Six Organs may be a stylistic cul de sac for Chasny but, on this evidence, who needs a way out? [Apr 2011, p.92]

A fast-paced, multi-faceted, furiously entertaining record that reveal hidden emotional depth. [May 2015, p.79]

A discordant, but strangely beautiful, experiment from the outer fringes of pop. [May 2011, p.93]

Red Barked Tree is the most successful product to date of this examination. [Feb 2011, p.86]

These are impenetrable walls of off-kilter guitars, skronking saxophones and icy synths, topped off with Richard Butler's mournful rasp. ... For the most part, Made Of Rain cleaves closest to the sense thrum of Talk Talk Talk. [Jun 2020, p.37]

[A] moody, edgy album. [Mar 2002, p.104]

A rich, evocative portrait. ... The album's raw honesty is also highly tuneful. [Mar 2023, p.34]

An enduring tenacity runs through Works For Tomorrow, one of the best and feistiest entries in their catalogue. [Sep 2015, p.73]

The opening, “Sky Hooks” is beguiling, too, while “Hooked Paw” amps up the dub and woozy quotients to unique effect. [Sep 2024, p.39]

The songs on Ruins are sharply focused and blessedly heavy. [Dec 2016, p.36]

Technology's presence just goes to show how untamable Amidon's unself-conscious, creaky-rope voice is. [Nov 2014, p.71]

An air of cheerful scepticism prevails over the 10 tracks, all bathed in the kind of dry, warm production favoured by early-'70s radio rock. [Apr 2006, p.100]

Both their most straightforward album and their most elusive. [Mar 2018, p.34]

A thrilling, surprisingly melodic dialogue. [Mar 2013, p.77]

Mr. M is bold in arts and surprisingly experimental. [Mar 2012, p.76]

Most compelling are the variety of vocals--some spoken, some hollered, some sung in spinetingling harmonies. [Sep 2008, p.98]

It is guitarist Drew St Ivany who controls the ebb and flow, his use of scintillating, strobe-like textures and groaning chasms of feedback recalling Skullflower, or Comets On fire at their most intense. [Apr 2011, p.91]

It’s a ravishing production, and with a companion disc promised next year, feels like a fresh start for a brilliant career.

Deeply melodic, brilliantly played, and blessed with a spirit that feels generous and boundless. [Oct 2020, p.26]

Sisterworld is an impressive record which lurches menacingly between euphoria and tranquility. [Mar 2010, p.89]

He's louder and stranger than ever, growling his way through 11 songs that mix stomping glam rackets with lumbering. [Sep 2017, p.26]

The 12 artfully crafted songs here suggest Blitzen Trapper should now be judged in the elevated company of Wilco, Brendan Benson and The Raconteurs. [Jul 2010, p.113]

Evening is appropriately darker and, for the first half, more ambient, with sublime, subtle vocals. Radiant stuff. [Sep 2015, p.73]

They conjure a sequence of absorbing soundtracks for unmade dramas, of which the pick is “Love Changes Everything V”, an intense dialogue between violin and guitar, suggesting My Bloody Valentine reinventing themselves as a folk group. [Jul 2024, p.32]

"Things You Learn The Hard Way" is a droll litany of wry advice evocative of Jason Isbell's "Outfit", and "Hometown Here" and "Let 'Em Burn" display a commendable facility for the deftly sketched potted soap opera. [Feb 2022, p.34]

The Alvins' follow-up [to Common Ground] is highly expansive in a focused way. [Oct 2015, p.69]

This underrated band progressively unleash waves of measured ferocity over he turbine drumming of Brandon Young toward payoffs that are staggering in their intensity. [Oct 2014, p.71]

It's a document of poignant intimacy and imagination, characterised by simple melodies, devastatingly heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the odd burst of euphoric pop. [Dec 2016, p.38]

MoB have... not lost a cent of their turbulent, controlled-chaos energy. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Comes across like a hi-fi version of Tom Waits at his gnarliest. [Jun 2006, p.92]

Mailman offers an insider's glimpse into his beginnings--a spirited 1970s club set and a priceless disc of stripped-down, gloss-free demos. [Jan 2012, p.96]

Unsettling to the last, it’s Blanche all over.

Presley has a wry, modern take on country music. [Mar 2015, p.81]

Nude with Boots follows their last album, 2006's "(A) Senile Animal," in being one of the most straightforward, epically rawk albums of the Melvins' career. [Aug 2008, p.99]

Strange To Explain might be about dreaming and escape but it's also about their limitations, our need for hoke and the importance of other people. [Jun 2020, p.31]

This is another unhurried set of expertly played FM gold. [May 2019, p.27]

The material is designed to showcase the principals' piano playing, and skilled engineer Mike Piersante has set up the mic'ing and mix by putting Russell's piano on one side of the stereo spectrum, Elton's on the other, making the record a particular kick under headphones. [Nov 2010, p.98]

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

Murdering Oscar is all about connecting with the past, as Hood cuts loose with old and new bandmates, crafting tender paeans to his new wife and daughter, dusting down childhood memories against a backdrop of roughhouse blues, swamp-country and slow Southern soul.

Saint Etienne's most far-reaching album since Fox Base Alpha. [Nov 2002, p.124]

Hopefully, no one other than Eno and Wolfe will use the term "nong" (non-song) to describe this bridge between the Summer's ambient Lateral and song-based Luminal. Nonetheless, these 11 songs occupy that space successfully, whether Wolfe's voice is filling out Eno's eerie soundscapes as a textural but poetic component ("Little Boy") or mere embellishment (the slow-motion "Flower Women"), or conjuring Julee Cruise ("Part Of Us"). [Dec 2025, p.30]

Mostly, this is spry, melodic, and totally charming. [Aug 2012, p.79]

Long In The Tooth, his first full set of secular studio originals since 2005's The Real Deal, has it share [of gems]. [Sep 2014, p.70]

Beneath their limpid surfaces, Mark "E" Everett's songs are volatile dollops of emotional explosive. [Mar 2006, p.98]

Bugg's references are strictly retro, but his debut boasts a pleasing absence of stodge. [Nov 2012, p.71]

Aged 91, Nelson brings gravitas to any lyric, the more world-weary or wistful the better, and these covers fit him like a glove. [Dec 2024, p.36]

Her strident approach to country means she excels at rockabilly-flavoured tunes. [Dec 2013, p.71]

They're bummed to learn that adulthood breeds more angst than adolescence, which inspires a sharp-edged '70s hard rock, with songs celebrating kink and demanding equal pay and full-body autonomy on "Big Trouble". [Sep 2023, p.23]

Damned Devotion is her fifth album, and feels like a kind of reckoning, a taking stock, and a work of renewed focus. If 2014's The Classic was a high-concept exercise in soul pastiche, here she returns to her core territory, forensically charting the human heart, tracking the course of midlife love, lust and loss. [Mar 2018, p.20]

Palme finds Arnalds staking a strong claim to territory as uniquely precious as Dory Previn's. [Oct 2014, p.67]

The result: Meiburg's finest album to date. [Feb 2016, p.80]

The Black Keys are on the cusp of greatness--Attack and Release, produced by Danger Mouse, takes them one step closer, but not quite over the edge.

While Pearlies often invites comparisons with music by Lush’s many dream-pop descendants – “The Presence” and “Tonight Is Mine” being just two songs here that Beach House will wish they’d crafted – Anderson continually finds intriguing ways of deviating from those templates. In so doing, she’s able to nudge the guitar pedals aside and demonstrate that her music still has other places to go.

Increasingly straight, maybe, but Wooden Wand still possess a magic touch. [Mar 2013, p.79]

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

The result is an album that bursts with life and invention. [Apr 2011, p.89]

Cacophonous, chaitic, and a lot of fun. [Apr 2010, p.83]

Flitting from sublime to the ridiculous, from the personal to the universal, and from a time before people to a time long after them, it's a mess, but a glorious one all the same. [Nov 2020, p.30]

As a whole, the record is a persuasive parcel of slick Americana with just enough redneck grit in the oyster. [Mar 2023, p.26]

Fans of Steve Reich - an admirer of Perich's 2009 1-Bit Symphony, whose release required listeners to plug headphones into a CD case - will revel in his latest, as will those who've tired of "New Classical's" limited palette. [Jan 2021, p.31]

The band sounds re-energised by an idea of the city, the marketplace, pop ambition. [May 2005, p.102]

The band's creativity, imagination and power remain undimmed. [Jun 2023, p.29]

They're both incredibly deft players, executing taut riffs with obvious charisma. [May 2023, p.35]

Even without the backstory or an understanding of how difficult this record was to make, …Frankenstein is a skilful portrait of what it means to feel disconnected from the joy and urgency of life.

Shelley deliver[s] his best songs in years. [Apr 2006, p.96]

While the lyrics largely deal in anguish and dissolution, Bachmann's settings switch between exhilarating noise ("Cold Waves" featuring Superchunk's Mac McCaughan), grand synth-pop ("Hospital") and quasi-orchestral soul ballad (the sweeping "(I'm Your) Bodhisattva"). [Mar 2026, p.29]

Righteous and blissful. [Apr 2026, p.33]

It's as powerful as it is invigorating. [Nov 2013, p.67]

In this case, sustained synth notes and chimes entwine to create a meditative environment that, while no longer as revolutionary as Discreet Music once seemed, is just as serene. [Feb 2017, p.26]

If the production lacks the stark immediacy of their finest work, this is still music filled with hooks, abrasion and their signature swagger. Cynthia Sley is in particularly fine voice. [Sep 2023, p.24]

Reflective of our era of political polarisation, the likes of “Contempt For You” can make for bruising listening experiences. Yet there’s still plenty of solace to be found in performances by Iceland’s Elin Ey and the ever-remarkable Anohni. [Jul 2022, p.26]

Happyness gets more interesting when they dig deeper into rock history. [May 2017, p.32]

This album subtly expands her metrical, folksy songcraft to the point where songs like 'Heard It All Before' and 'Fireheads' are just one spoonfed breakbeat from being charttoppers. [Oct 2008, p.113]

Fabulous stuff all round. [Apr 2012, p.79]

Sure, at times, they sound like Gene, but on tracks like "Do You Really Wanna Know" they are nigh-on perfect: Jangly and breathless, with traces of The Smiths but a softer edge. [Apr 2011, p.89]

High art, low humour and deluxe filth: a hugely seductive combination. [Jun 2009, p.95]

It may be their best yet. [May 2015, p.71]

Having grabbed attention for their collaboration with Jenny Lewis on "Rabbit Fur Coat," then their own "Fire Songs," this takes a bold shift in direction. [Mar 2010, p.104]

13 toe-tapping and soul-stirring treatises against hate, inequality and violence. [Apr 2023, p.26]

That old adage about the quiet ones hold true for Elanor, whose debut capitalizes on I'm Going Away's fleeting ease. [Aug 2011, p.87]

Cuttin' Grass Vol 1 is Simpson's warmest, most life-affirming record by a country mile. [Jan 2021, p.26]

Thurston Moore’s ninth solo album might begin with a weirdly angular nursery rhyme set to sparse plucked strings but he’s soon bending his guitar into all sorts of freaky shapes on an album that stands among his best solo works. [Oct 2024, p.37]

It's dumber, filthier, sturdier and packed with more euphemisms than Viz's Profanisaurus. [Aug 2006, p.104]

The sound of a group entering their prime, Silent Shout--strange, bold and tuneful--is textbook Euro-pop. [Apr 2006, p.110]

A comeback album that feels vital rather than forced. [Apr 2021, p.25]

Much of it... sounds like the spiritual cousin of Neil Young's After The Gold Rush and Harvest, sharing the same back-to-nature rusticity. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Woof has to be one of the weirdest debut albums of the year, a record that throws everything at the wall in the conviction that some of it will stick and so what if it doesn’t. [Nov 2024, p.34]

An open, compassionate record with a fierce spirit. [Sep 2023, p.33]

This is not pastiche or revival - this is jazz created in a distinctly London accent; the sounds you hear in cars and minicabs, the fractured beats you hear pouring out of teenagers' phones - refracted through the prism of jazz. [Mar 2020, p.28]

Cassadaga is fulsome, epic, and swirling, by far Oberst's most sophisticated, seamless effort. [May 2007, p.89]

The chronological sequencing, kicking off with the delightfully sloppy "Gardening At night" from the "Chronic Town" EP, charts a course from indie college jangle to pensive AOR, and tracks fro their latter days on the IRS label sparkle with eloquence and grandeur. [Jan 2012, p.96]

With Bergsman's dourly dreamy voice and wistful songcraft, it's recognisably indiepop, but sent delightfully pie-eyed on Blur Hawaiians. [Dec 2012, p.77]

With strong ensemble backing Escovedo alternates gentle, reflective lullabies with incendiary Mott-styled rockers, to marvellous effect. [Aug 2008, p.93]

Catchy as hell. [Oct 2008, p.90]

She addresses transformation, loss, connection and apartness in literate, finely turned pop songs centred on her sweet, pellucid voice and filled out with dreamy loops and strings. [May 2016, p.73]

Space and darkness area constant among these eight tight songs, but there’s also plenty of punch. [Oct 2022, p.36]

Evam Caminiti and Jon Porras' third album lumbers slow as Earth's stoner rock, but throws its arms open, in a slow-burning ritual, to the infinite, star-flecked space above the Californian wilderness. [Dec 2001, p.85]

Nile's title track offers up celebration and togetherness, with disease and idiocracy pushed into the back mirror, and guitars and organs to the fore.[Sep 2021, p.31]