From the creeping “Let That Sink In” to growling “Warpaint”, Sage Motel is super stuff: check in at your earliest convenience. [Jun 2022, p.31]

Loving You is a poignant last statement, rich with nuance and personality. [Sep 2023, p.34]

"The Outer Region Of The Universe" is an appealing ambient workout, while "Co-Pilot" is an ever-mutating bossa nova. [May 2025, p.87]

Marked by lovely, unobtrusive backing by various Lambchop alumni, the overriding impression is of Wagner and Tidwell serving the songs rather than playing out lingering Conway & Loretta Fetish. [Nov 2010, p.92]

Though Abyss' quieter moments are plenty chilling,m Wolfe's brand of anguish best suceeds when she's out to do serious damage. [Sep 2015, p.83]

It's all certainly a lot more complex, if a little less immediate, than anything they've done before. [May 2007, p.104]

Ultimately dissolves into a beautifully arranged and slightly sickly morass of curdled pop tropes, out of which spurt a bodacious riff or glossy rave arpeggio. Oddly no-one does this better. [Dec 2015, p.76]

An austere beauty. [Aug 2011, p.81]

Just when you thought Bjork had plumbed and conquered every depth and summit of her range, Dirty Projectors have shepherded her to newer pastures. [Dec 2011, p.81]

While Django Django have spent much of the last decade assembling art-pop collages from eclectic grab-bags of styles, this fourth studio set seems to pull off the trick more seamlessly than ever. [Mar 2021, p.29]

It's a head-turning mix, a sort of pop-art take on Southern gothic, and highly infectious. [Jul 2016, p.73]

Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at.

Ultimately, it's an album rooted in the constant collision of rock and pop. [Aug 2020, p.27]

Deer Creek Canyon is dappled with sad-slow shuffles and lovely ruminations on escape, the roll of the seasons and her roots in Colorado. [Jan 2013, p.73]

Tell The Devil is full of Biblical allusion and attendant questions of sin and atonement, the 70-year-old's conspiratorial drawl framed by low-down grooves and flinty slide-blues. [Nov 2017, p.30]

Could It Be Different? is a cathartic celebration of newfound self-assurance. [Feb 2018, p.32]

There are a couple of duds, but songwriters Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, a kind of grungy hipster take on Sweden's pop factory, still have a tremendous hit rate. [Apr 2014, p.74]

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

Unhurried passages of string melodies dominate, but often underpinned by unsettling notes of cello and bursts of shortwave radio as he explores the myth of Orpheus' escape from the underworld. [Oct 2016, p.32]

Taken on its own terms, though, Nouns is a righteous success: delightfully dazed, good-times punk rock for a new generation of Californian dreamers.

The results are extraordinary. [May 2013, p.76]

The quintet's most vibrant album in two decades. [Apr 2025, p.35]

When you live in Florida, it is summertime all the time, which might be why this Palm Beach quartet have developed such a seasonal vibe on their sun-spotted indie-pop debut. [Aug 2010, p.96]

She's made a hugely satisfying album of slinky electronic soul. [Oct 2013, p.71]

Natalie Merchant has made an album of elemental beauty... she's never sounded better. [Jan 2002, p.140]

The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999's Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. [May 2003, p.108]

Sincere and beautiful. [Nov 2003, p.116]

The Darkness are genuinely in thrall to the power of stadium rock in all its bombastic, unreconstructed glory. [Sep 2003, p.97]

The lackadaisical nostalgia for childhood beach holidays is certainly evocative--as indeed, is the way Real Estate recall New Jersey Antecedents The Feelies and Yo La Tengo, plus any number of old Flying Nun bands. [Feb 2010, p.96]

The effortlessly adroit songwriting on this, his second album shows why [in-the-know Kiwis have long talked up the talents of James Milne]. [Jan 2010, p.118]

Cat's Eyes has nice moment's has nice moments, but it makes you realize how much we'll miss Broadcast, who explored similar terrain with more aplomb. [May 2011, p.86]

It remains a somewhat foreboding listen, but one compelling in the intensity of its vision. [Aug 2011, p.97]

He's let down by the lyrics, which seem, to have been assembled from a collection of fridge magnet soul cliches. [May 2014, p.78]

[A] set of intense and committed songs. [Jul 2017, p.25]

There are some moments her that are mearly shoegaze revisited. But more often than not, Cantu-Ledesma's background in more avant-garde practices helps shake things up. [Aug 2017, p.26]

The ex-pat Brit displays an affecting, fluid picking style that at times sounds comfortingly English. [Aug 2017, p.28]

Less, often, is more. The home demos of "sans" is powerfully raw. [Jan 2018, p.39]

There are plenty of albums by singer-songwriters documenting damaged relationships, but few have mapped out the emotional catography with such candour and insight as Van Etten. ... The ethereal "You Didn't Really Do That" floats on layers of seductive harmony, while church-like organ lends the bittersweet "I'm Giving Up On You" a sepulchral feel. [Jan 2018, p.43 - Album score: 8/Extras score: 6]

An understated debut of mature sophistication. [Feb 2019, p.27]

It's a(nother) set of hushed, impressionistic tracks tapping the British folk tradition, digital psychedelia, Talk Talk and Japanese death poems. [Aug 2019, p.36]

Unfussy yet poetic. [Aug 2019, p.31]

It’s the pair’s 25-year relationship that most radiantly shines through here, adding a relaxed and comfortable tone, as though you’ve walked in on their private back porch session. [May 2021, p.23]

There's plenty here to startle, to catch you looking. ... It's consummate.[Nov 2021, p.32]

Although his dabblings in bluegrass pastiche are less convincing elsewhere, it’s all shot through with characteristic, likeable idiosyncrasy. [Oct 2022, p.36]

A fairly ravishing seven-song set of instrumental jazz that reveals a softer, more considered side to the multi-instrumentalist. [Mar 2023, p.36]

It's a rather ragtag collection. .... You do, however, really get a sense of what a playful, unique and ahead of his time composer Garson was. [Sep 2023, p.42]

Demonstrates a continued forte for hooky songs that are just as likely to draw from '80s inspirations like The Smiths and Aztec Camera as from Joyce Manor's rowdier predecessors on Epitaph. [Feb 2026, p.35]

"Bodies" and "Sludge" bring some metal chops to the show, but experimentalism comes in the shape of "Giraffe", based around a beat by David Sitek. [Feb 2026, p.31]

Hen's Teeth is where Beam truly leans into the possibilities of dropping simple songs into the laps of intuitive musicians and delighting in what emerges. [Mar 2026, p.27]

The Big To-Do, it's pleasing to report, rocks as hard and loud as anything they've previously done. [Apr 2010, p.78]

The synth reveries outstay their welcome, but the sense is of a great talent whose early solo work vented a lifetime's pain and outrage now experimenting and recalibrating. [Nov 2018, p.30]

Together they achieve a level of fervent interplay that's exhilarating to hear. [Nov 2012, p.81]

It's hard to find fault with this uplifting debut. [Feb 2005, p.78]

Harris is as proud, painful, and plaintive as ever here, dripping with life and dealing in dire certainties. But she never gets heavy about it, and in places sounds lighter than air.

DNA plus inspiration can be a potent combination. [Apr 2014, p.69]

His debut LP married experimental electronics and alt.pop. Now, he takes a giant step closer to the latter. [May 2015, p.73]

This is a satisfying strange listen. [Jul 2016, p.75]

The fuzz-furred riffs of “Edin” and “Sicarus” are infectiously sharp, backed up by satisfyingly heavy rhythmic ballast, and Corgan’s voice, often underrated, is stronger since the strangulated edges loosened with age. [Review of the Year 2024, p.35]

Steve Albini is admirably restrained here, preserving the raw power of Niblett's guitar, allowing it to throb and hum beneath--and sometimes above--her bell-like voice. [Apr 2010, p.95]

While the warm melodicism of "Dime Amiga" and the soulful "Ando Con Miedo" respectively suggest Gruff Rhys and Panda Bear as kindred spirits, folk rhythms define the exuberant centrepeiece, "La Lucia". [Aug 2025, p.39]

It's the first time Grandaddy have in any way rooted themselves in a specific genre, and it proves strikingly successful; Lytle's more experimental electronica pushing against any notion of nostalgia or country pastiche. [Feb 2024, p.24]

The most heart-wrenching selection are a ravaged take on Nirvana's "Stay Away" in which Bradley intuitively taps into Kurt Cobain's roiling anguish, a tonsil-shredding full-band rendition of "Victim Of Love" and the instrumental "Black Velvet," which Brenneck had earmarked for a Bradley vocal he was too weak to sing. [Dec 2018, p.23]

Failure looks a long way off. [Apr 2012, p.75]

If there is a more beautiful and ambitious song this year than "White Foxes"... well, there just isn't. [Nov 2012, p.83]

Hampson has a discerning ear for when and how to place sounds to best offset each other. [Aug 2012, p.73]

All their songs unfurl slowly, gracefully... and some might say a little laboriously. Luckily, singer Jamie Lee has a voice that can just about carry his lofty lyrical themes. [Sep 2013, p.92]

This is a wild and dirty, devotional trip that peaks with the shrieking, delay-warped minutes that constitute closer "E Shra." [Jul 2015, p.84]

The result is a playful and moving return to themes like the battle of the sexes, and love lost in a blur of alcohol. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Bunker Funk runs along more heavily rhythmic lines, without sacrificing a single joule of energy. [May 2017, p.26]

Gnod explore a cacophonous avant-garde rock music with elements of Swans, Spacemen 3 and country folk The Fall swirling in its DNA. [May 2017, p.30]

It's an unalloyed treat. [Sep 2017, p.38]

It's gorgeously detailed stuff, though often most compelling when those details end up fogged-out and hazy. [Aug 2017, p.28]

There's a welcome freshness to Sequence; it may be smartly, deftly constructed, but it feels free and open. [Jan 2019, p.23]

If the three-CD anthology is intended to make a case for the allure of the band's post-Tattoo You recordings, which comprise 18 of the 36 studio selections, it succeeds for the most part. ... The chief selling point, though, is the third disc, which contains 10 performances from recent tours, four of them featuring guest stars, and here, the results are decidedly mixed. [Jun 2019, p.49]

Songs like "of Lucky Hand" and "Deathwish Blue" see him shed the more chameleonic nature of last year's Full Circle Nightmare and more fully establish his own raggedly glorious sensibility. [Aug 2019, p.29]

The trio are faithful to their ancient source material, while adding spacious arrangements, harmony choruses and subtle embellishments that amplify the songs' emotional punch. [Feb 2020, p.25]

Karen's spectral, childlike voice sounds like it's been beamed in from a haunted 19th-century log cabin. [Feb 2020, p.29]

A remarkable act of spiritual resilience. [Jun 2021, p.23]

Lahey excels at crafting chewy pieces of bubblegum-punk whose exuberance and smarts are often matched by their emotional potency. [Jun 2023, p.32]

“MC Mambo” by the mixed-heritage German-Ghanaian collective Pepper, Onion, Ginger Salt is aborderline novelty quasirap number that oozes wonky DIY charm, like much of this uneven but absorbing collection. [Jun 2024, p.50]

Their trademarked scuffed jangle sparkles on the likes of “Pine For You”, and such downbeat cuts as “Rifled Through” demonstrate that none of their facility for the lachrymose epic has ebbed since “Taillights Fade”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

As ever, Lewis's lyrics are the standout. [Mar 2025, p.35]

Jump Into Life feels like a vital reminder of how the expression of joy can serve as both an act of resistance and a demonstration of resilience. [Jul 2025, p.33]

Captivatingly widescreen stuff. [May 2025, p.27]

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

A convincing demonstration of the group's rejuvenation and reorganisation after the departure of longtime frontman Duke Amayo. [Jan 2026, p.27]

Unfurls a desolate systems music that simultaneously feels a love letter to the timbres and patters of analogue synthesisers, and a paean to the post-industrial north. [Feb 2026, p.33]

Plaintive harmonies pull on heartstrings, furthering the pair's reputation as modern Americana's Everly Brothers. [Jun 2026, p.33]

These are nuclear-grade pop hits that don't sacrifice on adult emotional complexity: a rare power. [Jul 2016, p.81]

Sparse instrumentation, with Ritter's deftly picked acoustic to the fore, keeps the focus on the lyrics, the post-mortem honesty of which amuse, astonish and occasionally unsettle. [Apr 2013, p.77]

It's all charmingly rendered and, as in the wigout 'Pigeonhold,' teeming with joyous abandon a la the Arcade Fire. [Sep 2008, p.98]

A perfect introduction to a musician currently in full stride. [Oct 2012, p.71]

Riley has mellowed with age, so the politicking is shot through with humour. [Jun 2006, p.94]

Icy washes and brittle synth clanks complement the pair's wintery vocals. [Nov 2011, p.107]

Amidon's spry banjo and sky-blue voice give this music a gentle centre, light on ego or affection. [Dec 2020, p.27]

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

Nathaniel Rateliff fully integrates his parallel identities as exuberant frontman, introspective folkie and perpetuator of rock's sacred texts on South Of Here. [Aug 2024, p.39]

That a curdled, unifying groove undulates throughout this perverse collection is testament to Dear's abundant skills. [Sep 2010, p.91]