The results are successfully restorative, sometimes recalling The Album Leaf's 2000s Sigur Ros collaborations. [Aug 2020, p.33]

Utter desolation never sounded so lovely. [Apr 2012, p.84]

This is mostly acoustic guitars lovingly plucked, drums delicately brushed, fiddles softly sawn. [Oct 2003, p.113]

It might be best to appreciate Call The Comet as a sublime soundtrack, possibly the most atmospheric, widescreen guitar album you'll hear all year. [Jul 2018, p.25]

Blue Songs journeys as great LPS should do. [Feb 2011, p.89]

It's autumnal but never overbearingly bleak, thanks to the enduring warmth of Thorn's voice, and the empathy of her lyrics, even on the almost desolate "Singles Bar." [Jul 2010, p.125]

A Boy From Tupelo is ultimately a necessary and revealing addition to Presley's vast catalogue, one that spins a fascinating yarn about a pimply kid who transformed into something unprecedented: a rock star. [Sep 2017, p.50]

Time's Arrow does venture a little outside their comfort zone - the lush "California" is a Cocteau Twins fever dream - but they're at their best closer to home on the career high of "Misery Remember Me", a glittering palace of gothic Italo disco. [Feb 2023, p.29]

Kelly has lost none of his facility for wry lyricism or deadpan melody. [Sep 2017, p.32]

An audacious vault into Depeche Mode and U2 territory. [Oct 2017, p.30]

Intoxicating. [Mar 2004, p.87]

Sounds great, but a little superfluous. [Jan 2020, p.28]

The trio has acquired the confidence to cherry-pick tropes from dark-rock's heritage and mould them into thier own glum grooves. [Mar 2006, p.100]

A sumptuous set of gloriously gloomy ballads that emphasise Moss's expressiveness as a vocalist. [Dec 2018, p.28]

[An] excellent debut album. [Nov 2014, p.73]

First-time producer Justin Townes Earle has succeeded Jack White as guardian of the Wanda Jackson sound, guiding her through a fascinating mix of covers and originals. [Dec 2012, p.72]

Heartbeat rhythms raise the emotional temperature. Joseph’s theme is abuse, and survival. Her voice coils and swirls in songs that play like maternal nursery rhymes rendered for comfort. [May 2022, p.29]

Through the simplicity of their languid melodies, Beach House access a portal into pop's truly uncanny nature. [Jan 2007, p.93]

Like Lubomry Melnyk's, Moore's rapid piano-playing creates an appealing haze on "Starwood Choker" and "Form Takes," while his companions augment this with similarly opaque washes of tape delay, spectral drones, bass and woodwind. [Mar 2017, p.25]

A gleefully malevolent testament to the cathartic joys of furious, poison-flecked songwriting. [Oct 2007, p.113]

Weirdest of all is "Don't Forget Jayne", where JBL freaks out over a wonderfully odd fusion of Taylor's disjointed samba drumming and Wener's smooth jazz guitar licks. [Mar 2025, p.34]

The Heavy's debut album is a dirty, bluesy, funk rock noise that, on paper, looks deeply uncool but might actually be the album of the year. [Dec 2007, p.97]

Weaver grounds all this analogue fizz and crackle in strong songwriting, erecting a razzle-dazzle wall of sonic scaffolding around richly referential lyrics and lysergic pastoral harmonies. Her best yet. [Jun 2017, p.38]

Out of the pain and anger, Moorer has fashioned the finest album of her career. [Apr 2015, p.80]

Resulting in a most welcome return for this singular artist. [Jun 2025, p.42]

Simple but true. [Jun 2016, p.78]

This third album sees her come into her own as a songwriter with a seductive collection of slow-burning synth-funk. [Aug 2016, p.80]

This is a hugely varied set: the title track starts with a barrage of Missy Elliott-style clapping, "New Myth" sounds like a mournful colliery band anthem, while the gorgeous "Daphene" sounds like a folk-rock Fleetwood Mac. [Feb 2011, p.89]

For all of their doom-mongering--this record feeds on notions of dereliction and abandonment--Marconi Union always finds beauty in the bleakest places. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Forced Witness is a lovely album of '80s-ish pop, using synth and sax to find the space between Springsteen and the Bunnymen. [Sep 2017, p.24]

His style is scraggly yet sophisticated, ranging boldly from country drones to rambunctious rural ragas. [Oct 2016, p.26]

“Right Hand Over My Heart”, an irresistible number with moody Omnichord and synth motifs, and at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the sinuous “Water Torture”, in which a disgusted Davis addresses his country’s barbarity practised in the name of world order. “Moonlit Kind” closes the set, an existential hymn with an agreeably lazy, Yeasayer-ish groove. [Jul 2024, p.30]

[Black's] bright, clear voice supported by lush soundscape of horns, strings and piano. [Sep 2015, p.81]

Molina's songs achieve the kind of epic, majestic sweep his ambition and talent have long suggested. [Jun 2005, p.104]

Glimmers of Blonde Redhead's future can be divined throughout Masculin Feminin, whether in Kazu Makin's girlish vocals, or Simone Pace's snaking, restrained drum parts; even in their juvenilia, Blonde Redhead were looking through their own sophisticated, idiosyncratic filter. [Oct 2016, p.49]

Pylon sees Killing Joke maintain the late-career renaissance precipitated by the original lineup reuniting for 2010's Absolute Dissent. [Nov 2015, p.77]

A bunch of amazing songs that combine the passion of early Sinead O'Connor with the craft of Christine McVie. [Jan 2005, p.124]

It's sometimes more about the journey than the getting there, and the contents of this latest Bowie box help document many of the steps. ... The 1969 Space Oddity record remains more than its title track, the tender love songs particularly strong. It's a hippie record of social observation and heavy inner trips, Bowie's wit and tenderness rendering it a cut above. [Dec 2019, p.41]

Frequently offers moments of joy. A wider range of live musicians – harp, clarinet, violin, vocal ensemble – give songs like “Collect Color” and “Big Dipper” room to breathe and lend sparser, more electronic-based tracks like “Violetlight” and “Heartwood” a sense of intimacy by comparison. [Nov 2024, p.37]

The lumbering "Livingston Bramble" aside, the music is elegant and winding. [Nov 2013, p.74]

A confident, more expansive--emotionally and musically--annexe to his impressive, soul-baring debut. [Dec 2014, p.75]

For Godard, it bridged punk and his Tony Bennett phase, with the band sporting knock-off Fred Perrys at the height of goth gloom-mongering. [Nov 2014, p.75]

The synergy between electronics and organic instrumentation, sometimes an arid and baffling blend in improv, makes this a thrilling listen. [Dec 2011, p.87]

A thing of gentle and radiant wonder. [Mar 2018, p.24]

The lyrics are presented with such conviction that it becomes quietly devastating. Rather like Swamp Dogg himself. [Apr 2020, p.24]

Purists who flinched when Tame Impala began to morph into a hairier Da¢ Punk may be similarly nonplussed by the sextet’s turn toward blissed-out dance-rock, but everyone else will have a lot of fun. [Aug 2021, p.28]

Ambarchi and O'Rourke bed their extended compositions down in richer tones, with glassing electronic hums and roiling organs moving on shifting sands. [Apr 2015, p.71]

The result is both viscerally corporeal music, full of gristle and breath, and richly ambient. [Oct 2022, p.27]

The Low Highway settles into a sustained crosshatching of strummed and plucked strings, paralleling the feel of a road trip, the initial elation giving way to an endless pattern of forest and farmland as America whizzes past as a steady 90mph. [May 2013, p.72]

The sole new composition, "Prungen," is a funked-out blast of galloping synth arpeggios, while the terrific "Music! Dance! Drama!" fires up a cyclotron of raucous electro-punk fanfares and weapons-grade xylophone riffs. [Jul 2013, p.77]

Atmospheric, good-natured and often very beautiful. [Nov 2025, p.33]

An aquatic, slow-moving work, rich with melancholic atmosphere. [Oct 2017, p.35]

On this evidence, enough to suggest that Birch, now into her late sixties, might just be entering her next great creative phase. [Apr 2023, p.39]

The outpouring of creativity is exciting: but where this clearing-out of the songwriting archives leaves The Smile now is anyone’s guess.

There isn't another band who make creativity sound so intensely joyous. [Dec 2014, p.75]

Things are more cinematic here, with every melody weaving through a mise-en-scene packed with dramatic incident. [Nov 2006, p.101]

She's rarely sounded more alive. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Still one of America's most unique and affecting songwriters. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Narcissistic (“Black Hole Baby”, a montage of radio praise and day-in-the-life mission statement), earnest (“crushed.zip”, an anxiety-fuelled showcase for singer Orono’s sugary-sad voice) and deeply weird. [Aug 2022, p.33]

Lennox and Kember create breezy sonic collages of sunshine melody, fluidly chugging rhythms and fizzing analogue synths without succumbing to full retro-jukebox pastiche. [Sep 2022, p.29]

It's all held together by the band's well-honed knack for a screwy groove. [Apr 2019, p.39]

Tricky is back with his best album in at least a decade.

Lapalux is already in the foothills of greatness. [May 2013, p.73]

While a talking blues about baseball cards edges into geekville, "To The Veterans Committee," a sunshine pop supreme, might have you singing the praises of Dale Murphy without even knowing who he is. [May 2014, p.69]

These unfailingly lovely late-night reflections stalk the same territory as the third VU album, Richard Hawley, The Lilac Time, and ballad mode JAMC, moving from the stark intimacy of "Over You" to the narcotic drag of "Waking Up" and Bond theme grandeur of "If The World Is All We Have." [Aug 2017, p.30]

The stripped-back production adds a sense of immediacy and places focus on the fine vocals of hall and Golding, plus guest vocalist Hannah Hu. [Oct 2021, p.33]

A finely judged set that draws deep from his Texan heritage and that of nearby Louisiana, a favourite teenage haunt of his. [Oct 2025, p.24]

The stroke of genius was to persuade dreamer-for-hire Kelley Polar, Richard Davis and Paul Conboy to sing on this sparkling LP, resulting in a masterclass in soft synthetic soul. [Apr 2010, p.83]

This is a fretful and ferocious record, lyrically much preoccupied with things having ended or appearing about to end, but musically much more blaze of glory than any kind of funeral pyre. [May 2024, p.40]

Hyperdrama boasts the same kind of air-punching swagger and imaginative ambition that made Random Access Memories so inescapable. It also benefits from a similarly formidable guestlist. [Jul 2024, p.35]

As with any enduring soundtrack, this collection of songs stands on its own. [Oct 2019, p.24]

“The Wraith Behind Our Eyes” sounds like the kind of thing Ian Dury might have come up with if he’d been raised in sunny California, while the New Age jazz flourishes of tracks like “Threaded Dances” hit home what a unique concoction of flavours and sounds Izenberg has put together here. [Aug 2024, p.35]

Ten-minute sonic odyssey "Neptune" provides a typically overblown finale, but it's INXS-style banger "The Runner" that will further cement their place at indie rock's top table. [Nov 2019, p.25]

Ideas fly out of Collector at a dizzying pace. [Apr 2020, p.27]

It trades in giddying, irresistible, full-steam-ahead-and-damn-the-torpedoes rock'n'roll. But at its heart, it's essentially a thoughtful wander in search of personal and national innocence.

She's at her most persuasive, however, on the delicate waltz of the piano-led "Too Much Of Not Enough," a shimmering showcase for one of the most alluring and arresting female voices at work today. [May 2019, p.27]

Most crucially, Costello manages--apart from the previously cited cringe-worthy lapses--to play along with Burnett’s in-soft/out-LOUD approach, making this his most engaging album in a very long time.

Respect is due--such is their musical vigor, PJ make it sound like it all really matters. [Sep 2009, p.90]

Twelve are here, and while Rosanne doesn't reinvent songs in the manner of, say, Cat Power, she does restate them briskly, with husband John Levanthal's production pushing her beautiful bell-like voice to the fore. [Dec 2009, p. 87]

Every Valley feels far more substantial [than 2015's The Race For Space], as PSB's amorphous brand of prog, motorik and post rock integrates fully with BFI clips and first hand interviews. ... Pathos and fortitude are plentiful. [Aug 2017, p.35]

Too many of these frictionless Eurodisco makeweights only prove that great, urgent, heart-tugging electro-pop is easy to stimulate but difficult to pull off successfully. [Jun 2013, p.75]

Throughout, Rademaker's tremulous vocals and endearing slacker persona imbue his songs with a heart-tugging humanity. [May 2024, p.34]

The Darkness are genuinely in thrall to the power of stadium rock in all its bombastic, unreconstructed glory. [Sep 2003, p.97]

If 2020 confirms anything, it's the breadth of what Magik Markers can do, within what might read like constraints. [Nov 2020, p.36]

He's a poet of the everyday, finding outsized emotions within these life-sized tableaux. [Dec 2018, p.28]

Sounding emphatically Icelandic on every note, sister act Ásthildur and Jófrídur Ákadöttir coo gorgeously flinty, frosty, intertwined harmonies over stark, piano-led chamber-folk arrangements. [Sep 2016, p.78]

Unsurprisingly, American V is the most desolate of the series, bereft of the moments of playfulness that leavened its predecessors. [Aug 2006, p.92]

With martial trumpets, cheap-sounding Farfisa organs and raspy baritone saxes, there are certainly nods toward Ethiopiques legends like Mulatu Astatke or the Wallas Band, tracks like "Rite Of The Ancients" and "Golden Dunes" add a rugged garage rock, and riff-based funk of "Black Venom" has a breakbeat that's just begging to be sampled by a bright hip hop producer. [Nov 2010, p.83]

The songs are much more confidently realised. [May 2008, p.100]

Strange Weekend drifts and delights. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Path Of Wellness proves Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein haven’t forgotten the empowering, life-giving qualities of rock’n’roll fun. Sleater-Kinney are turning their reunion years into a reaffirmation of the importance of support and solidarity on a private, personal level. [Aug 2021, p.30]

The lonesome trumpet-flecked "Sand," an easy-swinging "Laugh" and "Cali," with its late summer-in-Laurel Canyon vibe, prove this is no one-note set. [May 2017, p.35]

Plays Chris And Cosey, more than justifies its existence. [Mar 2015, p.73]

The result is unmistakeably LB. [Apr 2015, p.78]

These moody, brooding pieces avoid TV cliche and occasionally produce gems in their own right. [May 2013, p.74]

These are finely detailed hymnals with a deceptively light touch, led out by Beam’s warm-blanket voice and brittle guitar.

Much more than just a hobbyist fancy, 2 is, in fact, far better than it has any right to be. [Aug 2016, p.82]

The Living Sisters have put their respective groups aside to concoct a delicious LP straddling the genres. [May 2010, p.97]