By combining focused layers and distinctive styles, The Coathangers have crafted their best record yet. [Apr 2019, p.26]

A stripped-down production adds intimacy, though Hersh's voice isn't quite as strong as it once was. [Dec 2013, p.74]

Path Of Wellness proves Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein haven’t forgotten the empowering, life-giving qualities of rock’n’roll fun. Sleater-Kinney are turning their reunion years into a reaffirmation of the importance of support and solidarity on a private, personal level. [Aug 2021, p.30]

She relies on relatively conservative house music tropes sometimes, but the hooks never fail to cut through. [Jun 2023, p.29]

This is an album filled with earworms, with hooklines and stray phrases that burrow deep into your consciousness. [Sep 2016, p.72]

Sometimes it's grating - "The Ocean" could be a Belinda Carlisle album track - but the supremely catchy likes of first single "Hell" deserves daytime radio ubiquity. [Jan 2010, p. 131]

His debut is characterised by frantically over-driven beats, but is as soulful as it is dance-insistent. [Jul 2015, p.80]

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

Nothing Important offers more of idiosyncratic "ritual community music," as he calls it. [Feb 2015, p.75]

The overall vibe is naturally more intimate than before. [Aug 2015, p.81]

Diligent cherry-picking makes this collection a decent illustration of their left-field charm. [Dec 2023, p.44]

Mostly the mood is dark. Kinda seductive, too. [Jun 2006, p.120]

Mostly, though, it reasserts Bishop's status as wide-ranging guitar master, gently amused by any such assumptions of grandeur. [Mar 2015, p.71]

Intense. [Feb 2016, p.78]

Jump For Joy is a panoramic, magical reverie on the sometimes hard gift of a life in American music. [Sep 2023, p.36]

New guitarist Matthew Simms has refreshed Wire's sound. [Apr 2013, p.79]

A rich, nuanced, fantastically enjoyable album that understands great music is often the product of a historical continuum rather than radical innovation, and which saves its best trick 'til last. [Aug 2015, p.82]

Working with a major label has brought a new sheen to the Ladytronic wall of sound. [Oct 2005, p.94]

A Mad & Faithful Telling is an impeccably titled album [Apr 2008, p.88]

When it works, it doses oso brillantly--but the preponderance of bog standard indie rock elsewhere is sadly less engaging. [May 2009, p.89]

Stark and poetic, with an echo of danger. [Feb 2012, p.105]

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

The charming meld of discordance and melody is displayed throughout, with Rønnenfelt shrieking and hissing above tar-thick bass, piano stabs and guitar. [Dec 2016, p.32]

While this second album adds a layer or two of extra accompaniment, the emotional core remains a formidably magnetic force. [Mar 2022, p.26]

As a listener, it’s equally hard not to feel the love. With Hot Chip, it now feels like the right time to commit.

They stew in the rich absurdity of it all, and offer a collection that rings of the band’s tendency toward Southern-gothic neo-noir, but with frequent punctuations of light. [July 2022, p.32]

Her light, airy palette, punctuated by arresting stabs and scattershot rhythm, is informed by vintage Squarepusher and Plain - but Eastman's pioneering work as a black, gay musician operating in challenging times clearly resonates with James. [Oct 2022, p.32]

Seems an innocuous exercise in regurgitation rather than innovation. [Dec 2002, p.131]

It’s earthy and it’s eloquent--no doubt Willie will approve.

Overall, Sirens… may be a bit of a stylistic scattershot, but the Muscle Shoals foundation and Isbell’s razor-sharp songwriting mark it as an auspicious debut.

Vermont find unexpected warmth in the almost mathematical precision of these restrained but seductive instrumentals. [Apr 2014, p.83]

Her fourth sees her exploring darker, richer tones, drawing herself up to mythic height as she conjures a fiery, fantastical rebirth. [Nov 2020, p.29]

Feels like one of his least fussed-over releases. [Apr 2021, p.37]

Welfare Jazz ratchets up the pizzazz. [Feb 2021, p.37]

Clearly, appealing quirks can easily become irksome affectations. [Apr 2007, p.94]

A near-perfect balance of industrial threat, hardcore power and black comedy. [Oct 2006, p.134]

If there is pure genius in this last set of remasters, it is in how Jimmy Page has contrived to turn Coda from a desultory selection of offcuts into an essential purchase. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Ghost Forests is a sensual record where the spaces in between the sounds assume a corporeality all their own. [Dec 2018, p.26]

Anxiety's blend of heaviness and gloss is unexpectedly affecting. [Apr 2013, p.67]

There are rich pickings here. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Molina here opts for a more expansive spproach with reedy harmonies, horns, soulful guitars and gospel piano. [Aug 2009, p.100]

Tangk is more about diverse, swooning sonic details that support troubled singer Joe Talbot's redemption. [Feb 2024, p.28]

It works, mainly: though one or two songs could benefit from the old viciousness, these are seductive confections. [Apr 2004, p.104]

Very much string-drenched business as usual: sometimes lovely, sometimes perilously close to self-parody. [Jul 2003, p.129]

He hasn't sounded this corrosive since Copperhead Road. [Nov 2002, p.115]

Antenna compresses the formula further, fetching up crisp, anthemic crunch-rock several notches above the inexplicably popular likes of Bush or Papa Roach. [May 2003, p.96]

The best record he's made since 1996's Casanova, it's one of those rare instances when an artist retraces their steps and successfully locates what made them interesting in the first place. [May 2004, p.102]

If you thought they didn't make 'em like this anymore, here's the exception that proves the rule. [Feb 2002, p.112]

There's a Jekyll and Hyde quality to Wolf Alice's debut that gently reels you in with its gossamer folk pop and lilting indie-pop before it going for the jugular with savage bursts of psycho-grunge guitars. [Jul 2015, p.84]

Musgraves' superpower is her ability to convey complex emotions via concise phrasing, which means quieter songs such as "Good Wife" and "If This Was A Movie" hit especially hard. [Nov 2021, p.30]

This first solo release in 10 years finds him in majestic form. [Nov 2016, p.40]

A taut, lean 30-minute manifesto of a record which contains some of their most tuneful, groove-oriented songs yet. [Mar 2020, p.32]

Time's Arrow does venture a little outside their comfort zone - the lush "California" is a Cocteau Twins fever dream - but they're at their best closer to home on the career high of "Misery Remember Me", a glittering palace of gothic Italo disco. [Feb 2023, p.29]

[A] charming debut. [Oct 2015, p.71]

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

The LPs collected here lack the punch of his previous efforts. But they do have their charms. ... Most revealing are two live LPs, from '83 and '87, that show an artist reconsidering his old hits--and his old selves--for new fans. [Nov 2018, p.45]

Despite the band’s unabashed borrowing, it’s hard to deny a song as huge as “Sweet”; the record’s obvious smarts and dynamic wallop carry it. [Jul 2024, p.31]

These are dark and heavy songs for dark and heavy times. [Jan 2026, p.31]

New Magnetic Wonder can make a claim to be the definitive AIS album. [Apr 2007, p.92]

Recording in an African village with a laptop and local musicians lends a more organic feel than previous releases. [May 2015, 84]

With the genre-hopping feel of a high-concept mixtape, Bless This Mess calls on a wide cast of collaborators. [Apr 2023, p.38]

Old Fears is entirely worth your concentration. [Apr 2014, p.81]

Old friendships contribute to the good vibes, and an atmosphere that's at once rambunctious and exploratory. [Apr 2015, p.76]

Still one of America's most unique and affecting songwriters. [Dec 2011, p.90]

The results are weirdly and pleasingly dislocated. [Aug 2021, p.29]

While there's a groovy sweetness at work in "Clutch Pearlers", and "Bully" is anything but - a woozy, neon-pastel comforter with a head-nodding pulse. [Jun 2023, p.25]

A dozen remarkable tracks. [Feb 2006, p.78]

More of a safe record than a spectacular one. [May 2018, p.35]

The Stand Ins stands out on its own merits, a trove of dazzlingly wittty songcraft. [Nov 2008, p.112]

With its smoothing of rough edges, it's likely this record will split opinion, but there's much to admire for those--like its creator--willing to burrow. [May 2004, p.107]

The music here remains identifiably and intrinsically Wire. [Jun 2016, p.82]

Her vulnerability is more affecting on the wistful break-up anthem "Losing", before "Younger & Dumber" closes the set with a pedal steel-laced paean to the woman she used to be. [Jul 2023, p.24]

"Young" offers brief flashes of a youthful Cure, but the fuzzy "Choke," about cocaine abuse, is underpinned by a malignant industrial beat, and the dominant mood remains that of an emaciated, homicidal Gary Numan. [Mar 2018, p.32]

Offering a combination of improv and discipline supplemented by anxious guitars and a vocal that often sounded like the recitation of a manifesto. [Jun 2019, p.27]

All in all, it's a match made in heaven. [Jul 2015, p.75]

there's a bit too much scene-setting and not enough storyline, but overall this is some rollicking debut. [May 2008, p.113]

Concrete Desert is a seductive set-piece. [Jun 2017, p.24]

Channel Pressure asks some complex questions about pop's obsession with nostalgia, although the likes of "Joey Rogers" and "The Voices"--with hints of Daft Punk's "Digital Love"--also functions as irresistible pop tunes on a more basic level. [Jul 2011, p.82]

Much more than just a hobbyist fancy, 2 is, in fact, far better than it has any right to be. [Aug 2016, p.82]

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

Bliss, bliss, bliss--get Loved up and float away. [May 2012, p.77]

The confidence and unforced vigour of Face The Truth suggest Malkmus is happier on the margins of alt.rock than in its spotlight. [Jun 2005, p.112]

A career milestone. [Mar 2006, p.91]

Hit Reset is a deliciously rowdy work in which Hanna flames negligent friends, cyber-bullies and idiotic lovers. [Aug 2016, p.77]

A mouth-watering feast of beats and grooves... as welcome as anything he's done. [Apr 2005, p.100]

Still shambles too freely but features stellar moments. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Not all of it works...But, as a radical overhaul of a career, it's a brave, brilliant and highly personal statement. [Mar 2010, p.83]

Waits is still taking more risks than most US 'singer-songwriters' of his generation, and parts of this album rock righteously. It's just that some of Waits' musical modes... have been done before, and much better. By him. [Nov 2004, p.110]

It's a compelling psychological study set to lovely tunes. [Jul 2003, p.114]

As background listening, this sounds like high-class Enya, but listen harder and dense textures and nuances lie beneath the surface. [Feb 2004, p.78]

Lost In Revelry's trump cards are its sudden, exhilarating turns of weather, its restless--sometimes uncomfortable--soul-searching, and its knack of throwing up instantly-hummable pocket classics. [Dec 2002, p.131]

Strange, though, that we yearned for Pollard to treat his songs properly when he tossed them off as lo-fi sketches, but now they arrive as crafted, completed stadium anthems, that faint whiff of underachievement remains. [Sep 2003, p.102]

As a mature statement by someone who's done it all, but still retains a desire to create something new and fresh, Mighty Rearranger is a record of considerable depth, admirable adventure and surprising passion. [May 2005, p.110]

The trio has acquired the confidence to cherry-pick tropes from dark-rock's heritage and mould them into thier own glum grooves. [Mar 2006, p.100]

In many ways [it] seems in thrall to its predecessor. As a study in System Of A Down's multifarious strengths and occasional weaknesses, however, it's indispensable. [Jan 2006, p.110]

Just as the record threatens to flatten into artifice, they bust out their best Clash and Cheap Trick moves on 'Middle Management,' gleefully shattering the porcelain into smithereens. [Jan 2008, p.82]

'Little Ones' is insanely jaunty, like somthing out of "Sesame Street" and one of the most enjoyable songs of the year. The rest of Receivers is equally buoyant. [Dec 20008, p.108]