Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello appear as duet partners, affably resigned to not competing with that unmistakable undimmed voice. [Apr 2016, p.75]

The first disc of 4CD retrospective of their early mid-90s work is an embarrassment of riches. [Feb 2012, p.84]

Vito Deluca indulges himself on his outstanding debut. [Oct 2010, p.104]

Blue Weekend is a collection of songs that immediately dazzle, with a relentless array of strong hooks, nestled within a sea of diverse sonic colours. [Aug 2021, p.35]

The tranquility is transporting and when it ends abruptly after just 34 minutes, the only option is to play it again. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Eight tracks range from menacing, acid rain drone to jagged rhythmic gut-punches. Here they summon the raw energy of The Young Gods in their prime, hobbling through grey ruined cities that have dominated our news-screens in recent times. [Jul 2025, p.33]

She's performing and singing at her peak. [May 2014, p.83]

An a cappella "I'll Find A Way" provides clearest evidence, but their talents stretch beyond voices. [Sep 2025, p.31]

His latest, Bella, is laden with sumptuous melodies and mordant wit. [Feb 2011, p.103]

Moonshine Freeze is an impressive conduit for their upward trajectory. [Aug 2017, p.36]

As a reminder of his consummate talent, and a place to start George's comeback, it's hard to beat. [Feb 2011, p.93]

[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]

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

That old-time, good-time vibe can occasionally dip into hokeyness, as the album title signals, but slow numbers like "Lindsey Button" and "Put 'Em Up Solid" are where the group excels. [Sep 2017, p.28]

An extremely moving and potentially radical record. [Sep 2003, p.99]

Through its grooves she invites the listener inside her world without the glow of a screen, a much needed respite from Zoom. [Dec 2020, p.27]

An intimate, ballad-dominated song cycle that melds their vintage and experimental sides. [Jun 2023, p.36]

Although it's a shame to see eccentrics reining in idiosyncratic impulses,... they've honed their hubris. [May 2005, p.98]

At times it resembles a dream playlist from some forgotten '70s FM station. [Jul 2005, p.94]

An album that can initially feel scatty but is held together by its creator's passion and poise. [Dec 2018, p.28]

The world is certainly overdue proper acquaintance with The Constantines. [Nov 2005, p.98]

Despite the sense of loss that inevitably pervades the music here, Steve Goodman's first solo effort as Kode9 also charts out some exhilarating new directions. [Dec 2015, p.74]

There are shades of The Smiths and The Sundays in the likes of "Strange Warnings" and "Take Yourself With You," while opener "Colour Of Water" is a near-perfect piece of electro-pop, at once wistful and joyful. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Ice cool and white hot by turns, Emika is a singular and significant new voice at the interface between pop and dubstep. [Nov 2011, p.83]

The Josh Ritter who appears here is primarily a writer of quality pop songs.

Javelin sounds like a proper Sufjan Stevens album, picking up the lyrical and sonic threads of Carrie & Lowell and 2010's The Age Of Adz. [Nov 2023, p.22]

Women As Lovers may be his best yet. [Mar 2008, p.107]

Clear, uncluttered, minimally adorned, it works in different measures to the usual. [Oct 2023, p.31]

Though still hyper-literate, the sound away from the semi-spoken ballads tends less frantic than The Hod Steady, from the Cars-like new wave of "postcards" to the distinctly Springstonian "Luke & Leanna". [May 2025, p.29]

Even if this [air of refined sophistication] can occasionally make Women feel a little bloodless, you have to marvel at the exquisite execution. [May 2013, p.76]

The septuagenarian may not possess the range he once had, but Bell's voice wears the years gracefully. [Aug 2016, p.71]

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]

Norrvide still sounds a little glum, but he's got plenty to be happy about here. [Jul 2014, p.76]

What is startling is the abundance of new ideas and feeling of renewed vitality on Music For The Age Of Miracles, qualities that make the songs as compelling as any the band have recorded. [Oct 2017, p.34]

A triumph of sample-based, groove-cutting rap that shifts ground with every attempt to pin it down. [May 2004, p.106]

Shepherd's most eclectic album to date, a richly pleasurable balancing act between brain and body, academic seminar and night club, cerebral experiment and sensory feast. [Nov 2019, p.32]

The songs tap '80s electronic pop, art-house soundtracks of the same era, psych-prog ad house and constitute a compelling set-piece. [Jun 2023, p.32]

Silver Bullets sounds, instantly and unmistakably, like a Chills album.... It is also a heartening delight. [Dec 2015, p.63]

Working In Tennessee resonates with much of the cool, complicated clarity of his very best work. [Nov 2011, p.85]

2 deals in lugubrious late-night lyricism and equals Kurt Vile and Cass McCombs for warmly melodic meanderings that beguile rather than baffle. [Dec 2012, p.69]

While the duo's tempo remains measured and its atmosphere is typically grand, thanks to a 40-piece orchestra, Iris puts more emphasis on modular synths. [Feb 2017, p.38]

If is deeply lovely music, born of a tenderly weighted sensibility. [Dec 2011, p.88]

The Brothers prove they can still poleaxe a dancefloor with a well-aimed barrage of strobe-ing electro-house.

Once Upon A Time In The West may lack the cultural resonance Archer so desperately craves, but it’s widescreen appeal makes most guitar bands sound like they’re on Super 8.

The Place We Ran From is bloody and dense and dark, and not in the least like a pastiche. [Aug 2010, p.85]

The swinging, jazz-country arangements are perfect, too, hitching the polished, romantic sophistication of the songs to a down-home, rootsy bonhomie that draws comparison with Dylan's reinterpretations of the Sinatra songbook on 2015's Shadows In the Night. [Apr 2016, p.78]

"South Coast" and "Albatross", especially, are the sound of a band growing no less peculiar and wonderous for their familiarity. [Mar 2025, p.41]

Some of it is as good as anything Diamond has done.

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

They stand out because they combine some very familiar elements with more style and grace than their peers. [Feb 2011, p.94]

The heavier contemporary numbers hint at a fire still burning. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Despite stuffing their saddle bags full of choice musical cuts old and new, The Middle East somehow contrive to sound like nobody but their own sweet selves. [Jul 2011, p.86]

Pratt has one of those voices, like Josephine Foster, that remain stubbornly, elusively ageless. [Feb 2013, p.78]

It's a blazing set for a 70-year-old, but Winter gains traction from his fretboard duets/duels with Eric Clapton, Billy Gibbons, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Perry, Brian Setzer et al. [Oct 2014, p.80]

What elevates Rogue Wave above the pale massed ranks of the wispy and fey, though, are melodies with real muscle, and a muscial ambition that flirts with the experimental, but remains joyously within reach of the FM dial. [Dec 2005, p.112]

The 2 Bears' faith in the unifying qualities of a good rave-up has a tendency to spill over into hokey sentiment at times, but such criticism feels like pure humbug in the face of the album's unexpectedly trippy and heartwarming final third. [Oct 2014, p.65]

Taking its musical cues from Dennis Wilson and Echo And The Bunnymen, the band remain human underneath the strum and bang and always make sure that, in among the fire and thunder, there are songs, and emotion and, as ever, extraordinary lyrics. [Oct 2010, p.93]

Interplanetary Class Classics smears Saoudi's nihilistic euphoria across throbbing new-wave and singalong Glitter Band boogie. [Apr 2017, p.35]

Tragedy and Geometry is exquisite and detailed to an almost obsessive-compulsive degree. [Jan 2012, p.89]

In the end, it comes down to little moments of bliss, and those seven or eight words. "I don't know how I made it" Scott sings, as Taylor Goldsmith essays an angelic harmony. "but I made it". As a funeral march, it's a humdinger. [Apr 2025, p.22]

Robust, sparkly. [Jul 2019, p.24]

It works beautifully. [Jun 2013, p.75]

The 51-year-old family man's struggles with depression and anxiety bring unrelenting urgency to the album. [Jan 2023, p.15]

Gangster Star is a light, trippy confection, reinventing R&B with rippling electronics and slippery, Prince-like funk. [Aug 2017, p.31]

It's a fearless rejection of current pop trends, fashioning a benchmark of intensity and originality that the rest of this year's albums will struggle to match. [Fed 2010, p.94]

There is surprising range here. [Aug 2017, p.52]

Dig deeper into This Is The Computers, recorded at the San Diego home of former Rocket From The Crypt man John Reis, and it's clear they have a pop heart. [Jul 2011, p.86]

Elitism for the People documents Pere Ubu creating their own private musical apocalypse and then forging in to start the world anew. Not a world to be drowned in, but one to treasure. [Sep 2015, p.88]

It's when Leithauser plays on his home ground of rueful romantic desperation (as he does on the title track), though, that he really hits his stride. [Oct 2016, p.31]

A gig of the year, no question. You should have been there. Now you can be. [Dec 2004, p.150]

Exceptional in its melodic prosperity and calculated grandeur. [Mar 2002, p.96]

A gem. [Apr 2005, p.105]

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]

This album pursues a theme of escape from the more lurid temptations of early adulthood, and Darnielle locates an aptly urgent yet reflective tone. [Nov 2012, p.79]

[It] sees her expanding her horizons with out scrimping on nuance or emotion. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Ward's sweet, carefree voice is at odds with the urgency of the music. [Oct 2006, p.133]

An understated debut of mature sophistication. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Soul Time! is another thrilling homage to the glory days of Motown and Stax. [Dec 2011, p.87]

This album is heavy because it's dense with detail. [Jan 2015, p.63]

It's a testament of the savvy of darcy and his producers Ross Gillard and Amy Fort that the new album's experimental passages are very much cut from the same cloth as more obvious crowd-pleasers like "You Felt Comfort," which shares the drive and jangle of "Tall Glass Of Water," and "Saint Germain," a dreamy haze of a song that demonstrates Darcy's gift for melody, absurd turns of phase and more pointed expressions of inner turmoil. [Mar 2017, p.38]

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

In The Vines reveals more of its peculiar candlelit charm with every play. [Dec 2007, p.106]

The garbled way in which The Coral piece these disparate elements together creates an odd, timeless and cosmic music, buzzing with energy, and very much their own. [Apr 2016, p.80]

She writes about toxic masculinity and abusive relationships with racing candour, and she sings with a fresh, unnerving snarl that weaponises her signature twang. [May 2020, p.35]

It's all unceasingly beautiful. [Mar 2012, p.81]

The lyrics are shorn of detail. Hearts are dented, if not entirely smashed, but the emotional core of the songs are harder to locate, because the tropes of country songwriting ave been traded for something less defined. There's a restless energy. ... There's a refreshing purity, too. [Aug 2020, p.31]

The songs are rich in both melody and syncopation. [Feb 2024, p.25]

Monsters Of Folk ends as captiatingly as it starts. [Oct 2009, p.99]

Their second is a complex, pile-driving delight. [Jul 2016, p.78]

This is as much a celebration of collaboration, camaraderie and community as it is a noted personal evolution. [Jan 2023, p.17]

Its eight songs are distinct and stirring. [Jul 2013, p.80]

Who Is The Sky? benefits greatly from Byrne's singular perspective as a songwriter. It also shows how much more expressive he continues to become, even here in his eighth decade on Earth. [Oct 2025, p.26]

An album that has bite and snarl but also a wonderfully woozy and unfurling sense of groove. [Jun 2024, p.36]

The Maels' spectrum of tried-and-true on Sparks Album No 25 is wide and rich enough to provide no end of delights. [Oct 2017, p.39]

A career peak. [Oct 2015, p.78]

A succinct, deceptively simple half-hour outing. [Dec 2017, p.25]

The results are lively and irreverent. [Nov 2012, p.77]

A confident reiteration of this singular group's virtues. [Mar 2021, p.38]