Alexander isn't far off great. [May 2011, p.86]

The second solo album still sounds like a wilful jukebox stocked on the disparate taste of someone attempting vinyl hari-kari. [Apr 2003, p.116]

Everything shines out brighter and louder than ever before as they return from a three-year break. [Sep 2014, p.64]

[El-P's] sinister, scarified industrial noise and beats bring a grimly thrilling dimension. [Jul 2006, p.102]

Arcade Fire have delivered a triumphant restatement of purpose that 2022 probably doesn’t deserve but is brightened by all the same.[Jun 2022, p.35]

Backed by a 15-piece band plus horn section, they delivered a spirited set of classic blues, R&B and gospel that concluded with “The Weight”, which Staples and Helm had first performed together at The Last Waltz in 1976 at the start of their 35-year friendship. [Jun 2022, p.33]

Smart and slick but vulnerable too, it's the point where Blonde On Blonde meets Voulez-Vous. [Apr 2020, p.33]

Tan remains aloof and introspective, still murmuring about lonely walks and cigarettes, but now there's a swagger and verve to his production. [Jan 2016, p.75]

The self-produced LP captures the energy and sentiment of a veteran bar band tearing it up in some Jersey Shore dive - meaning they're very much in their element on this timeless record. [Nov 2023, p.31]

Most of it so beautiful and effortless and easy, and no matter how much you want to look for ghoulish clues, it sounds like a great new record by someone spectacularly alive. [Jan 2012, p.83]

Upping the tempo-and libido of her Grammy-winning "Beautifully Human," here Scott lays the funky paramaters wide open. Jan 2008, p.100]

A set of one-take, fragile musings, predominantly for acoustic guitar and voice. [Mar 2019, p.23]

Throughout the album, it's a thrill to hear Rhys' mellifluous voice juxtaposed with the music's synthetic thrust.

An album that is as eccentric as it is atmospheric. [Feb 2012, p.90]

An electrifying collision of cosmic jazz and squalling psychedelic rock, all tumbling grooves and frenzied collective euphoria. [May 2019, p.34]

Adios expands on 2014's The No-Hit Wonder by incorporating heaps of soul, a pinch of sprightly folk and swampy blues. [May 2017, p.25]

Against all odds it works, distilling shots of Bowie, Billy Idol and inevitably, Pulp into a surprisingly potent cocktail of list and regret. [May 2025, p.35]

The Decemberists' most immediate and outgoing album. [Feb 2011, p.76]

The songs are suited by the rough and tumble, though, wearing the bruises with poise and pride. [May 2012, p.83]

These are beautiful songs, penned from midlife. [May 2014, p.82]

Matt Korvette is a misanthropic force of nature whether ticking off the negatives of cities from Boston to Rome ("Everywhere IS Bad") or addressing adult responsibility ("Helicopter Parent"). [Mar 2024, p.33]

Crucially, though, sardonically strong melodies underpin the, er, shit. [Jun 2011, p.94]

The dissonant guitars and whirring synths land on the more accessible side of avant-garde rock, veering into sia-esque pop on tracks like "Greener Stretch," though revelling in never quite resolving its melodies. [Nov 2017, p.36]

“Love Resurrection” exhibits a more redemptive, albeit Yazoo-like energy. Later work, too, is transformed, with “Filigree”, from 2013’s The Minutes, now a poignant piano ballad and B-side “Tongue Tied” (from 2002’s Hometime era) getting the electronic polish it deserves. [Nov 2024, p.40]

Loaded: Reloaded stands as a lavish sequel. [Nov 2015, p.92]

It's often breathtaking. [Mar 2018, p.22]

d'Ecco has become marvellously proficient at channelling the spirits of Bowie, Bolan and Jobriath into riff-forward dance-rock numbers, and In Standard Definition is irresistible trash for anyone so inclined. [May 2021, p.23]

You can't turn the clock back, of course, but in "Sad Days And Lonely Nights" you completely understand how the simple groove and ringing of the strings might act as a revivifying tonic. [Jun 2021, p.23]

A bold leap forwards. [Apr 2008, p.98]

Back On Time is restlessly inventive without being overwrought. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Blood, Looms, And Blooms finds the much-missed producer back on track after personal tragedy, peddling her strongest work to date. [Aug 2008, p.96]

The album endures as a bequest to the bogglement of the ages. [Mar 2015, p.95]

It captures the core of what Jones does. His compositions are always assured, and his playing is never overwrought. [Jul 2022, p.29]

For all his experimentalism, Adamson never once loses sight of the song. [Dec 2008, p.94]

His seventh sees few stylistic changes. [Apr 2011, p.78]

Remembering Now is the deeply heartening sound of an artist recognising himself. [Jul 2025, p.34]

Like the opener, ["Rolling Stone"] promises more than it delivers, but pretty much everything in between rings the bell. [Feb 2011, p.80]

Their second album pulls their punched-up, modernist synth pop into tighter focus while softening some of its sharper corners. [May 2012, p.83]

Their hedonistic sex-dance anthems go down a treat. [Apr 2003, p.103]

Taken on their own, they're slight. The cumulative intensity of the album, though, is something else altogether. [Sep 2025, p.37]

Retains the tweak and squidge of his experimental, post-techno wanderings, but it's meant for feet rather than head. [Sep 2004, p.98]

Though Chasny’s folkier inclinations generally prevail over Six Organs’ equal affection for psych explosions, it’s still thrilling to hear him set the controls for the big red sun in the final minutes of “Summer’s Last Rays”. [May 2024, p.41]

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]

An ample demonstration of their powers. [Apr 2023, p.25]

The result is a beautifully atmospheric travelogue on which their voices and guitars, plus occasional harmonica, are accompanied by nothing more than the sound of the rails humming and a whistle blowing. [Oct 2016, p.34]

Approached with an open mind, it becomes a compelling blend of ambience, minimalism, poetry and devotion. [Dec 2019, p.32]

No frontiers are breached, but Mascis's cracked vocals and melancholic melodic turns only get more affecting with age. [Dec 2018, p.28]

Debris is an astonishing debut, not just for the power of the songs, but for the journey that they trace. [Feb 2020, p.34]

Ultraviolet... demonstrates both purpose and renewed vigour. [Jul 2022, p.25]

“Mr Bojangles”, sung with cornpone syrup by Dylan, here earthily returns to the drunk-tank cell where Walker met its subject, a broken-down, alcoholic tap-dancer his song invests with heel-clicking magic. The tune defiantly climbs, strings waltz and Earle stores sentiment ’til the end.

If rock is indeed dead, then albums like thus are its extended intelligent coda, its sustained afterburn. [Jan 2012, p.82]

Purim blends new material with rebooted old favorites here, applying her lush liquid harmonies and dazzling six-octave vocal acrobatics to voluptuous bossa nova reveries. [May 2022, p.32]

Circular Sounds is a collection of snappy, mildly psychedelic, instantly memorable songs, delivered with an unfussy and becoming modesty.

The result is a fresh and invigoratingly modern take on black music and as far removed from a musical history lesson as you get. [Mar 2013, p.69]

The woozy, lovely songs on their third album now have an unexpected urgency. [Jun 2020, p.34]

Perhaps they should have been more democratic in the past, because this is a terrific record that plays to The Strokes; Strengths and also adds fresh colour to their palette. [Apr 2011, p.79]

The tunes, by now, are richly coloured--there are tasteful flurries of cello, violin and brass--but the centrepiece remains Michaelson's lazy baritone, which makes up in emotional richness what it lacks in energy. Happily, Dan hasn't cheered up. [Jun 2016, p.76]

It's confounding at first, but the more you strain to hear, the more Krell reels you in. [May 2011, p.88]

With Pop Makossa, the music's backbone is exposed--the complexity of the genre, bringing together multiple national musics alongside Congolese rumba, highlife, and later, funk and disco, leads to singularly compelling long-form grooves. [Aug 2017, p.51]

They have crafted an album that feels very much like the score for an imaginary film--an avant-garde French film, to be precise, an extended nocturne encompassing romance and its aftermath, the inexorable passage of time, and the preciousness of the fleeting moment. [Jun 2012, p.81]

A genuine quartet record. [Jan 2023, p.18]

Poppily uplifting, Us is an album with drowning depths. [Apr 2003, p.114]

Pedigo is often plugged in, his nimble fingerpicking surfing waves of sludge guitar. But there are moments of unlikely beauty too. [Nov 2025, p.31]

There is a dreamy, unconscious quality to the way Marshall inhabits a song. The covers sessions were big on spontaneity. [Feb 2022, p.22]

It feels as though the band have carved out a new sonic space for them to operate in while still retaining their own identity. [Sep 2024, p.32]

Enumclaw’s second album further confirms the impression of a group combining most of the virtues of The Replacements at their snottiest and Violent Femmes at their most confrontationally awkward. [Sep 2024, p.30]

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

The result is a revelation. “As Above So Below” and the joyous, sax-assisted “Love Weapon” positively glow, Clément’s gentle chanson like a golden cord that guides you through their labyrinthine twists and turns. [Dec 2024, p.35]

Everything on Little Oblivions will make you feel, and it's the catharsis we all need. [Mar 2021, p.26]

An astonishingly primal album. [Aug 2006, p.93]

Ballads Of Harry Houdini brandishes a sharper focus than many of its predecessors, with “Barfighter” and “Devil Tongue” bristling with tension and those signature guitar lines that move like wreaths of smoke. [Review of the Year 2024, p.34]

Translated From Love utterly captures Kelly Willis' oft-wayward talent. [Oct 2007, p.115]

It’s hard to resist the sensory impact of these songs. Chemtrails picks up the nostalgic thread of 2019’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, though here she’s mostly Midwest and more melodic. [Jun 2021, p.25]

It’s a welcome return, to say the least.

If the Plastic Beach-era material gets a bit bogged down in the concept, it's not without its moments. [Jan 2012, p.86]

Songhoy Blues take the fusion of West African desert rhythms and rock'n'roll a further step down the road trodden so thrillingly by Tinariwen. [Mar 2015, p.81]

[A] darkly compelling new album. [May 2017, p.24]

It's a perfect match with producer Richard Hawley, who here channels his love of epic reverb pop to more interesting ends than on his solo albums. [Dex 2008, p.86]

The album sound stultifying, but this is far from the case, thanks to a steady stream of surprises and a depth of detail that reveals itself incrementally.

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

This stellar set is anchored by existential bar-band thumper 'Just About Time' and 'homeland Refugees.' [May 2009, p.86]

Eleventh Dream Day may be getting on, but there are no signs of them growing stale. [Apr 2011, p.80]

The threesome manage to toe the very fine line between control and chaos, suppression and release. [Jan 2024, p.34]

Her husky drawl of a voice remains as precious and fragile as a chandelier, and it well suits these insidiously melodic, intimate songs. [Oct 2009, p.110]

It is the instrumentation that offers the complexity, bringing texture to this deceptively simple-sounding album. [Jun 2013, p.72]

The retro-futurist fun peaks with the bopping space-disco of the title track and the irresistible "Refractions (In The Rain)," while loungey sax and self-help guides to meditation smooth "On The Other Side..."'s journey to the stars. [Nov 2021, p.27]

Exuberant opener "Sushi And Coca-Cola" signals Philip Janeway's intention to loosen up, which he reiterates in the "I saw the light" refrain of "Ooo Wee". The band morphs into The Four Tops on "Nothing More Lonely". [Nov 2025, p.39]

Blood Bitch confirms her singular methodology is now at its most surgically precise and bold. In realising her uncontainable ambitions, one might even suggest it represents Hval's coming of age. [Oct 2016, p.38]

As with Daft Punk's Discovery and Playgrou's eponymous 2001 debut LP, Handcream For A Generation puts fun back on the agenda, offering a blurry picture of marathon socialising and the frazzled warmth of the morning after the night before. [Album of the Month, May 2002, p.88]

This anniversary reissue is less concerned about the album as it is and more curious about how it might have sounded. ... Arguably the most revealing aspect of this reissue is Scott Litt's bold remix of Monster. [Dec 2019, p.40]

Emily Haines is still secretly one of the most articulate, compelling performers in modern rock. [Feb 2006, p.70]

Reaffirming his faith in rock as transformative thrill, and adding atmospheric detours recalling late-period Weller and Bowie. [Jul 2023, p.27]

It moves like a Best Of, stacking the hits up top. [Jan 2018, p.40]

For all the record’s sonic invention, though, its Sangaré’s voice that commands attention, a rich, textured instrument that has only grown more nuanced and subtle with age. [May 2022, p.34]

He's been in this territory before, covering the Bunnyman's Crocodiles (2001), but never with such verve. [Dec 2015, p.79]

"Bad Apples'" Sonic Youth guitars provide a punkish response to policing following Sarah Everard's murder, while "Company Culture" breathlessly addresses workplace harassment. They boast a grim wit too. [Feb 2025, p.36]

Idealism is essentially a retread, but a superior retread with subtle character definition. [Jun 2007, p.97]