Gamel is an ecstatic return. [Aug 2014, p.76]

The whole thing feels like a dusky gambol through America's musical past. [Sep 2014, p.81]

The album is reminiscent of Kraftwerk in its combination of chilly electronics and haunting, hooky melodies but has a wonkiness unique to Haines. [Nov 2015, p.76]

A seriously strong debut. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Images abound of betrayal, compromise, opportunities selfishly squandered. But a kind of redemptive enlightenment emerges. [Aug 2017, p.34]

Sometimes this nomadic approach produces some sublime pop, but more often the results are erratic--odd even--but never dull. [May 2018, p.33]

Much darker successor to How To Die In The North. Utterly compelling it is too. [Sep 2018, p.26]

Trent and Hearst have always been keen storytellers, digging deep into characters at loose ends, laying them out in the lyrics and then finding new depths and new sympathies in the performances. [May 2019, p.28]

An album filled with soft, tender indie-folk. [Nov 2020, p.29]

This might have worked better as a single LP, but to ensure the collection doesn’t run out of steam, there are two new tracks: the bouncy “Curious” and retro rocker “Billy Goodbye”. [Apr 2022, p.44]

Prochet crafts another bewitching set of songs that weave together strains of vintage Gallic pop and gentle shoegaze with the gnarlier elements. [May 2022, p.30]

It's a dozen of his finest compositions reworked as bluegrass tunes, and it's magnificent. [Oct 2023, p.31]

Rhett Miller’s quartet crank up the cowpunk on the likes of “This World”, “Falling Down” and “Chased The Setting Sun”, but time, inevitably, has tempered their collective experience. [Jun 2024, p.37]

Producer Aaron Dessner’s quick working pace and embrace of imperfection have helped deliver a rawer set of songs written when Atwell was weaning herself off antidepressants and feared feeling’s return. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Precious but powerful. [Aug 2024, p.38]

On this outing it sounds more like step-by-step calculation than natural evolution. [Apr 2026, p.36]

The title track ends proceedings on a high, with Sheryl Crow on backing vocals, a smattering of mandolin and a semi-surreal spoken interlude in which Starr sounds ever so zen. It ends, as it surely should, with a single snare shot, delivered like the most emphatic of full stops. [May 2026, p.30]

It's very earnest. [Sep 2012, p.79]

Terrific, genre-flipping from Seattle collective. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Odd missteps apart You Are All I see turns out to be one of the year's boldest, most beautiful debuts. [Nov 2011, p.81]

Lewis conducts what navel-gazing there is on The Voyager with her characteristic mordant wit, and she has shed none of her way with an irresistible, deadpan pop melody. [Aug 2014, p.75]

This record has all the earmarks of Vernon's next big thing. [Oct 2013, p.69]

For those of us who prefer Neil when he's plugged-in and splenetic, it's tempting to call the album his best since 1990's Ragged Glory. Living With War, though, is too much of a frontline dispatch, too consumed with the present, to be easily catalogued for posterity. [Jul 2006, p.82]

A collection that feels more art project than album. [Nov 2012, p.71]

Even more affecting are those tracks where he keeps things simple. [Apr 2012, p.83]

Glacial electronic-first compositions like "Vessel" ape the atmospheric intensity of Julia Holter, but even in her exile, Ballentine finds something pretty to latch onto in every song. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

There's nothing here that is likely to offend or amaze but it's a classy affair from start to finish. [Jun 2014, p.79]

Moody textures outnumber memorable songs, but this is still a stylish and inviting debut. [Jul 2014, p.73]

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]

The rewards are high. [Mar 2016, p.73]

All up, it's a quiet knockout. [Oct 2018, p.37]

It’s a big, bolshy set, slightly dated by its industrial-rock dynamics, but there’s no denying the Depeche Mode-ish “Godhead” or (especially) the giallo-ish critique that is “A Woman Destroyed”. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Lamp Lit Prose is another outstanding chapter in what is shaping up to be one of the great 21st-century musical odysseys. [Aug 2018, p.29]

It doesn't always Gel. But a horn heavy take on the Stooges' "Dirt" is satisfyingly ballsy. [Jul 2012, p.70]

Here he bends the two impulses on a dark, pulsating album that sits alongside other neo-industrial work from Raime and the Haxan Cloak. [Dec 2013, p.74]

Like all of his work, it's thoughtful, humble, introspective, funny and endlessly digressive. [Dec 2015, p.72]

[A] low-key, often gorgeous new project. [Jun 2016, p.79]

Smash The System is looser, punchier, a surrealist pop masterpiece. [Nov 2016, p.28]

It's a thoughtful, profound and intensely beautiful late-blossoming career highlight. [Nov 2016, p.30]

A towering success. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Gangster Star is a light, trippy confection, reinventing R&B with rippling electronics and slippery, Prince-like funk. [Aug 2017, p.31]

What might feel somewhat reheated is saved thanks to Dal Forno's poise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

There are writing collaborations with the likes of the Chemical Brothers on the beautifully woozy and remarkably tender “Ballad (The End)”, which further serves to hit home the increasing breadth, scope and versatility Owens possesses in her far-reaching electronic compositions. [Nov 2024, p.41]

Like a blurrier version of Tame Impala's Lonerism, each listen reveals further pleasures. [Sep 2013, p.91]

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

An affecting, lyrical record that makes you feel blessed for not having lived through it, but wiser, so graceful for the ride. [Oct 2012, p.74]

It offers astutely resonant personal ruminations at the dame time as honouring Baez's enduring search for material which speaks to the social condition of the age. [Apr 2018, p.25]

There's nothing fussy about the way Chatham County Line continue to go about their business, their acoustic music occupying the sweet spot between Del McCoury and The Jayhawks. [Jan 2017, p.22]

The album is a loose concept piece with a watery theme, but it's the infectious melodies and powerful vocals that stand out. [May 2019, p.27]

The blend of early Cure and gnarly grunge of "Soft Like A Flower" produces an indie-ish racket, the dance pulse of "Wild Times" and the smoky brass curling around "Golden" show new facets to her sound that work just as well. [Nov 2023, p.26]

It's excellent stuff. [Oct 2015, p.75]

His self-deprecating humour and goofball vocals leaven these dark songs about mortality, confusion and alienation, lending both levity and gravity to the staticky guitar riffs and soaring choruses. [Aug 2018, p.28]

The execution falls vexingly short of ambition, principally because a little of Darnielle's limited voice goes a long way. But the best of the songs are great. [May 2011, p.93]

[Hate For Sale returns her] to the totemic sounds of the early Pretenders albums, trusted and familiar territories. [Aug 2020, p.31]

The kids know where it's at, and so, in this career-high purple patch, does Paul Weller. [Apr 2012, p.69]

Mann's striking vocals, empathetic and emotional, weave through anxiety and depression, crisis and loss. Melodic arrangements abound. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Mono are masters of the emotionally saturated slow build, though they have their own variations on the dark/light dynamic, as in “Reflection”, which moves with a casually graceful swing, and “Holy Winter”, where an upright-piano motif shapes the celestial whole. [Jul 2024, p.38]

Jaunty and beholden to fuzz, White Reaper comes on like Kentucky's answer to Supergrass on this charming debut, crammed with short melodic powerpop gems. [Sep 2015, p.83]

This is the work of a star-crossed original in full flow. [Mar 2016, p.73]

A listener might be impressed by the scale of the experience, but ultimately there is something missing--intimacy?--missing. [Jun 2017, p.30]

The group allows O'Rourke to indulge his songwriter instincts and Tweedy to exert an often-suppressed experimental imperative. [Feb 2003, p.82]

Exquisite. [Feb 2003, p.80]

It's autumnal but never overbearingly bleak, thanks to the enduring warmth of Thorn's voice, and the empathy of her lyrics, even on the almost desolate "Singles Bar." [Jul 2010, p.125]

Impeccably arranged, the whole thing plays out like an extended, pragmatic version of "A Day In The Life." [Mar 2012, p.82]

"The Reason Why" and "Motoring" swath Tom Dougall's sighed vocal in sheets of Ride-like guitar. [Oct 2012, p.87]

Basar is marred by a couple of misguided forays into coffee-table trip-hop, but when Africaine 808 aim for the dancefloor, they usually hit the spot. [Feb 2016, p.71]

Lucy Gooch's early life as a chorister feeds into Desert Window's beauteous soundscapes, looping her gentle soprano voice over gauzy layers of synths in a seamless shift of classical ambient, jazz and dream-folk textures. [Jul 2025, p.28]

Hardcore contains some of their most affecting tunes since the early singles, instrumental parts coiling around each other in graceful, liquid polyphony. [Mar 2011, p.97]

Dark cabaret with an unhinged, dervish energy. [Feb 2006, p.70]

A confident, more expansive--emotionally and musically--annexe to his impressive, soul-baring debut. [Dec 2014, p.75]

Space Gun fizzes with an energy and seamless melody that recalls the band at their mid-'90s peak, and there's an intriguing assortment of songs to be found. [Apr 2018, p.27]

Thankfully, more often than not Eitzel is on great form. [Nov 2012, p.82]

These moody, brooding pieces avoid TV cliche and occasionally produce gems in their own right. [May 2013, p.74]

The Lucky Ones frames this new worldview in a punchier, tauter, leaner sound--less fuzz but more crunch. [July 2008, p.104]

The Coincidentalist, as with most things Gelb puts a shoulder to, is a thing of strange, understated pleasure. [Nov 2013, p.68]

Things are more cinematic here, with every melody weaving through a mise-en-scene packed with dramatic incident. [Nov 2006, p.101]

More by accident than design, it works sometimes. [Aug 2010, p.79]

More fun are the African-tinged "Radio Bemba," "Odeon," where New Orleans meets Irish tin whistle, and the Mexico-meets-Chopin "Black Hibiscus." [Mar 2014, p.80]

Pylon sees Killing Joke maintain the late-career renaissance precipitated by the original lineup reuniting for 2010's Absolute Dissent. [Nov 2015, p.77]

Sampson has broadened her horizons on this largely self-produced album, mastering a richer range of sounds and styles clipped synthfunk to sleek R&B to sumptuous gospel-pop. [Feb 2017, p.37]

Its high-beam intensity and near relentless drive triumphing over the niggling familiarity of some songs. [May 2017, p.30]

Laid-back and loose maybe, but neither lazy nor lacklustre. [Dec 2019, p.33]

Swift navigates Sansone's majestic folk-rock arrangements like the able captain of a frigate sailing over shimmering seas. [Sep 2020, p.36]

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.

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]

At moments conjures Steely Dan, Little Feat and Weather Report while stretching into new territory. Constant shifts in tone, tempo and scale keep this 14-track, 90-minute opus in constant motion. [May 2025, p.31]

It's rich in moods and textures, variously lean and percussive, euphoric, foreboding and melodically vibrant. [Jun 2025, p.31]

An album that is as genuinely moving as it is pulsing and hypnotic. [Jul 2025, p.37]

They may not go out with a bang on this occasion, but Cheap trick's capacity to surprise prevails. [Dec 2025, p.28]

Stark, often stunning. [Dec 2006, p.121]

This is a corporeal and cacophonic record, but all ear-bleeding mayhem it isn't. ... Lightning Bolt continue to spark. [Nov 2019, p.28]

Rich with amped-up fiddles, mandolins, accordions and harmonies, it's vibrant, hook-laden and addictive. [Aug 2015, p.77]

Black gothic grandeur, but with a beige, biscuit-coloured centre. [Oct 2013, p.72]

The second full-length album is richly textured and exceedingly complex in its arrangements. [Apr 2012, p.75]

Engaging New Zealanders The Beths masterfully marry muscle and vulnerability here. [Sep 2025, p.28]

It's beautifully eerie. [Oct 2018, p.30]

Tennessee Pusher is comfortably up to standard, the demented Dylan pastiche, 'Alabama High-Test' a particular highlight. [Oct 2008, p.101]

The two hours and four tracks of Love In Detroit capture the mood and excitement of a Fela show during this second phase of his career. [Jun 2012, p.93]