Anderson's admiration and affection for this feminist icon is such that you come away from Amelia with a greater respect for those who keep on taking risks. [Sep 2024, p.28]

Though feelings of disaffection inevitably colour Foam Island, a tentative optimistic note emerges in songs like the title track and "Stoke The Fire." [Nov 2015, p.73]

Hen's Teeth is where Beam truly leans into the possibilities of dropping simple songs into the laps of intuitive musicians and delighting in what emerges. [Mar 2026, p.27]

The result is a quietly moving hymn to home and humanity. [Mar 2021, p.29]

The singer-guitarist somehow manages to deliver passages of remarkable intimacy within this sonic immensity, as if the sounds were an externalisation of the ravaged psyche he first exposed on the 2014 modern-day landmark Lost In The Dream. [Dec 2024, p.39]

A perfectly formed masterclass in early hours reflection. [Aug 2020, p.82]

A set of songs that inscribe their intensities and their romantic visions directly on the listener's heart. [Feb 2016, p.76]

Their wispy, diaphanous reworking of The Cure’s 'Just Like Heaven' suggests the Watson formula could travel far.

They've come up with a non-vocal album that surprises and delights. [Nov 2008, p.112]

The fact that Parker sings five of eleven tracks is The Invisible Way's other obvious point of departure, and one of its great strengths. [Apr 2013, p.61]

There are lots of martial bust-ups and squalls of fretboard fury that show that Buddy may be old but he's still wild. [Jan 2011, p.88]

There are a couple of duds, but songwriters Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, a kind of grungy hipster take on Sweden's pop factory, still have a tremendous hit rate. [Apr 2014, p.74]

It's remarkable that the cosmic Ekstasis--recorded in Holter's home with only five musicians--feels surer of itself than Tragedy, a record rooted in millennnia-old practice. [Apr 2012, p.72]

The music here is intimate yet remote. [Dec 2002, p.140]

Here it brillianrly showcases the interplay between Iyer's melodic clattering, Stephan Crump's slithery bass and Marque Gilmore's fizy drum explosuions. [Oct 2009, p.98]

It's when the band marry this discordance with melody that they really shine. [Nov 2021, p.35]

Unquestionably, it is beautifully done. [Jun 2011, p.80]

There's a heightened atmosphere and sense of scale throughout. [Jun 2012, p.84]

The album which confirms that the older, wiser Dinosaur Jr--Dinosaur Sr, if you will--compete on quality as well as quantity. [Sep 2016, p.73]

A head-first plunge into the psych-punk muck. [Aug 2012, p.76]

The pick of the bunch are the two recordings made in 2000. The first is a live set recorded shortly after Glastonbury at the BC Radio Theatre featuring Bowie's well-drilled band on a post-Glasto high, working through the hits. The second is Toy. [Jan 2022, p.38]

The record is a listen-through winner, but the title track and languid, acoustic closer "John Prine On The Radio" are standouts. [Aug 2024, p.35]

From Scotland With Love successfully and movingly unites past and present, old and new, sight and sound. Another diamond. [Aug 2014, p.77]

Gentle pedal-steel weepies and shimmering, folk-rock beauty are testament to her new-found freedom. [Sep 2013, p.92]

A wonderous, modernist mix of LiLiPUT, Husker Du and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [Mar 2022, p.28]

Number 14 sees them rejigged as a quintet, allowing their reverb-drenched sounds to spread where they will. [Oct 2012, p.87]

It’s a vibrant and genre-spanning collection, from the stripped-back piano house of opener “Wanna” via the UK garage flavour of “Waited All Night” (featuring xx bandmates Romy and Oliver Sim). Elsewhere, there are touches of R&B, disco, pop and electro-funk as the record unfurls with all the grace and flow of a masterful DJ set. [Oct 2024, p.43]

With Oberst's frail and quavering but steel-lined voice high in the mix, it clarifies how exceptional his lyrics are, and what exactly they're about. [Jan 2006, p.104]

bdrmm have expanded their sound, retaining that youthful energy and combining it with ambition and impressive marshalling of dynamics that creates a strangely serene album. [Aug 2023, p.25]

[The set] has ramshackle charm. [Nov 2013, p.89]

It's Creevy's charismatically odd lyrics and playful, St. Vincent-style subversion of angsty feminine stereotypes on provocative curios such as "Daddi" that keeps us transfixed. [Mar 2019, p.26]

Producer Joe Henry's tribute to that album, 1964's Bitter Tears, reimagines it beautifully. [Nov 2014, p.83]

Ackerman's psych-mangling songs covers a riveting emotional and sonic range. [Dec 2008, p.92]

Balancing staccato rhythms and itchy guitars with a neat line in woozy, trance-like synthesisers, they have an oblique lyrical bent that's all their own. [Feb 2008, p.80]

Magnificent Fiend is both indebted to the past and utterly timeless, wild but controlled, chin-stroking clever and head-shaking dumb, referential without being reverential. [May 2008, p.88]

His style remains unequivocally distinctive on these two succinct pieces. [Apr 2018, p.32]

Some stunning inventive improvisation, with pianist Danilo Perez sounding like 10 excited monkeys jumping up and down on the keys. In a good way. [Mar 2013, p.76]

To Be Still is a quantum leap from its predecessor, and one which establishes Alela Diane as a significant figure in contemporary Americana.

While they're not doing anything particularly new, the mixture of bile and valedictory swagger here is exhilarating. [Apr 2014, p.73]

Packed with big, epic pop. [Jun 2003, p.102]

K Bay probes the Richmond, VA-based artist's teeming psyche while advancing his anything-does record-making style. [Oct 2021, p.34]

Lenker collects vivid details and lets them amplify each other, until the deeply personal becomes somehow universal. [Mar 2024, p.29]

They rise to each other's challenges surprisingly well, with sinuous lo-fi beats brushing against saxes, woodwinds and vintage synths. [Jun 2011, p.96]

Shields' four contributions are everything you'd hope for. [Oct 2003, p.126]

Two years on, her sound is equally ambitious but more committed: here are modern, maximalist pop songs with top notes of R&B, Trap and Afrobeat, plus experimental detailing. As ever, Taylor's lyrics convince. [Nov 2021, p.32]

Every note of this compelling album backs her up. [Sep 2014, p.72]

Spoon display their signature style, precision and immediacy in real time, locked together through 10 taut tracks. [Mar 2022, p.36]

Songs unfold as complex relationships, with attendant euphoria, doubt and internal demons. [May 2005, p.112]

A more contemplative, intimate offering that in its own heavy and soulful way is just as thrilling. [Oct 2014, p.79]

She sounds like a woman liberated, employing the services of Al Green's band, the Hi Rhythm Section, and cheerfully ratcheting up the soul textures hinted at on her 2010 debut, Obadiah. [Nov 2014, p.75]

Despite a few notable omissions--no "Big New Prinz"?--it feels like the most coherent overview of the band's 40-odd years to date. [Jan 2018, p.38] [Album: 9/10 Extras: 6/10]

Coming so soon after Depression Cherry, it would be easy to dismiss Thank Your Lucky Stars as a mere postscript, but, if anything, it's the more impressive of the pair. [Jan 2016, p.72]

Past Life Regression is a perfect distillation of Quever’s aesthetic – 10 hook-filled tracks that bring to mind vintage Paisley Underground excursions, Barrett-era Floyd and jangly C86 moods. [Jul 2022, p.31]

Another reliably excellent offering. [Mar 2016, p.82]

An album that pores over the passing and the past with such defiant, deadpan nobility. [Feb 2012, p.78]

Having coloured in right up to the edges in previous projects, it's a pleasure to hear Ruscha exercising restraint on "Lights Passing By" and "Gravity Waves." [Apr 2018, p.35]

It sounds timeless, and oddly familiar. But subsequent listens add intrigue. [Feb 2014, p.70]

As with Singing Saw and City Music, a lot of time an thought has gone into ensuring Oh My God holds together. Lyrical themes are repeated, explored and teased out. [May 2019, p.22]

He has clearly been galvanised creatively. What an excellent record. [Jul 2020, p.37]

He's a man who cleary thrives on company, his stringy voice bolstered by the presence of Jolie Holland, Neal Casel, an on "No time To live Without Her," Vashti Bunyan. [Jan 2011, p.92]

Whether deployed as a meditation aid or an object for more focused listening, Lovegaze succeeds handily. [Jan 2024, p.31]

The results are sparkling, upbeat and infectious. [Apr 2014, p.73]

His solo debut is simple and earthy, leaning on little more than organ, warm acoustic guitar and his wondrous singing, carrying the betraying quaver of a man who feels a little too much. [May 2012, p.78]

It's a dynamically compelling set that taps Black Sabbath, Chic, Killing Joke, Elmer Bernstein and Paolo Conte, Mike Patton's extraordinary (six octaves) voice its focus. [Jun 2015, p.76]

The results, restrained, immersive and quite beautiful. [Jun 2014, p.71]

Avant-folk with a thin glaze of psychedelia and gurgles of electronica on songs that draw their charm from the contrast between Dyble's crisp enunciation and vaguely experimental settings. [Sep 2017, p.26]

Their songs are a cola rush of pop harmony, like the Fizzbombs with added Mentos. [Oct 2025, p.24]

Stung! is a detail-rich trip as warm as it is wiggy. [Aug 2024, p.39]

Pretty, poignant and educational, too. [Aug 2013, p.71]

A triumph. [Oct 2014, p.77]

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

Lonerism is more melodic and expansive then 2010 debut Innerspeaker, connecting the disparate dots with real elan. [Nov 2012, p.84]

These 18 collaborations are a fascinating voyage through the classier end of pop, country and R&B over the past decade, and also add much needed focus to Jones (sometime insipid) mix of country and smooth jazz. [Jan 2011, p.93]

There's a sustained congruence about the rhythms and textures that make The Take Off and Landing of Everything seem like an extended and mediation on certain musical and lyrical themes. [Apr 2014, p.72]

Here they have shuffled back a few years from the disco and jazz-funk infusions of 2021's Private Space to a more sun-dappled classic soul sound. It suits them perfectly too. [Aug 2025, p.32]

A provocative and inventive second album. [Sep 2009, p.96]

End Times is not merely Eels' best album yet, but in the highest rank of breakup albums, something with the anguished fury of Ryan Adam's "Heartbreaker," sighing with the stoic resignation of Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel Of Love." [Feb 2010, p.83]

[Fear Fun is] packed with sardonic, self-effacing songs that recall the finest traditions of harmony-soaked West Coast folk-and-country influenced rock'n'roll. [Jun 2012, p. 68]

These crafted tracks are built for dancefloor delirium, yet darkness and unsettlement abound, awkward elegance and cool beauty twinned with repetitious abandonment. [Sep 2016, p.74]

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

If Hypnotic Eye was just about the snarl, it'd lose steam fast. Instead, it's only one element of a story that's bigger and richer, which is how a storied American band returned to the core principals of yesteryear without having to pretend to forget all they've learned in the meantime. [Aug 2014, p.63]

These 10 songs feel bold, nourishing and emotionally resonant. [Nov 2016, p.34]

Disturbing, but also enthralling. [Jan 2020, p.23]

Of their own material, "Glory" best captures the ensemble in full flight--fluid rhythms, breakneck percussion and melodic patterns--while the sweeping "Remain" foregrounds McCaslin's expressive sax skills. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Sparse, literate... and full of killer tunes. [Sep 2005, p.105]

Margaret's melodies are often submerged, but her approach is not entirely ambient. [Aug 2023, p.34]

The end result creates an engulfing sonic swirl, recalling the enveloping work of Cluster and Tangerine Dream. [Dec 2018, p.24]

A record that is dreamy and introspective yet teeming with ambition. [Apr 2021, p.37]

Painted Image is as stylistically omnivorous as it is emotionally acute. [Feb 2019, p.24]

Steingarten combines clipped, Kompakt-style 4/4 funk with a massy dub sensibility reminiscent of Adrian Sherwood's Tackhead productions. [Apr 2007, p.114]

The trio [Badbadnotgood] create nuanced, immersive contexts for the rapper's narratives: occasionally dialed in, at times surprising. [Mar 2015, p.71]

A brooding, impressive return. [Mar 2014, p.71]

"Living Torch I" is gentle and organic, a hypnotic four-note refrain offering some of the spiritual uplift of her organ work. The shorter "Living Torch II" presents something like the same ingredients, but strafes them with electronic attack. [Oct 2022, p.33]

As poetry alone, it's interesting, but the music's elegance make it something more. [Jan 2011, p.93]

This album feels like a new beginning. [Apr 2014, p.70]

With North African and Latin American angles also explored, this is a throbbing, ominous, rigorous homage to garage basics. [Jun 2019, p.29]

This invigorating swansong by the Anglo-Italian duo finds Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia bowing out at the peak of their powers. [May 2015, p.84]

The results go beyond folk, with flurries of orchestration and discord adding rusty grandeur to Flemmons' pained vocals. [Jun 2013, p.69]