Somewhere on the feral fringes of indie civilisation, Half Japanese remain kings of their own tiny jungle. [Feb 2017, p.28]

It shows the band at their most proggy. [Mar 2018, p.26]

Her songwriting here... demonstrates a depth and majesty previously absent in her work. [Mar 2007, p.82]

There's an appealingly alien quality to Joyfultalk's third album, a sound that drifts beyond familiar reference points. [Apr 2020, p.28]

Fear Trending is a fully realised album which stands equal to anything this consistently inventive band have done thus far. [Feb 2015, p.82]

What most surprising is the diversity here--the sense of direction is not pressing, but ultimately there's plenty to revisit. [Nov 2010, p.94]

Thrillingly perma-bored, sarcastic and suffused with the stench of inadequately ventilated student accommodation. [May 2018, p.28]

Aside from the roistering music, what makes this ultimately so appealing is they way McCaughey and Wynn universalise their subject.

Hadsel sounds both ethereal and earthly. [Dec 2023, p.27]

This follow-up to their 2014 debut blends antique-sounding folk tracks with glossier electronic numbers including "Die Young," which cocoons premature death in pretty harmonies, and "Kick Jump Twist," about the quest for instant fame. [Jun 2017, p.38]

The brilliant "Oya" places the sisters' voices front and centre, swinging from Bjork-like vocal gymnastics into a Yoruban spiritual. Elsewhere, Russell winds the pair's cajon and Bata beats into wonky boom-clap rhythms that smartly complement the romantic "ghosts" or "Think Of You." [Apr 2015, p.77]

Bittersweet melancholy is rarely more refined. [Nov 2022, p.38]

The highlights are "TH", "RL", "KTYWS" and "WAL", which all dig deep into Quincy Jones=style late-70s boogie and disco: a riot of rubbery, pitchwheel-assisted synth basslines, smart horn stabs and Cleo Sol's flirtatious, harmony-laden vocals. [Aug 2025, p.37]

The arrangements... are ambitious and richly textured, producing work that rewards repeated listening. [Jan 2003, p.117]

Another relaxed but enigmatic foray into modernist roots territory to stand alongside records by Gillian Welch, Laura Veirs, Sparklehorse and Bonnie "Prince" Billy. [Jun 2004, p.98]

It's breadth is pleasing, aiming for something more hooky than Factory Floor's typical brief. [Sep 2018, p.30]

What's surprising is how structured it is, even if little will have been recognisable to devotees. The pleasures lie not only in lengthy stretches where they lock together instinctively. ... It's also in the tension leading to these moments. [Jan 2022, p.38]

Country Funk unearths further lesser-known practitioners of this mythical genre. [Sep 2012, p.101]

This is much more of an Esperanza Spalding album than a Milton Nascimento one. But what Spalding has been able to do successfully is subsume herself into the world that Nascimento has created over the last 50 years – a dreamlike realm of folkloric myth, plugged into nature’s heartbeat. [Aug 2024, p.28]

While never musically abrasive, [it] is riddled with enough trademark lyrical barbs and sung with sufficient Eartha Kitt-ish snarl that the listening is never too easy. [Nov 2006, p.134]

Dulli remains a restless and unpredictable frontman, constantly distorting his voice from a soaring falsetto into a bellowing bass, as though he's just getting started. [Mar 2020, p.27]

[It] strikes a finer balance between ['Year Of Meteors'] and the magic folk realism of her earlier work. [Apr 2007, p.116]

Cut The World blow Hegarty's songs to grander scales. [Sep 2012, p.73]

Radiohead have made their most well-behaved, classically structured album since "OK Computer."

Old Punch Card is surprising and, at points, quite brilliant--it'll make your ears double-take. [Nov 2010, p.97]

While "Symmetry" and "Say Hello" seem destined for pole positions on motivational playlists, such displays of ebullience are well balanced with evidence of Wye Oak's more melancholy side. [May 2018, p.37]

The sextet's second effort is both an expression of their anarcho-punk fury and a declarartion of straight-edge commitment, but it's also a radical redrawing of hardcore's boundaries, that reanimates the genre with an aggressively intelligent jolt. [Nov 2008, p.96]

The group conjure a brilliantly ludicrous trash-pop poetry, hymning girls with gammy eyes on night buses--all much more seedily evocative and enjoyable than erstwhile Yummy Fur comrades, Franz Ferdinand. [May 2009, p.77]

Over the course of 80 compelling minutes they roam laggardly through rural post-rock, prog, folk, ambient and doom metal pastures without ever trying your patience. [May 2009, p.80]

The music is strikingly minimal throughout, the emphasis is firmly on The Word and the Beastie Boys have plenty left to say. [Jul 2004, p.108]

So, no startling change of pace, direction or feel, then. Instead, what Tindersticks sound like on this subtly strong album is a band with restored self-belief, again loving doing what they do better than anyone else.

As the title wryly suggests, they work as an ambient field, though the pairing of soft-chiming strings and vaporous synth drone in "Mossy Stump" makes it a standout. [Sep 2025, p.31]

Infinite Arms is a neoclassic landmark that you'll need to get on vinyl. This is a record that begs to be flipped over and played again. [Jun 2010, p.93]

The Donkeys' debut album was impressive enough, but there;s even more to admire in this fine follow-up. [Jul 2011, p.80]

Fu##in Up captures Young and the Horse on blazing form. Nelson makes acapable duelling partner for Young, working intuitively alongside Old Black’s grizzled solos, while Lofgren’s honky-tonk piano lends ashimmying quality to these craggy, elemental songs. [May 2024, p.41]

A bewitching record. [Jul 2012, p.82]

Humanely crafted, with a warmth unusual in the avant-garde. [Jun 2004, p.96]

With this one weighted heavily toward the dance floor, there's no shortage of sublime moments. [Jul 2012, p.74]

This is still a very heavy rock record, but it slithers with a degree of grace that had been missing in the past. [Nov 2015, p.65]

The fourth album by childhood friends Carlotta Cosials and Ana Perrote is a masterclass in simple but devastatingly effective melodies. [Oct 2024, p.36]

While there is some noodling with electronica, it's the understated melodies that linger. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Once heard, they are not easily forgotten. [Jul 2013, p.76]

With Arcade Fire arranger Owen Pallett draping the songs in sympathetic strings and producer James Ford working overtime on drums, the result is a widescreen epic, full of high fevers and crystal-clear vocal performances.

Buoyed by intimate guitar and keyboard riffs that also recall prime Kinks, ballads of hope arise. [May 2020, p.32]

What lingers longest on this remarkable record is an uplifting sense of resilience. [Jun 2018, p.26]

A final suite of three songs--"Wait For Her," "Oceans Apart" and "Part OF Me Died"--offer a more intimate perspective; a warm, optimistic coda to Waters' apocalyptic reveries. [Jul 2017, p.40]

This fruitful collaboration between k.d. Lang, Neko Case and Laura Veirs succeeds largely because it makes room for all three distinctive voices and songwriting styles, alongside sublimely blended three-way harmonies. [Jul 2016, p.71]

John Dwyer returns to thrashing, galloping warped punk, albeit with a more pronounced funk feel. [Oct 2020, p.34]

There's ample sustenance for the heart as well as the head. [Jul 2012, p.68]

The cumulative effect is upbeat jubilation. [Oct 2018, p.30]

Two Hands is more grounded [than U.F.O.F.]. ... The music is also rawer and more immediate. [Nov 2019, p.22]

A hardcore fan's wildest dreams fulfilled. [Jan 2005, p.134]

Each mode works in service of the vibe Cohen intends, but Spring's organic easiness belies the evident care in its creation. [Dec 2019, p.24]

Captures their Tex-Mex boogie at full tilt. [Aug 2005, p.105]

Velociraptor! makes good on the pair's loud-mouthed claims by stripping away previous excess. [Oct 2011, p.91]

He straddles the line between known and unknowable, and that's a mighty fine place to reside. [Feb 2019, p.28]

GVF strut and swagger through a sweeping hard-rock extravaganza that propels them from emulators to inheritors of a rich legacy. [May 2021, p.27]

You Know Who You Are is a smart, dynamic effort that breaks some new ground. [Apr 2016, p.76]

The mood of Expert In A Dying Field is yearning and reflective, as Stokes picks over the bones of relationships on mournful janglers like “Your Side”, punky rocker “Silence Is Golden”, the shimmering “Best Left” and terrific closer “2am”. [Oct 2022, p.25]

Musically, too, he became far more adventurous than both Roxy Music and the New Romantic legions who echoed the original glam-rock innovations, his work paralleling that of questing artists like Scott Walker and Talk Talk.

There is sleaze here and funeral swing, and sass to spare. [Jun 2009, p.105]

These are gently rugged country-folk songs made all the more authentic by a chewy voice that, with age, now seems to have deepened its resolve.

While never denying the quavering fragility of his voice, these arrangements, sympathetic, spartan, largely acoustic, frame what remains so it's only the strength--Cash's abiding defining characteristic--that you hear. [Apr 2010, p.89]

It's a heavy trip, with the exotic/erotic minimal techno of Ricardo Villalobos overlaid to intoxicating effect with the eerie hauntological manoeuvers of The Focus group. [Feb 2011, p.82]

There's not much room for originality in the tiny space he stakes out between Petty, Chilton and Westerberg, but thanks to Cumming's easy charm and gift for simple , classic hooks, the likes of "Workin' It Out" and "Total Darkness" feel like old friends. [Jul 2015, p.73]

Elegiac and otherworldly. [Jan 2022. p.25]

The addictive, chant-like vocals of Whitney Johnson, AKA Matchess, combined with some satisfyingly spacious grooves, periodically aligns Desert So Green with the contemporary psych-rock swirl of Warpaint and Moon Duo. [Feb 2026, p.39]

Arrangements are denser and somehow tenser than the relaxed studio recordings, with “Partition” building to a fervent drone and “Natural Information” riding a wild groove kept in check by Callahan’s steady vocals. [Oct 2024, p.33]

A potent techno-pagan tapestry of intertwined voices, church bells, liturgical chants and occult spells. [May 2021, p.27]

A lovely understated album. [Feb 2016, p.75]

She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically ("Take me on a genocide tour/Take me on a trip to Darfur") and musically. But a knockout's a knockout, however messy the bout.

All The Young Droogs plots a grotty course through its age, but finds something joyful and heroic at the bottom of the bargain bucket. [Mar 2019, p.38]

More than standing as a document of a particular time and place, it makes not having been there feel like a real loss. [Jan 2014, p.68]

This version has been remixed and remastered to beef up the sound and integrate Chris Cornell's glorious vocals more fully into the songs. ... Six demos, recorded on eight-track the previous year, give a good idea if where the band were coming from. [May 2017, p.52]

There's an enduring warmth to the record that comes from the fuzz of psychedelia that holds everything together. [Apr 2025, p.27]

Oldham's rustic configurations have been replaced by the fine Chicago kosmische act Bitchin Bajas, who provide authentic relaxation tape vibes and stretch the parameters of Oldham's songcraft. [May 2016, p.69]

A deservedly confident album. [Aug 2020, p.28]

Irresistible. [Dec 2022, p.35]

The body of the album is given over to gorgeous, baroque instrumentals. ... But there is variety here. [Sep 2021, p.24]

Trumps her three EPs by virtue of its consummate, maxi-pop plushness and the honest realisation of its concept. [Aug 2025, p.39]

Singing in a voice rich with the patina of experience, there's a universal wisdom to songs such as "New Religion" and "Home Is A Song", on which she's joined by Anais Micthell. [Jul 2025, p.26]

Glorious soundsuite. [Oct 2020, p.37]

A captivating set, aided by a full band that shift is between artful, countryish ballads ("Simple," "Ride") and cabin-fever rockers ("Face," the abstract "Gem"). [Dec 2021, p.27]

John McCrea's sense of subversion skates on the thin ice of their self-belittling grooves without ever quite toppling. [Jan 2002, p.131]

The best thing to come out of Sweden for a while... apart from porn. [Jul 2004, p.95]

It's a nuanced handling of some of her recent song obsessions. [Jan 2021, p.27]

The resulting set is intense, clamorous and deranged (often thrillingly so). [Jan 2026, p.31]

Derivative, perhaps, but reconfigured in a way which is both expert and highly seductive. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Their heaviest to date. [Nov 2005, p.108]

These songs often sound like Broadway-style miniatures tilted at strange angles. [Feb 2021, p.30]

A sweatstorm of strum and twang. [Dec 2005, p.106]

It's hard, then, not to view My Days Of 58 as among his most transparently autobiographical works, as brimming with self-scrutiny and pontification as it is elegant wordplay. [Mar 2026, p.26]

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

No One Is Lost does what Stars do: uplifting songs with catchy hooks and gorgeous arrangements. [Dec 2014, p.80]

A cutting, driving, defiantly hook-happy set (mostly) focused on survival amid America's income-inequality nightmare. [Feb 2015, p.75]

Finn maintains his novelist's eye for detail throughout. [Apr 2017, p.28]

The album works as whole--beginning with an eruptive blast of noise and ending with the gentle farewell that is 'Friend Of Ours.'

It feels in some ways much more of a post-Lambchop album than FLOTUS. [Apr 2019, p.24]