Hyperspace never feels over calculated or overdressed. Instead, it's the work of an artist who sounds fully re-engaged. [Jan 2020, p.20]

[King] brings innate soulfulness to his performances on El Dorado. Each song has a distinct stylistic antecedent. [Feb 2020, p.29]

Like much of the rest of this fine record, [final song, "It's Summertime Again"] sounds like a forgotten hit beamed in from some beatific version of the past. [Nov 2013, p.77]

The production has opened up enormously. [Feb 2017, p.32]

Her sixth, co-produced by Jonathan Wilson, executes no radical stylistic swerve but neither are its 10 songs of a single type. Rather, they’re a balancing of country – here are echoes of Tammy, Emmylou and Lee Hazlewood – and torch song (kd lang, Roy Orbison), with the odd flourish of cocktail-lounge melancholy (a la Badalamenti) and classic, MGM-style orchestrations. [Jul 2022, p.28]

Band Leader David Moore's piano lines are more definable, tinkling through the serene textures in a way that recalls Hans-Joachim Roedelius. [Nov 2014, p.71]

A family of songs that are strikingly evocative, but never overwrought. [Mar 2019, p.25]

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.

It shares Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago's" exquisite sense of existing in its own hermetically sealed world. [Aug 2009, p.87]

Throughout, Crowell’s versatile, impassioned voice is in fine fettle, a confident mix of goofiness and longing, anticipation and excitement, sadness and sentimentality, as if he’s just now entering a new prime. He might well be.

The joy is in how much of it there is to listen to, with constant change in tempo, instrument and texture that manage to maintain an overall coherence while keeping everybody from getting bored. [May 2014, p.79]

Their voices just sound so good together. ... Maybe that's why this album ultimately sounds so generous and compassionate despite the many tensions it voices. [Jul 2019, p.35]

A sparkling set recalling the mid-century tipping point of folk revivalism into rock. [Apr 2024, p.38]

Thematically and musically, this is classic Hawkwind –epic space-rock with science-fiction lyrics –resulting in a double album crammed with songs like “The Tracker” or “Traveller Of Time And Space” that could have been written at any time since 1970 and therefore fit seamlessly into one of rock’s great canons. [May 2024, p.34]

Auerbach's stoic, close-mic'd vocals and gnarled tendrils of distorted guitar bring a devastating immediacy to an album that contemplates the death of love and, by extension, mortality itself, seeking closure. [Mar 2023, p.25]

"Illusion Pt II" is a deceptively buoyant album opener. ... Album highlight "Sniveller" kicks off with Dry Cleaning-esque new wave swagger before unexpected backing vocals from JG's Lan McArdle deliver a heart-rush. [Feb 2023, p.36]

Co-producer Alex Goose injects some hip-hop chink and spaghetti-western vistas into the arrangements, goosing the languid rhythms, and the hooky “Time Will Tell” momentarily quells the heartache. But the hopeful notes recede on the closing barroom ballad “The Fool”, as Frazer runs out of words, leaving melancholy piano notes to signal the encroaching dusk. [Jul 2024, p.32]

[An] eloquent set of songs about absence and change. [Apr 2005, p.108]

For all the dark corners of her ever-changing self she avidly explores, the intrinsic brightness and irrepressible energies in her songwriting continue to enrich the experience of accompanying her. [Sep 2024, p.31]

Andrew Dragazis' fifth album is masterfully serene. [Nov 2016, p.25]

It seems relocating from Vienna to L.A., getting married and becoming a father has nudged the British-born producer-performer closer t conventional R&B electro-pop on his second album, with mostly positive results. [Feb 2017, p.38]

For the most part, this Stockholm outfit's sun-streaked, clever-white-boy pop-funk catches a season as expusitely as Air did circa Moon Safari, or as Hot Chip have more recently. [Aug 2006, p.104]

Folk bends under their queries, but doesn't break. [Jan 2025, p.31]

The six tracks are minimalist to the point of vanishing, crafted from gently shimmering electric guitars and murmuring keyboards, while Silberman's soft, high voice, polished like fine silver, delivers a series of quietly emotive haikus. [Mar 2017, p.39]

This incarnation of Modern Nature has delivered a slim but rich volume of musical poetry, that demands a certain commitment to appreciate its quiet fervour. [Nov 2023, p.18]

Angels Of Destruction sounds like one almighty road trip, barrelling along to piano. blustery guitars and the odd honk of E Street sax. [Feb 2008, p.86]

Polished but never bland, and comes dotted with a wealth of special guests. .... But a big part of what makes Tonky compelling is how he stitches his tales into a wider fabric of African-American experience. [Mar 2025, p.36]

The results are fascinating. [Feb 2015, p.78]

The covers aren't impersonations. [Apr 2019, p.28]

Beyoncé's seventh solo album is a flawlessly structured feast. [Oct 2022, p.25]

White has not only fashioned a terrific album from less than ideal circumstances, but one that finally feels like a worthy successor to No Such Place. [Mar 2012, p.96]

By expanding their repertoire, taking a few risks, and nailing those harmonies, they’ve made what feels like the first great British album of 2009.

{I Still Do] offers a typical Clapton mix of covers and original material. The former are rather more impressive than the latter. [Jun 2016, p.72]

Screen Violence is a punchy and determined effort, full of big hooks ands awash with glittering synth textures. [Sep 2021, p.27]

This is music that looks death square in the face and screams back at it, announcing its life. [May 2014, p.69]

All told, it's an awful a lot to listen to, but the scope is majestic, the ambition outrageous and the music magnificent. [Jun 2015, p.72]

The all-together family vibe permeates this unabashedly life-embracing album. [Sep 2009, p.83]

The mood is heavy throughout, but only the closing, exhausted "Katla" outstays its welcome. [Jun 2013, p.81]

The Harrow and the Harvest is kin to not dissimilar works by Uncle Earl, Crooked Still, Kate Fagan, even Steve Earle's rumbustious bluegrass outing with Del McCoury--and blessed by the insuperable advantage of Welch's voice. [Jul 2011, p.74]

Taylor maintains the intimacy of Yorkston's sound, highlighting the weary warmth of his voice, and adding instrumental shading, while KT Tunstall and The Pictish Trail bring harmonic depth. [Sep 2014, p.81]

Keith provides Out Of Range with its sense of momentum, moving things forward where Sharp will circle his themes like a vulture. ... Gun Outfit can sing from the heart as well as from the brain. [Dec 2017, p.31]

A softly glowing and unerstated album. [May 2006, p.98]

It's an album, like most teenagers, that is sometimes awkward and exhausting, but also joyous, un-jaded, and bursting at the seams with promise. [Apr 2006, p.114]

It's dumb, downhome fun, and deliberately gizmo-free. [Jul 2006, p.86]

A song cycle that straddles inescapable anxiety and persistent optimism. [Feb 2018, p.24]

Their 10th studio album might be their best of the new century: 11 songs capturing the reckless dynamic that made these Texans alt.country heroes in the 10th century. [Mar 2017, p.37]

Laughing in the face of mortality is a preoccupation, from the honky-tonk close "When I Get To Heaven" and "God Only Knows", but Prine's playful wit is best captured in "Egg & Daughter Nite, London Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)." [May 2018, p.33]

All round, a party atmosphere prevails--and undoubtedly a good time is had by all.

Their debut is an urgent affair full of scratchy, slyly melodic and occasionally anthemic post-punk rock. [Apr 2011, p.83]

It's a dynamic soundbed for her arresting singing. [May 2015, p.77]

Arctic Monkeys were never comfortable as the ‘voice of a generation’. Humbug subtly shrugs off that unwanted mantle, and in the same deft movement, promises a much more interesting future.

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

It's all inimitably Sparks. [Jul 2025, p.37]

While this Dublin quintet's latest stops short of total reinvention, the changes are marked - John Congleton brings the darkly spangled, alt.rock power, and textured synths do a lot of the melodic lifting. [Feb 2023, p.32]

His tidiest folk-pop tunes to date. ... Irresistible. [Oct 2020, p.27]

The best parts of An American Treasure are the snapshots of a less self-straitened Petty. [Nov 2018, p.48]

The new versions are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the old versions, they're just more so, if that makes sense.

A cappella shanty "Poor Old Horse" is a working class hymn with real bite, while muted electronica gives "As I Roved Out" a thoroughly modern sheen. [Feb 2018, p.35]

Peter Silberman's half-whispered vocal melodies are more accessible than ever. [Apr 2021, p.25]

Lonesome sounds, but comfortably familiar. [Feb 2025, p.34]

Highlights are the playfully bobbing rhythms of "Geruhsam" and epic closer "Aus Weiter Ferne," a masterful interplay of harmonic sweetness and menacing drone. [May 2020, p.32]

The four players are able to design the tracks in architectural detail, each part locking into the rest with unerring precission, and this tautness keeps the album from sagging through its most challenging stretch. [Oct 2008, p.78]

Her candid, self-interrogating lyrics and glassy, soulful voice take centrestage. [Oct 2022, p.29]

It is an album in the original sense of the word, offering a coherent display of Auerbach’s influences.

M Ward and Garth Hudson, members of Giant Sand, Los Lobos and Calexico are all present and correct on Middle Cyclone lending their distinctive instrumental hands--but this ultimately Case’s tour de force, and hers alone.

It's a feast of contextual songwriting and sizzling guitar. [Apr 2012, p.83]

In 39 tracks over two CDs, the punk-fuelled folk-rock group that had ruled the ’80s along with U2 magically reappears.

Musically, it predictably alternates between relentless, driving guitars and agonisingly slow dirges, but Bazan's gift lies in lyrics. [Oct 2002, p.112]

"Timber" is almost all Tyler, "Spider Ballad" a lowkey club throbber, all of it only made possible by this unexpected partnership. [Nov 2025, p.33]

What unifies these wildly disparate modes [political satirist. self-loathing lothario, celebrity stalker, Cali yacht-rocker, and Nilsson-like romantic crooner] is Baxter's musical sophistication, which puts him closer to the witty elegance of 10cc than the alt.country label he's been slapped with. [Sep 2018, p.26]

On this generous and kaleidoscopic soul album, Harding holds nothing back. [Dec 2021, p.30]

Superior, though, is Heavy Rocks, the group's second release to go by that name. [Jul 2011, p.79]

Hawk's followup hints at a talent that will outlive hipster buzz, drawing not just from hazy '80s nostalgia, but from the artists who populated his own youth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Following on from a 2017 album of standards, this chiefly replaces covers with original compositions and adds a meaningful, Slint-like loitering on chord to his repertoire of shattered blues licks. [Nov 2019, p.30]

Such a heady, high-octane swirl that, perversely enough, you often forget you're listening to a Madonna record. [Dec 2005, p.102]

It's a warmer interpretation of Fay's celebration of and concern for the state of the world than on 2015's icier Who IS The Sender? [Feb 2020, p.22]

A fantastic hybrid of Spacemen 3 and Deep South voodoo. [Oct 2006, p.99]

The shape, tone and settings of songs from "Gitarhum" onward shift their author's stance and point her somewhere else, perhaps yet to be determined. That they do so without throwing her off balance is another mark of Evergreen In Your Mind's achievement. [May 2026, p.28]

Whether you choose to hold the eco themes in mind or simply revel in its textures, Requiem is a gripping listen, a powerful late work from a veteran who has weathered more storms than most. [May 2026, p.24]

It maintains throughout that signatures guileless fealty to soulful rock'n'roll, laced as usual with the wry melancholy that distinguishes Fallon's lyrics. [Mar 2018, p.

Moments like "Apparent Lushness" are where An Act OF Love becomes a headphones record par excellence. [Mar 2017, p.26]

LC! balance their more precious tendencies-winsome vocals, chiming xylophone--with a sharp wit and ideas that arrive in energetic tumbles. [Mar 2008, p.88]

Tremendous stuff. [Mar 2014, p.83]

Several tracks here resemble conceptual art installations. .... But others movie in a poppier direction. .... Best of all might be "The Men Who Dance In Stags Heads". .... With help from harmonised backing vocals, woodwind countermelodies and some dreamy electronic flourishes, it somehow manages to turn this dark tale of the rural poor's response to the Industrial Revolution into something sunny, joyous and beatific. [Jun 2025, p.38]

On Sunset demonstrates that complacency remains his greatest fear and most powerful muse. [Jul 2020, p.24]

His primary source is a pipe organ in an Icelandic church, which he processes, filters, deconsecrates, muddles and distorts, and therefore liberates in the course of this album, enabling its latent potential to escape from its wooden room and form a burgeoning cloudscape. [Apr 2011, p.83]

An involving double album. [Aug 2020, p.28]

Constancy is provided by the band's sleek economy and the piercing, implacable vocals of Sian Alice Ahern herself. [Sep 2009, p.92]

There are crafted, uplifting songs, but also haunting, ambient undercurrents hinting at everything from Art Of Noise to The xx to Fever Ray. [May 2011, p.103]

The commitment that Vedder brings to all this material, from the rowdiest thrashing to the schmaltziest ballad makes this feel like a unified and ultimately convincing project. [Oct 2009, p.90]

It isn't a coincidence that this, Hot Chip's most focused album, is also their finest--more ruthless editing in future will doubtless yield even more spectacular results.

Alongside the general pixelated bombast, it also represents Power's most melodic work. [Sep 2019, p.23]

The many versions of that song [Ballad Of A Thin Man] sprinkled throughout the discs illustrate the fluctuations of interpretation, form and commitment that were a feature of Dylan’s first tour in eight years, unremarked at the time but now on full view. [Nov 2024, p.48]

A Blessing... is perhaps a more personal and introspective record than usual. But truly there's still a lot to marvel at. [Apr 2006, p.112]

A delight. [Mar 2021, p.25]

It's hugely impressive and would certainly suit a fully dramatised staging. [Mar 2020, p.30]

The record itself isn’t angry, fizzing instead with a creative fire. There’s a looseness and joy to songs like “Make It Right” and “Homewrecker”, rooted in the extended jam sessions in which Garbus and bassist Nate Brenner birthed the record, the bold lyrics an extension of that passion. [May 2021, p.32]

A knottily intricate yet oddly inviting album. [Jan 2024, p.30]