Strikingly, Stevens' craggy baritone is virtually identical 50 years later; but whereas in 1970 he sounded prematurely aged, hearing him now we can't help but envision that innocent, introspective 22-year-old. [Oct 2020, p.39]

With its smoothing of rough edges, it's likely this record will split opinion, but there's much to admire for those--like its creator--willing to burrow. [May 2004, p.107]

While about as niche as it gets, this is a strangely endearing and subtly beguiling album that does much more than just send you to sleep. [Sep 2024, p.29]

A rare treasure indeed. [Aug 2004, p.101]

It's '80s pop, but not as you know it. [Sep 2014, p.69]

A towering success. [Dec 2016, p.32]

These are new songs that sound like the old songs, the kind you might treasure 'til your vinyl is pockmarked and warped. [Feb 2015, p.86]

The result is pulsating electronic music that draws from the spontaneity and invention of free jazz. [Apr 2019, p.30]

There are points where his relentless utopianism can sound trite. .... But, let’s face it, these are nice flaws to have. In an era where so many of our musical heroes seem to be growing more cantankerous and ill-tempered with age, it comes as a welcome relief to see one heritage act pushing positively into the future – and making some of the warmest and most joyous music of his career. [Review of the Year 2023, p.21]

The Flatlanders exude joy here. [Aug 2021, p.23]

The album closes with a reprise of 'To Ohio'--possibly superfluous given the perfection of the earlier version, but the only marginal misjudgement on an otherwise largely faultless album.

It is the clan's most successful production since 1996's "If You're Feeling Sinister." [Jul 2009, p.88]

While the album is too long, he consistently crafts a fine tune. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Generally, Dumb Flesh is more gleaming and monolithic than ever. [Jun 2015, p.71]

Their fourth album continues in the vein of 2011's Last Night On Earth, divining its inspiration from cool, crisp '80s US new wave, "Every Breath You Take" bass lines, Brat Pack soundtracks and wistful songs about girls. [Jun 2013, p.76]

If Regan's Mercury Prize-nominated debut in 2006 attracted comparisons with Nick Drake, this belated follow-up ditches the finger-picking folksiness for full-on rock, and sees Regan mutate into a latterday Mike Soctt. {Feb 2010, p.96]

Brings to the surface all of the volatility and emotional charge that was inherent in their work. [Apr 2003, p.104]

It all sounds like prime Jennings, all twinkling swagger on such upbeat tracks as "After The Ball", and bruised pride on the exquisite ballads. [Nov 2025, p.47]

It's the kind of listen whose rich but unfussy loveliness belies its deeply personal lyrics. [Dec 2021, p.24]

This sombre threesome could use a little humour and warmth, but there is real passion in reverb-drenched, Spector-ish, elemental pastorals like "Rivers" and "Trenches." [Sep 2015, p.80]

At times their lurid romanticism can be an acquired taste... But there's an ambition and articulacy here. [Mar 2005, p.104]

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

A cohesive album that is simultaneously Big Star-ish (but not slavishly so) and Chilton-like (but not depressingly so). [Oct 2005, p.98]

She alternates between fighting the current and giving in. That approach, coupled with vocals balancing despair and determination, lends "The Smoke", with its cathedral synths, and especially "Division", with its narcotised krautrock drumbeat, an unsettling energy that's both treacherous and cathartic. [Mar 2026, p.29]

Empire arrives with the same frazzled mien as Oasis' What's The Story (Morning Glory); alive with paranoia, delivered with an unshakeable self-belief. It's relentless stuff. [Sep 2006, p.80]

More straightforward.... Lovely. [Oct 2015, p.76]

A record dotted with peaks. [Apr 2007, p.93]

The rewards are high. [Mar 2016, p.73]

The closing "That Way My Garden" typifies playing of purposeful spiritual strength, crashing through into some great beyond. [Apr 2025, p.28]

One of his most engrossing albums yet, a gorgeously unsettling collection of itchy electronics. [Apr 2016, p.81]

One-hit wonders no more, White and de Martino now sound prepared for a big pop future. [Mar 2012, p.101]

Though sometimes still prone to cliche, in his finest work--such as the salient balladry of "Bad Dreams" and "Silent Movie"--LaFarge confronts roiling uncertainty and chaos, to great effect. [Jun 2017, p.33]

This follow-up feels less homemade, but just as delicately adventurous. [Oct 2009, p.108]

Working with former Lamb partner Andy Barlow for the first time in six years, her marriage of vocal and acoustic guitar is raw yet rewarding. [Apr 2010, p.97]

A sublime suite of semi-ambient glitch-pop. [Dec 2001, p.106]

These are tender anthems, even if some won't be readily singing lines like "eating your ass like an oyster" in a festival field. [Nov 2019, p.22]

Amidon's spry banjo and sky-blue voice give this music a gentle centre, light on ego or affection. [Dec 2020, p.27]

Mutt offers a terrific spread of styles. [Sep 2012, p.73]

A perfect summer record for those who found the last Beach House album too wintry. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Island Family examines themes of identity, isolation and belonging against an endlessly inventive backdrop of sweeping electronica, clever samples and weirdy folk, sometimes strangely blissful and at others beat-driven and wakeful. [Apr 2022, p.32]

Its 10 tracks show that age still hasn't tamed Hammill's mighty, stentorian voice or the existential rage still burning at the centre of his songs. [Dec 2017, p.27]

Real-life dramas wrapped in uplifting tunes. [Aug 2006, p.86]

There's something curiously inviting about this understated music. [Nov 2006, p.120]

Another terrific collection, tacking a stylish course between Jam and Lewis, Zapp and raving crunk. [May 2007, p.88]

The Coincidentalist, as with most things Gelb puts a shoulder to, is a thing of strange, understated pleasure. [Nov 2013, p.68]

If there are occasions when the rugged soloing gets a little bogged down in detail, there are many others where the trio achieve moments of adrenalising magic.

Life Of Pause demonstrates a more playful and propulsive approach. [Apr 2016, p.82]

Skeletal Lamping follows the latter path, fleshing out the polymorphous persona of Georgie Fruit via brilliantly executed attention-deficit funk. [Dec 2008, p.105]

A heavy trip indeed. [Apr 2015, p.71]

This is by some way their most fully developed and experimental set to date. [Jul 2020, p.30]

Her fourth album's dramatically sparser, its unconventional structures recalling Julia Holter. ... She's most compelling on "This Time," whose haunted spaces are gradually filled with flickering keyboards and ebow guitar. [Oct 2021, p.31]

"Ready To RUn" and "Nobody Knows" are particular highlights, and "Wild Horses II" joins their own immortal "Emmylou" in the top tier of country songs about country music. [Dec 2022, p.26]

Another Szunny delight. [Oct 2018, p.34]

A Bridge To Far finds Midlake refining what they do best. [Dec 2025, p.30]

It's a warm, beguiling set that tips its hat to roots music interpreters as disparate as Hoyt Axton, Fairport Convention, Dolly Parton, The Byrds and Bobbie Gentry, wile also tapping Cajun fiddle music and the work of Ralph Mooney. [Nov 2019, p.23]

Leaving New York for Sweden during the pandemic gave fresh perspective to these songs of past American odysseys and accumulated loss. [May 2023, p.36]

The Repulsion Box ushers in a strikingly individual talent. [Jul 2005, p.89]

{A] far superior effort [than Rebirth]. [Feb 2011, p.84]

A pleasant surprise: engaging, exciting, and a much better album than most bands can muster after 25 years together. [Nov 2005, p.106]

[Drummer Dave Lombardo's] return hasn't complicated Slayer's brutal, single-minded aesthetic, but it has stoked the hellfire that merely sputtered on God Hates Us All. [Sep 2006, p.97]

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]

In a field of her own. [Feb 2016, p.79]

The album is a powerful exploration of faith, with Young circling his own mortality.

This deluxe set showcases the vital rush and wildness that Stinson brought to the band for the last time. [Nov 2023, p.36]

A tantalising exploration of modern-day kosmische. Seemingly liberated by technology, these two fiftysomething blokes conjure the kind of utopian panoplies dreamt up by Harald Grosskopf and Neu! on the 24-minute “A Yellow Robe”, a swirling, burbling journey that also nods to recent experiments by Roman Flügel and Peder Mannerfelt. [Sep 2022, p.27]

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]

A gorgeous confection. [Mar 2015, p.77]

This is best thought of as ‘country soul’. Isbell’s words, in style and content, are old-school tears-in-the-beer laments, deftly lightened by exquisite deadpan payoffs.

It’s a wonderful surprise that Further Complications turns out to be such a reinvigorated piece of work. Much of this freshness must be down to the working methods of producer Steve Albini.

Blackshaw creates multiple orchestral effects with his instrument alone, each strum resounding like multiple windchimes. [Aug 2009, p.87]

Birch's approach is intimate and dreamy. [Aug 2025, p.28]

A terrific package. [Jul 2012, p.71]

Arab Strap songs mostly have a strong, vinegary flavour, and this is abracingly sour album over the long haul. The relentless misanthropic grind can drag in places. But as ever, Moffat’s withering scorn is sweetened by beautiful poetry, tender emotion and self-aware, bruise-black humour. [May 2024, p.36]

At times it's almost unbearably candid, an unflinching examination of his devotion both to homestead and to God. [Jul 2004, p.112]

Exhaustive in the best way possible, emphasising the logistical nightmares of hosting such a big event but also putting listeners right there in the stadium. [Apr 2023, p.41]

Nothing like previous portentous epics. This reissue comes with a bunch of interesting outtakes. [Dec 2020, p.47]

Chris Stapleton rides roughshod over country music formulas on Starting Over, with assistance from a pair of Heartbreakers. [Dec 2020, p.39]

The template remains intact, with monotony fundamental: The Necks lend the title track's repetitions a shimmering, slowly evolving transcendence, Anna Von Hauswolff and sister maria provide bloodcurdling shrieks on the devastating, pummelling "Sunfucker," and Baby Dee adds voodoo magic to "The Nub." [Dec 2019, p.32]

Certainly worth investigation. [Jun 2005, p.102]

Russell was clearly fully committed to the project, with sincere lyrics and a strained, emotional vocal sustained by luscious strings. [Dec 2017, p.30]

Where Mavis' voice once a rangey, optimistic mezzo-soprano, her register has dropped dramatically to an emotionally rich, brassy contralto. It adds a growling intensity to lyrics that are dignified rather than angry. [Dec 2017, p.24]

Sitting somewhere between alt.rock, indie-pop and a singer-songwriter album, it’s a neat balancing act that feels personal and intimate yet also sonically ambitious. [Dec 2024, p.37]

Cadogan's threesome seem an altogether leaner, meaner deal. [Feb 2007, p.78]

A surreal sense of the macabre in everyday life remains their MO, from "Skunks"' shuffling crawl space inhabitants to the winged appetites of the softly intoned "Mothballs". [Oct 2023, p.29]

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

It's gratifying to hear this veteran crew sounding so scrappy. [Oct 2008, p.113]

A welcome fusion of past glory with 21st century arena-rocking attitude. [May 2019, p.26]

They're not best known for melodicism, but in a funny way the slow-blooming compositions here are full of charming, playful melody, detailed in exotic colours. [Nov 2022, p.25]

The new songs possess an engaging spareness and intimacy while still making room for such guests as Sharon Van Etten. [Jun 2017, p.33]

RTZ helpfully collects together a bunch of Chasny's rare early jams, proving that his eldritch guitar studies--at once intense, devotional and not a little creepy--have remained consistent for a decade now. [Mar 2009, p.103]

Kirby's second is more cosmopolitan than 2021 Cool Dry Place, with bandmates Alberto Sewald's and Logan Chung's muted soft rock production shifting her halfway toward Weyes Blood's polished indie folk. [Jan 2024, p.31]

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]

As ever, BBR's absinthe-flavoured acid drops give you a great deal more to suck on than the rest of pop's confectionery selection. [Mar 2003, p.112]

Mosey is clearly not just the work of an absurdly gifted musician, it's the product of an exceptionally vibrant mind. [Jun 2016, p.70]

Anyone partial to the distinct strain of English folk from yesteryear, namely the sylvan otherness of Trees or dawn-of-the-70s Fairport, will find plenty to toast in the music of Wolf People. [Jun 2013, p.81]

A spellbinding listen. [Jul 2020, p.36]

's the urgent but effortless certainty that Matsson was born to sing these songs. [May 2010, p.108]

Their 1993 debut, remastered by Bob Weston with b-sides and rarities, treads similar--of less self-consciously clever--ground to Crooked rain-era Pavement, with dissonant, spiky guitars piercing surprisingly melodic college radio favorites. [Sep 2011, p.79]