Stills is dynamic vocally and instrumentally throughout, but the underutilised talent pool makes this document of what was incongruously dubbed The Memphis Horns Tour and odd curio that exemplifies the wigged-out extravagance of the era. [Jun 2023, p.49]

As ever, OCMS manage the deft balance of embracing tradition without lapsing into curatorial piousness or zany pastiche. [Nov 2023, p.31]

Cobb recorded the record at Macon's legendary Capricorn Sound with Georgian musicians, and it sounds it. [Oct 2023, p.27]

His voice might not be as powerful as it was – “This Ain’t Rock And Roll” sees him push it to the throaty limit –but it still has range, control and versatility, while his phrasing is consistently imaginative. [May 2024, p.30]

The real keeper here the brooding, seven-minute "The Old Homestead", as cryptic as anything he'd written since "the Last Trip To Tulsa". [Mar 2025, p.53]

Another satisfyingly robust effort. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

The most initially striking thing about Gift Of Screws is that, despite its brevity, it’s actually quite varied.

RTZ helpfully collects together a bunch of Chasny's rare early jams, proving that his eldritch guitar studies--at once intense, devotional and not a little creepy--have remained consistent for a decade now. [Mar 2009, p.103]

His pieces for banjo, like the revenant lyricism of the title track, are charming, moist eyed miniatures. [Jun 2013, p.74]

At the fluttering heart of this 10th album is the voice of Karen Peris. Her phrasing and tonal glides are as distinctive as those of Victoria Williams or Iris DeMent. [Aug 2018, p.28]

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]

If art is love, and love is art, then this hyper-stylised, characteristically idiosyncratic break-up album, in the end makes a perfect kind of sense. [Mar 2017, p.36]

In short, Legend does for trad-soul what Oasis did for The Beatles. [Dec 2006, p.116]

When he's not making party music, he stretches out and delivers deep fluid grooves. It's the naggingly simplistic melodies and dumb call-and-response choruses of tracks like 'U Want Some?' that spoil the fun. [Aug 2009, p.92]

Not every track gels, but the duo's easy chemistry never feels like gimmicky contrivance. [Jul 2014, p.81]

Recorded in Nashville with Ken Coomer producing and former Sturgill Simpson guitarist Laur Joamets adding minimal country flourishes, it goes some way to understanding what to do with Oren's voice, a low, conversational rumble which manages to disguise the clipped poetry of his lyrics as easy conversation. [Dec 2017, p.32]

At its blissed-out best, as on "Saw You Twice" and "Feel So Right," her new direction conjures the kind of streetwise reverie rarely heard since the days of AR Kane and One Dove. [Feb 2018, p.28]

Luckily, the music, a tapestry of harmonica, bass clarinets and bamboo flutes, is a florid, textured joy. [Jan 2011, p.86]

With Arcade Fire arranger Owen Pallett draping the songs in sympathetic strings and producer James Ford working overtime on drums, the result is a widescreen epic, full of high fevers and crystal-clear vocal performances.

Themes of mind control are sprinkled throughout the record, whose highlights include storm opener "Paradise," the semi-rapped title track, the funky "The Planet Of Straw Man" and closing song "Maria 63." [Oct 2019, p.39]

This simply sounds like junior Jay-Z. [Mar 2008, p.96]

The most peculiar aspect here is the sound of Oldham shaking off his customary moroseness in "Poems, Prayers and Promises" and "Milk Train" and positively radiating joie de vivre. [Mar 2013, p.75]

Grandfeathered is no great progression from last year's Everything Else Matters, but there is genre-defying richness and depth to [the] tunes. [Apr 2016, p.78]

Alone is filled with tremendous vocal performances. [Dec 2016, p.24]

14 beautifully broken-hearted tunes about just what the album title says. [Dec 2017, p.33]

The band's range has expanded impressively from their debut. .... Again is the confident fulfilment of the promise of Lush Life, from a band with the spirit and the songs to match their work ethic. [Dec 2025, p.22]

Not an easy listen, but an accomplished one. [Dec 2013, p.67]

Illum Sphere has been well-placed to see how dubstep fragmented into house, garage, minimalism and avant-garde gestures, and he reflects all of these in his debut LP. [Mar 2014, p.78]

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

Either annoyingly sweet or refereshingly well-adjusted, depending on your mood. [Oct 2002, p.107]

There are clever couplets and wry winks, but the melancholy is authentic. [Jan 2004, p.112]

A sublime suite of semi-ambient glitch-pop. [Dec 2001, p.106]

He's dispensed with the grittier elements and plumped for a straightforward US college rock backing, with dismal results. [Nov 2003, p.112]

From Every Sphere is the ultimate grower, which moves, in your mind, from quite nice to utterly compelling and addictive over a matter of days, or better, nights. [Album of the Month, March 2003, p.94]

The schizophrenic tone changes recall the experimentation of Deerhoof, yet the overall sound is as natural as The Flaming Lips. [Jan 2005, p.132]

The results shimmer like rivers at dusk. [Sep 2010, p.111]

The synergy between electronics and organic instrumentation, sometimes an arid and baffling blend in improv, makes this a thrilling listen. [Dec 2011, p.87]

Throughout, she pulls no punches, her razor-sharp lyrics demonstrating a singular wit and vulnerability. [Dec 2020, p.35]

Other Lives are clearly kindred spirits of The National, but there's not a single clunky or derivative note here. [Sep 2011, p.93]

This LP is their most uncompromising yet. [Dec 2013, p.74]

One of those albums that evokes a tangible mood; in this case, somewhere adjacent to the sun coming up after a rollercoaster of a night out. As such, it's frequently wonderful. [Apr 2026, p.34]

Born Like This finds the New York MC triumphing with content rather than form. [Jun 2009, p.85]

It's an assured and heartfelt work built carefully around McMorrow's falsetto vocals. [Oct 2016, p.35]

The Superchunk frontman journeys to the early '80s, where punk was dissolving, songs were becoming introspective and straightforward rumble of rock was being corrupted by synthesisers. He does it with precision. [Jun 2015, p.78]

Most crucial is a penchant for '60s chanson's soft-focus harmonies and production values. [Jul 2020, p.30]

On first listen, Cellophane Memories sounds reliably Lynchian in its hypnagogic moans, bluesy torch songs and voluptuous slow-motion noir-scapes. But it also pushes beyond these familiar tropes, notably by layering, intertwining and tape-reversing Zucht’s sultry mezzo-soprano vocals on deliciously weird stand-outs. [Sep 2024, p.29]

Here childrren's voices, crazed yelping, psych-surrealism and Jesus freakouts combine to create a phantasmagoria that is fun, disturbing, inspired and childlike all at the same time. [Jan 2008, p.90]

Throughout, his instrument is recorded so close, it practically lassos your ear with its strings. [May 2011, p.94]

A magisterial set. [Feb 2014, p.75]

It's strictly a mood piece, complete with daffy lyrics about mermaids, bicycles and "Gypsy Tears." [Aug 2014, p.81]

[Bardi Jóhannsson's] presence is overshadowed by that of Jean-Benoît Dunckel. [May 2016, p.79]

The likes of "Maliblue Dream Sequence" and "Tonal Bath For Bubbles" positively glow, layering shimmering keyboard washes, ringing chimes and raga-like melodies to create a sense of blissful stasis. [Jan 2018, p.23]

Arguably Pond's slickest effort so far--a gorgeously nuanced set of damaged synth-funk and curdled power ballads that should finally see off any Grateful Dead comparisons. [Apr 2019, p.20]

Raw, wild, beautiful and sometimes painfully human, the results are enough to make the world a little easier to beat. [Sep 2020, p.29]

“Flowers For The Unsung” teases out some quietly pretty melodies. However, the freeform avant approach of the album is not always an easy ride; the wildly experimental playing makes it a constantly surprising listen but often one that is very heavy, dense and a little overwhelming. [Review of the Year 2024, p.28]

It's a remarkably immersive and generous album, emotionally as well as musically. [Apr 2018, p.18]

Demonstrate[s] the multifaceted yet coherent place Scott has arrived at as a songwriter. [Mar 2020, p.37]

This isn't mainstream music in any sense of the world, but it's one of the first glass-rattling industrial-noise records you could imagine getting stuck in your head. [Aug 2014, p.81]

It's real allows the band to stretch their legs a bit, to jam ferociously without looking at the time, to slow things down, to try out a few new tricks. [Apr 2019, p.27]

There's plenty of uncommon beauty in these four hours of stalagmite electronica. [Sep 2016, p.69]

A welcome return. [Nov 2022, p.29]

Rufus reins in his extravagant tendencies for a subtly shaded, seductive album that radiates warmth and contentment. [May 2012, p.84]

Outside of fashion, and as exciting as The Bunnymen's second, Heaven Up Here. [Oct 2006, p.133]

Her voice is every bit as great as her songs. [Aug 2016, p.76]

A sweetly sprawling album. [Sep 2020, p.32]

The Repulsion Box ushers in a strikingly individual talent. [Jul 2005, p.89]

There's nothing insubstantial about this fabulous comeback. [May 2013, p.68]

The real ace up their sleeves is their exquisite harmonies. [Dec 2012, p.77]

A high-flying triumph. [Mar 2017, p.26]

There is a hint of Nashville in the production, a dash of steel guitar, but the main symptom is the clarity of the sound. It dares to be understated, pushing Real Estate's artful ambivalence into the light. [Feb 2024, p.35]

Each [track] is assembled like an audio drama, starting with static noises and amusing spoken-word fragments before frequent musical plot changes. [Aug 2015, p.77]

In lyric form and musical scale, it was epic.... The discs of "companion audio," often short on revelation, here reveal a moment of sheer anomaly. 10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod is whatever that title may mean, everything the LP is not: a tender piano piece. [Sep 2015, p.93]

Fairly conventional, but done with plenty of panache and alluring bad-girl swagger. [Sep 2016, p.69]

A cycle of slushy but well-written R&B ballads which pay tribute to his soul heroes. [Feb 2011, p.84]

Josh Pearson has gone there so we don't have to--we should be grateful he's returned to tell the tale. [Apr 2011, p.72]

Their The Fool traces out similar shapes as east coast cousins Effi Briest: dreamy, faintly pagan psychedelia, their tumbling vocal harmonies, undercut by inexorable, tidal bass. Their softly-softly approach does breed some earworms, though. [Dec 2010, p.104]

An album of rapid-fire drums, throbbing bass and colossal riffs that nod, well, headbang, back heavily to the glory days of thrash metal. [Oct 2019, p.29]

With Spoils, Alasdair Roberts has delivered his finest work to date. [May 2009, p.95]

A lush and ambitious piece of progressive pop music. [Sep 2017, p.38]

The Gris Gris are a challenging, intense proposition. [Jan 2006, p.113]

Ceremony feels appealingly gigantic. [Jul 2013, p.83]

Uncharacteristic moves brings an intriguing dimension to Berninger's inward-peering persona. [Jul 2025, p.26]

The melodic facility and phrasing are as elegant as we have come to expect. [Sep 2002, p.118]

The Youth sound rejuvenated. [Jul 2004, p.108]

Her simple, repeitious music is predominantly listless and washed out. [Jun 2003, p.102]

Spewing more words per inch than an IRS vault, the effect is like primal scream therapy set to incidental music. [Oct 2002, p.101]

Overall, it's rather slight and inevitably rough around the edges.... But there's still considerable entertainment to be had from Segall's urgent renditions of "Cat Black: and "Buick Mackane" while his take on "The Slider" and "20 Century Boy" are magnificent reboots. [Feb 2016, p.94]

Horse Feathers have found their way to a much richer, more confident sound, marrying Southern soul grooves and rough-hewn Americana to Paul Simon eloquence. [Jul 2018, p.28]

The set charms and thrills. [May 2025, p.29]

Besides the odd burst of surf guitar and filigree finger-picking, the basic musical parameters remain unchanged. [May 2011, p.85]

She's rarely sounded more alive. [Jun 2007, p.92]

Derek Miller's flashy axemanship and Alexis Krauss' swoon are compromised by sanitized production. [Mar 2012, p.98]

The best of Ride Me Back Home feels as much a companion to [2018 My Way] as to its predecessors in Nelson's trilogy of reckoning--there's a certain Sinatra-esque conspiratorial intimacy. [Aug 2019, p.37]

Deerhoof are close to knocking the Flaming Lips off their exalted perch. [Feb 2011, p.82]

Recall[s] the tin-pot vigour and gutsy emotional bite of... Guided By Voices. [Mar 2006, p.94]

In a recording career that stretches back more than four decades, Ry Cooder has never before made an album as immediate as Election Special.

Though their ongoing debt to the Krautrock canon remains evident, their stoner brew is now heavily spiced with influences drawn from Afrobeat, funk and space-rock. [Jan 2014, p.72]

Although less immediately catchy, Celebration Castle... soon warms up. [Jul 2005, p.94]