It's an effortless charmer. [Feb 2023, p.29]

While about as niche as it gets, this is a strangely endearing and subtly beguiling album that does much more than just send you to sleep. [Sep 2024, p.29]

It’s a tough balance to pull off, but it works seamlessly, and is clearly the result of a band who intuitively understand the dynamics and pull of the dancefloor as much as they do the art of crafting pop, art-rock and the odd indie banger. [Nov 2024, p.43]

Now in her seventies, her voice is deeper than it once was, but it remains an instrument of impressive power. [Review of the Year 2024, p.27]

This is the kind of record that Albini's notoriously no-frills production style served best: a brooding and intense post-punk, equal parts visceral and cerebral. [Mar 2025, p.32]

Disquiet is a marathon - it's more than three hours long - but every minute matters. [Nov 2025, p.35]

Cheap bubblegum keyboards sound even more archaic in a present the embattled singer knows all too well. .... Beach Boys harmonies brighten "Electric Rock And Roll", and the '70s dream-time of Mike Post themes and lost childhood comfort is caught in "Glorious Chorus." [Dec 2025, p.36]

His gentle voice sits amid occasionally baroque arrangements, the simplicity of which ensure his more complex songwriting skills remain accessible. [Feb 2005, p.76]

As the music heads dynamically towards its conclusion, you feel as if you are in safe hands, a life raft on a wave of crushing power. [Apr 2020, p.18]

Songs still betray their freestyle origins in what is Wand’s most exploratory album to date, from the disquieting “JJ” to the seven-minute churn of “High Time”. [Aug 2024, p.40]

Combined with June's remarkably careworn vocals--they suggest that the young Tennessean has been around the block more than once. [Jul 2013, p.77]

Taylor's no alchemist--not yet at least--though Lateness Of Dancers suggests he can write songs that transcend the everyday by hymning its subtleties. [Oct 2014, p.78]

Several tunes put the talents of Bradford-based Hladowski siblings Chris and Stephanie to stunning effect on vocals and amplified bouzouki respectively. [Apr 2011, p.75]

[A] stunningly well-designed and authoritative record. [Jan 2013, p.77]

Departures from the mean include jazzier ventures with Ren Harvieu and octogenarian soul singer Ural Thomas, plus forays into baroque-pop balladry that get the best out of Laura Groves and Marissa Nadler. [Apr 2021, p.30]

Overall the vibe is more celebration than confrontation, but there's still room for the odd reassuring freakout. [Nov 2023, p.29]

Her piano work enviably deft, she still opts for just guitar and brass on the title track, but "paradise" offers the easy-going charms of early Diana Ross, while producer Leon Michels helps lighten the mood further on "Running", adding sax and drums. [Apr 2024, p.35]

It's almost as if the quieter tracks allow her to relax, while the full band numbers--fleshed out rather over-eagerly by a group containing several Mumfords and a Whale--subdue and constrain her. [Apr 2010, p.101]

Stately, thoughtful balladry. [Jun 2006, p.115]

comforting reel-to-reel tap hiss haunts each track, and you imagine this will sound particularly good on vinyl. [Mar 2016, p.96]

The sheer velocity with which they throw ideas out makes this a mighty exhilarating record. [Nov 2012, p.77]

Plucking samples from wannabe grime MCs and unknown divas and weaving these into his uplifting electronica proves surprisingly moving. [May 2016, p.79]

Perrett is back, in decent shape, and fully engaged with the world. [Aug 2017, p.18]

Shook unpicks destructive relationships, self-determinism, mental health struggles and romantic yearning over backings that switch between rockabilly, mid-tempo ballads and ringing outlaw country. [Apr 2024, p.41]

[An] effervescent, sun-dappled debut. [Aug 2005, p.103]

An album that frequently feels to be about growing pains, Sprinter may, like its predecessor, not quite be Mackenzie Scott's defining moment. All the same, it shows enough promise that we should take that as a profound positive. [May 2015, p.68]

Ramshackle, out of tune, fey and frail, not yet tightened by Trevor Horn, these tracks capture the essence of this band's particular genius. [Dec 2008, p.83]

Cox's wistful croon and a proto-motorik chug are as wonderfully deadly as ever. [Jun 2013, p.71]

Think early Air meets hip-hop, the West Coast harmonies and Ultramarine-style tech-fok eccentricities merging with euphoric yet becalmed moodscapes. [Nov 2002, p.113]

This is much more than the usual retro-action.... DJ Shadow remains elusive to the end. [Jun 2002, p.127]

There's exhilaration amid the despondency, as powerful songs and a light, shoegazey sheen means they frequently soar. [Sep 2002, p.111]

A record dotted with peaks. [Apr 2007, p.93]

It’s hard to resist the sensory impact of these songs. Chemtrails picks up the nostalgic thread of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, though here she’s mostly Midwest and more melodic. [Jun 2021, p.25]

Deeply melodic, brilliantly played, and blessed with a spirit that feels generous and boundless. [Oct 2020, p.26]

Illuminate is a rich, alluring debut which nods to Orbital or The Chemical Brothers with its hooky melodies, pulsing analogue synths and supple breakbeat rhythms. [Jul 2014, p.69]

She sounds like a woman liberated, employing the services of Al Green's band, the Hi Rhythm Section, and cheerfully ratcheting up the soul textures hinted at on her 2010 debut, Obadiah. [Nov 2014, p.75]

An album of unexpected depth and originality. [Oct 2014, p.68]

Marling's fifth takes vast steps forward musically, as ever. It's more defiant and distinct than anything she's done before. [Apr 2015, p.74]

Brun continues to confound expectations on a set of sonically adventurous songs. [Oct 2015, p.73]

There's no shortage of melancholy here, but it's of an understated and universal kind. [Mar 2016, p.74]

Their playing and singing has laser-sharp focus, while still allowing the songs and their rich, raw melodies the space to breathe. [May 2018, p.35]

On "Silenced By Hum" her amorphous delivery helps bring Bjork's more recent experiments to mind. Nonetheless, "Come About" suggests the duo's closest kindred spirit is Jenny Hval. [Dec 2020, p.30]

A fine racket it is. [Apr 2021, p.32]

Ultimately it’s this balancing between considered atmospheres and rattling noise that gives Present Tense such a sharp bite. [Jun 2021, p.25]

He uses digital means to deepen, layer, smear, distend and otherwise tweak the emotive piano figures that remain discernable. ... As is often the case for Tiersen's music, the effect is mesmerising. [Oct 2021, p.35]

The pick of the bunch are the two recordings made in 2000. The first is a live set recorded shortly after Glastonbury at the BC Radio Theatre featuring Bowie's well-drilled band on a post-Glasto high, working through the hits. The second is Toy. [Jan 2022, p.38]

It starts with rousing rebel anthem “The Real”, and further highlights include the shoegaze drawl of “What’s In A Name?”, the jittery “Silenced” and the sinister growling surf of “You Think I’m Joking”. [Jul 2022, p.25]

Singing in Spanish in a deep baritone over the ringing tones of his tres guitar, the Cuban rhythms sway as enticingly as you'd want. [Aug 2023, p.36]

There's a clear path being charted, expanding the grammar of R&B into the heart of the modern-day mainstream. [Oct 2023, p.34]

A reworking of an early Squirrel Flower track, "I Don't Use A Trash Can", and the delicately atmospheric "Finally Rain" bookend the work, showing Williams' quiet strength as a songwriter. [Dec 2023, p.34]

These are distressed, in-limbo songs. Their unlikely latter-day alliance with Dave Fridmann adds poignantly lavish flourishes and echoing space-age keyboards to the dead-end punk tattoo of “I Don’t Fucking Know What I’m Gunna Do” and monotone monologue and suffocating synths of “Nothing/Everything”. [Jul 2024, p.35]

Morton's naive delivery gives "Purple Yellow" the poignancy of Portishead, and UB40's Ali Campbell popping up on "Broxtowe Girl" feels like a fever dream. [Jul 2024, p.38]

A slippery amalgam of Chicago house, Detroit techno, acid house grooves and sleazy electro-pop. Delirious fun it is too. [Jan 2025, p.32]

A bold and vibrant tableau of pulsing beats over which Hamdan's serpentine voice coils and caresses. [Oct 2025, p.28]

Inexorable forward movement is shadowed by existential dread. [Jul 2018, p.30]

Ad hoc, anything goes is the mood of what follows. Much is accomplished and playful. ... When he allows himself to forget who he is and just remember what it is that he does, he can still come up with songs to surprise you. More impressively, maybe even surprise himself.

For all the effective arrangements, most of the songs sound a bit anonymous. [Jun 2010, p.92]

Shuffle and skip for best results. [Jan 2016, p.71]

All The Young Droogs plots a grotty course through its age, but finds something joyful and heroic at the bottom of the bargain bucket. [Mar 2019, p.38]

The record is a listen-through winner, but the title track and languid, acoustic closer "John Prine On The Radio" are standouts. [Aug 2024, p.35]

Post-Bush, post-9/11, post-financial crisis, they sound more like [a] documentary. [Jan 2013, p.77]

Williamson is good at painting Hogarthian grotesques in a few brushstrokes. [Aug 2015, p.70]

Each track has been precision-tooled for playlist perfection but even here the sheer class of "Rendezvous" and "Karma" shine through. [Aug 2018, p.35]

After a strong start, though, her sixth album sags in the middle with a run of ho-hum numbers, until Welch summons the elements again with the orchestral flourish of "You Can't Have It All". [Review of the Year 2025, p.24]

On Room Inside The World, we hear them filling out their sound with synths, vibraphone and--on "Desire"--a 70-piece choir, an the songs are growing too, laced with emotional nuance. [Mar 2018, p.31]

Rarely has the deep past sounded so stirring, or so modern. [Oct 2009, p.94]

Here the pair [Richard Swift and Damien Jurado] resume roles for an equally enchanting follow-up. [Feb 2012, p.96]

Salvation lies in juxtaposing their dystopian vision against surging Beach Boys harmonies, gentle Simon & Garfunkel loveliness and the bucolic reverie of "Futures." [Mar 2018, p.25]

If Grant’s recent output veered toward the unnecessarily quirky, this new record restores focus. It’s as unsettling as 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts and – in its own way – as alert to the shoddy stitching in the stars and stripes as Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys, Phil Ochs’ Rehearsals For Retirement or the queercore of Dicks and MDC. [Jul 2021, p.20]

Like fellow minimalists The xx, Blake takes from dubstep an awareness of space and silence; he appreciates the power of a perfectly weighted pause. [Mar 2011, p.98]

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]

Mos Def can still create the year's finest hip hop album. [Sep 2009, p.88]

Warm Leatherette is often considered a rehearsal for Nightclubbing but in some ways it’s the most radical of the pair, because it unveiled to a shocked audience the new-look Jones, presented on the sleeve in stark black and white as a kind of sinister Pierrot by her partner Jean-Paul Goude.

Deliluh are more economical on their third album, even if they regularly expand on its mix of Kyle Knapp’s intimidatingly recited, enigmatic lyrics and angular post-punk. [Jul 2022, p.25]

Hadsel sounds both ethereal and earthly. [Dec 2023, p.27]

Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas' latest masterpiece is dense but unfathomably gorgeous. [Nov 2025, p.28]

Here is transcendent refuge from the storm. [Aug 2018, p.26]

Throughout Azel, the mix of the two genres allows for an even greater sense of uplift and collectivism in a music that always carried the communal at its core. [May 2016, p.72]

Built To Spill's blend of expressive guitar playing and light to moderate whining plays as well today as it did when the band emerged nearly 15 years ago. [Jul 2007, p.96]

Weller's 12th solo album is characterised by cut-ups and sound collages, built around riffs and grooves. There are fadeouts and fade-ins mid-song, vocals come heavily treated, instruments are strafed with sound effects. Essentially, Weller is making a virtue of his processes. [Jun 2015, p.65]

Its cut-and-paste of totalitarian rhythms, shredded human voices and celestial melodies something like an Aphex Twin remix of Hieronymus Bosch. [Apr 2017, p.25]

It’s rarely coherent and not always pretty, but the most effective therapy rarely is. [Oct 2022, p.26]

He too, has become more of what he always was. And somehow he's achieved that by paring his music down t its rawest essence. [Jul 2023, p.26]

There’s something galvanising about the way they’ve signed off with their best album in decades. This is not to slight previous albums like Perpetuum Mobile or Alles In Allem, but the group are on particularly excellent form. [Jun 2024, p.26]

Lie Down In The Light is his most coherent LP since the bleak masterpiece "I See A Darkness." [Aug 2008, p.85]

Shadows is full of drowsy sweetness and mellow doubt: the sound of a great group ageing gracefully. [Jun 2010, p.89]

Call it a quiet protest against reality: a one-woman bed in. One way and another, it works like a dream. [Feb 2020, p.18]

Even when they're singing about the horrors of nuclear holocaust -- as they do on the Hendrix-ish "Mushroom Bomb" -- they can't help but sound quite addictively cheerful. [Aug 2020, p.27]

Meek and producer Mat Davidson took the band to Sonic Ranch in Texas and gave the record a much more expansive, full-sounding presentation, a resounding and confident tone that matches these optimistic and often unfiltered emotions. [Oct 2023, p.33]

There's something unerring precise about the four compositions here, even as they stretch their limbs outwards. [Nov 2025, p.28]

Mostly, familiarly sombre patterns of piano and string quartet dominate this lovely album. [Dec 2003, p.118]

The instrumental interludes full of hypnotic loops and Mellotrons are intriguing enough, but the meat lies in the lushly layered art-pop songs. [Jun 2020, p.30]

Layered with folklore and mysticism, lustrous synthesiser textures and twangy surf-punk guitars, the band's third album maps an expansive musical cosmos. [Mar 2022, p.26]

An album heavy on moody atmospheres and dese riffs. ... There's also pleasing variety to this immersive and enveloping debut. [Jun 2023, p.36]

[Endless Arcade's] follow-up is even more impressive, the five-piece creating an organic song cycle largely concerned with the roll of time hope's eternal promise and an unerring sense of where their natural strengths lie. [Oct 2023, p.34]

At times here it feels like Debbie Harry took a wrong turn on the way to Studio 54 and wound up with Shed 7.

An exemplary set. [Feb 2014, p.76]

Derivative, perhaps, but reconfigured in a way which is both expert and highly seductive. [Sep 2014, p.69]