While nothing else here is quiet as astonishing, ["Junior Dad" is] a perfect ending to the most extraordinary, passionate and just plain brilliant record either participant has made for a long while. [Dec 2011, p.80]

It's Wells' unorthodox vision that presides. [Jan 2016, p.81]

This Old Dog is an admirable exertion. [Jun 2017, p.28]

A hugely accomplished and banging debut LP. [Apr 2015, p.76]

Anglo-Saxon sextet Sweet Sweet Lies dress nasty themes in sweet acoustic melodies and sharp suits. [Mar 2012, p.98]

Sombre but spellbindingly ethereal nostalgia. [Jun 2017, p.28]

If polished solos from Steve Vai and Keith Emerson detract from the original film's clumsy verite, some lines can still elicit big chuckles. [Aug 2009, p.105]

While Pilbeam's gorgeous, dreamy melodies remain her main strength, a longer running time give her space to play with different ideas. [Jul 2019, p.29]

Their seventh album is the soundtrack to a full-length film made by singer Tim Rutili but comfortably works on its own, sounding genuinely unlike anyone else - every song contains a surprise, however minor. [Nov 2009, p. 83]

Fronted by Jonas Stein formerly of adolescent punks Be Your Own Pet--the missing link between the Monkees and Dead Kennedys--are every bit as spirited as his old band. [Dec 2009, p.117]

While Efrim Menuck will never be a technically great singer, his fiery, hopeful delivery here marks a career best. [Mar 2010, p.96]

A fine collection and a lesson in dignified maturity from which all former rock gods could learn. [Aug 2002, p.115]

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

The sounds on Smart Flesh may be muted, but there is power and daring in its pursuit of stillness. File under: a quiet Storm. [Mar 2011, p.84]

May be Regan's finest 35 minutes to date. [Sep 2019, p.33]

The Dublin troubadour's debut as Villagers is rich with risk and imagination, evoking Robert Wyatt and Brian Protheroe. [Jun 2010, p.106]

Showcase[s] his deep knowledge of American and British folk music and deft picking style that is sophisticated but never ostentatious. [Aug 2018, p.33]

Forsyth's imperative to find new possibilities from a classic format shines through. [Sep 2017, p.28]

The complete One To One concerts and Live Jam 2 are welcome additions to the brief Lennon live canon, but while Studio Jam is fun, there’s only so much that can be gained from listening to the band running through rock’n’roll classics, however good they are. Of more interest is Home Jam: scraps of home recordings, phone calls and hyperactive Lennon chat. [Nov 2025, p.48]

It's very fine, glowing with an oblique, poppy sensibility that's theirs alone. [Jan 2003, p.127]

Eerily beautiful record. [Jan 2021, p.30]

If the aim was to out-bonkers Joanna Newsom and Kate Bush while creating a compelling album, Amos has more than succeeded. [Oct 2011, p.81]

Theirs remains a stubbornly extreme sound, although Celestial Lineage finds new ways to combine heaviness with solemn beauty. [Oct 2011, p.86]

A substantive whomp on the butt to typical Nashville superficialities. [Dec 2014, p.83]

Askew's voice and tiple remain distinctively sui generis, as does the air of fairytale enchantment about his songs of children's dream, birds and fishes, city streetlife, blue-eyed babies and brown-eyed boys. [Oct 2013, p.61]

Despite moments of discordance, as on "Narkopop 1," Gas continues to provide, for the most part, analgesic relief. [Jun 2017, p.30]

The result is a twilight world where Robert Wyatt and John Coltrane rub shoulders with Why? and Vernon Elliott. Mad, but quite magical. [Dec 2008, p.81]

There's justifiable anger, not least "History"'s confrontation with generational trauma, but her potent self-respect is an inspirational as Roots Manuva, to whom the eerie "Marginalized" nods. [Dec 2023, p.27]

They have not deviated from their core virtues: drolly mordant lyrics, instinctive tunefulness and the lo-fi new-wave sensibility that carries it all. [Sep 2021, p.27]

The visual-album version is the trippiest means of experiencing Ernest Greene's third full-length under his Washed Out moniker. Yet the music is sufficiently enthralling on its own. [Aug 2017, p.38]

It's a neat homage to '60s girl groups and C86 bands they inspired, spooked-out bubblegum delivered in singer Dee Dee's naive but infectious sing-song. [Jun 2010, p.98]

Addressing subjects from addiction and gun crime to censorship and obscene over-consumption, the anger is righteous but leavened with the hope of change. [Sep 2018, p.29]

Sweeping strings and sparse piano merge deftly with Jordan’s melancholic voice on “Light Blue”, while the fingerpicked “c. et al.” is bare-bones heartache wrapped up in tender beauty. [Dec 2021, p.33]

The terrific Hobo Rocket has many of the admirable assets that made BWD great, but there's a sense in the album's overall finesse that things as far as possible are being taken perhaps a little more seriously than hitherto. [Sep 2013, p.82]

On "Silenced By Hum" her amorphous delivery helps bring Bjork's more recent experiments to mind. Nonetheless, "Come About" suggests the duo's closest kindred spirit is Jenny Hval. [Dec 2020, p.30]

His keen-eared blending of Beatles-style melodies and psych jangle with the snarling attitude of Mudhoney and Melvins' malevolent heaviness is oddly invigorating. [Nov 2012, p.81]

Coracle is more about a kind of glittering ambiance, one forged in a liminal space between drone, electronic Krautrock and the heady shoegaze of Ulrich Schnauss. [Nov 2011, p.107]

Epic eight-minute closer "Give Me Your Love" produced by Hot Chip's Al Doyle and Joe Goddard, will keep you dancing until dawn. [Sep 2023, p.27]

Besides being vivid demonstrations of her versatility, the girl-group pop of "Hey World," the country-gospel of "The Heart Of It All" and the delicate chamber-folk of "Just for Today" all provide very good reasons to welcome her back. [Mar 2020, p.26]

The Strange Boys have added some muscle to the general mix. [Dec 2011, p.83]

Incrementally, Yorke's resilient gifts come into focus. [Dec 2014, p.83]

If there's a criticism, it's that this rarely expands on the ideas of their debut: shouty kiddy-rapping, Motown samples, crashing drum loops. But when a band boasts such a unique sonic palette, "more of the same" surely ranks as a compliment.

A set which is at times whimsical, and frequently dark--sometimes managing to combine these sensations. [Apr 2017, p.39]

It's the sound of a man confronting his own inevitable end with humour and dignity. Let's hope he doesn't move on any time soon. As band OF Joy proves, this particular wellspring is far from dry. [Oct 2010, p.82]

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

An album that feels comfortable and confident, and made by a group of people who have found their own idiosyncratic rhythm. [Mar 2025, p.32]

Roots Manua's particularly thrilling on the poignant urgent "A Caged Bird," but while "Lessons" suggest the warm post-jazz realms of Tortoise could have explored post TNT, no-one else combines dignified grandeur and soulful romance so effectively. [Apr 2019, p.26]

Emotions played out against a backdrop of upbeat, urbanised alt. folk and groovy pastoral soul. [Apr 2018, p.23]

There’s certainly an abundance of good ideas – often several within the course of one song, with hooks emerging from the fog before dissolving as quickly as they came – but the band seem to work through them in perfect harmony, on the way to even greater things. ... Their best album.

The lovely songs have such a languid unity of purpose. [May 2016, p.75]

Entirely self-written and beautifully realised, Americana is a deeply satisfying reminder that Davies remains a songwriter with a huge reach, but few equals. [Jun 2017, p.29]

On 'The Colour Of Three' and 'Glide,' Fennesz once again proves himself a match for the Kevin Shields of 'To Here Knows When' or "The Coral Sea." [Feb 2009, p.80]

The furious cumbia/rock fusion of "Graveyard Love" and the gentler cosmic pop of "Tourmaline" may comprise a new creative apex for these inveterate overachievers. [Dec 2022, p.29]

Album lurches bizarrely from the heart-rending to the goofy to the simply spaced-out, but what it lacks in polish it makes up for with buckets of charm.

Takes a few listens to become accustomed to. [Mar 2003, p.104]

Only Frozen Sky Anyway is a seriocomic meditation on the absurdity of humanity, unfailingly generous in music and spirit alike. [Oct 2025, p.32]

Lurching from inspired to confounding, it's ragged, erratic, but never boring. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Tim Showalter has channelled his grief after losing loved ones and the agony he endured getting straight into a set of nakedly emotional songs, while producer Kevin Ratterman has erected a reverberant wall of sound to match the scale of his outpourings. [Dec 2021, p.35]

The hightlight is the 14-minute, exploratory "Heat Sink", as the pair size up and seduce each other like a pair of tropical birds in an elaborate courtship dance. [Oct 2025, p.31]

Touches of ska... and ethereal dream-rock... betray a penchant for late-'70s guitar experimentation, alchemised here by a brilliant pop sheen. [Jul 2004, p.101]

It kicks ass. [Aug 2006, p.99]

For all its weird dissonance, Sermon...'s musical crudeness gives it a powerful immediacy. Strangely accessible and highly addictive, it's her best work in three decades. [Mar 2007, p.98]

This 3CD/5LP set ably performs the mixed blessing of making you feel that you are there, and annoyed that you weren't. [Feb 2016, p.74]

It certainly recalls the space-age jazzers whose careers ran parallel to them. [Dec 2012, p.75]

Some sound like strange nursery rhymes; some like surreal Eurovision entries. All are very good indeed. [Oct 2010, p.85]

By "Carousel", the feedback feels cleansing, as authentic anti-heroes and alter-egos merge with the purging heaviness. [Apr 2025, p.35]

No other pony does his one trick half as well. [Apr 2016, p.76]

Largely instrumental, but with some strong vocal hooks, this is music of ascension. [May 2016, p.76]

Fine writing, then, and there’s musical variety, too.

Harrowing subject matter, and yet these raw confessionals have a stark, compelling beauty that ultimately feels bravely defiant. [Jun 2018, p.37]

The multi-ethnic Jessica 6 blend disco, soul, house and melodramatic ballads with both skill and affection. [Jul 2011, p.87]

This may well be the most exhilarating debut of the year. [Nov 2003, p.107]

His most accessible work since Parklife. [Sep 2004, p.101]

Arguably slight at first, it rewards repeat listening as its seductive, heartfelt stories unfurl. [Mar 2004, p.90]

A much warmer, more luxurious record than the brittle debut, the shrillness wiped from Jackson's voice in favour of uncontrived and appealing attitude. [Aug 2014, p.74]

This delightful album rolls back the last 60 years. [Aug 2012, p.78]

The record's feel, like West's College Dropout, offers a rich jukebox of gospel-tinged R&B flavours over which Common scatters his gems. [Aug 2005, p.97]

The primary revelation of Elsie is Fallon's voice. [Oct 2011, p.90]

A series of esoteric, danceable, frequently amusing stories about sleeping in gardens, body waxing and Swansea. [Jan 2019, p.19]

Sparhawk builds on the melodic sensitivity that frontman Dave Simonett revealed on his Razor Pony EP. [Sep 2014, p.79]

Internal Sounds is a sparkling conflation of '69-vintage Byrds, early Burritos and psychedelic country helped along by the odd splash of boiling surf. [Oct 2013, p.74]

The blues remain a touchstone--the album's first line is "Woke up this Morning"--but Grinderman 2 prefers to prowl rock's perimeter with Amon Duul II, Suicide and contemporary drone practitioners like Wooden Shjips. [Oct 2010, p.86]

This time out, the band wants you to have an experience, and that's what you get, on a record that's over the top, wildly inventive and satisfying in the ever-deepening way of landmark longplayers from the last century. [Nov 2010, p.89]

Kempner's raw honesty encompasses the droll as well as the despairing. [May 2016, p.78]

Pedal steel and fiddle waltz around a crystal-clear baritone on a succession of laments to hillbilly heartbreak that ooze class from every pore. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Their sound has nonetheless developed in intensity and sophistication.... Beautiful. [Mar 2015, p.83]

Classic pop songwriting with a twist is the order of the day, with watertight barbershop harmonies spooned onto layers of intricately arranged organ, while lyrics are unabashedly lovestruck. [Jun 2009, p.93]

A fierce, defiant record. [Apr 2003, p.108]

Warmth and easy elegance dominate, yet Korkejian's songs aren't without mood upsets. [Aug 2017, p.25]

A set of songs about romantic love, self-love and self-actualisation whose confident arrangements sacrifice none of the intimacy of Duffy's earlier work. [Sep 2025, p.32]

After tinkering with their lineup for this fourth album, Baltimore's Arbouretum have emerged heavier, moodier and better than ever. [Mar 2011, p.83]

They do it so well. Particularly impressive are the two lengthiest pieces. [Sep 2018, p.29]

Subtle, complex, and not always pacifying. [Mar 2023, p.32]

This albums marries Tweedy's mature emotional outlook to the workaday manners of Uncle Tupelo or the Woody Guthrue project, Mermaid Avenue. [Dec 2020, p.34]

From the electrifying first few minutes of Things Are Great, it's evident that Bridwell is revitalised. [Feb 2022, p.25]

Nothing US wrong reminds you of early Jackson Browne or Jimmy Webb, albeit with a tougher, rootsier swagger. And it's a worthy addition to that fine Californian bloodline. [Sep 2011, p.94]

Effectively embracing the entire history of the band's sound, the album sprawls over an hour, and has so many peaks and valleys it's practically topographical. [Apr 2005, p.98]

It's a thoughtful, profound and intensely beautiful late-blossoming career highlight. [Nov 2016, p.30]