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

The Foos album closest to Nirvana. [Aug 2023, p.29]

AmERICa finds Wreckless Eric reborn in the USA, his home since 2011. Curmudgeonly, maybe, but a sly joy pervades. [Dec 2015, p.81]

A sumptuous feast. [Sep 2023, p.24]

Neither beholden to tradition nor self-consciously moderne, she crafts skeletal songs of great warmth and grace. [Oct 2006, p.117]

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

Pretty.Odd. often tries way too hard to be obtuse, it's true, but you have to admire the band's willingness to grow. [May 2008, p.106

It's a stunning performance, drawing fire from Smith's stentorian performance, providing the ballast for the voyage of her Rimbaudian drunken boat. [Aug 2008, p.104]

These delectable hookfests metaphorically parallel Hadreas's move from the gloom of his Seattle hometown to his new base in sunswept L.A. [Jul 2020, p.33]

Most of the songs are breezy reflections on romance--even two Q-Tip productions lack bite--but its melodious artiness is engaging. [Apr 2012, p.84]

This double album is both poignant and richly inventive. [May 2016, p.69]

The rest is a warm and hilarious mediation of mortality. [May 2012, p.83]

There's barely a duff track here, from the talking gothic blues of "The Pill" and the slinky Monks-esque strut of "Isolation". Top marks, though, go the pulpit croon of "(Sometimes You Got To Be) Gentle". [Dec 2009, p. 97]

Eye Contact works because its bolshie drum patterns and metallic synth stabs, influenced by Jamaican dancehall and UK bass music, anchor it firmly in the near future, while Lizzie Bougastsos' strong and inventive melodies help make light work of what could come across like a pretentious muddle. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Hit Reset is a deliciously rowdy work in which Hanna flames negligent friends, cyber-bullies and idiotic lovers. [Aug 2016, p.77]

His debut LP impresses, in large part thanks to smart deployment of guests. [Sep 2016, p.70]

There's little discordance but much invention and beauty. [Aug 2012, p.73]

An ambitious, perceptive set. [Oct 2016, p.35]

Alfa Mists addresses a key weakness in so much contemporary jazz - it actually has some decent tunes. He's helped by his guests. ... But Alfa himself (who also raps on a couple of tracks) can also develop a compelling melodic idea. [Jun 2023, p.35]

Simple folk arrangements foregrounding Moorer's richly emotive voice. [Jan 2020, p.27]

Brakes sound like The Jesus & Mary Chain with Tourette's. [Aug 2005, p.102]

Some of the group's most personal work. [Jul 2023, p.24]

One of the most intriguing walls of sound since My Bloody Valentine circa Isn't Anything. [Jul 2006, p.97]

A brave, beautiful record. [Sep 2006, p.76]

Bowles' music is rarely less than seductive, the product of both a gifted multi-instrumentalist and restless cultural forager. [Nov 2018, p.26]

Those acquainted with the slow and soulful pace of Griffin's recent work may be surprised by her ability to let rip here. [Dec 2013, p.69]

For every textured, tasteful track that evokes Tortoise's mid-'90s peak as a prime exemplar of US indie's brainiest strain, two deviate wildly. [Feb 2016, p.83]

Their take on the genre [is] sharply observed and utterly sincere. [Feb 2015, p.83]

There's a biting political edge to the off-kilter "In The Desert," which savages Bush and Blair for instigating the Middle East crisis and its attendant horrors. At the same time, this wouldn't be a Mekons record without a fair dollop of humour. [May 2019, p.26]

Exultant opener 'Country Love' and Cajun rumbler 'Shreveport,' like most of Haymaker!, just sparkle. [Feb 2009, p.82]

It's blend of whispered poesy, free-form rock, and orchestration, by Jean Claude Vannier, is much celebrated and sampled. this reissue provides a definitive account of its making. [May 2009, p.86]

Go past the tone of his voice, inhale the poetry, and you'll taste a sweeter, less mordant Leonard Cohen. [May 2012, p.68]

There's a softness and elegance to Trickfinger. [Jun 2015, p.83]

This album finds him in complete mastery of his musical range and lyrical fancies. [Apr 2010, p.91]

Four crisply recorded shows.... A super-funky artefact. [Aug 2015, p.94]

It's at times crushingly heavy, but there's a cerebral knottiness to the arrangements, and Chino Moreno's vocal boasts a windswept melancholy harking back to the new romantics. [Dec 2020, p.29]

Their creative freedom is evident again on their final album. [Aug 2024, p.30]

Their most imaginative and immersive album yet, with Webber emerging as a more commanding frontwoman. [Nov 2019, p.28]

Once Twice Melody's greatness lies not in its hugeness - it's in the duo's ability to create music that possesses the same intimacy regardless of its scope. [Mar 2022, p.33]

Quiet Life enabled Japan to get from B to C, and from D to E, and from there to wherever they went next. ... A third disc, recorded live at Japan's Budokan, captures the band at full tilt. [Apr 2021, p.45]

The listlessness of the structures is initially offputting, but the tracks begin to reveal luxurious depths. [Dec 2013, p.69]

A bold leap forwards. [Apr 2008, p.98]

Alongside warm, grunge-pop songs sit the reverb-and-ambient-noise bath that is "Night Swimming," the tripped-out psych folk of "Lucy" and hugely poignant epic" Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes." [Apr 2020, p.35]

His mystical belief in the power of love pervades the material, sometimes anthemically, sometimes playfully, but always disarmingly. [Oct 2007, p.96]

Wildly ambitious in its melding of industrial bombast, free-jazz skronk, horror-film atmospherics and psych freakouts. [Mar 2019, p.34]

Here she uses soft synths to emulate an organ, lute and pipes, which combine on the likes of “Vanity” and “Qasmuna (Dreaming)” to cast an alluring spell, evoking the likes of vintage Boards Of Canada and Catarina Barbieri’s superb Ecstatic Computation. [Jul 2021, p.21]

In which the prince of hip hop get a blessing from the king. [Sep 2008, p.110]

Smith habitually flows everything together, creating glowing and serene canvases of sound with her own gentle and expressive voice hymning at the centre. [Jul 2020, p.34]

No museum piece, Urstan energizes the past. [May 2012, p.80]

Inspired by the memory of departed friends, it sits midway between Cave's grand guignol, and the sweet hurt of Robert Forster. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Tracyanne Campbell still writes exquisite songs that don’t sacrifice melancholy for cleverness, and the band still provide smart arrangements that nod to country, Motown, Brill Building pop and other distinctly American sounds. [May 2024, p.32]

His ninth album rests on his strengths. His balladeer’s voice is a steadying comfort on “Heavy Rain”, adding subtle Orbison shivers on “I’ll Never Get Over You”. Duane Eddy-like twangs judder through murder ballad “Two For His Heels”, and a guitar solo scorches “Deep Space”. The album’s beating heart, though, is “People”, a supernal acoustic tribute to Sheffield. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Donovan's songs are still queerly wired, taking unexpected detours, blasting out into destructo-guitar solos, stomping T. Rex blues, and drenching acoustic guitar in slapback echo and ghostly vox. [Aug 2015, p.77]

A bold and vibrant tableau of pulsing beats over which Hamdan's serpentine voice coils and caresses. [Oct 2025, p.28]

Gently irresistible throughout. [Aug 2024, p.31]

The band's trademark cracked songcraft... is here in spades. [Nov 2004, p.99]

It's the darker numbers in which Jewel's muse gleams brightest. [Sep 2013, p.95]

Though not as viscerally crushing as A Crow Looked At Me, Lost Wisdom Pt 2 is as plainly poetic. [Jan 2020, p.27]

A beguiling mix made more loveable by its melancholic core. [Aug 2006, p.100]

A friskier beast than usual. [Jan 2018, p.29]

A hugely enjoyable, idiosyncratic ride. [Sep 2023, p.37]

Tourist In This Town fairly fizzes with the excitement of striking out alone, and justified confidence that hers is a voice worth hearing. [Mar 2017, p.26]

Love Yes is a dazzling electronic set that throbs with energy and emits a sensual glow befitting its focus on love, desire and sexuality. [Mar 2016, p.81]

A musical time machine. [Mar 2012, p.82]

A haunting collection which points towards renewal. [Jun 2025 p.35]

The overall tone may be sombre but it's expressed with such a weightless delicacy, shaded with occasional harmonica and piano, that it's hard not to feel transported. [Apr 2014, p.77]

Nothings Gonna Change shimmers in spare arrangements, ghostly keyboards, textured horns, and, occasionally, a talking-style vocal style borrowed from Springsteen's Nebraska. [May 2012, p.72]

The results are funkier than anything Byrne or Eno might have imagined almost 40 years ago. [Jul 2018, p.30]

Jaar, the son of conceptual artist Alfredo Jaar, can weave a heady spell, presenting himself somewhere between David Byrne and Ricardo Villalobos. [Jun 2011, p.85]

Mulvey brings virtuosity, intelligence and a lightly experimental agenda to his rich and crafted solo debut. [Jun 2014, p.80]

Woozy, off-track beats blend with video game blips and organic strings, harp and sax, while a cameo from Thom Yorke is woven neatly into this lush, psychedelic fabric. [Jun 2010, p.86]

When LAMB is good, it's very good indeed.... It's one of the most audacioius pop albums of the year. [Jan 2005, p.120]

This Is BASIC plays as galvanising and gleeful, not only to audience effect but clearly for its makers, too. In all of that, it’s anything but. [Oct 2024, p.32]

Last Night is ambitious, mature and noisy. [Nov 2013, p.78]

A pleasantly bitchy book gives all Ork acts their due, a raft of rare tracks completing the picture. Prix offcuts are essential listening for Big Star fetishists.

Gallipoli is the most acoustically rich Beirut album to date, with studio buzz and random dissonance deployed as musical texture more than ever before. [Mar 2019, p.35]

As familiar as a hug from an old friend. Yet the band's knack for colliding pop melodies with thrashing drums, pummelling bass and screeching guitars is as effective as ever. [May 2021, p.25]

The overarching atmosphere is masterful, a sense of brimming anxiety that unites even as it unsettles. [Apr 2020, p.37]

A remarkable act of spiritual resilience. [Jun 2021, p.23]

Their chemistry is obvious. [Feb 2013, p.74]

The songs, musically dazzling with strings and fetching arrangements, sometimes organise themselves into forceful hooks. [Mar 2013, p.77]

All are very good indeed.

Layered vocal effects and unexpected rhythms on tracks like "Messenger" and "Loud" reward repeated listens, while the pounding, jagged drums of "Caged Sleep" and blissed-out fuzz-pop of "Wheel" offer immediate satisfaction. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Elemental and beautiful. [Apr 2025, p.31]

Never self indulgent, this is enquiring music that's frequently beautiful. [Dec 2008, p.81]

Pick Me Up Off The Floor hangs together wonderfully. [Jun 2020, p.33]

An audacious, risk-taking tour de force, it locates itself in the upper reaches of Steve Wynn's increasingly daunting canon. [Jan 2011, p.87]

Still, as a whole, Bitte Orca feels nothing less than a modern equivalent to Talking Heads' Fear Of Music or Scritti's Cupid & Psyche 85 –art-rock with intellectual rigour, borderless curiosity, and no fear of the mainstream. Pop, by any other name.

'Cave Mouth' rocks with something of Fugazi's technical heft, while 'Perfect Fit' matches Penner's quavering vocals to dancing Klezmer piano and swells of cymbal. [Aug 2009, p.88]

The dynamic, White-produce LP is dominated by wistful yet hooky ballads. [Jul 2017, p.32]

Unexpectedly, it's all pretty exciting. negotiate the scree, and the songs demand repeating. [Dec 2009, p.121]

Somewhat Gothic, but for all its dark corners, this debut gleams with a pop lustre. [Jun 2011, p.77]

Rustic, rowdy, bags of fun, Life On Other Planets is another Supergrass masterpiece. [Nov 2002, p.118]

Their most convincing, most composerly music to date. [Feb 2004, p.69]

A confident debut, a record that is greater still than the sum of its impressive parts. [Jul 2015, p.74]

This is an album filled with earworms, with hooklines and stray phrases that burrow deep into your consciousness. [Sep 2016, p.72]

Eight relatively streamlined stoner-rock cuts. ... But Fuzz are best when they embrace ridiculousness. [Nov 2020, p.29]

A wonderful pop album that reads as both a studied tribute and a welcome update. [Apr 2023, p.35]