An album that is as imaginative as it is innovative. [Feb 2025, p.39]

The Caretaker creates ambient music that doesn't merely settle in the background but is evocative of memory and loss. [Feb 2012, p.83]

Comes awfully close to the masterwork he so clearly gunning to make. [Jun 2020, p.38]

The tautly controlled power of the performances meshes with the barely harness emotion of Ban Gibbard's impeccably sculpted, tortured lyrics. [Apr 2015, p.73]

Sultry, compelling and ever so slightly spooked, Cosmic Wink flickers and flashes like a series of time-lapse landscape photographs, but the place it documents is the heart. [Jun 2018, p.36]

If Sigur Ros shared a cottage in Dovedale, they might just sound as magical as this. [May 2013, p.71]

Whether the album has scratched Stewart’s solo creative itch remains to be seen, but it’s hard to imagine a better record to finally put their own name on. [Dec 2022, p.34]

[A] promising, flawed debut. [Apr 2004, p.110]

A joyful noise. [Sep 2018, p.39]

Seldom is the personal married to the political in such an enchanting fashion. [Aug 2015, p.75]

A thematically rich record, heavy on mood and elegantly written in a way that positions Del Rey between Eve Babitz and Carole King. There are beguiling and evolving melodies underneath the spare piano and acoustic arrangements. [Nov 2019, p.24]

This controlled bedlam is just the thing for fans of the similarly explosive, experimental and exploratory sounds of Comets On Fire, Oneida and Black Mountain. [Aug 2005, p.97]

West is far from rap's deftest lyricist but his neurotic grandstanding is compelling and often pretty funny to boot. [Feb 2011, p.84]

There's respect but nothing approaching the sort of suffocating reverence that kills so many covers. [Dec 2018, p.22]

The implausible but winning transformation is complete: Arab Strap have made a genuinely uplifting record. [Dec 2005, p.109]

Bushnell provides that perfect kind of bass you barely notice. Keltner's percussion is a different story. Captured mostly in first or second takes, he doesn't so much keep the beat as respond to what Young is doing, an improvised interplay of odd, shaggy patterns. The record often becomes a duet between Young and Keltner. [Jan 2017, p.20]

It absolutely stands on its own merits, however, as an album replete with the sinister strangeness and bleary whimsy which has characterised Laibach’s best work. [Jun 2022, p.29]

It's a stunning showcase of his emotional, slippery, psychologically fraught production style. [Dec 2014, p.71]

First Demo captures the band's first flush of creativity. [Dec 2014, p.91]

Like much of Kent's work, the mood is melancholy and the focus is on her intricate production. There's plenty to admire in Kent's elegant phrasing, her cello longing and mournful. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Raitt isn't breaking new ground--she's emphatically marking out the turf she's owned for 45 years. [Mar 2016, p.78]

This is all very impressive stuff. [Feb 2015, p.80]

Richly textured music. [Apr 2020, p.35]

Multi-instrumentalist Joe Pisapia, produced much of Easy Wonderful, which is distinguished by impeccably crafted contours, sharp lyrics, buoyant grooves and swelling choruses. [Nov 2010, p.90]

Newman is at his most affecting when he plays it mercilessly straight: his flickers of sincerity all the more beguiling for only appearing rarely.

McCauley's time might just have arrived.

As ever, Simon's work is a strange mix of easy and uneasy listening--it's balm, but it leaves an itch. [May 2011, p.74]

At its most ascetic, Fog sees Broder kicking down the same fence post of convention as Tortoise, the Beta Band and latter-day Radiohead. [Mar 2002, p.111]

Their fourth album is a quietly audacious work, careful but not cautious, an expansive blend of woozy country, skewed folk and cracked torch songs. [Aug 2018, p.30]

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]

It's a compelling psychological study set to lovely tunes. [Jul 2003, p.114]

These songs achieve something like topicality, sounding all the more invigorated and just plain fun for having one foot in the past and the other in an uncertain present. [Aug 2016, p.68]

Here you'll find the French cool of Ruth's "Polaroid/Roman/Photo," the glacial "Romantic" by Sweden's Cosmic Overdose as well as the gorgeous minimalism of "NY NY" by Dutch musician Truus De Groot. [Sep 2017, p.52]

[Happy People] is a cunning, crackling, can't-keep-still classic. [Nov 2004, p.120]

No one can actually improve on the perfection of "Wichita Lineman," but the version of "Rhinestone Cowboy" included here, stripped down to grunge guitar and a Willie Nelson-esque vocal, is bold and definitive. [Aug 2013, p.68]

The added zip only serves to spotlight her stark, moody delivery. [Mar 2007, p.98]

A superb new Fall album.

These renditions are suffused with the joyousness with which Hatfield embraces the source material as she finds the sweet spot between emulation and invention. [Dec 2023, p.31]

Sinclair's knack for storytelling, wordplay and a warm voice carry sufficient wit and energy to ride the jazzy undercurrent. [Apr 2014, p.81]

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]

A lovingly rendered family portrait. [Jul 2018, p.37]

Imagine a jam session between King Crimson, Fugazi and '70s Miles. Now imagine it working. That's the Mars Volta. [Aug 2003, p.98]

Her despondency is balanced with levity elsewhere. [Jul 2012, p.74]

Their sixth album intersperses passages of barbed attack with atmosphere and nuance. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Delicious desolation. [Mar 2022, p.23]

Discovering all this mellow gold now is akin to discovering Laurel Canyon was actually on the other side of the Pacific. [Dec 2017, p.47]

Proceeds with the unhurried observational vividness of extended takes in a Richard Linklater film. [Dec 2019, p.35]

AM feels a considerably more self-assured album: heavy in a dramatic and confident way, conceptually strong and not without groove. [Oct 2013, p.73]

Airy melodies and Rachael's breathy vocals combine to create music that gets under the skin. [Jul 2023, p.24]

This is MF Doom's most accessible moment to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

The deep-cut-heavy, career-spanning set is manna for the faithful. [Oct 2023, p.48]

The more melodic and less maniacal "Melting" and "Sleep Drifter" point toward newer ambitions and influences. Especially welcome is the turn toward Middle Eastern and North African sounds on "Anoxia" and the title track.[Mar 2017, p.32]

It's a darker, deeper affair. [Jun 2007, p.94]

The Brooklyn-based veterns have beefed up the arrangements on LP number five, and Matthew Caws' material happily carries that weight. [Mar 2008, p.96]

Two fetching female voices bring a soft-focus glow to the linchpin songs on this incandescent album. [Apr 2016, p.79]

Apparently Stith shied away from any musical expression for years--in which case Heavy Ghost represents a quite spectacular plunge. [Apr 2009, p.87]

These septuagenarians have made a Doobie Brothers album that sounds like it was recorded by their much younger selves, and the passing years haven't blunted their vibrancy. [Jun 2025, p.36]

An album that takes in atmospheric ambient, immersive synth soundscapes and ripples of cosmic electronics that shift from beautifully immersive to hauntingly eerie. [Dec 2022, p.26]

Familiar, sure, but a highly potent blend of the ancient and modern nevertheless. [Sep 2003, p.98]

An inspired and fruitful fusion. [Sep 2018, p.35]

Whenever his scorched Bill Callahan drawl appears, the effect is at once jarring and intoxicating. [Dec 2014, p.72]

Raggedly glorious covers of Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy” and Bo Diddley’s “Crackin’ Up” rate as major highlights along with the live debut of Tattoo You’s “Worried About You” and a blistering take on “Hot Stuff” that amply demonstrates the liberating effects of the band’s temporary escape from baseball stadiums and hippodromes. [Jul 2022, p.44]

He's unafraid to risk sentimentality in his quest for real feeling. At the end of a vexed, troubled third album, it feels like a hard-earned affirmation of his roots, people and community he's still a part of and still committed to. [Mar 2025, p.30]

A satisfactorily dramatic return. [May 2017, p.30]

This third album is even better, his voice smoother, more assured, and the tunes equally as confident. [Nov 2010, p.92]

Wainwright’s vocals imbue the material with a mixture of world-weariness, compassion and delight, qualities that didn’t loom large in the emotional lexicon of his younger self.

it's a densely layered, frictional set that matches emotional heft and musical invention in equal and impressive measure. [May 2025, p.39]

Born Like This finds the New York MC triumphing with content rather than form. [Jun 2009, p.85]

The debut LP by Elias Bender Ronnenfelt's new project feels more daring still. [May 2015, p.77]

A funny, peculiar, epic piece of pop minimalism that could be no-one else but Hannon. [Jul 2019, p.27]

It's a delicate, individual record, from the same neighbourhood as Paul Weller's recent excursions in rustic soul, but instead of Weller's creosotey vocals, the emotion is carried in a Minnie Riperton trill.

Her free rock trio is on thunderous form on these lithe and sinewy instruments, stirred up in a cauldron of sub-metal froth and white-hot jazz rock. [Jun 2013, p.76]

The lyrics are occasionally hackneyed, but overall 4 is a very strong record indeed. [Sep 2011, p.79]

The band pursue numerous fractured trends through a breakneck 34 minutes and manages to corral them into an acid-drenched but cohesive whole. [Nov 2015, p.83]

A record that pivots around like the Minutemen; delivered with a verve that comes with a clarity of identity. [Dec 2024, p.36]

[An] instant classic. [Sep 2006, p.84]

Rhubarb Rhubarb is scuzzy but smart, surging between primitive playfulness and something more malevolent. [Dec 2014, p.83]

"D4N" is a shimmering piece of neo-soul featuring vocals from kindred spirit Sampha. even better are the tracks that dispense with the drums and moves into woozy, beatless territory, using choral harmonies and FX-laden electric pianos. [Sep 2023, p.27]

A further shift away from the full-throttle krautrock of their early years into something more sumptuous. [Feb 2019, p.37]

As history lessons goes, it's a lively one. [Mar 2015, p.81]

The Besnard Lakes' fourth album doesn't really add anything new to the heady concoction of symphonic shoegaze, doo-wop and spy stories they perfected on 2007's Are The Dark Horse, but it's always a pleasure to hear them work up a storm. [May 2013, p.67]

The covers from less celebrated acts support the premise most intriguingly. [Jul 2025, p.49]

Remarkably, almost every performance resonates. [Apr 2014, p.83]

These are glistening sonic fancies picked out in neon and Day-Glo. [May 2011, p.79]

A seductive mix of pastoral folk, motorik beats, psychedelic ragas and gnarly '70s rock, transposed to the Japanese landscape. [Jun 2016, p.74]

After a couple of plays, you're struck by Up's sonic cleverness. Three or four listens and the lyrical complexity begins to bite. Finally, and insidiously, after perhaps six or seven plays, the melodies bury themselves in your head. [Oct 2002, p.112]

At the fluttering heart of this 10th album is the voice of Karen Peris. Her phrasing and tonal glides are as distinctive as those of Victoria Williams or Iris DeMent. [Aug 2018, p.28]

It invokes countless familiar sources--The Byrds, Ennio Morricone, The La's, The Doors, Joe Meek--but reassembles them in such an unexpected way that 500-year-old songs sound utterly fresh. [Feb 2010, p.88]

It's a long time since a debut album forged its influences into something quite as fresh and rich as this. [May 2011, p.87]

"Say Valley Maker" and "Rock Bottom Riser" are hypnotic highpoints, but best of all is "Diamond Dancer," an incongruous slice of hillbilly funk on which he channels his inner Gil-Scott Heron. [Jun 2010, p.83]

Beauty & Ruin falls short as a masterpiece but it quietly lets the handbrake off on Mould's creativity. [Jul 2014, p.79]

There's a beautiful simpatico between Prochet and Danell throughout that elevates everything, and the El Michels Affair contribution points outwards, to new experiences. It's a lovely album - 30 minutes well spent. [Jan 2026, p.20]

These songs are pretty, but something intense seethes just beneath the surface. [Nov 2015, p.83]

Considered, compassionate and intricate, conceived of equal parts magic and dread, Laws Of Motion works a slow but deep enchantment. [Dec 2018, p.30]

Dean Rudland and Tony Harlow’s selections here mix up the canonical (Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” and “Red Hot Mama”, The Undisputed Truth’s “Like A Rolling Stone”, Sly & The Family Stone’s “Thank You For Talkin’ To Me, Africa”), with a good few cratedigging rarities. If anything, in their enthusiasm they may have set themselves a little too wide a brief. [May 2017, p.46]

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

Prove as unflinchingly human as Hammill's own work.[May 2021, p.27]

His latest fizzes with energy and smarts, and sees him letting his imagination off the leash to irresistible effect. [Jul 2016, p.70]