It's an album that unfurls like a flag on a battlefield, glorious, tattered, defiant, full of big choruses, vaulting harmonies, a brazenly windswept sound. The guitars couldn't be louder, bolder, more heroically deployed. [Nov 2023, p.28]

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

It's this mix of songwriting voices as well as the tight thematic concept of The Dirty South that makes this such a strong LP, and the new songs don't diminish that. [Jul 2023, p.44]

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

Songwriting of the highest calibre. [Sep 2003, p.104]

You don't expect progression from such evident classicists, but there's a new clarity, poise and refinement. [Apr 2004, p.107]

32 years on from Swans' formation, Michael Gira is not only still moving forward, but making some of the albums of his career. [Jun 2014, p.81]

Sweeping strings and sparse piano merge deftly with Jordan’s melancholic voice on “Light Blue”, while the fingerpicked “c. et al.” is bare-bones heartache wrapped up in tender beauty. [Dec 2021, p.33]

An album that's both sad and angry, thoughtful and impassioned, and desperate for America to escape its chequered past. [Nov 2016, p.18]

A wealth of new material for diehard fans. [Aug 2017, p.46]

Their heaviest to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

It's been a gradual recalibration and Songs For Our Daughter ruffles more of Marling's characteristic composure: she's feeling the breeze, focused, pressing keenly forward. [Jun 2020, p.24]

In the jigsaw puzzle that is Bob Dylan, The Whitmark Demos are crucial pieces, and it's easy to get lost in the depths, the sheer audacity and beauty, of this music. [Nov 2010, p.107]

Divers feels like her most comfortable, charming album. [Nov 2015, p.80]

A classic of modern psychedelia. [Jun 2005, p.113]

The band hits an altogether richer seam on the Fleet Foxes-like “Mine Forever” and the vast sweep of the string-laden title track, rooted in the lost highway myth but sounding more akin to classic Walker Brothers. [Jul 2021, p.30]

A celebration of the inherent power of community and music’s ability to connect and resonate through the ages, created by someone fast becoming one of the most important young voices in modern American folk music. [Oct 2022, p.18]

Like any new city, this album may take some getting used to--there's beauty everywhere, but the streets are far from a neat grid. But as you walk them, Holter's genius as a sonic town planner reveals itself. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Bad As Me is the sound of a supremely confident artist convening a raucous celebration of his own myth, and is multifariously marvellous. [Nov 2011, p.78]

There's a lighter, more hopeful bent to the musical settings, which perfectly balance the more dissonant leanings of The King Of Limbs with a sumptuousness and gentleness they've rarely sought since OK Computer. [Aug 2016, p.81]

The music here swells, surges and rages without ever losing the vulnerability at its core. [May 2024, p.31]

Lives Outgrown is a quite different prospect to Gibbons' previous work - more intimate, more personal, coloured by the grief and goodbyes se has weathered in recent years. But it is still possible to find a thread that runs from here to Out Of Season, and back to Portishead. [Jun 2024, p.23]

It's a bravura fusion of dense-art metal/pop and strutting baroque disco. [Nov 2017, p.36]

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

All are very good indeed.

An even more ambitious conceptual album that finds her sharing her insecurities, praising her heroes and going on a fairytale voyage over 19 tracks. [Oct 2021, p.30]

There are surprises everywhere. While "R&B" and "Nearly Daffodils" are sprightly, irreverent post-punk, the influence of Black Country, Nee Road nd Radiohead are evident on the complex, proggy title track and the diverse, hushed final third of the album. Lily Fontaine's lyrics, to are deep and funny. [Apr 2024, p.32]

The result is a record that confirms … Phenomenal Nature was no fluke. This is the sound of Jenkins hitting her stride – less disembodied than its predecessor, more grounded, its tone ranging from the easy warmth of Tom Petty to the steady discernment of Aimee Mann, via a little Laurie Anderson. [Jul 2024, p.28]

Return To Cookie Mountain sees TV solidifying their more ethereal tendencies into denser compositions. [Aug 2006, p.100]

A rare rock record with the rage, urgency, wit and shattering of complacency usually found in grime. [Apr 2017, p.32]

At times it hits harder and heavier than anything they've attempted before. [Nov 2020, p.32]

Courtney Barnett has managed to expand her lyrical preoccupations and musical interests outwards and upwards, while still retaining the magic of her past peak. [Apr 2015, p.68]

RTJ3 is the pair's most focused and mature work to date. [Mar 2017, p.34]

In a still-uncertain climate, its emotional honesty and crystalline truths are a gift.[Jun 2021, p.32]

Her most wide-ranging LP, Iconoclasts is also her most unwieldy, but she finds no small catharsis in letting the music overwhelm. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

Quite mesmeric. [Oct 2025, p.31]

Both adventurous and accessible, a record in love with the obliterating power of sound. [Apr 2003, p.120]

Patty Griffin reached something of an artistic peak with 2015's Servant Of Love, a record that distilled her love of American folk, blues and country into an intimate song cycle with a powerful emotional pull. Its follow-up is no less personal, perhaps even more so. [Apr 2019, p.28]

Every bit as special as promised. [Jul 2025, p.29]

Things are really supercharged here by Epworth's electronic touch. It's a highly potent and undeniably successful combination. [Oct 2025, p.24]

Her sixth, co-produced by Jonathan Wilson, executes no radical stylistic swerve but neither are its 10 songs of a single type. Rather, they’re a balancing of country – here are echoes of Tammy, Emmylou and Lee Hazlewood – and torch song (kd lang, Roy Orbison), with the odd flourish of cocktail-lounge melancholy (a la Badalamenti) and classic, MGM-style orchestrations. [Jul 2022, p.28]

The nostalgic tug of the earlier, dancier singles remains strong, but as a bonus disc of rarities demonstrates, their experimental side is equally compelling. [Mar 2012, p.101]

Its initial oddness now just sounds like a ramshackle tryout for what was to follow. [Jun 2012, p.91]

Gathering is another collection of Dylanesque strummings, rescued as always from generic blandness by Ritter's alacrity as a lyricist and husky grin of a voice. [Nov 2017, p.36]

If you're a Prince bootleg freak you'll know most of it already, but if not it's a great introduction to his writing for outside productions. Often, the real revelation is how closely performers hew to his demos. [Jul 2019, p.48]

Skyway Man's fantasy realm is absorbing enough that he can pull off increasingly audacious musical combinations. [Dec 2020, p.38]

Another excellent set of verbose tunes delivered with the vocal swagger of Morrissey or Alex Kapranos, against a shimmering curtain of prime pop jangle. [Mar 2023, p.28]

Striking successor to 2021 breakthrough Pohorylle. .... Her phrasing is exquisite throughout. [Oct 2023, p.26]

A masterpiece in any time zone. [Dec 2023, p.26]

While there's room for marvellous deeper cuts such as "Goodnight Tonight", "Wild Life" and "Arrow Through Me", there's also filler like "Getting Closer" and "Call Me Back Again". In true Wings fashion, perhaps there really is something for everyone here. [Review of the Year 2025, p.45]

A singular, rhapsodic triumph. [Apr 2007, p.94]

Harding lays bare the pain and discomfort felt in her previous work, though the road to it is far more dynamic and winding. [May 2019, p.33]

Not for the faint-hearted, Damien Jurado is a habit which won't necessarily bring joy to the listener. But once acquired, you will find it hard to kick. [Apr 2003, p.106]

It's the sense of a nuanced beat group finding their own path beyond Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine that's most compelling. [Feb 2015, p.99]

There's a defiance in each painful note. In tasting despair, Tahliah Barnett has returned 10 times stronger--in spirit and voice. [Dec 2019, p.27]

The only pity is that navigating one's way around the three hours and 20 minutes of music is such a fiddly business. [Oct 2016, p.46]

Trouble No More presents a very humane portrait of a man on a serious spiritual quest, which makes it as biographically fascinating as it is musically frustrating. [Jan 2018, p.34]

Banhart's free-flowing oddness makes most musical eccentrics seem self-conscious and predictable. [Jun 2004, p.90]

She uses her voice as well as she ever has, giving the moods light and shade. [Sep 2001, p.104]

From A Basement... returns us to the more unfiltered, denuded sound of his earlier [albums]. [Nov 2004, p.106]

Almost every tune sounds like a hit. [Dec 2001, p.108]

These are smart, confident and mostly fine-boned songs, though epic closer “Posing For Cars” leans on a lachrymose, slow-mo, alt.rock guitar passage. [Jul 2021, p.27]

There are barely any duff Sault tracks. [Sep 2021, p.26]

Their debut takes SBB's percussive "Congotronics" sound and twists it into dramatic new shapes. [Jun 2015, p.78]

Manning Fireworks, his third studio album and maybe his best, sounds like the Drive-By Truckers backing Vic Chesnutt. [Sep 2024, p.36]

Radiohead have made their most well-behaved, classically structured album since "OK Computer."

This lovingly compiled box is the perfect place for anyone curious about The Staple Singers' remarkable 50-year career to get acquainted. [Feb 2020, p.46]

This isn't mere sonic overload; Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein's vocals are still towering. [Jun 2005, p.107]

Strong on characterful production, writing and lyrical fronts, it's a country-pop tour de force that showcases her insight and humour as she addresses everything from the economic precarity of her homeland to the devastating harm done by body shaming. [Sep 2025, p.29]

By comparison [to 2019's Father Of The Bride], Only God Was Above Us is off its meds - grimier, sonically and spiritually; more compressed, more stressed. Lyrically, conflict is everywhere and nothing is stable. .... It would all be so much showing-off if the narrative ache Koenig displays wasn't so palpable, and the craft wasn't so meticulous. These guys listen hard, sometimes applying different processing effects on each word, even syllable. [May 2024, p.33]

There are moments of genius throughout. [Sep 2015, p.91]

A Jaime 2.0 likely to secure her status as an auteur in terms of both conception and execution. It's bigger, freer-thinking and more dynamically audacious record. [Feb 2024, p.20]

Spoon's secret is that this tension is never quite released, the martial beat never breaks down, full rock music never quite kicks in. [Oct 2002, p.120]

Lonerism is more melodic and expansive then 2010 debut Innerspeaker, connecting the disparate dots with real elan. [Nov 2012, p.84]

Their seventh LP is a(nother) case of "none more black," but 'Big Church'--in which a Viennese women's choir provides the counter to crushing, sustained chords are striking departures from Sunn)))'s awesome canon. [Jun 2009, p.103]

We can surely welcome more bittersweet beauties like the steely "Elderberry Wine" and, in particular, "The Way Love Goes", Hartzman's very own "Silver Springs." [Oct 2025, p.35]

Throughout Jamie, Howard also continues to challenge the impressive instrument of her voice in unpredictable ways. ... Her quest for personal fulfillment doubles as a creative bloom as well, revealing new dimensions of her talent. [Oct 2019, p.18]

Excellent and indispensable. [Sep 2011, p.94]

SBP always made a virtue of their limitations, but the results of their unshackling from penury are spectacular. [Jun 2012, p.84]

A glorious album. [Mar 2013, p.76]

This is what The Graceless Age as a whole does so unforgettably, bearing witness to a burning world. [Sep 2012, p.70]

Often, the more oblique voices speak loudest from Manchester Mekons' pop-prog punk collectivism, through Durutti Column's moist-eyed melancholy, World Of Twist's epic pop oddness, to classic British hip-hop from Ruthless Rap Assassins. [Sep 2017, p.53]

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

It's wonderful to have them back, and on such imperious form. [Nov 2022, p.30]

There are nine other unreleased tracks, of which “Why D’Ya Go To Cleveland” is the only entirely unheard thing. ... Not everything is unsalted. The B-sides and rarities – many from film soundtracks – allow Harvey to stretch herself into Brechtian oompah, Beefheartian discord, neo-folk. Some of these waifs and strays are excellent. [Dec 2022, p.42]

Lee's overarching theme is loss and despair at the damage done to the natural world, but with an approach that is emphatic rather than abrasive, the anger palpable but not overbearing. [Mar 2024, p.29]

The Delines' sixth and finest album to date. .... You'd have to reach for the likes of Bobbie Gentry's Patchwork or Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates, or indeed a film like Robert Altman's Raymond Carver amalgam, Short Cuts, to find a world so rich and intimately strange. [Feb 2025, p.40]

Exuberant opener "Sushi And Coca-Cola" signals Philip Janeway's intention to loosen up, which he reiterates in the "I saw the light" refrain of "Ooo Wee". The band morphs into The Four Tops on "Nothing More Lonely". [Nov 2025, p.39]

They add to their ongoing commitment to openness here. [Oct 2018, p.29]

You can sense the deceptively complex Art Angels will only continue to yield further depths with time. [Jan 2016, p.76]

His voice must be heard to be believed. [Apr 2005, p.105]

A couple of missteps aside, this is Ghost's best since that '96 debut, Ironman. [Jun 2006, p.102]

So full of imagination and life-enhancing radiance that you could wallow in their fragrance all day. [Nov 2024, p.43]

Instantly satisfying, but its charms and mysteries will resound for years. [Mar 2022, p.25]

What threads these eight songs together into a true album rather than just a compilation is the idea – the threat, the inevitability – of leaving and being left. Partly that’s due to Auerbach’s judicious curation, but that fear of loss animates almost all of Son House’s music, if not all of the blues in general. ... House conveys as much joy on these songs as he does pain, telling us so many years after his death that we cannot experience one without the other.

he power of Landless lies in their own exquisitely intertwined four-part vocal harmonies, which add spine-tingling beauty to even the most fatalistic lyric, from an achingly gorgeous rework of traditional Celtic heartbreak lament “Blackwaterside” to the adventurously chosen Slovak-language ballad “Ej Husari”, a radiantly lovely murmuration of swooping, cooing, chirruping voices. [Jul 2024, p.35]

Still only 26, Marten's writing is a strong scaffold for an experienced live studio band, whose every flourish (the irresistible keyboard arpeggio on the breezy "Crown" is a particular delight) add depth to her words. [Aug 2025, p.33]

M.I.A.'s vivid debut already sounds like a booty-shaking milestone to rank alongside The Streets and Dizzee Rascal. [May 2005, p.98]