We’ve Been Going... is above all an incredible sounding record. Across its 10 tracks, it incorporates the Jupiter synths and saturnine beats of Remind Me Tomorrow and the stark, swooning strum of her early records to create truly a cosmic dynamic range, from the softest whisper to the most desolate scream. [Jun 2022, p.18]

The world-view is challenging and heart-felt, the playing deft, the conviction clear. [June 2008, p.88]

If you've not already bought into the LDR mythos, it's like joining a long-form TV show midway through its difficult fourth season. [Jun 2023, p.26]

Innovations are few.... Still, when these nocturnes, crescendos and intimations of apocalypse remain so musically rich and emotionally powerful, it seems churlish to demand more. [Dec 2002, p.130]

The Delgados have made a fine follow-up to 2000's The Great Eastern. Problem is, it's the same album, more or less. [Nov 2002, p.115]

A big, baroque fusion of sharp garage, paisley pop and '70s sleekness, finished with a coating of Terry Jacks sentiment. [Jul 2004, p.104]

Wagner is adept at evoking children's half-remembered nightmares. [Sep 2014, p.81]

There's still a mumblecore sulkiness to Jordan's delivery that drags some songs down, but on tracks like the fingerpicking marvel "Let's Find Out" and "Deep Sea," she finds a distinctive voice all her own. [Aug 2018, p.33]

This engrossing hour-and-three-quarter work pursues long-form drones at the pipe organ in a way that is both hypnotic and uplifting. [Oct 2019, p.30]

An intriguing body of work. [Nov 2019, p.22]

This is a tremendous album. [Mar 2020, p.22]

Eight Gates presents him as a living being, troubled and troublesome, which might seem like a minor accomplishment but is actually closer to profound given what we know of his life after these sessions. Most of all, it reinforces Molina as an artist rather than as someone overtaken by demons, as a flawed man rather than the myth he often made himself out to be. [Sep 2020, p.38]

Switching guitars opens her songs up considerably, but Cohen maintains the intimacy and intelligence that have always been her signature. [Mar 2024, p.28]

Songs start as brooding slices of minimalism and slowly mutate into Morricone-esque ballads ("Teeth"), motorik synthpop ("Propeller") or chugging waltzes (a version of Neil Young's "Red Sun"). [Apr 2025, p.36]

Pajo is not, and will never be, a great singer.... His guitar playing, though, is as quietly inventive as ever. [Jul 2005, p.96]

While their pristine sound lacks grit, in lyrical terms the troubled "Lies" and "The Mother We Share" show the Chvrches are blessed with hidden depths. [Oct 2013, p.64]

The music more than matches The Besnard Lakes' cinematic ambition. [Apr 2010, p.81]

The Libertines is a record of such raw autobiographical honesty that it carries a weight few others in 2004 can match. [Album of the Month, Sep 2004, p.94]

The Toronto band maintain a formidable degree of power and velocity throughout their fourth album, yet songs like "The Mirror" and "Framed By The Comet's Tail" are well-served by their willingness to ease up on the gas pedal. [Nov 2020, p.33]

It's impressive... but it will be interesting to see whether his undoubted talent will flourish beyond such a conceit. [Sep 2006, p.83]

[A] rich and understated debut brimming with wisdom and heart. [Nov 2015, p.79]

Songs Of Resistance throbs with urgency. [Oct 2018, p.32]

The sound, constructed with The very best's Johan Karlberg, is spare, clean and spry, a gratifyingly novel fit for Taylor as she dissects Slow Club's split and raw romantic wounds--a heady emotional brew of pain, thwarted lust and giddy pride. [May 2019, p.32]

None of the best tracks here would have sounded out of place on Old 97s' mid-'90s classics "wreck Your Life" and "Too Far To Care." This consistency feels, by now, like confirmation of the purity of Old 97s' original vision. [Oct 2020, p.34]

Vivid, diverse and faintly trippy. [Nov 2006, p.99]

Nootropics is a slow burn that lingers long. [May 2012, p.78]

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

Are You Alone? hints at a Blue Nile-like melancholy beauty; otherwise the album could be prescribed as a treatment for insomnia. [Dec 2015, p.74]

If A Different Ship was the soundtrack to a road trip, the new record is designed for a summer afternoon. [Dec 2015, p.73]

Attempts to blend leftfield electronica, Broadway balladeering and voguish trap beats are technically impressive but stretch his minimal melodies to [the] breaking point. [Apr 2019, p.26]

A brilliant album. [Aug 2012, p.80]

It is the sound of a sweet soul contemplating deliverance; as mellow and fierce and fearful as that.

It is a more energetic, and in places darker, record than its predecessor. [Apr 2015, p.82]

It's all held together by the band's well-honed knack for a screwy groove. [Apr 2019, p.39]

It's a big, satisfying holistic record modelled with great finesse, mixing dread with Technicolor synth dazzlement and operating on a newly ambitious scale. [Dec 2020, p.25]

Each song plays like a breath exhaled. Steve Shelley's production, too, is wonderfully sympathetic. [May 2023, p.36]

The LP opens with “My Golden Years”, a delectable mélange of Harrisonian 12-string riffs, Wilsonian harmonies and layer-cake hooks, and reaches its apex with the glorious Beach Boys homage “In The Eyes Of The Girl”, with Sean Ono Lennon co-producing and playing bass. [Jun 2024, p.35]

This handsome debut bristles with ideas that could lead to some truly remarkable music later on. [Mar 2012, p.89]

Some tastefully lightweight, pleasantly inessential filler ultimately make Fuse a minor late-career coda. [Jun 2023, p.26]

An astonishing return, up there with their best records to date. [Feb 2021, p.18]

Canada's Quin twins fairly blaze through The Con's 14 compact, supercharged tracks. [Oct 2007, p.109]

Performance is expertly weighted between great hooks and loose, Southern-styled jams that dare you to shake a leg. [Sep 2018, p.39]

Parenthood proves just another phase in Maximo Park's stubborn stand for empathy and learning through rock'n'roll. [Apr 2021, p.32]

The real standouts are "Daddy's Little Girl," in which M Ward puts her inside the head of Frank Sinatra, and the Jack Pendarvis-Andrew Bird collaboration "We Can't Have Have Things."

It's a scuzzy Swans-like behemoth. [Oct 2014, p.77]

A small-hours gem. [Jun 2006, p.100]

This third album is their richest and strongest to date. [Jun 2024, p.33]

One to file alongside Second Attention (2006) in Toth's vast and increasingly noteworthy catalogue of cliche-free Americana. [Jun 2014, p.85]

As stylistically adventurous and technologically innovative as the album is, this community of musicians ensures it remains accessible and soulful. [Oct 2019, p.24]

THe good stuff is terrific. [Mar 2005, p.104]

Effectively picks and mixes from the Jansch stylebook. [Oct 2006, p.130]

Tracks like “Our Hometown Boy” and “Chrome Mess” stand out, all high-chiming happy-sad harmonies and fuzzed-up bubblegum psych-pop jangle, but a richly flavoured, wonky-fringed, charmingly sloppy-slouchy mood shapes the whole album. [Nov 2024, p.37]

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]

All A Man Should Do is a thing of considerable depth and sensitivity. [Nov 2015, p.79]

What sometimes seems like attrition - "Paradise Is Mine's" relentless hammering, "Ebbing's" pounding 11 minutes - can, nevertheless, deliver ritualistic euphoria. [Jul 2023, p.34]

Leithauser has worked solidly on his strengths - muscular and expansive, pop-rock songs with standout lyrics - to distinctive effect. [Apr 2025, p.33]

A racket, but a charismatic one. [Jun 2014, p.72]

Where on 2001's Lack of Communication their cranked-up Stoogeisms were adorably desperate, here they're glibly glamorous, energised by a Pixies-like concision. [Mar 2004, p.87]

A reflection on memory and transience amid which his deadpan drawl is frequently draped in incongruous but effective orchestral splendour, while Finn’s character sketches are as deft as ever. [Jun 2022, p.26]

All Of A Sudden... rather falls under the shadow of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but there's ample majesty in its climactic moments to recommend it. [Mar 2007, p.79]

It the bits between the notes that rescue this from the status of pointless fidelity and make it so compelling. [Sep 2013, p.90]

The quartet concentrated on developing more pleasurable lines, and on well-structured songs rather than open-ended jamming. [Dec 2013, p.59]

The set is more interesting the more it delves into the songwriter's prodigious output, generally beefing up what it finds. [Jun 2015, p.81]

Despite convoluted explanations about their relationship with nature, these compositions are surprisingly straightforward, with "Everyone Sleeps" and "Hands In The Anthill" almost primly formal. [Mar 2019, p.29]

This is creating at its most creative as he thrillingly twists the blues into phantasmagorical new shapes with an almost Beefheartian sense of adventure. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Contains the usual assortment of slurred tirades and workmanlike riffs, but it also features a smattering of minor Smith classics. [Nov 2005, p.96]

Galactic's Ya-Ka-May is a pungent musical fusion, adding hip-hop to mardi-gras funk, with help from a cast of local luminaries. [Apr 2010, p.86]

Running at 33 fat-free minutes, With Tramped By Turtles is immediate evidence of their comfort as ensemble players. .... The sense is of both parties yielding to the moment, guided by instinct and decades of fluency in their respective practices. [Jul 2025, p.24]

The pace and register of the record seldom alter: the soundscape is always more baked earth than lush foliage. [May 2005, p.103]

Small Town Heroes is the band's fifth and best album. [May 2014, p.68]

Alongside the general pixelated bombast, it also represents Power's most melodic work. [Sep 2019, p.23]

This two-hour epic very occasionally rests on its laurels by using sounds from past palettes, but is characteristically rich and adventurous. [Apr 2013, p.67]

Unlike the solar-powered efforts of The Thrills or The Polyphonic Spree, they understand, like The Beach Boys before them, that the best way to soundtrack a broken heart is to drench it in sunny three-part harmonies. [Jul 2005, p.102]

The only consistent thing about Infiniheart is its inconsistency. [Sep 2005, p.116]

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

One of Hitchcock's very best. [Nov 2006, p.114]

This largely instrumental album is lush and joyful, roaming and sweeping across the ivories, one to which you can create a dramatic narrative of your own. [May 2011, p.79]

If there's a tiny problem, it's that such sonic weirdness detracts a little from Del's entertaining rhymes. [Jun 2011, p.80]

It's an intense, at times crazed live-in-studio session. [Aug 2011, p.104]

They run a tight ship, cramming 41 short, tough tracks onto Quakers with verses from indie-rap stalwarts Guilty Simpson, MED and Prince Po. [May 2012, p.80]

A glorious ruckus. [Aug 2012, p.69]

The entire album has a refreshingly spontaneous feel, the result of their cutting the dozen songs live, including Parker's vocals. [Jan 2013, p.75]

Dico's strong, rich voice dominates an intense, and rather Cohen-esque suite of songs which frequently find her switching gender roles. [Sep 2014, p.73]

Worthy is a far bolder and more satisfying selection [than Thankful n' Thoughtful]. [Mar 2015, p.77]

Hardy's agile vocals and lyricism are never in doubt, but shine brighter on light touch arrangements. [Jun 2015, p.76]

The Word pick up where they left off on their 2001 self-titled debut. [Jun 2015, p.84]

Her self-produced Domino debut is an alluring tale of heartbreak and romance, framed by murky electro ballads and scuffed synthwave. [Sep 2015, p.75]

Upbeat, uptempo and clearly a lot of fun to make, Give Up Your Dreams is a funny and infectious record. [Sep 2015, p.80]

There is a tense, troubled air to many of these songs.... But the like of "Plates2" and "Moonbeams" mirror the story of the album by unfurling gloriously into expansive soft-rock vistas. [Aug 2015, p.69]

A crop of startling, striped-down songs. [Feb 2016, p.78]

These dusky vignettes are embellished with delicate shades of cello and synth, making them most suitable, like his debut, The Houseboat And The Moon, for a quiet night in. [Feb 2016, p.71]

There are delicate nylon-strung acoustic guitar solos, punky and ecstatic Ornette Coleman covers, thrash metal improvisations for just guitar and drum, and intriguing battles with saxophonist Chris Potter. [Jul 2016, p.88]

"Dandy," a fond-but-smart homage to Bowie that channels the spirit of "All The Young Dudes" with unashamed nostalgia. It's the standout track on his first album of new songs in six years--but there's plenty else here that's worth hearing, too. [Nov 2016, p.31]

Their largely improvised debut explores a gorgeous cosmic jazz with shades of Michael Rother and Cluster, Benn helming modular synth, Duffin adding tasteful gusts of sax. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Harvey maybe a bit too in love with a crunchy delay/distortion footswitch combo, but the likes of "Space Monkeys," he and his younger guys make a creditable, spacey blues. [Jan 2017, p.27]

For all the collaboration, and the interweaving of roots and modern, Ayisoba's relentless kologo, and sheer force of character, gifts the album its irresistible drive and fierceness. [May 2017, p.32]

The dynamic, White-produce LP is dominated by wistful yet hooky ballads. [Jul 2017, p.32]

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