This bold, moving and purposeful record proves De La remain eternal. [Jan 2026, p.29]

Alongside warm, grunge-pop songs sit the reverb-and-ambient-noise bath that is "Night Swimming," the tripped-out psych folk of "Lucy" and hugely poignant epic" Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes." [Apr 2020, p.35]

About Farewell is a gentle, rueful, often beautiful record. [Aug 2013, p.75]

She's pushed through the looking glass on WOW to conjure a zany world of pixelated pop for her avatar Kate NV to stumble around, dazed and amused. In Many ways she's just as provocative, albeit in a different musical language. [Mar 2023, p.32]

Honor found in Decay confirms that they are a metal band, yes--but one reminiscent of Silver Mount Zion or Swans as any more traditionally heavy-rocking concern. [Nov 2012, p.73]

Donnelly's unselfconscious voice recalls Kate Nash and Lily Allen, but she both angrier and less suited to straight-up pop. [Apr 2019, p.28]

Fading Frontier strikes the most satisfying balance between menacing mantric grooves of 2006's Cryptograms and the pop melodicism that emerged on 2010's Halcyon Digest. [Nov 2015, p.82]

Nevertheless, for all its omissions and repetitions, the sheer scale of this archive still feels like an exemplary work of preservation. [Sep 2012, p.92]

Ther music is spacious yet intimate, drawing from the dramatic guitar textures of fellow Texans Explosions In The Sky, yet Sun June's hazy songs blur and shimmer at the edges, like a mirage on the horizon. [Review of the Year 2023, p.32]

Despite a few rote movements, becomes an early contender for 2009 Top 10 lists. [Mar 2009, p.92]

It's confounding at first, but the more you strain to hear, the more Krell reels you in. [May 2011, p.88]

A more polished and focused affair that demonstrates the breadth of Duncan's sparkling ability, not to mention his pop chops, while conveying a gorgeous otherworldiness that effortlessly channels peak Cocteau Twins and Radiohead. [Nov 2016, p.26]

Guthrie's work endures because if its essential big-hearted hospitality--and Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames have mad themselves right at home. [Mar 2012, p.93]

At her best, and across much of Banga, Patti Smith still dramatises the distance between South Jersey and the San Francisco basilica, the street tussle between the poet and the factory girl, the devotion of the mongrels of faith for the betrayers of salvation. [Jul 2012, p.78]

90s alt.rock influences proudly displayed. [Sep 2023, p.24]

Birds & Beasts is nothing if not vivid – a summoning of the mythical American landscapes that kept pilgrims heading west. Despite its antecedents, the album is rarely conventional. [Aug 2024, p.41]

This fifth studio release is no less diverse, hitting hardest with the Woody Guthrie-alluding title track, a raging blast of rap-hop that addresses prejudice and intolerance in the Trump era. More frequently, though, Clark immerses himself in funk and soul. [Mar 2019, p.26]

Stetson and Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld dart and dovetail elegantly, h er playing the piercing counterpoint to his imposing low end. [Jun 2015, p.81]

A graceful, distinctive album. [Mar 2012, p.101]

To get the measure of Jagger's contribution you have to turn to the five new songs on disc two, which are also the meat of the DVD offering.

If Regan's Mercury Prize-nominated debut in 2006 attracted comparisons with Nick Drake, this belated follow-up ditches the finger-picking folksiness for full-on rock, and sees Regan mutate into a latterday Mike Soctt. {Feb 2010, p.96]

This collection further substantiates Newman's rarefied status as a songwriter. [Jun 2011, p.93]

Small, but near-perfectly formed. [Nov 2011, p.90]

Sidi broadly draws on the same blues traditions Ali Farka Toure, but there are subtle differences here, too.[Jan 2014, p.78]

The results are spectacular. [Jul 2014, p.66]

Samba Toure's fourth album in five years rocks as hard as any African record we've heard. [Mar 2015, p.83]

If the first half of the album doesn't quite fire up with the dame ferocity as its predecessor, fans of Tin Star will be pleased to hear it gathers pace soon after. [Sep 2015, p.72]

Condition sits somewhere between the two [previous albums Dying and Dead], obscuring lovely melodies with disjointed electronica on deliberately self-destructive tracks like "Dissolve," the willowy "Colour Me Out" and "Coping Mechanism." [Apr 2017, p.39]

[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]

Tortoise's John McEntire, producing, keep the whole rhapsodic jam on an even keel. [May 2018, p.30]

[African Scream Contest's] successor is every bit as thrilling, extending its remit to cover the years from 1963-1980 and thus offering a more diverse range of cross-cultural fusion. [Jul 2018, p.49]

The result sees them maintain high energy levels while showing off a richer musical palette and a keener sense of flow. [Sep 2023, p.31]

The album finds the 69-year-old musing on mortality and checking in on his past with poetic articulacy. [Oct 2023, p.37]

It's a strong, seductive set, with the soul-blues burn of "Prophet" and tender "If You Think It's Love" standouts. [Dec 2019, p.29]

They're not best known for melodicism, but in a funny way the slow-blooming compositions here are full of charming, playful melody, detailed in exotic colours. [Nov 2022, p.25]

Remember The Humans makes sumptuous use of its star talents Feist and Hannah Georgas. .... But a handful of hazier, more ruminative mantras are harder to grab hold of. [Jun 2026, p.36]

A beautiful paradox of angsty noise and beguiling craft. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Throughout, Crowell’s versatile, impassioned voice is in fine fettle, a confident mix of goofiness and longing, anticipation and excitement, sadness and sentimentality, as if he’s just now entering a new prime. He might well be.

While it's not a great record, the world would be a marginally better place if people were drooling over John Wizards rather than Vampire Weekend. [Sep 2013, p.90]

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

Broken Politics is a thoughtful, reflective record that twines the political and the person. [Nov 2018, p.26]

The accumulative effect is transformative but focusing on the moving parts, the elaborate patterns and the mazes that constantly expand and unwind is fascinating. The stark reality of the music's often caustic infrastructure is never far from the surface; it nags and vies for your attention amid the hum. [Jan 2023, p.26]

A Major new British talent is born in William Doyle's solo debut, which sounds like the great lost album that Brian Wilson, Eno and Bjork should have made together. [Feb 2014, p.75]

The music is purposeful and powerful. [Jul 2003, p.114]

When she's raised the stakes so high, anything less than the reinvention of music comes as a disappointment. [Jan 2003, p.122]

It's odd to praise a record for lacking assurance, but her avoidance of contrived resolution feels appropriate. [May 2015, p.84]

He has produced his most sonically consistent album in years. [Oct 2018, p.35]

Problems are timelessly ordinary, loneliness lightly worn, and Webster's music is enriched by her unique cultural blend. [Jun 2019, p.37]

1992 – 2001 does a fine job of collating their best moments from a career that spawned four albums and two EPs, as well as offering nine unreleased tracks from the hours of music they recorded in an empty bedroom that served as a regular rehearsal space.

It's not quite experimental, but there is evolution in this superbly judged set. [Nov 2022, p.21]

While nowadays one might be tempted instead to call this ‘post-jazz’. Nonetheless, perhaps the best way to think of Butterss’ work is as simply ‘jazz plus’. It’s suitably inclusive and ultimately most reflective of her sweeping ambitions. [Nov 2024, p.32]

An engaging exercise in psychedelic computer music that sees him exploring a more satisfying style of production after the itchiness of 2016's Unstepping. [Oct 2018, p.26]

The atmosphere is organic and engaging, the only problem being that amid the fug of good vibes, no one remembered to write a killer song. [July 2008, p.94]

A madly ambitious, darkly despondent and goofily exuberant grand folly of a record. [Album of the Month, Dec 2005, p.98]

it's not just a band getting back together after nearly a decade apart, but a band reaffirming the ideals that animated them in the first place. [Nov 2025, p.29]

The departure of bassist Alanna McArdle to front Welsh noiseniks Joanna Gruesome doesn't seem to have dented the band's bruised vitality and pleasing lyrical spikiness. [Apr 2015, p.75]

Kidal sounds like a high tide. [May 2017, p.40]

Surprisingly experimental. [Mar 2018, p.28]

If the dark intensity leans close to self-parody at times, there are enough musical surprises to bring some light to Lanegan's darkness. [Jun 2020, p.33]

Incorporates orchestral flourishes and ambitious compositions into a full-bodied, emotionally bruising documents of divorce, betrayal, new love and self-discovery. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

Without the scuffed overload of his teenage releases, it's obvious that these are newly minted. [May 2006, p.98]

With an empathetic band featuring strings, keys and pedal steel, Castle alternative;y pulls the songs into focus with her clear, honeyed voice and lets it drift free inside them. [Jul 2018, p.24]

As the title wryly suggests, they work as an ambient field, though the pairing of soft-chiming strings and vaporous synth drone in "Mossy Stump" makes it a standout. [Sep 2025, p.31]

While After lacks the appealing chaos of predecessor Ripely Pin, it compensates with bright choruses that contrast with a dark, decaying lyrical scheme. [Apr 2015, p.78]

Clarke is both perpetuating and recontextualising the music of the mid-20th century. [Sep 2023, p.24]

The result is consistently thrilling and uncompromising music. [Aug 2023, p.28]

Full of jingle-jangle mourning, this is a soulful, charming debut. [Jan 2025, p.39]

Whether deployed as a meditation aid or an object for more focused listening, Lovegaze succeeds handily. [Jan 2024, p.31]

Raymonde elicits gorgeous performances from guest vocalists. ... Even more welcome are the deviations from the sumptuous dream-pop and ethereal acid-folk modes you'd expect of Ojala. [Dec 2017, p.28]

She's actually more effective when slowing things things down a notch. [May 2014, p.77]

Album highlight “Understood” sounds particularly Young-like here too, but elsewhere Martsch sounds confident in his own skin, merging interlocking layered guitars, subtle melodic touches and licks that veer from crunchy to blissed out. [Oct 2022, p.26]

Her strikingly rich, four octave voice is the axis around which producer Andrew Broder has directed dark, ambient, degraded bassmusic, industrial pop and dungeon synth, with feedback and software fubars playing their part. [Apr 2025, p.28]

Throughout, Coxon's masterly musicianship and shameless enthusiasm for such modish fare pulses like an electric current. [Apr 2006, p.110]

13 Rivers is a sparse, raging and noisy record. [Oct 2018, p.37]

The south of France motorik and funk bass of "Protéïformunité" similarly reassure, before "Don't Forget You're Mine" charts choppier waters and communication breakdowns. "The Inner Smile" returns to Sadier's central quest, propelling her mantras of sexual and global reg=integration with eruptive, flute-heavy prog grooves. [Feb 2024, p.35]

They conjure a sequence of absorbing soundtracks for unmade dramas, of which the pick is “Love Changes Everything V”, an intense dialogue between violin and guitar, suggesting My Bloody Valentine reinventing themselves as a folk group. [Jul 2024, p.32]

They're lean and immediate in nature, with melodic ease that belies lyrics awash with loss, uncertainty, regret, overwhelm and defeat, feelings that sit on the surface, undisguised. [Mar 2025, p.40]

This is an exercise in extravagant claustrophobia, not nostagia. [Apr 2009, p.86]

AM feels a considerably more self-assured album: heavy in a dramatic and confident way, conceptually strong and not without groove. [Oct 2013, p.73]

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

Hardly an alienating, experimental listen... White hasn't written such an accessible set of songs since 2000's De Stijl. [Album of the Month, Jul 2005, p.88]

Beth Ditto's remarkable gospel holler and fervent anti-sexist agenda deserves--no, demands--to be heard by a much bigger audience. [Aug 2003, p.106]

It's frequently lush and lovely. [Dec 2004, p.150]

This is MF Doom's most accessible moment to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

“Waters Of Nazareth” yawns like a car crusher, mashing hip-hop, electro and funk into gleaming slabs of sound, while “D.A.N.C.E” displays a lighter touch, channelling Chic disco in a whirl of sugary keyboards and euphoric violin stabs.

Never self indulgent, this is enquiring music that's frequently beautiful. [Dec 2008, p.81]

It's an exhilarating racket, to say the least. [Sep 2009, p.88]

Sub Pop reckon they've unearthed a gem in the form of 18-year-old Avi Buffalo frontman Avigor Zahner-Isenberg; the superior West Coast jangle of his debut album suggest they might well be right. [May 2010, p.92]

Presumably bucketloads of fun live, the novelty wear thin on record. [Nov 2010, p.101]

This is a bleakly beautiful record which unfolds slowly. [Apr 2011, p.87]

It is raw, retro nouveau, deep house bangers like "When A Fire Starts To Burn" and "Stimulation" that make this a perfect Brit companion piece to Daft Punk's recent rebootings of disco history. [Aug 2013, p.69]

A move into electric guitar, Hammond organ and bass bring mixed results. [Aug 2013, p.79]

No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness. [Sep 2014, p.66]

[An] edifying fourth solo album.[Aug 2015, p.78]

Here are smoky, jazz-pop elegies, era-defining homages and bittersweet, elegantly orchestrated ruminations, underlining Jackson's reputation as a maverick auteur. [Nov 2015, p.77]

these are largely piano-centric tunes, tastefully embellished with pedal steel, guitar and subtle gospel harmonies, armed with a baroque-pop sensibility that claims the middle ground between Harry Nilsson and The National. [May 2016, p.69]

It's a document of poignant intimacy and imagination, characterised by simple melodies, devastatingly heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the odd burst of euphoric pop. [Dec 2016, p.38]

A characteristically indefinable collection guaranteed to please their larger continental fanbase. [Feb 2017, p.35]