The Riptide glides by satisfyingly. [Sep 2011, p.83]

Out Of Times sounds slight, so pop-driven that it feels weightless; in '91, it sounded like a triumph, but really it was a herald of triumphs to come. There is, however, something extremely reassuring about the volatility of this album, its out-of-time-ness, which suggests that the music isn't simply confined to the past but thrives in the present. [Dec 2016, p.46]

It's only when they change pace on "Cheated Hearts" and the equally poignant "Dudley"... that Bones makes its mark as a worthy successor to Fever. [Apr 2006, p.98]

Without the scuffed overload of his teenage releases, it's obvious that these are newly minted. [May 2006, p.98]

It's complex, uncompromising stuff. [Apr 2007, p.106]

Mixes magic and sci-fi, beauty and horror. [Mar 2020, p.35]

The antic hippie of Banhart's early work is long gone on this depressed but not despairing record, warmed by the melancholy, spacy hush of his voice over drifting synths and the bass's heartbeat pulse. [Oct 2023, p.25]

It's fitting that this debut contains at least half a dozen exquiste songs that could work in any idiom. [Feb 2008, p.80]

It's never indulgent, always exciting. [Oct 2010, p.114]

What really distinguishes LXXXVIII is its sense of soul. [Review of the Year 2023, p.21]

Several tunes put the talents of Bradford-based Hladowski siblings Chris and Stephanie to stunning effect on vocals and amplified bouzouki respectively. [Apr 2011, p.75]

Their true talent lies in creating songs replete with dreamy, late summer melancholy, shrouded in dusky reverb and topped off with Justin Young's oddly emotive quaver.[Apr 2011, p.84]

Still only 26, Marten's writing is a strong scaffold for an experienced live studio band, whose every flourish (the irresistible keyboard arpeggio on the breezy "Crown" is a particular delight) add depth to her words. [Aug 2025, p.33]

Purring, pulsing and bathed in neon, this might actually be their essential release. [Aug 2018, p.35]

Exactly a year since the release of his dreamy debut Causers Of This, South Carolina's Chaz Bundick is back with a very different and impressively cultured second album. [Mar 2011, p.105]

Despite several terrific individual tracks, this record ultimately derives its considerable strength from a renewed appreciation of the power of collective identity. [Jul 2011, p.90]

“Day 2000 Awake”’s warmth, inspired by parenthood, is perfectly poised too, and if “Poor Symmetry” seats her at a piano in Joni Mitchell mood, the pulsing “My Hands In The Water” recalls Kate Bush’s mature, sumptuous pop. [Jul 2024, p.31]

Marianne's back on her feet theses days, fully recovered, and while reminding us that love is pain, doesn't entirely neglect the funny bone. [Oct 2014, p.70]

Haines... is shaping up as the most impressive writer of the current wave of Canadian indie. [Jul 2007, p.103]

On this sixth album, there's a deft combination of denseness and groove that is never easy to master, but also a freestyle improvisational quality. [Feb 2019, p.29]

The expanded set illustrates the inventiveness of their playing and the original template of their sound was a strong one--these were louder protest songs for a louder time. [Feb 2013, p.94]

It's a risky move [a change in sound] that has nonetheless reaped rewards. [Feb 2015, p.77]

A compelling new chapter in their long history. [Jun 2020, p.39]

The familiar tropes of nomadic wrangler life are present--trusty steed, blood-red sunsets--but, refreshingly, the masculine cliches are not. Instead, the country-rocker concentrates on intimacy, tenderness and ambiguity. [May 2019, p.33]

The result is quietly dizzying. [Oct 2022, p.25]

Soulfire is a portrait of the E Street Band guitarist as a rock'n'roll renaissance man. [Jul 2017, p.32]

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

A surprisingly moving reflection of the big issues - family, death and companionship - as he processes his feelings through caustic noise and deep-flanged techno. [Ju 2025, p.31]

A typically perverse decision to substitute a US remix for the standard version of album closer "Tomorrow" does little to deaden the impact of an album that owned its moment every bit as much as The Queen Is Dead. [Mar 2014, p.94]

A remarkable return. [Oct 2003, p.130]

While he's got enough pure country in him to for convincing Merle Haggard-style balladry, he's best on rabble-rousers like the rightly pissed populism of "Stomp And Holler" and the de facto title song, a doomed soldier's outrageous, funny surreal travelogue grafted onto a grungy mutation of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." [Mar 2011, p.85]

They remain funny, fly and fit for the future. [May 2004, p.104]

A record that is quietly powerful in its delicate yet emotional execution. [May 2024, p.39]

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

They've managed to retain everything that was oddly beguiling about them in the first place while boosting their mass appeal with a production that is all West Coast sleek and radio-friendly lustrous. [Feb 2005, p.80]

The quartet peel back the years on corrosive songs that strike a masterly balance between melody and uppity guitar noise. [Oct 2017, p.26]

He may have worked alone, but in doing so he has created an entire sonic world, a welcoming garden for all to tread. [Mar 2022, p.37]

Drums Between The Bells captures Eno in versatile and intricate mode. [Aug 2011, p.82]

It’s always going to be tough to unequivocally celebrate your hometown when the everyday reality is poverty and disenfranchisement. But as Sadam says, Imarhan’s music aims to bring those issues to wider attention while simultaneously representing the richness of their culture – a feat that Aboogi pulls off with passion, skill and no little style. [Feb 2022, p.30]

The irresistible “It’s Mine Now” cheats tragedy by taking ownership; “Siren Song” finds its folkloric sea legs after flailing; “Grand Final” grabs the moment with jubilant pop panache. [Oct 2024, p.40]

This stripped-down set from the Palace/Bonnie songbook is a reminder of what a great singer Oldham has become. [Jan 2019, p.23]

With his band's thrilling fourth album, Baldi successfully develops his own take on the merger of powerpop and hardcore brawn. [Feb 2017, p.24]

One of the year's most uplifting records so far. [May 2007, p.99]

Ferry's systematic methodology reveals the flaws as well as the qualities of the chosen material. [Apr 2007, p.105]

He thrives in intimate surroundings, furnishing these songs with discreet and sometimes adventurous embellishments - drum machine, say - that enhance his message, rather than detract from it. [Apr 2020, p.26]

As a back-to-the-roots album which at the same time packs a vital contemporary relevance, Mira does everything you could ask and more. [Mar 2019, p.28]

Stream-of-consciousness ranting has helped Sleaford Mods develop songwriting which is doubtful, while retaining its intensity. [Apr 2017, p.31]

A refreshing badass entry to a genre whose purveyors tend to be overly mild-mannered. [Jan 2014, p.79]

Felt's abundance of different textures and its carefully composed atmosphere of unease ensure this is more than another recombination of Krautrock and Warp Record Reference points. [Apr 2018, p.35]

The sound, constructed with The very best's Johan Karlberg, is spare, clean and spry, a gratifyingly novel fit for Taylor as she dissects Slow Club's split and raw romantic wounds--a heady emotional brew of pain, thwarted lust and giddy pride. [May 2019, p.32]

It is not hard to make fun of this band, even if you’re broadly sympathetic to their beliefs. But the atmosphere they create in their music is so heady, so insidious, so rooted in their environment and their Utopian ideals, that the whole package becomes compelling.

Her brush with the big boys only appears to have strengthen her resolve on a collection of fierce country rockers. [Apr 2011, p.75]

Perrett is back, in decent shape, and fully engaged with the world. [Aug 2017, p.18]

This release overcompensates handsomely, delivering 48 sharp, gorgeous-sounding missives that document ensemble brilliance and Petty’s chiming, hook-happy American-everykid songwriting.

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

Lollipop is their 13th Studio album, and one of their best. [Jun 2011, p.91]

Murray Street contains some of the best music Sonic Youth have recorded since the landmark Daydream Nation in 1988. [Jul 2002, p.122]

Another excellent set of verbose tunes delivered with the vocal swagger of Morrissey or Alex Kapranos, against a shimmering curtain of prime pop jangle. [Mar 2023, p.28]

Ol' Frank hasn't had this much twisted fun since 1994's Teenager Of The Year. [Oct 2003, p.111]

While it's very much a rock album... it kicks in a very 'now' way (this ain't Tin Machine). [Oct 2003, p.112]

The Boy Named if is a thunderous, furious reconnection with the more splenetic chapters of his catalogue - though if there's a difference between this and Blood 7 chocolate or This Year's Model, it's that Costello here sounds like he's thoroughly enjoying himself. [Mar 2022, p.26]

His debut illustrates a more prosaic act of creation, in which fastidious study is transformed into compelling new music. [Aug 2011, p.92]

Revitalising his finest work with unlikely guests performing unlikely roles. [Jan 2020, p.31]

Four vignettes offer reminders of Brian Eno's early ambient outings. ... But the slower evolution of three longer pieces, which nonetheless maintain this aesthetic, make them more potent. [Mar 2021, p.37]

An exceptional, disarming collection of mutant electronic music. It’s a dense, disorienting 40 minutes of hyper-punctual edits, very tonally bright and often overwhelming; a sensorial bombardment. [Jun 2022, p.29]

A reflection on memory and transience amid which his deadpan drawl is frequently draped in incongruous but effective orchestral splendour, while Finn’s character sketches are as deft as ever. [Jun 2022, p.26]

There are many sterling moments to escape from Young's vault--but none seem quite as unguarded as the best ones here. [Jan 2014, p.84]

Boldest of all is the grimy techno pulse and bass thrum of "Lake Disappointment", which pulls off a stylistic switch while maintaining the winningly smoky atmosphere of the album as a whole. [Mar 2025, p.31]

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

Pollard fleshes out his vaguely familiar melodies with inventive, unpredictably expansive arrangements. [July 2008, p.108]

Too True is a bold album. [Feb 2014, p.73]

Trent and Hearst have always been keen storytellers, digging deep into characters at loose ends, laying them out in the lyrics and then finding new depths and new sympathies in the performances. [May 2019, p.28]

Drum machines and brass add a little range to the prettily strummed ethereal balladry. [Apr 2015, p.77]

A rich, impassioned set of songs. [Sep 2021, p.24]

The sense of naive wonder evident recalls the bewitching power of Sigur Ros. [Apr 2011, p.75]

It is intimate, sometimes almost conversational, and words are sighed, whispered, confided. Oddly, the more she pulls back, the more epic it sounds. [Jun 2016, p.68]

It may not be fuelled by as many immediate hooks and gnarly grooves as The Overload, but it's a bold progression both musically and lyrically. [Mar 2024, p.24]

"Slow Rise (To The Middle)" reels from the crush of diminished expectations amid instrumental interaction as heady as Oliver Wood's lyrical musings. [Sep 2025, p.39]

What prevents this all from becoming a mish-mash of textures is Hoop's single-minded passion, which lends a self-assured cohesion to her diversity.

The decades since Fogerty first recorded these tracks have perhaps cost him some of the high top and low bottom ends of that distinctive half-drawl-half-snarl with which a California kid reinvented himself as some Southern swamp monster, but across “Legacy” he sounds generally in vigorous form, verging in parts on the downright feral, and he is surely entitled to what is as much a vindication as a celebration. [Sep 2025, p.30]

Destroyed is up there with his career peaks. [Jun 2011, p.91]

Brothers is really all about The Black Keys; swaggering journey from sub-White Stripes curio to one of the best rock'n'roll bands on the planet. [Jun 2010, p.81]

There are moments where this French-Algerian collective truly get deep into "acid house". ... Elsewhere, three decades of Western club culture are put through the prism of North African music. ... Best of all is the galloping afro-house of "Habaytak", featuring the haunting voice of Ghizlane Melih. [Mar 2023, p.23]

It wouldn't be wildly inappropriate to identify American Life as an early 21st-century update of Love's Forever Changes, effecting as it does a similarly eerie ambivalence with its fusion of mind-altering sonics and mellow acoustics. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Atmospheric, heart-rendering and infused with myriad old souls, Imaginary Man is a richly dramatic, poignant singer-songwriter opus. [Sep 2015, p.71]

This is a lovely addition to an organic, forest-themed catalogue that works on the macro and micro levels. [Mar 2022, p.29]

Some of her finest vocals, full of wit and humour and immense loneliness. [Jan 2026, p.34]

Rats On Rafts are shooting for something bold on their third LP. They land their shot too. [Mar 2021, p.35]

He too, has become more of what he always was. And somehow he's achieved that by paring his music down t its rawest essence. [Jul 2023, p.26]

Amazingly, it somehow avoids the drivel of The Darkness by sheer gleeful abandon. [Jun 2006, p.98]

Mov[es] through electronica, folk, folktronica, big beat, psychedelia and Krautrock, all guided by Kid Millions' astounding drumming. [Sep 2006, p.91]

They nevertheless sound irresistibly fresh and zesty. [Feb 2017, p.23]

There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni's early albums.... Unfortunately, Joni's Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus.

They demonstrate a unique approach, building unsteady sonic sculptures from bizarre beatboxing and sped-up samples and bringing them to life with rapturous soul testifying. [Apr 2018, p.37]

Not a decline, but a deliberate descent. [Apr 2016, p.92]

With Lisa Milberg sounding like a cross between Nico, Bjork and Yoko Ono, WYWH is one deep, dark, sexy reinvention. [Dec 2010, p.87]

With Dave Cobb's production reinforcing their boisterous dynamism, Volunteer surveys the sacrifices Old Crow make for their music, the camaraderie of the bandmates and heroes at the expense of the stability of family and home. [May 2018, p.29]

Fishing For Fishies encapsulates many of their musical charms, foregrounds their deeper lyrical concerns and also shows they don't need to rely on gimmicks to get their point across. [Jun 2019, p.25]