Burke... intuitively transforms a bunch of country tunes into gospel rave-ups and secular hymns. [Nov 2006, p.101]

The tone is generally one of mild encouragement, of jollying-along the reluctant participants in this most fraught of celebrations, as indicated by titles like "Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!" and "It's Christmas! Let's Be Glad!".

New Magnetic Wonder can make a claim to be the definitive AIS album. [Apr 2007, p.92]

It’s a majestic, grandiose, machine-tooled album, subtly orchestrated with gothic pianos and doomy organs.

A former architect, his second album pursues a funky, abstracted techno that, much like the music of his former label boss Actress, has a distinctly London grit. [Mar 2017, p.35]

Reid's follow-up to 2015's gorgeous debut, Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs, is no less bewitching. [Apr 2017, p.37]

GBV’s second of 2022 is another LP packed full of charm, imagination and winning tunes. [Aug 2022, p.26]

A rather lovely record...Fully audible at last, Cox's downcast lyrics invest these hazy tunes with gripping poignancy. [Oct 2010, p.90]

It’s proof that, when he escapes from awkward, self-conscious navel-gazing, Oberst can be a songwriter of some note.

Like Bryan Ferry aglow after the best afternoon stroll of his life, stylish and uncharacteristically serene. [Apr 2013, p.72]

Like Maja Ratkje, Jenny Hval and Bjork, Hukkelberg adds another to her already impressive catalogue. [Mar 2012, p.87]

This is about consistency of themes and mood over time, reimagined by a man reckoning with his past and drawing new light to the deepest of cuts. [Jan 2024, p.38]

This great LP is best seen as their Desert Island Discs, a statement of things the band can't do without. [May 2009, p.79]

An album that is as poignant as it is over the top. [Oct 2003, p.118]

Intelligent and addictive. [Nov 2003, p.110]

Most rewarding are the serene "Something to Shout About" and the cascading "Down On The Corner": respectively, the No 1 smash Electronic should have had and the massive hit a reformed Smiths still could. [Mar 2003, p.95]

Miserable but magnificent. [Oct 2017, p.39]

While diligently pursuing McCaslin's own vision, this could be an extra disc on Bowie's I Can't Give Everything Away boxset, breathing the same excited, expanding air. [Nov 2025, p.35]

Opening with the dolorous drones of "They Being Dead Yet Speaketh," Johannsson slowly builds to the rousing "The Cause Of Labour Is The Hope Of The World," a transcendent fanfare for the common man. [Jul 2011, p.88]

A finely crafted record, whose artfulness is mediated by informality. [Oct 2014, p.69]

After a fair-to-middling second album they took a self-imposed break before returning with this excellent effort. [Oct 2011, p.83]

Fish finds a gorgeous middle ground between lambent guitar soli, all slow rivers of singing steel string guitar, and richer, more resonant arrangements. [Nov 2015, p.72]

It would be a magnificent way to end a magnificent career, but Simon probably has more ideas in him. [Jul 2023, p.20]

Amos teams up with the Metropole Orchestra to revisit songs from her '92 debut onward, adding sumptuous, bejewelled dimension to the rich expressive like of "Precious Things" and the conceptual epic "Yes, Anastasia."[Nov 2012, p.69]

The true spiritual kin to Neal's spectral fragility is Mazzy Star's. [Mar 2021, p.35]

If the scale is almost beyond comprehension, Love also represents a sonic Da Vinci Code for Beatles trainspotters. [Dec 2006, p.104]

His poignant, classically arranged pieces sit surprisingly well alongside more electronic compositions. [Apr 2017, p.37]

Icily brilliant. [Mar 2018, p.32]

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]

This second album by Minneapolis trio Night Moves was worth the wait. [May 2016, p.78]

There's nothing insubstantial about this fabulous comeback. [May 2013, p.68]

Clever and thrilling in equal measure. [Jul 2019, p.30]

Invigorating results. [Oct 2021, p.27]

Anhedönia's gifts for storytelling - part Flannery O'Connor, part David Lynch - are compelling enough, but the music is equally stunning, a mix of shoegaze, gothic country and doom metal. [Sep 2025, p.29]

Teen Dream finds the duo resolving to present their songs in somewhat firmer strokes. Nothing rocks, exactly, but organs coo in sharper focus, drum machines bear with added vigour, and an eerie disquiet occasionally linger. [Feb 2009, p.79]

The stand-out, though, is the epic "The Little Death (In Five Parts)" which mixes AC/DC pyrotechnics with a sexually charged rhythm section. [May 2011, p.80]

Panoramic, synthetically symphonic and a lot of fun. [Jul 2015, p.77]

In Conflict feels starkly personal. [Jul 2014, p.77]

Sounds like the product of a sloppy but inspired band enjoying the straightforward art of making a noise. [Jun 2002, p.114]

Thrillingly heavy and direct it may be, but there are great tunes here. [Jul 2014, p.77]

Anyone who's enjoyed a fruitful encounter with Ariel Pink's home-recorded oeuvre should also find plenty to love about John Maus. [Jul 2011, p.91]

The underlying sense given off by the LP's inventive chord changes, soaring melodies, eloquent language and silky vocals--notably on the rhapsodic "Semaphore" and "Flight"--is that of a 21st century Joni Mitchell. [Oct 2016, p.31]

Stelmanis using her hurt as fuel for a series of sleekly designed tracks that alternate between surging, propulsive pieces of dancefloor-ready catharsis and more delicate yet still dramatic passages that emphasise the most crystalline properties of Stelmanis' voice. [Review of the Year 2025, p.21]

Surviving on the present, these songs infer, may be hard. To process this, he uses expansive, hypnotic arrangements: winding guitars, jazzy undertones, sturdy melodies sent into the ether. [Jan 2021, p.23]

A records that spurts gloriously in all directions. [Oct 2013, p.65]

Magnificent. [Nov 2011, p.84]

The backing is beautifully understated but it's Becky Stark's pure, unaffected folksy sigh that's a thoroughly comforting presence throughout. [Dec 2012, p.73]

Mering's atmospheric second album is a masterclass in spooked melancholia, clothing her cool Nico-esque vibrato in spine-shivering folk-noir arrangements. [Nov 2014, p.84]

The final 25-minute-long “Fünf” is most thrilling, revealing what “Animal Waves” could have been had they not been drifting in different directions in the studio. [Dec 2024, p.47]

The girls have made a gorgeously restrained full-length debut that intimates both youthfulness in its most innocent state and startling self-awareness. [Nov 2013, p.74]

Primal yet precise, these obliques beats and blocky grooves loom out of the lush ambient foliage like the crown of a Mayan temple in the Yucatan jungle. [Dec 2011, p.87]

There's a spiritual quality to these streams-of-conscious compositions, which sound open-ended as though she's posing questions to the woods around her. [Feb 2019, p.34]

Bock’s solo work takes a subtler but no less arresting approach, weaving in melodic passages for strings, organ and woodwind and rhythmic calls to her Brazilian heritage in ways that only fully reveal themselves with repeated listens. [Aug 2022, p.25]

The lack of ironic twists is both slightly unsettling and hugely refreshing. [Apr 2016, p.83]

A delicious pathos has sustained Jurado through seven albums. It's still intact but it's just possible to detect a lightning of his mood around rthe edges. [Nov 2008, p.105]

Unvarnished and unpredictable, then, but in the grand Slits/Raincoats tradition, Nash is no-one's little girl. [Apr 2013, p.74]

Now We Can See feels a sunnier listen, bracing indie-rock with few frills but a joyfully juvenile energy and choruses to spare. [Jun 2009, p.103]

Songs such as "Golden Days" and "No Woman" combine the fragile longing of indie-pop with the superior songwriting smarts of classic early-70s rock, in a way that should reel in fans of Josh Rouse and Liam Hayes. [Jul 2016, p.82]

Beguiling and really rather wonderful. [Jan 2023, p.21]

The songs are underpinned by euphoric, tangled guitar rock a la Japandroids, transformed by Quinlan's defiant joy. [Jul 2015, p.77]

Childers is blessed with a timeless voice and an ear for the plurality of mountain music, these songs roaming between bluegrass, folk, straight-up country and R&B. [Sep 2019, p.26]

Challenging, but deeply satisfying. [Aug 2016, p.83]

Beast Epic is laidback and monochromatic but enlivened by its discourse. [Oct 2017, p.32]

Talk of golden snakes, white hands of grief and stalking vultures is somehow steered clear of quasi-mystic cliche, marking out Rose Windows as promising contenders on the psych-rock block. [Jul 2013, p.80]

For anyone who enjoys a dash of shimmering disco hedonism with their feminist theory, or who simply harbours a lingering respect for the sun-drenched joy of '90s trance techno, this album offers a richly rewarding dialogue with mainstream pop. Crucially, Hval understands well the strange, seductive, subversive potency of "cheap" music. [Oct 2019, p.28]

Just about every songs clicks. [Oct 2011, p.84]

Their best effort yet. [Mar 2006, p.102]

consider this the handiwork of a special group of musicians who know the value of what they've inherited, yet have made an album that feels avidly and thrillingly contemporary. [Jan 2026, p.28]

The country double Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town, is the best and it's not un-experimental. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Savior is a commanding narrator of heartache and revenge, singing of blood and tears over piano and reverb-drenched guitar, demonstrating a star quality that belies her 24 years. [Feb 2020, p.33]

Candylion is a more layered, fully-realised album than 2005's Yr Atal Genhedlaeth. [Feb 2007, p.79]

The intensity builds so subtly that it's hard to pinpoint when the easygoing chord changes give way to droning menace, but by the time they hit the nine-minute-plus closing reprise of "In Between," the pastoral vibe has been transformed into squalling white noise. [Mar 2017, p.30]

How to cope [with increasing adulation and greater expectations]? It seems, by softly imploding--further muffling their already oddly diffuse abrasiveness and by replacing pummelling noise with woozily reflective loops. [Oct 2010, p.98]

Even on songs which tap into more difficult territory, such as "When Your Heart Is Broken", he delivers it with such a seamless knack for melodic songcraft, that he even turns heartache into foot-stomping riffs and sing-along choruses. [Apr 2025, p.30]

A powerful eulogy. [Jun 2020, p.28]

It's all hugely engaging. [Jun 2009, p.96]

The MC's focus on Escape 2 Mars is mainly ecological, the music packing ample punch to underline his message. [Feb 2010, p.86]

A subtle, unshowy set it may be, but Toumani & Sidiki shows that this particular family affair will endure... perhaps for another 70 generations. [May 2014, p.75]

Her best record yet. [Jun 2002, p.107]

Parker's songs still cut and slash, at times with righteous indignation, and The Rumour are focused, just within a different lens. [Jul 2015, p.79]

The joyous hooks and choruses remain, but they're tempered by a welcome moodiness. [Dec 2002, p.129]

The swooping strings and Escher-like melodic structures of "Camion" and "Yard Bull" are reassuringly familiar to Vannier enthusiasts. ... Patton rises to the occasion throughout. [Oct 2019, p.33]

In lyric form and musical scale, it was epic.... The discs of "companion audio," often short on revelation, here reveal a moment of sheer anomaly. 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod is whatever that title may mean, everything the LP is not: a tender piano piece. [Sep 2015, p.93]

It's All Right... functions almost like a best of. [Nov 2017, p.32]

These blown-out and clanking loops, atmospheric drones and jump-cut textures are more like the product of electronic collage than free-guitar improv, and all the more fascinating for it. [Jun 2020, p.34]

Together they achieve a level of fervent interplay that's exhilarating to hear. [Nov 2012, p.81]

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]

A sweeter collection of songs this year you'll be hard pushed to find. [Oct 2006, p.110]

Deliciously dark and yet full of an elegant lightness, this is Hersh at the top of her considerable game. [Oct 2023, p.29]

The theme of lost innocence is ideal for the sad sweetness of Conor Deasy’s voice, which has never sounded better than on 'This Year,' a rush of noise which restores the busked immediacy of their debut.

Many of the covers are of recent blues songs, such as Joe Bonamassa's "Distant Lonesome Train," Gary Moore's "The Hurt Inside" or "Evil And Here To Stay" by John Headley, but Mayall is able to locate them firmly within an older blues tradition without ever making them sound like hollow tributes. [Mar 2019, p.30]

The Golden Age is the real thing. [Feb 2008, p.72]

Losing Sleep is a great record, period. [Oct 2010, p.102]

A cameo from run The jewels is a final treat on an album full of them. [Apr 2016, p.76]

A deceptive simple, calm record, Love Letter... sounds both intuitive and direct, and any wrangling along the collaborative way is undetectable. [May 2016, p.80]

Even when the sonic mood broods on "Radical", the optimistic sentiments (quoted in the album title) reflect a creative force in rude force. [Jul 2025, p.27]

New guitarist Matthew Simms has refreshed Wire's sound. [Apr 2013, p.79]

There's a winning mix of mist and muscle on this debut. [Jul 2016, p.69]