What could be tokenistic gels well. [Nov 2015, p.81]

The album's refracted harmonies, fluttering synths and off-klter beats are sometimes unsettling, sometimes in deceptive, sensual communion. [May 2020, p.27]

It's business as usual with sludgy riffs marrying metal and punk. [Mar 2021, p.32]

Without question, Schmilco is Wilco's quietest, most disquieting album. [Oct 2016, p.24]

The disparate elements feel abstract and abrasive in places, yet the whole is sumptuously melodic and sonically rich. [May 2016, p.75]

Producer Ed Stasium keeps the production crisp, melodic and controlled. [Mar 2019, p.30]

A gorgeous collection of songs steeped in Americana roots and full of breezy canyon vibes. [May 2023, p.28]

“Poppies” is an aching, Beatle-esque waking dream, half-heard car radio for company, prime Aimee Mann a comparison. Cleveland’s distorted electric guitar, cool, Stereolab-like synth glides and dub Ethio-jazz further colour the scene. [Jul 2024, p.35]

11 raw but gorgeously melodic songs. .... One of the least cliched [breakup] records you're ever likely to hear. [Nov 2025, p.31]

That old adage about the quiet ones hold true for Elanor, whose debut capitalizes on I'm Going Away's fleeting ease. [Aug 2011, p.87]

Field recordings, ASMR, personal effects and various metals combine to conjure some magical moments. [Jul 2025, p.31]

Definitely a return to psyche splendour. [Oct 2002, p.122]

The results sound as if Corgan plundered a few moves from Dave Grohl, since the songs keep one boot in heavy metal but mostly get straight to the point while piling on the hooks and harmonies. [Mar 2003, p.95]

A triumph indeed. [Sep 2003, p.102]

Amply demonstrates the man's craft, the inherent strength of apparently fragile blooms added extra ballast by painterly shades of guitar, piano and strings. [Apr 2003, p.105]

He may be treading water a little until he really gets into his groove as the 21st century Sondheim, but Distortion at its best is beguiling and quietly devastating.

D is a technical tour de force. [Jul 2011, p.89]

If Texas is a deliberately ambiguous assessment of Crowell’s home state, it’s also a resounding endorsement of the enduring powers of its composer.

Layered vocal effects and unexpected rhythms on tracks like "Messenger" and "Loud" reward repeated listens, while the pounding, jagged drums of "Caged Sleep" and blissed-out fuzz-pop of "Wheel" offer immediate satisfaction. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Variety is this album's strength. [Oct 2023, p.33]

Gone are the stark acoustics of his noughties output, replaced instead by a layered warmth and gorgeous, semi-orchestral settings that make him sound like a spiritual descendant of early '70s Laurel Canyon. [Feb 2014, p.77]

The mood is upbeat throughout; a joyous, non-stop chug through several shades of American popular song. [Nov 2019, p.28]

Curiously nonconformist to the last. [Jan 2021, p.27]

Despite occasional hints of tastefully anodyne sonic wallpaper, most of these painstaking musical haikus have a quietly potent and gently mesmerising beauty. [Jun 2019, p.29]

Though not as viscerally crushing as A Crow Looked At Me, Lost Wisdom Pt 2 is as plainly poetic. [Jan 2020, p.27]

It's clear we're in for an introspective ride, though the more major-key, upbeat nature of many of the record's arrangements belie these melancholy undertones. [Oct 2021, p.29]

One of their more purely enjoyable albums. [Mar 2023, p.25]

Blake's fragmented post-dubstep has always had an air of bleak melancholy, but nothing he's done has been quite as self-consciously miserable as this. [Nov 2021, p.25]

Frequently offers moments of joy. A wider range of live musicians – harp, clarinet, violin, vocal ensemble – give songs like “Collect Color” and “Big Dipper” room to breathe and lend sparser, more electronic-based tracks like “Violetlight” and “Heartwood” a sense of intimacy by comparison. [Nov 2024, p.37]

His fine fourth album sees him thicken his sound a little, layering jazzy brass and full-blooded surf-rock twangs over austere acoustic foundations. [Jul 2011, p.96]

Less outre than much of Patton's work. [Feb 2013, p.80]

Weirdly wonderful. [Jul 2015, p.78]

Her flow has a bratty edge and unhurried, authoritative core, capable of Philly soul sweetness on “Lo Rain”, or riding low, squelching beats on “IDGAF”. ... Meanwhile, “Let Me Be Great” isa pan-African firework display celebrating her rooted rebirth. [Oct 2022, p.34]

Now We Can See feels a sunnier listen, bracing indie-rock with few frills but a joyfully juvenile energy and choruses to spare. [Jun 2009, p.103]

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

Toledo offers dense, self-analytical lyrics and a style that take in everything from The Zombies to the Pet Shop Boys, ambitious in scope and clearly much agonised-over. [Dec 2015, p.69]

It's droll, evocative and occasionally moving. [Jun 2018, p.30]

The album isn't presented in chronological order, which makes it harder to discern changes in style and lineup, but does demonstrate the consistency of Wheeler's writing over a long period of time. [Mar 2020, p.43]

The fourth album from Speedy Ortiz crackles with typically furious energy - but there's a deftness which makes the band's polemics as fun to listen to as they are powerful. [Nov 2023, p.33]

Though still hyper-literate, the sound away from the semi-spoken ballads tends less frantic than The Hod Steady, from the Cars-like new wave of "postcards" to the distinctly Springstonian "Luke & Leanna". [May 2025, p.29]

Occasionally, they lapse into their own shuffling comfort zone, but there's always a pixel-level attention to detail here. [Nov 2005, p.102]

Something dignified and yearning arises from the mass of programmed details. [Sep 2009, p.88]

Could very well be the best record of this restlessly self-critical career. [Jul 2006, p.90]

EarthEE feels both comfortingly familiar and thrillingly alien, without striving too hard to be either. [Mar 2015, p.83]

A deceptive simple, calm record, Love Letter... sounds both intuitive and direct, and any wrangling along the collaborative way is undetectable. [May 2016, p.80]

A rather beautiful debut. [Mar 2017, p.32]

In the china shop of his last five years' work, this LP is the bull. [Jul 2015, p.70]

Taking cues from Lord Byron and Rome, this solo album from the former Race Horses singer is a dramatic affair. [Apr 2016, p.75]

What is new is the extensive use for the first time of the Kora, a lyrical embellishment that slots dreamily into the melodic elegance of the classic Baobab shuffle. It's good to have them back. [May 2017, p.37]

The top line melodies don't always cut that deep, but with such intriguing decoration, we're still enchanted. [Jul 2020, p.29]

Lapalux is already in the foothills of greatness. [May 2013, p.73]

It's Saadiq's fine songs--notably the showstopping slow-jam 'Oh Girl'--that makes The Way I See It less a homage, more a timelessly enjoyable 42 minutes. [May 2009, p.97]

A dizzying positivity is the constant in this adventure in fractal sonics. [Apr 2011, p.75]

The set has both strength and a lean, lustrous beauty. [Nov 2018, p.26]

Strikingly immediate, yet also rewarding repeated immersion, the 10 tracks here are, just as Forster intended, amusing, infectious and relaxed. [Oct 2015, p.65]

There's little on her 16th album to suggest it's anything other than business as usual. [Jul 2023, p.36]

[Fuzz is] eight glorious tracks of heavy, frantic and, yes, extremely fuzzy, proto-metal. [Nov 2013, p.71]

The results are impressive: the requisite 1960s garage cover sits happily alongside the band's traditional urgency, and their newfound classicism. [Nov 2009, p.99]

Psychedelic touches percolate subtly through the songs. [Oct 2015, p.79]

M Ward and Garth Hudson, members of Giant Sand, Los Lobos and Calexico are all present and correct on Middle Cyclone lending their distinctive instrumental hands--but this ultimately Case’s tour de force, and hers alone.

Songs like "That Loneliness" can make Jagwar Ma sound a little clean-living, while the ingenuous "Let Her Go" simply bowls you over with sun-bleached pop-psych. [Sep 2013, p.90]

First Taste is focused round the self-imposed discipline of not featuring guitars. ... In truth, the challenge barely affects Segall's shred-happy sound. [Sep 2019, p.34]

The album's highpoints, particularly "Show Me Everything" and "This Fire Of Autumn" showcase a band who seem to have rediscovered new ways of putting together their already impressive constituent parts. [Mar 2012, p.101]

The production is more sophisticated, the arrangements more intricate, the melodies and harmonies more complex. [Oct 2006, p.106]

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]

This is a terrific, sustained album. [Aug 2006, p.93]

Blessed is a powerful, vivid, highly emotive record. [Mar 2011, p.92]

To some, Psychedelic Pill will seem like a monumental work of self-indulgence. To others, though, its heft and eccentricity make it one of the purest expressions of Young's genius to date.

Hayden's nagging melodies and deadpan delivery occupy their own peculiar kingdom. [Sep 2004, p.102]

Makes you want to chain-smoke while swigging a quart of Jim by the neck and taking agreeable houswives to stud. [Aug 2003, p.110]

A slate-cleaning exercise that positively radiates contentment. [Jun 2005, p.102]

What Day Is It Tonight?--culled from 15 years of recording since 1993--captures their tight ferocity in full force. [Feb 2010, p.104]

Be Strong is warm and easy comfort food for recessionary midlife ravers. [Feb 2012, p.90]

The album is drenched in Hawaiian guitar and wah-wah, making the title perfectly apt. [May 2012, p.67]

It has its Mr. Fox-y moments but this feels like a minor clanger. [May 2012, p.83]

Utterly self-contained, 10cc's collision of Brill Building Craft, Beatles hooks and proggish daring still sounds, for the most part at least, curiously modern. [Jan 2013, p.89]

The partners deftly sustain a mood of languor through a dozen tracks of varying tone and texture. [Apr 2013, p.67]

At times the pace crawls, but James' supple, intimate vocals are engaging, and the sonic palette shimmers inventively. [Mar 2013, p.73]

[An] intense and atmospheric instrumental debut. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Evans' descendent Gruff Rhys has immortalised his journey with a saga in documentary, book, app and CD form. Rhys has a talent for presenting such material with the right mix of pathos and play. [Jun 2014, p.82]

A triumph. [Oct 2014, p.77]

Gelb's semi-surreal observations lace things together. [Jun 2015, p.77]

This invigorating swansong by the Anglo-Italian duo finds Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia bowing out at the peak of their powers. [May 2015, p.84]

Young In All The Wrong Ways may be Watkins' third solo album, but it feels and sounds like her first, reintroducing her as a writer/artist of uncommon eloquence and consequence. [Aug 2016, p.70]

It's a dense, courageous storm of an album, revved-up and snarling. [Jul 2016, p.73]

Peyroux's smoky, Holiday-esque voice has seldom sounded finer as the trio's jazzy ambience is lent a wonderful natural reverb by the vaulting acoustics. [Nov 2016, p.35]

[The] now East Memphis-based artist comes off as an eloquent country/folk songsmith. [Feb 2017, p.26]

Despite its heady beauty, a gloomy fatefulness also shapes this set. [Mar 2017, p.30]

Its four sides teem with microbial incident, particularly in the dense thicket of percussion from Tony Buck that undergrids the album. [Mar 2017, p.35]

Not so much a fusion as a cross-cultural collision. [May 2017, p.40]

It comprise four lengthy tracks, from the wood-wind-assisted Led Zep-sized rocker "This One's For The Human" to the one chord motorik Krautrock of "The Visitations." Best of all is "The Moon IS Not Your Friend," in which a McCartney-styled guilty pleasure is bookended by terrifying space-age FX. [Jan 2018, p.17]

This second album tips a stetson to the neglected Western heritage of his native country, from the stark beauty of "Saskatchewan In 1881" to the deliciously luminous cover of Wilf Carter's "Calgary Round-Up." [Nov 2018, p.37]

[The union] is clearly well-judged. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Sympathetic rock collaborators have written fine new Mavis albums in her spirit, and her gigs are exhilarating revival meetings for her friend Martin Luther King's mission. Focusing on those new songs, these 79th-birthday recordings don't quite capture that fervour. [Mar 2019, p. 34]

[Susan] Tedeschi breaks free from those Bonnie Raitt comparisons that have long dogged her. [Apr 2019, p.39]

Finn remains an astute and supremely compassionate songwriter, but musically, New War is often mellow to the point of lethargic. It's best when it showcases his deep eccentricities. [May 2019, p.27]

A lusty, witty, charismatic racket. [Jul 2019, p.30]

If Psychedelic Pill was among his longest, strangest trips, Colorado has more rustic charms--Harvest Moon or Prairie Wind, but hopped up on guitars. [Nov 2019, p.16]