Drowsily beautiful. [Oct 2010, p.94]

It mines familiar-enough influences. ... There's a sonic freshness, though, abetted by wizardy analogue production tricks of Daptone head engineer Wayne Gordon. [Jul 2018, p.34]

Impressively, Gardner's instrumnetals such as "Grey Lanes" and "All Over" show how he can effectively summon up an exquisite nostalgia for an invented '60s. [Jun 2015, p.76]

As good a record, in fact, as anything this gifted polymath has ever released. [Feb 2004, p.82]

The results are charming, melancholy and achingly beautiful. [Jul 2012, p.84]

Their debut is squeaky-door dub that offers unexpectedly plentiful tunes. [Sep 2016, p.73]

Doseone's keen ear for a pop melody and hip-hop's punch keep him on course. [Aug 2012, p.71]

Bad Magic is gloriously genre-defying. [Sep 2015, p.78]

There's an earworm-like lure in every track. [Aug 2011, p.98]

Alongside the sexually explicit likes of "Pull My Hair" and "Wait" sit conscious soul and creamy R&B. [Nov 2005, p.94]

It all suggests a sea change in attitude. [Sep 2005, p.114]

Their best, boldest, most unashamedly poptastic album yet. [Dec 2018, p.28]

The live setting and frontman Joe Talbot's inter-song exhortations heighten the feeling of being sucked into communal catharsis. [Jan 2020, p.26]

The result is vast and apocalyptic. [Dec 2015, p.81]

A moody, giddy, charming album, as ragged and dynamic as those the band were making half a lifetime ago. [Oct 2006, p.100]

They're still loud and angry - exploring themes around national identity, solidarity and challenging political establishments - but there is greater musical depth and breadth. [May 2025, p.32]

His guttural, rat-tat flow is raw and unleavened, but it's the way he uses it--in flights of fancy and feats of mischief--that's truly the nub of his appeal. [Dec 2013, p.66]

An intoxicating blend of surf-rock guitar and the blusterous post-rock drama of forefathers such as Lift To Experience; a bewitching blend that makes death's ominous presence feel that much closer. [Mar 2020, p.25]

Not so much an electronic supergroup, more a retro-futurist sonic museum. It uses Benge's collection of antique analogue synthesisers to create some pulsating dance music. [Apr 2020, p.37]

If anything, Damage And Joy underscores the Mary Chain's strengths. [Apr 2017, p.36]

The music reflects this stark, witty chronicle of precarious modern living with a queasy tableau of churning beats, one minute harsh and industrial, the next lush and dreamy. [Nov 2023, p.25]

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]

Clear Heart Full Eyes is a low-key triumph, containing some of the most emotionally satisfying work Finn has yet produced. [Feb 2012, p.82]

Worthy is a far bolder and more satisfying selection [than Thankful n' Thoughtful]. [Mar 2015, p.77]

Here the pair [Richard Swift and Damien Jurado] resume roles for an equally enchanting follow-up. [Feb 2012, p.96]

A late flowering triumph. [Jul 2010, p.117]

It's rhythmic patterns and twisting beats are surprising throughout, making the record as unpredictable a voyage as the times we live in. [Jul 2019, p.33]

It is the sound of a sweet soul contemplating deliverance; as mellow and fierce and fearful as that.

On this luminous nine-song LP, Souther adheres to the old adage--leave them wanting more. [Jun 2015, p.81]

Pounding opener "When The Drugs Kick In," the workaday wonder of "Everyday," and a churning, blistering cover of Neil Young's "Southern Pacific" highlight a fine return to form. [Jul 2013, p.73]

This time around, Grammy-bagging mixer Tchad Blake has replace T-Bone Burnett as producer and brought added intimacy without sacrificing dreamy magnetism. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Honeyblood is a captivating debut that prizes atmosphere over precision and is characterised by soaring melodies and terrifically spiky lyrics. [Aug 2014, p.94]

Brilliance and beauty, abounding in equal measure. [Aug 2014, p.79]

It's the low-key moments--the astral jazz of "There Was Always Water;" the clunky, piano-led "Back For Me;" the dubby "How Far Is Spaced-Out?"--that hit home emotionally. [Nov 2018, p.30]

It may surprise some, and disappoint others, but this is a record that ultimately finds Sparhawk turning pain into a kind of spiritual beauty. In that, it continues his work of over three decades, from the spectral I Could Live In Hope right up to the imploded noise of Hey What. [Sep 2024, p.22]

Yet another work of widescreen beauty and magnificent ambition. [Aug 2006, p.86]

Trouble Anyway announces the arrival of an artist who fits neatly into no category but thrives in the inbetween. [Jan 2019, p.13]

It's hard to conceive of a more thrillingly romantic record than this. [Feb 2012, p.85]

This collection does him justice by featuring cuts from all seven albums in the Smith catalogue. [Dec 2010, p.105]

When Sexsmith does finally pull a heartbreaker out of the bag, it's a doozy. [Apr 2015, p.83]

It's an effective idea and an enjoyable stopgap before her next masterwork arrives. [May 2014, p.74]

12 richly expressionistic and mercurial songs shaped by a mix of indie rock, country both alt. and classic, ragtime, folk, powerpop and Southern Gothic, which flit between darkness and melancholy, hopefulness and light. [Nov 2025, p.38]

It's a remarkably textural and atmospheric record. [Nov 2025, p.28]

Beneath the jazz-folk toned melancholia there's a new dramatic intensity. [Jun 2012, p.83]

While [Tom Joad] was often more like reading a book than listening to a record, this time Springsteen has struck a more natural balance between words and music. [Jun 2005, p.100]

"Never Come Never Morning", propelled by chunky drums and a vulnerable lyric, showcases a more accessible heart and introduces the spirit of openness that sits at the centre of an excellent record. [Mar 2026, p.34]

It hardly needs saying that this mammoth box is not intended for the casual Dylan listener. Even committed fans might think twice. Essentially, what you get is the same songs played in the same order over 23 nights. But, by God, how they are played.

[A] sonically rich debut. [May 2015, p.77]

San Fermin proves Ludwig-Leone to be a fantastically ambitious songwriter on the way to finding a voice of his own. [Oct 2013, p.74]

If it's not as striking as its predecessor, its colourful patchwork exterior clothes some of Hitchcock's finest recent songs. [Nov 2022, p.29]

The album's centerpiece is the autobiographical 10-minute "Colfax/Step In Time," a richly detailed remembrance of a run-in between his high school marching band and the KKK. [Mar 2012, p.84]

It's notable for uncensored emotional gloom and an evergreen college sound. [Feb 2024, p.37]

Feels like the moment where the pair's music pulls into focus. [Jul 2018, p.37]

It's beautifully recorded, carefully multi-tracked, but with the freshness and integrity of the live performances feeling intact. Most crucially, it never sounds overcooked. [Sep 2020, p.20]

Gold Record is very assured, marking a refinement of the Callahan sound. [Oct 2020, p.28]

Sensibly sequenced to feature the biggest hits at the top of the order and end with the newest single, "Devotion". The latter matches their standards for sparkling, dancefloor-friendly synth-pop with underlying notes of melancholy and wry humour. [Oct 2025, p.43]

Demolition is further proof that his creative instinct is still intact. [Album of the Month, Oct 2002, p.100]

Bidin’ My Time draws from every corner of Hillman’s long career, mixing folk rock and country rock and bluegrass into an amiable sound, somehow both modest and ambitious.

Anone who saw the original Cars will tell you that these guys blow those guys off the stage. [Jul 2006, p.104]

Cements FOW's status as the savviest modern-day practitioners of both Beatlesque pop and Steely Dan's cool precision. [Jun 2007, p.94]

A wonderful record. [Mar 2018, p.30]

Intense. [Feb 2016, p.78]

The result is a delight. [Nov 2007, p.115]

The Little Willies keep things gorgeously spartan, with barely an unnecessary note placed anywhere. [Feb 2012, p.93]

This is a much more laid-back collection of strangely alien desert music written in Hagerty's adopted home state of New Mexico and recorded in Texas. [Oct 2008, p.92]

It is the weirder, wilder, experimental material that makes this a significant new career benchmark for the German duo, their boldest and possibly best album so far. [May 2018, p.32]

If Deleted Scenes feels somewhat anachronistic, it doesn't blunt the quality of the songs within. [Jun 2020, p.37]

[It is] distinctive, involving, challenging, accessible, progressive and most other things that continue to be desirable in an indie-rock record, whatever the year. [Jul 2017, p.22]

Even in cliched moments the airy swooning music lends her breathy confessionals a vulnerable, charming intimacy. [Jul 2009, p.99]

This follow-up is chillier though no less stately, informed as it is by the recent death of her father. [May 2011, p.96]

The results range from flights of lysergic beauty on “Rainbow Ball”, “Split Screen” and “Seen” to a burst of jagged, early-days energy on “Nothing To Do”. For the first time in ages, they’re not overthinking it. [Jun 2024, p.36]

Best blues album of the year so far. [Jul 2012, p.69]

Morgan Delt has moved to Sub Pop and upped the ambition for this excellent follow-up. [Sep 2016, p.73]

Their most powerful work this century. It's the sound of a band entering a final act with a renewed sense of purpose, and sharp, sober new focus. [May 2023, p.26]

It's hard to find fault with this uplifting debut. [Feb 2005, p.78]

Working with a major label has brought a new sheen to the Ladytronic wall of sound. [Oct 2005, p.94]

Utopia really delivers on the transcendent promise of its title with the closing "Future Forever." [Jan 2018, p.12]

A mini masterwork of magic-realist Britpop melodrama. [Apr 2006, p.108]

Honor found in Decay confirms that they are a metal band, yes--but one reminiscent of Silver Mount Zion or Swans as any more traditionally heavy-rocking concern. [Nov 2012, p.73]

As brave as it is diverse. [Oct 2006, p.104]

Self-aware and possibly self-satisfied, this is wildly overloaded pastiche taken to ludicrous but highly entertaining extremes. [Feb 2017, p.28]

A delicate and sometimes bleak record. [Dec 2006, p.123]

Lynne's rawest, most intimately person album since I Am Shelby Lynne broke with her country roots 20 years ago. [Jun 2020, p.34]

Out Of Touch may be sophisticated and complex, but it's also damned groovy, hugely heartfelt and packed ti the gunwales with fizzing tunes. [Feb 2013, p.71]

This English-language version is a beautiful thing. [Dec 2013, p.63]

The xx duo eagerly depart from the templates that have served their band so well, thereby imparting Hideous Bastard with a spontaneity that complements the courage and candour in the lyrics. [Oct 2022, p.34]

His 16th full-length recording is by some distance, Springsteen's weirdest, and most constantly startling to date. [Mar 2009, p.76]

Although less exhausting than their debut, "Terrific Sounds," this remains an attention-demanding record. [Apr 2009, p.101]

The surprise of C'est Com...Com...Complique is not that Faust continue, four decades after their inception, but that they do so with such inventiveness and sense of play. [May 2009, p.85]

Turner's observations and the way he relishes a smart turn of phrase bring these vignettes to life in a way that's almost frighteningly vivid, even when his circuitous melodies don't always land. ... Much like For Your Pleasure or Gaucho, The Car functions both as intoxicating advert and withering critique. [Dec 2022, p.24]

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

Raw in texture but ambitious in scope. [May 2011, p.86]

Fernandez's tunes have an endearing air of fragility. [Jul 2015, p.75]

From the edge of the sea, back to the fringes of sleep, Summer Sun is uncommonly lovely. [May 2003, p.104]

Smart stylistic detours mask something a little deeper. [Oct 2021, p.24]

Luddites still unconvinced that digital technology is capable of emotional expression should make this their first stop on the road to enlightenment. [May 2004, p.103]

The likes of "Downtown" and "1000 Miles" are modest but sumptuous ballads which suggest something of lo-fi Blue Nile, while "London Bridge," from the title downwards, is basically a Blur song, to which he is surely entitled. [Feb 2023, p.35]

It is raw, retro nouveau, deep house bangers like "When A Fire Starts To Burn" and "Stimulation" that make this a perfect Brit companion piece to Daft Punk's recent rebootings of disco history. [Aug 2013, p.69]