Modern nature is an explicitly English affair: unbluesy, unassuming and slightly uptight (in a good way). [Sep 2019, p.36]

Tonight's Music finds Davies returning to The Moles' first principals of beguiling deadpan psychedelia, as if Syd Barrett had lit out to New Zealand in the 1980s and joined The Chills. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Quietly devastating. [Dec 2002, p.131]

[The new remix] is sympathetic and subtly revelatory. .... However, there is one near-unforgivable gaff: on "Hot Stiff", around 2 mins 50, just as Mick comes back after Keith's scribbling wah-wah solo, the new mix inexplicably omits the word "Hot", hitting is only with a mighty - "Stuff!" [Review of the Year, p.41]

However eccentric and laidback his expression, it's as masterfully distinctive as that of any auteur. [Nov 2018, p.35]

A real treat. [Jul 2005, p.92]

A work of rejuvenating power on which Weller and his long-serving band attain a new sense of purpose and focus. [Nov 2005, p.94]

[The] bucolic narratives on the sextet's fourth album are imbued with plainspoken authenticity. [Jan 2018, p.26]

It's an album that delights, challenges and provokes, while reimagining old folk traditions. [Feb 2020, p.35]

They produce a whole lot of full-fat dance-pop joy. [Oct 2023, p.85]

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]

[The album] fires out volleys of convincing Metalheadz-style jungle breakbeats, embedded in brooding sound collages apparently influenced by Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood. [Mar 2014, p.71]

A bold 10-track classic boasting a deftly modernised '70s-retro feel led by Hobba's clean young voice and dirty, Neil Young-meets-shoegaze guitar. [Apr 2013, p.77]

Greg Weeks and band reference artists as diverse as Michael Rother ("Caroline"), Cowboy Junkies, and "No Quarter" - era Zeppelin, but the classicism of their compositions keeps all this firmly in the service of the song. [Dec 2009, p. 92]

Black Sun is subdued and ruminative: snaking around dancehall, grime, hip hop, but holding fast to its own uniqueness. [Jun 2011, p.87]

The result sits somewhere between Mazzy Star and Broadcast, exploring a liminal space between the more propulsive moments of the album. [Apr 2024, p.41]

Faun Fables sound more shamanistic than ever. [Sep 2016, p.74]

There's no dazzle here, but that's precisely the appeal of the Glen Campbell-like "Searching For The Sun," "You And I" and the high noon mariachi of "I'm A Man." [Jul 2013, p.81]

Lands as another Technicolor blast. [Jan 2022, p.22]

Their third and strongest album, pitching them closer to Captured Tracks labelmate Mac DeMarco. [Oct 2015, p.84]

It's just a lovely collection of songs, in which the serenity of voice and understatement of band create a humane intimacy rather than anything more mystical. [Oct 2016, p.32]

It's the gently chiming guitars, summery synth lines and Vallesteros' Beach Boy melodies that dominate. [Sep 2014, p.71]

Feels like the first step in a viable third chapter for a band that has rediscovered its identity. [Apr 2021, p.30]

Mixed, but mostly positive results. [Jan 2016, p.73]

Most crucial is a penchant for '60s chanson's soft-focus harmonies and production values. [Jul 2020, p.30]

After years of striving, makes Augustines a band that now sound energised by palpable relief. [Apr 2014, p.69]

This tasteful collection is best represented by McBride;s cover of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes' "If You Don't Know Me By Now," matching her satin to the original's velvet. [May 2014, p.77]

Though they're all pushing 40, Hot Chip have seldom sounded as youthful and carefree as they do on seventh studio album A Bath Full Of Ecstasy. [Jul 2019, p.29]

Too engaging to be ambient, too amorphous to be melodious, Félicia Atkinson's latest continues her ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) experiments, her poetry whispered--often indistinctly--over strangely riveting electro-acoustic collages. [Aug 2019, p.26]

An occasionally excellent but disjointed album. [Jun 2012, p.71]

It's consistently charming. [Oct 2019, p.29]

The three proper songs are the highlights, though, with the Bacharach-esque title track among the finest Rhys has ever produced. [Nov 2016, p.37]

Konkoma's sound is rooted in 1970s Afrobeat, complete with blasting horn section and gloriously fuzzy organ, but shot through with touches of highlife, funk and rock. [Aug 2012, p.75]

The Joe Henry-produced LP is full of subtle beauty and rich imagery, but there's so much of it. [Oct 2013, p.72]

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]

She is in her Hot Gossip element on the camp, gasping electro of "Sauna", while the Morricone-referencing "Ride" channels Sheila B Devotion by way of early-'90s Madonna and the title track is sheer seduction in silk pyjamas. [Jun 2026, p.35]

With Fool, his focus is as much on method as material. [Feb 2019, p.27]

White's material feels freer than usual, full of spirals of organ and keys, collapsing new rhythms and delirious jazz-funk riffs; Holley's one-take improvisation edge towards visionary incantations. [May 2021, p.35]

From the hypnotic opener “Kasai Munene” to the upbeat closer “Allstars All Around” with its spiralling soukous guitars, this is celebratory music-making at its most joyously instinctual. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Whenever he [frontman Jeremy Gaudet] does lose his footing, the band’s imaginative take on mid-2000s indie rock – all churning guitars and zigzagging synths – steadies this Chopper. [Sep 2022, p.26]

It's all delivered with gusto and buckets of charm. [Jan 2014, p.76]

Now manifesting more of an intense, slow burn than a fierce blaze, they sound no less anguished. [Apr 2014, p.74]

11 bewitching songs that evoke late-aughts hypnagogic pop, Mac DeMarco's dreamiest ballads, and a badly warped cassette of '80s-vintage dinner jazz. [Jul 2019, p.26]

It's hard-going at times, but "Nolan" and "Soda Fide" are oddly stirring. [Jun 2014, p.78]

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

Solidly crafted but with few surprises. [Nov 2017, p.28]

The resulting album is a joy. [Jan 2026, p.27]

The boundary-trampling spirit that makes their music stretch out almost infinitely live remains barely tapped. What keeps The Zutons special is singer David McCabe's lyrics. [May 2006, p.108]

Trail Of Dead have always made music to get lost in and this one's a maze. [Mar 2020, p.23]

Now the songs are sharper and prettier. [Jan 2016, p.75]

Restraint didn't run in the family, perhaps, but a flair for interpretation did. [Mar 2019, p.30]

Their slick, mirthless approach and Roman Rappak's self-satisfied delivery threaten to turn Breton into Topman art-rock mannequins in the mould of Everything Everything and Alt-J. [Mar 2014, p.72]

The Turning Wheel has the feel of a big reveal. Her voice, as dramatic and flamboyant as a young Kate Bush, now pirouettes amid a backdrop of warm brass and orchestral funk supplied by an extended cast of players. [Jul 2021, p.34]

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

Credit Dalhous, aka Marc Dall, for making something beautiful but still somewhat unreadable in its intentions. [Sep 2014, p.71]

Frances The Mute smells like another concept album, is far too long and so pretentious as to be farcial. Amazingly, it's also mighty entertaining. [Mar 2005, p.91]

Hot Cakes adds little to their hybrid Queen, AC/DC, Van Halen and Gun N' Roses, but their air-punching thrills of "Forbidden Love" and "Concrete" are undeniable. [Sep 2012, p.74]

There's an appealing disjuncture at the heart of this collaboration. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Like Golightly's solid output since burying Thee Headcoatees in the late '90s, Sunday revolves around amped-up reinventions of mid-century hillbilly, honky-tonk, blues and country. [Nov 2012, p.75]

Fleeting, once again, is a loving, diligent and honest attempt by Jones to pay fingerpicking homage to his hero. [Apr 2016, p.74]

The expansively layered arrangements here are a testament to a bolder ambition than the acoustic troubadour shtick that once defined him. [May 2017, p.37]

[The] mostly instrumental pieces point up the rich musical subtleties and contemplative mellowness of the originals. [Mar 2014, p.72]

It's not easy to ooze insouciant cool while pounding out febrile garage-punk, but LA quartet Feels manage to pull that off throughout this spiky debut. [Jun 2016, p.73]

Talbot treads lightly, and a melancholy beauty predominates. [Jun 2012, p.73]

Aside from the odd burst of medieval flute, their fifth album is unlikely to scare the horses, striking a neat balance of darkly powerful and whimsical. [Jun 2013, p.70]

A slight disappointment. [Oct 2003, p.124]

Over time, however, a fondness for arpeggios becomes as predictable as island life. [Nov 2016, p.39]

The follow-up, recorded in isolation during lockdown, has a mellower, be-thankful-for-what-we've-got vibe. [Apr 2022, p.35]

Demonstrates a continued forte for hooky songs that are just as likely to draw from '80s inspirations like The Smiths and Aztec Camera as from Joyce Manor's rowdier predecessors on Epitaph. [Feb 2026, p.35]

Bittersweet pop songs are the order of the day, gently psychedelicised. [Jan 2021, p.27]

Amiably gentle but uplifting follow-up. [Aug 2023, p.25]

They're every bit as gleeful as they are virtuosic. [Jun 2026, p.26]

The best tracks revisit some older collaborations: "Hildebrandlied" is an acid house belter while Belgian techno producer Fabrice Lig hits the synth-pop jackpot with the Pet Shop Boy-ish "Cinema". [May 2025, p.31]

There are rum choices (Ex-Easter Island Head, Craven Faults), generic pumpers (Sally C, Shanti Celeste, Daybreakers) and moody mates (Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Deftones' Chino Moreno), while surprising highlights include Daniel Avery's "Drone:Nodrone" widescreen prowler. [Jul 2025, p.26]

A Dietrich pour nos jours. [Apr 2014, p.80]

The producer's penchant for tinsel and bluster tends to obscure the duo's strengths. [Jun 2012, p.80]

Deceiver sees them return in a better mental state but with much the same spirit as when they left, delivering wafting waves of shimmering guitar over lyrics that hint at drama and turmoil. [Nov 2019, p.24]

Love And Fortune is a reckoning with loss - of relationships, homes, a younger, more carefree version of herself - but one that does not wholly relinquish Donnelly's playful side. [Jan 2026, p.29]

True, there are covers of Tom Petty's "Christmas All Over Again" and Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," but it's informed by the general spirit of seasonal holidays, which is as much reflective as celebratory. [Jan 2021, p.23]

An altogether less whimsical - and much more Pearl Jam-esque - undertaking than 2011's Ukulele Songs. [Apr 2022, p.36]

Despite this record's twilight charms, the group may need to become more expansive if they want to head further out there. [Oct 2005, p.96]

There's the sense that primarily, they're out to please themselves, but that's of little issue when the result is a string of three-minute knee-tremblers played with excellent chops and plenty of gusto. [Nov 2013, p.76]

If Drift Code can't quite match the rural psychodrama of its predecessor, it boasts its own quizzical magic. [Mar 2019, p.32]

While The Streets' five LPs each had a distinct narrative, this is different - skittish investigations into the expanded and exciting taste of a now fortysomething workaholic. [Aug 2020, p.36]

This stone-age jalopy has a definite theatrical charm--malevolent Nick Cave-ish narratives, vicious basslines, squally guitar and touches of honking saxophone, all executed with a visceral energy that's almost painful to behold. [May 2014, p.67]

Things get chewier with "Tax To Your Head," as the trip gets a little heavier--musically as well as lyrically--eventually leading to gorgeous love song "Waitin'" and the pensive "Sitting On The First Rock From The Sun." [Aug 2018, p.24]

Lots to unpack, and it's a pleasure to do so. [Oct 2019, p.30]

The most affecting songs are the drum-less, spacious, guitar-led numbers: the spartan ragtime of "Boots Of A Soldier", or the wonderfully Tom Waits-ish waltz "The Knowing". [Aug 2024, p.32]

Ex is full of Hawtin's old sleek menace and disdain for obvious peaks, though the sound design is fractionally lusher than that of brutalist texts like Musik (1194). [Sep 2014, p.75]

This, then, is a rich and strange new sound for Marshall. [Oct 2012, p.85]

Even if it doesn't push the needle for Ono in terms of broader cultural awareness, it reinforces the crucial idea that those who know, know. [Apr 2022, p.24]

Dan Lopatin champions sounds that fall between futurological cool and nostalgic resurrection, and here takes them to a new level of melamine gloss. [Nov 2013, p.76]

Lively but also introspective, The House ultimately explores growth through personal reflection, while nestled in a cocoon of immersive electronics. [Feb 2018, p.30]

It's essentially a pop record--albeit a complex and cleverly arranged one. [Apr 2007, p.115]

There’s a palpable sense of world-weariness in his vocals and in the band’s fuzzy hooks, which makes everything sound both precarious and oddly poignant. [Aug 2022, p.25]

Those in thrall to Modest Mouse’s well-honed blend of ramshackle punk-folk and predilection for dispensing off-grid wisdom will find much favour with the latest addition to their canon. [Aug 2021, p.31]

It doesn't always work, but when it does, it suggests a great artist finding new and surer ground. [Jun 2012, p.77]

An album of rapid-fire drums, throbbing bass and colossal riffs that nod, well, headbang, back heavily to the glory days of thrash metal. [Oct 2019, p.29]