It feels as if she now trusts the power of her music to imbue even cliche with emotional power. [Jun 2018, p.29]

Nothing US wrong reminds you of early Jackson Browne or Jimmy Webb, albeit with a tougher, rootsier swagger. And it's a worthy addition to that fine Californian bloodline. [Sep 2011, p.94]

The most emotionally mature and fully realised work Gillespie has delivered in years, laying grainy, soulful, impassioned vocals over sumptuously old-school chansons clothed in vintage orchestral country-rock arrangements. [Aug 2021, p.27]

His eighth solo album is a fine place to start investigations of this dappled terrain, in laces a little heavier and more psychedelic than one might expect. [Sep 2014, p.74]

White-knuckle anthemicism is order of the day, and vocalist Elias Bender Ronnenfelt seem to gave grown into his skin. [Mar 2013, p.73]

The predominantly instrumental Hundred Of Days is a more expansive affair than 2016's At The Dam. [Jun 2018, p.30]

For Mnestic Pressure, his first for Hyperdub, Gamble again draws on themes of memory and perception to inform his shapeshifting arrangements, which curdle and collapse with familiar irregularity but don't necessarily build on past achievements. [Oct 2017, p.28]

Entirely self-written and beautifully realised, Americana is a deeply satisfying reminder that Davies remains a songwriter with a huge reach, but few equals. [Jun 2017, p.29]

This is a strong debut throughout. [Aug 2020, p.27]

It's impeccably crafted, with Mitchell and Johnson's radiant harmonies to the fore over arrangements that sometime evoke the bittersweet bliss of Fleetwood Mac ot turn-of-the-70s Grateful Dead. [Nov 2022, p.26]

Fair play to Jones, He's a trier. [Sep 2010, p.96]

For this fifth album, she changes tack again, gaining in clarity what she loses in originality. [Aug 2011, p.94]

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

This is the challenging, take-no-prisoners result, an audacious fusion of the reliable and the experimental, as daniel and Eno continue into the new decade a musical conversation as lively and uncompromising as that of Jack and Meg White. [Feb 2010, p.99]

A flawed masterpiece that infuriates as often as it dazzles. [Jul 2019, p.28]

It's the raw-cut trinity of JB, Otis and Solomon Burke that informs this album. ... Expect delights throughout. [May 2016, p.69]

Here she uses soft synths to emulate an organ, lute and pipes, which combine on the likes of “Vanity” and “Qasmuna (Dreaming)” to cast an alluring spell, evoking the likes of vintage Boards Of Canada and Catarina Barbieri’s superb Ecstatic Computation. [Jul 2021, p.21]

“Hello, Hi” is one of Ty’s most lean and focused albums to date. But the closer you get, the more you spot its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down in the dumps and head-over-heels in love: here is Ty Segall in all his wonderful contradictions. [Aug 2022, p.18]

Nothing is a strong as 'Hey Lloyd...' and Traceyanne Campbell's lachrymose croon is struggling to find new melodies, but on tracks like 'French Navy' and 'Honey In The Sun,' CO remain heartbreakingly lucid. [May 2009, p.80]

It's the skeletal accompaniment that lends the sound real brawn--primitive and intuitive, yet sophisticated at the same time. [Jun 2009, p.113]

Delivered with conviction and defiance these timely tunes benefit from the input of longtime pal and collaborator Rod Picott. [Jul 2013, p.72]

With each track developing at an imperceptible pace, this is subtle but irresistibly compelling. [Nov 2013, p.69]

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

"Bellevue Bridge Club" lands somewhere between Van Morrison, Richie Havens and--if only thanks to his violin's drones--The Velvet Underground, while "Manifest" is like a sober Townes Van Zandt. [May 2019, p.24]

Packed with brilliant, bohemian songs that combine affecting lyrical honesty, beguiling melodies and a voice that has a touch of Alanis Morissette. [May 2005, p.96]

The Voices are usually disembodied munchkin bables which flutter appealingly around the mix, but sometimes Stumbleine makes proper songs. [Jan 2013, p.82]

The results are fascinating. [Feb 2015, p.78]

Perry's cartoonish persona can grate, so it's refreshing to hear him speak from the heart on Rainford. [Jun 2019, p.32]

It never gets deep. ... It's stupid, daft, and no wonder that when Josh Homme's looking for a night of goofy escapism he goes to see The Chats. [May 2020, p.26]

Excels in its moments of mournful rumination. [May 2020, p.35]

Hard-swinging tales of misadventure. [Jun 2020, p.34]

While her new, synth-led turn can feel a little awkward - the keyboards on "Guardian Angel" overwhelm the tenderness of the song - there are moments, such as the sparks of synth noise on "Hum Menina", that fire her folk songs into another dimension. [Mar 2022, p.28]

Bullion's smooth, rounded sound burnishes what is a dynamic collection of songs. [Jun 203, p.26]

The band's creativity, imagination and power remain undimmed. [Jun 2023, p.29]

Hardly groundbreaking, but bursting with charm. [Aug 2023, p.26]

Isakov's most panoramic album. [Oct 2023, p.29]

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]

While opener "Whispers In The Echo Chamber" tries too hard to startle with blasts of screaming horrorcore, her talent for a melodramatic melodic hook wins through on "Tunnel Lights"'s yearning torch-song noir and the heartbroken small-hours lament of "Everything Turns Blue". [Feb 2024, p.37]

A slightly sunnier and more melodic LP. [Dec 2014, p.77]

A fine showing. [Jul 2006, p.84]

There's great charm to these yearning tunes. [May 2018, p.28]

embracing experience in all its prickly incarnations might make for a tricky life but--on this evidence--the pay-off is the creation of ever more beautiful and emotionally engaging music. [Jul 2014, p.72]

Imagine Bolan produced by Prince, then scrambled by Beck, and you're only halfway there. [Mar 2007, p.85]

Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale somehow manage to make a bass guitar and half a drum kit sound like a particularly loud avalanche, and then sneak in some tunes along the way. [Dec 2009, p. 103]

The 23-year-old deals in the kind of one-take, reverb-drenched, sugary psych-pop that mostly sounds effortless and might occasionally be genius. [Aug 2011, p.98]

The second solo album still sounds like a wilful jukebox stocked on the disparate taste of someone attempting vinyl hari-kari. [Apr 2003, p.116]

Producer Mike Mogis [gives] these delicate songs a sheen that was lacking on their 2001 debut. [Jul 2003, p.114]

Bridges high- and low-brow without ever being anything less than exhilarating. [Jul 2005, p.99]

Sauser-Monnig's songs retain a sense of early-morning introspection that lingers. [Aug 2019, p.29]

Modern Nature is close to classic Charlatans--no mean feat after their recent tribulation. [Feb 2015, p.74]

Spektor's biggest-hearted, clearest-minded effort yet--achieved, thankfully, without sacrificing any of her wonderful weirdness. [Aug 2006, p.111]

["And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me" is] unashamedly lovely but manages to avoid tweeness through the clarity and concision of both the composition and the playing. [Nov 2023, p.29]

Songs are steeped in creeping '90s guitar with ear-catching lyrics, plus a sense of vibrancy that comes from the fact Crutchfield really does have something to say. [Aug 2017, p.38

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]

An inspired makeover. [Mar 2019, p.30]

While the overall sound is massive, it's become somewhat restricted in tone and texture, most tracks careering towards climaxes of cacophonous synth whines and heavy rock guitars, a narrower palette than on previous albums. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Given a few spins, their hilarious, loopy, layered approach sinks in deep. [Dec 2008, p.124]

Willie's laidback voice is on top form, and for once, Wynton's garrulous trumpet takes a back seat, leaving space for some smart interjections from Mickey Rafael's harmonica and Walter Blanding's tenor sax. [Aug 2008, p.100]

In a way, this album serves as a fitting sonic museum to Serge, one that plunders from his past while maintaining his relentlessly forward-looking, hybridised pop vision. [Feb 2010, p.87]

"Try To Sleep" and the Kool Keith quoting "Witches" are songs that join classics in their cannon. [May 2011, p.91]

[They're] now on their eighth album and still finding something new under the pun. [Sep 2005, p.112]

A cherry if tad predictable offering. [Jul 2014, p.71]

Utopia Defeated justifies the hype. [Nov 2016, p.26]

11 bewitching songs that evoke late-aughts hypnagogic pop, Mac DeMarco's dreamiest ballads, and a badly warped cassette of '80s-vintage dinner jazz. [Jul 2019, p.26]

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

While the lyrics largely deal in anguish and dissolution, Bachmann's settings switch between exhilarating noise ("Cold Waves" featuring Superchunk's Mac McCaughan), grand synth-pop ("Hospital") and quasi-orchestral soul ballad (the sweeping "(I'm Your) Bodhisattva"). [Mar 2026, p.29]

Similarly to Lambchop's Nixon, it weaves together new and old, soul and country, black and white, love and hate, to form an understated masterpiece. [Feb 2006, p.74]

Their tendency to overthink and squeeze every drop of pleasure from their work does them few favors, particularly when they showcase such innovative songcraft on a record like Get To Heaven. [Aug 2015, p.73]

As they've refined their technique, they've almost erased the need for lyrics, while their twin obsessions--romance and the celestial--remain constants. [Jul 2016, p.89]

A pulsating collection of disco bangers. [Nov 2017, p.23]

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

After the intermission of Aerial, could this mark the real beginning of the second act of Kate Bush's brilliant career? Let's hope, like Molly, the answer is "Yes..." [Jun 2011, p.81]

An album of lonely beauty and piercing sorrow, White Chalk is P.J. Harvey back at the peak of her considerable powers.

Mr. M is bold in arts and surprisingly experimental. [Mar 2012, p.76]

He's hired JIm James, whose spiritual beliefs he seems to hare, along with a taste for cosmic rock and psychedelic blues, all of which figure on the compellingly heavy "Hey, No Pressure." [Apr 2016, p.75]

The quartet peel back the years on corrosive songs that strike a masterly balance between melody and uppity guitar noise. [Oct 2017, p.26]

Peter Silberman's half-whispered vocal melodies are more accessible than ever. [Apr 2021, p.25]

The xx duo eagerly depart from the templates that have served their band so well, thereby imparting Hideous Bastard with a spontaneity that complements the courage and candour in the lyrics. [Oct 2022, p.34]

A confident record that picks up where her recent DJ Kicks set left off. [Sep 2023, p.31]

With Lanegan at his stentorian best and Dulli in full confessional mode, Saturnalia is a feast, certainly--but one where the dishes are served delightfully raw.

It is an album in the original sense of the word, offering a coherent display of Auerbach’s influences.

A dense and abrasive record of astonishing precocity, which, if it has a fault, is only that it occasionally offers brute intensity in excess of the impact Pemberton's razor-sharp verses. [Oct 2008, p.87]

It's a stunning comeback that whets the appetite for an autumn tour. [Oct 2014, p.74]

The outer skein of mystical mystery shelters a clutch of slyly insistent melodies. [Jan 2019, p.21]

Richard Hawley hasn't strayed too far from a successful formula. What he does introduce is a deliberate sens e of brevity, keeping songs tight and focused. [Jul 2019, p.29]

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

Liz Harris's 10th album continues her slow ascent out of the appealingly murky haze of her early releases towards structured, if still frail, songwriting. [Jun 2018, p.28]

This Liverpool duo’s debut full-length occupies a brooding space somewhere between Mazzy Star and overlooked early-’90s slowcore heavyweights Idaho. [May 2022, p.29]

Instrumental understatement and forlorn romanticism define The Jacket. [Apr 2022, p.36]

An uniformly compelling set. [Nov 2019, p.27]

May well come to be regarded as the best British rock album since OK Computer. [Sep 2002, p.118]

This being a soundtrack and not a convetional Scott Walker album, there is no sign of that pale, lieder that floats through latterday Scott Walker records like a phantom. But there are clear points of continuity between The Childhood OF A Leader and recent studio albums The Drift and Bisch Bosch. [Sep 2016, p.68]

Whether observing modern Manson cults gathering “silent as a snowdrift in the hills, or delivering a sunrise eulogy bearing David Berman away, Darnielle’s sympathy never fails. [Aug 2021, p.31]

A work of lyricism and maturity, this is one of Veirs' finest yet. [Sep 2013, p.97]

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]

Coming so soon after Depression Cherry, it would be easy to dismiss Thank Your Lucky Stars as a mere postscript, but, if anything, it's the more impressive of the pair. [Jan 2016, p.72]

Sea Of Noise feels not just formally but emotionally authentic. [Nov 2016, p.39]

Nervy and noisy, Sixth House ranks alongside their best albums. [Aug 2018, p.33]