Songs such as "Bad Timing" and "Leave It" sound pleasingly full as a result, although it's at the expense of some of the intimacy that was arguably the band's best quality. [Sep 2011, p.81]

Sultry, compelling and ever so slightly spooked, Cosmic Wink flickers and flashes like a series of time-lapse landscape photographs, but the place it documents is the heart. [Jun 2018, p.36]

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]

It's back-to-basics good fun garage rock, and while it's familiar territory it's undeniable that the band know their way around a hook. [Sep 2023, p.28]

The album is reliant on the Scene's female associates--like Lisa Lobsinger on the lovely Moroderish cosmic disco of "All To All"--to bring character to whtat remain some pretty hazy jams. [Jun 2010, p.83]

While the album is too long, he consistently crafts a fine tune. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Not tunes for kids: simply some of Karen O's sweetest songs yet. [Nov 2009, p.100]

This time they've come armed with an acoustic guitar to counterpoint their love of reverb--something that works well with their generally playful attitude. [Aug 2011, p.100]

With Calexico's sensitive muting of colour, Beam is clearly thriving throughout. [Nov 2005, p.112]

The songs are much more confidently realised. [May 2008, p.100]

Rare and enchanting understatement in a brash and gaudy world. [Jun 2013, p.69]

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

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]

One of the most adrenalising albums you'll hear this year. [Sep 2002, p.110]

This captures The Cure at their crowd-pleasing best, an ageless band reveling in their past. [Feb 2012, p.83]

The songs on 151a are most notable for their beautiful bursts of melody and soaring tunefulness. [Jun 2012, p.158]

They’ve smuggled in sobering thoughts of isolation, loneliness and optimism’s perpetual challenge. But hope wins through with the sprightly funk and handclaps of closer “You Get Better”. [May 2021, p.25]

By and large, it's contemplation they're seeking. [Aug 2014, p.81]

There's a sense that it trawls the finest moments of his 15-year carreer. [Jul 2009, p.93]

Under the bluster, though, frontman Ritzy Bryan adds a consistent emotional intensity best heard on "Cradle," reminiscent ofg Lush at their most bruised and bruising. [Mar 2011, p.93]

His vocal lines are often so casually intoned that they mingle imperceptibly with those of his back-up singer Suad Khalifa, over gently pulsing twilight liaisons that yearn to be a little more sophisticated than they actually are. [Jul 2015, p.77]

"Forever & A Day" sounds suspiciously like a love song, "Sleep On The Wing" has one of those gorgeous Colin Newman vocal performances. Otherwise, it's ominous thrum, insistent rumble and circular tunes that hide menace beneath their logic. [May 2017, p.40]

This equally fine sophomore effort sees Burch take a few steps into the present. [Nov 2018, p.25]

The countrier she keeps it, the better. [Sep 2023, p.43]

The result is Roots Manuva's most purely pleasurable long-player. [Oct 2010, p.105]

The Absence isn't just an experiment in various styles. The songs are terrific. too. [Jul 2012, p.73]

A dynamically nuanced, nine-song set that conjures real-world wonders as convincingly as a doomed voyage to some imagined, far-flung galaxy. [Feb 2015, p.82]

Silver Liner utilises a much more effective palette [than The Reckoning]. It's certainly brighter and looser. [Jan 2016, p.72]

A series of folds, jump cuts and swarms, it's disorienting yet utterly gorgeous. [Jun 2016, p.79]

Producer Stephen Street deftly updates the brio of their early hits and the songs are impressive, too. [May 2019, p.27]

A Son tilts slightly more towards conventional song structure, minimising electronics in favour of (mostly) acoustic guitars. [Dec 2019, p.30]

Their fourth LP together sees them ditch the punky uptempo tracks and instead wallow in mournful, funereal meditations that don't leave White with much to do. [Dec 2019, p.35]

The songs are often guilty of bloated bombast, but Numan retains an impressive command of cinematic melodrama and richly layered sonic detail. [Jul 2021, p.33]

Young Blood is far darker than 2020’s soulful El Dorado. “Blood On The Tracks”, which chugs along behind a swampy, cowbell-accented groove, provides relief from the monolithic heaviness, which becomes enervating on the generic “Hard Working Man”. [Sep 2022, p.26]

An album replete with a rich, warm vibe that is more country-soul than punk rock, with swirling organ prominent in the mix. [Feb 2025, p.43]

The songs themselves range from ringing country-rockers to soulful ballads and vary shades between, thematically weighted between reflection and renewal. [Apr 2026, p.31]

Often, she comes across as heir to songwriters such as Todd Rundgren and Randy Newman--raising a jaded, critical eye to the world. [Sep 2017, p.38]

We Have You Surrounded has more variety than 2003's excellent "Dangerous Magical Noise." [May 2008, p.94]

It's essentially Clark in all his acoustic finery. [Nov 2011, p.96]

An intriguing new artist has found his voice. [Nov 2012, p.76]

Glass Riffer dials back the bold orchestrations of 2012's America in favour of a rapturous electronic pop with Deacon's voice pushed upfront. [Mar 2015, p.75]

Eventually, the unrelenting aggressiveness of Typhoons becomes exhausting; better to ignite a playlist by tossing in one of these potent cherry bombs. [Jun 2021, p.31]

William and Jim Reid remain as defiantly out of time as ever. [Mar 2024, p.29]

Arrangements range from scraped guitars to epic brass fanfares and, unusually for an album about loners, there's no misanthropy. [Mar 2007, p.86]

There's respect but nothing approaching the sort of suffocating reverence that kills so many covers. [Dec 2018, p.22]

Subtract [a couple of stinkers] and you have something of a minor masterpiece--and easily Weller’s finest solo album to date.

By using layers of shoegazey guitars and powerfully mic'd-up drums, they create soundscapes that combine Americana with English pastoralism. [Sep 2016, p.67]

A worthy, if more subdued, companion to Kacey Johansing's The Hiding last year. [Mar 2018, p.37]

Even better [than Time Skiffs]: consistently inventive rather than merely quirky, it makes sincere effort to get to the emotional core of what they do. [Nov 2023, p.25]

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

It may just be the most satisfying record he's made since the group's stellar 1995 debut. [Mar 2017, p.24]

The spoken-word pieces court tweeness, but Yorkston's delivery keeps things the right side of mawkish. [Mar 2019, p.37]

Affairs of the heart dominate Batmanglij's lyrics which, when combined with his unfeasibly Christmassy production across all 15 tracks, tends to leave the listener gasping for air. [Oct 2017, p.39]

It's hard to really connect with most of In A Dream; not only does it play through as tirelessly, tiringly arch, many of the songs just don't quite cut it. [Nov 2014, p.76]

Although brass and strings add muscle, a certain monotony creeps in towards the end. And there aren't enough strong tunes from the least melodically facile Beatle. [Dec 2002, p.134]

It's familiar territory for the mercurial Jon Langford and company, perhaps punk's most persistent ideologues. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Norrvide still sounds a little glum, but he's got plenty to be happy about here. [Jul 2014, p.76]

It's edgeless, overly polite, and arranged within an inch of its life. There's little room to move. [Apr 2015, p.71]

What's particularly impressive is the way their distinctive approaches combine. [Jul 2019, p.33]

Emerald Sea isn’t your average third album. An otherworldly mix of Gustav Holst’s drama, The Flaming Lips’ psychedelia and Broadcast’s retro-futurist exotica, with hints of the band’s earlier Beach House dream-pop, it breaks a fourth wall of sound with “The Glare”’s saturated reverberations, while “Deeper Surround” offers a chimerical carousel ride of synths. [Aug 2022, p.33]

It's all fairly dry, but listen closely and its charms emerge. [Mar 2025, p.41]

With [Belle & Sebastian] now seemingly lost to soft-pop pastichery, CO have come out of their shadow and flourished. [Jul 2006, p.84]

It feels more like a bedroom project than their recent full-band work, yet Toledo's knack for an irresistible choruses endures. [Jun 2020, p.28]

It finds Suede wrapping up a triptych of records since their 2013 reunion and in doing so they feel positioned with one foot in the familiar camp of old while striding forward with the other into fresh, unknown territory. [Oct 2018, p.34]

You'd struggle to find a more affecting ode to the selfishness of love than this. [Jun 2014, p.80]

An intimate, unfiltered snapshot of rough-hewn excellence. [Jan 2018, p.21]

Their first album without guitarist Bruce Gilbert draws on their strength as writers of nuanced pop, producing, in the mellow rumble of 'One Of Us,' 'Mekon Headman' and Perspex Icon,' a few more for the next Best Of.

It's a great combustible mix, a whirlwind of new sounds caught by the tail, diced and dissected and in permanent hectic propulsion. [Sep 2011, p.91]

Once you get over the initial shock of Kelis' raw-throated take on country-rock on "Friday Fish Fry," the culinary theme becomes another ingredient that never quite blends into a tasty dish. [May 2014, p.76]

The Don of Diamond Dreams finds Butler's effect-treated voice rippling through a prism of mutated funk and R&B that feels simultaneously sumptuous and deeply unconventional. [Jun 2020, p.37]

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

As thrilling as it is unexpected. [Jul 2022, p.30]

Women As Lovers may be his best yet. [Mar 2008, p.107]

Unsurprisingly, after nearly 30 years their hang-loose attitude is now tempered with a little socio-political reflection, although "Black Eyes"--a stomping, sown-dirty homage to hedonism--is a standout. [May 2017, p.25]

It has its charms.... but the naivety of their debut remains elusive. [Nov 2014, p.84]

Ten-minute sonic odyssey "Neptune" provides a typically overblown finale, but it's INXS-style banger "The Runner" that will further cement their place at indie rock's top table. [Nov 2019, p.25]

Album number three enlarges their sonic palette with piano, dobro and touches of strings and woodwind but maintains the same folksy charm. [Apr 2012, p.71]

The chilly disco-noir aesthetic of early 1980s synth-pop provides the musical hinterland, all monophonic squelch and analogue modernism. [Aug 2008, p.85]

Audacious and urgent. [Jun 2013, p.74]

Aldred's voice has also upped a register, his yearning falsetto perfect for pocket space opera "Progress" or the lubricious Al Greenisms of "Fingers Through The Glass." [Sep 2013, p.94]

Motion files nicely alongside Fripp & Eno, or Klaus Schulze, a set of rippling, drowsy circuitry, laminated with silvery guitar drones. [Apr 2014, p.76]

While a talking blues about baseball cards edges into geekville, "To The Veterans Committee," a sunshine pop supreme, might have you singing the praises of Dale Murphy without even knowing who he is. [May 2014, p.69]

Their fourth album is reassuringly familiar. [Jun 2014, p.73]

Johns suggesting a hunger for discovery still resides in us all, and his beautifully considered songs make for an emotive sat-nav. [Jul 2014, p.70]

On their fifth album, it's back go icy, slightly Gothic basics. [Oct 2014, p.73]

While there are a few too many round-the-campfire gloom-fests on I Forget Where Were, there are also displays of real musical background. [Dec 2014, p.77]

Apache holds its focus on straight-ahead vintage soul-pop, blending mid-tempo workouts and big weepy ballads with swampy shuffling grooves. [Sep 2016, p.78]

Wilderness is a logical step for the group, honing their aesthetic, and finding intimate rapture in the peak moments of their carefully crafted songs. [Feb 2017, p.24]

It's Macve's self-assurance and rounded expression that impress- that and her voice, a Lustrous and powerful instrument with a yodelling swoop that she wisely never overworks. [Apr 2017, p.32]

The highlight is the lengthy Elvin Jones tribute that opens the album---an expansive Afro-tinged big band upgrade of a piece originally recorded with Jim Keltner. [Jun 2017, p.38]

Canadian Colter Wall is just 21, but in delivering his rich imagery of railroads, frauleins and codeine dreams, he sounds closer to 71. [Jul 2017, p.40]

On her band's follow-up to its 2014 self-titled debut, Rankin returns to that comfort zone with largely engaging results. [Oct 2017, p.24]

Enriched instrumentation and subtle electronic flourishes make this Ackroyd's most rewarding collection. [Mar 2018, p.21]

The third Cd features interesting but inessential 12in mixes. ... There are diamonds throughout the sprawling set, which also manages to sound cohesive thanks to Lydon's binding, blaring vocals and the atmosphere of managed, jagged chaos. [Sep 2018, p.48]

"Overrated" tosses in traces of Disintegration-era Cure, with Matilda Bogren's dreamy vocals buried deep in a richly murky, shoegaze-friendly mix, while "Apart" leans towards the gothic and "Hard Ending" adds a little New order. [Jul 2018, p.27]

A pygmy in the grown-up pop world, maybe, but in his own tiny corner of the cosmos, a giant. [Feb 2019, p.30]

This is voluminous in length and style. [Feb 2019, p.33]

It's sometimes more about the journey than the getting there, and the contents of this latest Bowie box help document many of the steps. ... The 1969 Space Oddity record remains more than its title track, the tender love songs particularly strong. It's a hippie record of social observation and heavy inner trips, Bowie's wit and tenderness rendering it a cut above. [Dec 2019, p.41]