the timing. [Jun 2014, p.95]

Everyone from Hendrix to CSN&Y to Pink Floyd to Led Zep turns up in their dusky psych-blues-folk blended with a symphonic approach to song construction that keeps Sleepy Sun sounding fresh. [Jun 2010, p.98]

Slower than slow, softer than soft, the songs acquire an accumulative resonance. [Dec 2001, p.116]

It stands apart, a kaleidoscopic yet subtle take on eclectic ’60s sounds. With a little help from Younge, La Luz may have made their first great record. [Nov 2021, p.24]

This audio companion to Springsteen's upcoming autobiography serves as a decent best-of. [Nov 2016, p.52]

The results may comprise the most finely distilled example of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson's deconstruction of heavy riffage, with each of these tracks demonstrating the infinite varieties of fuzz and rumble that exist within a single mighty note. [Nov 2019, p.33]

Striking enough on their own merits, free of embellishments, all the more powerful for the immediacy of the moment. Simplicity is the key here. [Jan 2020, p.26]

It's a delightfully messy set of junkyard bubblegum garage, with Spencer squeezing out a series of choppy grooves while howling largely meaningless slogans against a backdrop of feedback and fuzz. [Dec 2018, p.33]

Well worth the wait. [Jan 2013, p.74]

Potter's expressive voice leads the charge, but wouldn't make half as much impact without the tight and nuanced Nocturnals punctuating each quiver and wail. [Oct 2010, p.101]

Upgraded in every sense: songs with deeper meanings, mountainous crescendos and choruses to communitise large crowds. [May 2020, p.32]

If there’s something odd about an authentic Southern girl reworking a singer from Ealing who longed to emulate her American heroes, then it’s perhaps best to judge this record on its own merit. Which, as it turns out, is very high indeed.

So Beck is finally fun again, and you suspect the person most surprised by how well Modern Guilt turned out is the guy who made it.

Their debut reveals a band bristling with ideas who've taken the time to streamline their influences into a syrupy white funk. [Nov 2008, p.98]

Boy, so they know what they're doing on this whipsmart debut. [Jul 2025, p.31]

Produced by Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos, this latest project sees her moving away from the playful whimsy of her debut in favour of looser, gritter textures. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Cantrell'a sprightly tribute LP is beautifully rendered, her bell-pure voice and the chops of Chris Scruggs, Fats Kaplin and Lambchop's Mark Nevers lending old songs a new, urban sophistication. [May 2011, p.92]

A magnificently rich and confident debut.... This is how Fischerspooner should have sounded. [Dec 2002, p.142]

A treatise on the tattered state-of-the-nation told over 12 slices of earnest, unerring pop-punk, the lowering mood is lifted by intricate harmonies and big singalong tunes. [Jun 2010, p.88]

The album is alive with everything that has always made him great. [Oct 2025, p.36]

There's a pleasing lyrical grit to At Swim. [Sep 2016, p.74]

Ultimate Painting may sound like a lot of bands--Real Estate, The Feelies--but they set their own beguiling pace, sounding completely untroubled by the passing of time. [Sep 2015, p.83]

The sextet's latest displays a newfound confidence, brokering country-soul, Southern rock and R&B with some panache. [Oct 2017, p.34]

Beam is a master of circumnavigating cliche. [May 2004, p.106]

Distance takes the intensity of 29013's Blindspot, and doubles it. [Sep 2014, p.77]

The racket they raise compensates in exuberance what it lacks in subtlety. [Dec 2016, p.37]

The mood is pained, the production suitably spare, pushing the singer's understated lyricism to the fore. [Jan 2017, p.28]

A strong start to a (hopefully) fresh chapter. [Dec 2024, p.37]

The greatest since he killed off Ziggy? Arguably, but certainly an autumnal peak.

The album is a deeply textural listen, led by Leaneagh’s impressive voice. [Jul 2022, p.31]

The entire album has a refreshingly spontaneous feel, the result of their cutting the dozen songs live, including Parker's vocals. [Jan 2013, p.75]

A glorious blend of wired energy and sullen attitude.

Superorganism benefits from a surprising amount of focus and discipline that belies the woozy feel of the group's fun and savvy synthesis of the bricolage hip-hop of vintage Gorillaz and Avalanches, and the Day-Glo psych-pop of Animal Collective. [Apr 2018, p.35]

Waxahatchee's vision is clearer on Saint Cloud. [May 2020, p.34]

If anything, Jukebox is bolder than "Covers," not least because two of the more obvious songs have been dropped from the original intended tracklisting.

The album maintains its hallucinatory aura throughout; it’s a dazzling aural anime from a wildly original artist. [Oct 2022, p.29]

This is also a brave, compelling record that stands shoulder to shoulder with the Manics’ best.

Taken together, the music of Year Of The Spider is anything but stuck in the past. Its novel sonic alloys, and punk rock spirit, very much ring of right now. [Sep 2021, p.20]

She tears into bilious rockers "Big Baby" and "Two Shots" like the wildcat of yesteryear. ... But Jackson really comes into her own on a heart-rendering cover of Johnny Tillotson's "It Keeps Right On A Hurtin'" and co-written country ballad "That's What Love Is." [Oct 2021, p.28]