The songs are largely Solomon accompanied only by a primitively strummed acoustic guitar, a sparse but effective backdrop to confessional odes about facing fears. [Jun 2026, p.34]

It's a most welcome trip back to what he does best. [Feb 2014, p.81]

Nelson sings like a canary and plays like a dream, Haggard growls like a grizzled jailbird, and everyone seems to be having a blast. [Jul 2015, p.72]

The sparse strum of "Easy For You To Say" eavesdrops on a troubled couple, a fear of romantic failure permeates the otherwise upbeat jangle of "Rose Town", and the country pop "When Will The Morning Cone" craves light at the end of a dark emotional tunnel. [Sep 2025, p.37]

Musically it's more grounded, though, if still diverse. [Nov 2020, p.27]

Another satisfyingly robust effort. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

Songs like "That Loneliness" can make Jagwar Ma sound a little clean-living, while the ingenuous "Let Her Go" simply bowls you over with sun-bleached pop-psych. [Sep 2013, p.90]

A mostly rich and involving experience. [Apr 2005, p.98]

There are enough familiar motifs to keep long-time fans happy. Lyrically, it's an endlessly pleasing melting pot. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Silent Alarm's innovation, sense of urgency and sleek production are enough to comfortably elevate Bloc Party above the post-punk rabble. [Mar 2005, p.106]

The lurching tempo shifts of opener "She Makes Me Real" set Masquerade's brooding, anxious mood. [Mar 2026, p.26]

Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig apply a dance-pop shine to the 10 songs here, an approach that lightens the load of heavy-hearted lyrics rooted in changes and challenges like Wolfe’s recent divorce. [May 2022, p.30]

Less ambitious than the album that spawned it, but a worthy companion piece nonetheless. [Nov 2013, p.71]

They never outstay their welcome or settle into anything as complacent as a groove, leaving nothing behind but a sugary residue and a feeling of faint violation. [Jan 2016, p.80]

The album is dominated by her fine, Jolie Holland-style whimsical vocals, backed by gorgeous arrangements from the mulch-instrumental band. [Mar 2013, p.70]

Though it lacks the ingenuity of Holiday, the palpable tenderness of Get Lost or the rigour of 69 Love Songs, it does satisfy a need. [Jun 2020, p.36]

The results are sometimes almost listenable, which is why the most compelling songs on her third LP allay these avant-garde instincts to a belting tune. [Jul 2016, p.69]

Humorous, pithy and downright ballsy. [Sep 2001, p.106]

Like a cross between X-Ray Spex and rage Against The Machine as reinterpreted via US hardcore, there's plentiful anger, but also a hopefulness. [Sep 2017, p.26]

Acoustic guitar features, alongside synths, samples and field recordings, but for all their adventurism, these songs have structure. Still, diversity rules. [Sep 2017, p.32]

It's refreshing to hear Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey challenging themselves as OMD enjoy their Indian Summer--"La Mitrailleuse" blends gunfire and military drums--even if the results mostly end up as blue-eyed Kraftwerkian pop. [Oct 2017, p.36]

Their debut to Sam & Dave is plain, but there;s as much Alabama Shakes and a pre-stadia Kings Of Leon too. [Oct 2015, p.81]

Full of sound and furry. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Butler performs the same job that Trevor Horn did with Belle & Sebastian--adding a widescreen pop ambition to McIntyre's flinty personal tales. [Nov 2018, p.34]

Notably louder than Hersh's other solo records, if it evokes anything else in her canon it's throwing Muses' furious, fabulous 1992 album Red Heaven, "Loud Mouth" and "LAX" being especially elemental eruptions. [Nov 2018, p.30]

The Glasgow guitarist's follow-up is more singular, placing Hubbert's spidery flamenco-influenced instrumentals alongside some less compelling vocal outings. [Oct 2013, p.70]

The mood is melancholy, the voice crystal clear, the folk-based songs deadly direct. [Feb 2014, p.78]

It's an album of disco torch songs with the usual glib lyrics about good times and sexy dancers replaced by light-hearted queer/feminist sloganeering. [Mar 2014, p.82]

The Los Angeles MC-producer hasn't yet made a definitive record. Cherry Bomb isn't it either, but its chaos is invigorating. [Jul 2015, p.83]

Producer Thomas Bartlett enlists the likes of Rob Moose and Brett Devendorf to add sharp edges to the Australian's singer's dreaminess. [Jul 2012, p.83]

The sense is of a band confirming their place as among the most enterprising in the genre. [Jan 2022, p.27]

Folds' heady tunes sparkle in these unconventional settings. [Oct 2015, p.75]

Guitarists Rich Robinson and Marc Ford, bassist Sven Pipien and the three seasoned players they've recruited stretch out stylistically on the sequel. [Nov 2019, p.28]

Half of a worthy comeback. [Oct 2016, p.25]

Barwuick's reliably beautiful voice sits at the back of the mix, observing the shimmering sonic haze below her. [Sep 2012, p.81]

A perfect introduction to a musician currently in full stride. [Oct 2012, p.71]

More suited to contemplation and drift than dance, perhaps, and with Gavin Bryars-like strings and low-level electronics making the 11 pieces more voluptuous than ever. [Oct 2014, p.67]

It fizzes with pent-up power and singalong choruses. [Jan 2018, p.18]

Despite the familiarity, Infinite Summer has a heart, and could probably melt permafrost with a single playing. [Nov 2016, p.79]

As with most ambient works, English's LP plays best as a set piece, through gauzy, soft-gushing epic "V" is a particular beauty. [Jan 2025, p.34]

Ultimately, it's an album rooted in the constant collision of rock and pop. [Aug 2020, p.27]

The band are at their best when they put their heads down and rock. [Jun 2015, p.83]

What is basically an update on the kind of blissed-out composite at which Andrew Gold used to excel. [Apr 2019, p.29]

The trio play straighter than fellow pre-Revolver fetishist Ezra Furman, but have the tunes to finesse it. [Aug 2016, p.75]

Ultima II Massage is ostentatiously big and frequently clever. [Jul 2014, p.83]

Royal Headache's second album oscillates between slightly unconvincing punk throwback and much more effective complex numbers. [Oct 2015, p.81]

His folky, cello-soaked songs will appeal to David Gray devotees. [Oct 2003, p.116]

Animal Companionship is a more sombre affair than it initially sounds as Ashworth uses animal love as a lens through which to dissect heartbreak and loss, broken lives and creeping morality. [Nov 2018, p.23]

Alone is filled with tremendous vocal performances. [Dec 2016, p.24]

Recall[s] the tin-pot vigour and gutsy emotional bite of... Guided By Voices. [Mar 2006, p.94]

Road-toned chops and anticipation of desert homecoming combine to evince a mighty set. [Jan 2016, p.81]

This delightfully unlikely collaboration is as much fun to listen to as you suspect it was to make. [Apr 2020, p.26]

The Vacant Lots might be cool but they still like to boogie. [Aug 2020, p.39]

The recording quality isn't the great, but the Family sound like the funkiest, most exhilarating house band you ever heard. [Sep 2025, p.47]

The Sniffers sometimes sound limited by their studiously low-brow, lo-fi aesthetic. Even so, Comfort To Me offers a mostly exhilarating mix of headbanging riffs, profane wit and gutter-punk attitude. [Oct 2021, p.24]

Stamey is at his most persuasive when he keeps its simple. [Jul 2015, p.83]

Kinder Versions offers up a stormy swell of sound that's intermittently compelling even if Mammut's wilder instincts can seem tethered down by plodding rhythms. [Sep 2017, p.32]

His fourth album as Lawrence Arabia cuts the potential sugariness of strings-embellished, '60s-influenced pop with reflective, often bracingly direct lyrics and wry humour, but sensibly, no sardonic edge. [Sep 2016, p.69]

The slow-burn of "Blue" is a soaring mid-set ballad with anthemic qualities showcasing a strong sense of dynamics. That captures the defiant mood, something best heard in opener "My Blood Runs Through This Land" and the churning rage of "understanding". [Mar 2023, p.25]

Most of these frothy confections would sit just as well on any of the band's previous 11 long players. [Aug 2013, p.67]

The irony is that Mature Themes, full of nonsense and wonderful ideas, further cements his reputation as one of the more vital voices of his generation.

When their formula works, like on the Brian-Wilson-joins-Radiohead splendour of "Thousand Thoughts" or the soul-weary, sci-fi lullaby "Blue Faces," they can sound untouchable. The lush, mechanised, bluesy trip-hop of "Driving Nails" and the sub-Underworld shouty gallop of "Stay Tribal" are diverting enough, too. But Archive's blind spot is a fondness for graceless pomp-rock. [Dec 2016, p.23]

With synths foregrounded for their texture and percussion a feature, they’ve shifted orientation without losing their identity. [Nov 2024, p.34]

His fourth solo album is structurally ambitious, obtuse and occasionally brilliant. [Nov 2012, p.83]

Right On! casts its own seductively austere shadow. [Jan 2016, p.77]

Karen's spectral, childlike voice sounds like it's been beamed in from a haunted 19th-century log cabin. [Feb 2020, p.29]

Modern Dancing suggests they're just as smitten with Pavement's affably skronky early works as they are with any '80s touchtones. [Jan 2016, p.81]

They channel their power into free form excursions of an often surprising delicacy. [Jan 2015, p.75]

Unreconstructed but entertaining when they get the balance right. [Feb 2016, p.76]

It's typical of Lamr's artistry that even a comp of offcuts comes formatted and conceptualised. [Jun 2016, p.75]

Slipstream relies on Bonnie;'s voice and slide playing--and, above all, her felicitous ability to pick the right song. [May 2012, p.80]

In places she sounds surprisingly like Andrea Corr, but she;s a winningly melodic songwriter. [Aug 2015, p.78]

After "Waiting," a disarmingly soulful duet with Noah Cyrus, the LP gets darker and more resonant. [Oct 2017, p.24]

A discreet, quietly rapturous record. [Nov 2012, p.72]

Dent May favours freewheeling, psych-funk pop that nods at The Beach Boys and The Carpenters, but adds notes of samba, mariachi and '50s lounge music. [Nov 2013, p.69]

His second Daptone album swings like Sam Cooke, sways with rocksteady cool, and is as stylishly '60s as a pair of fur-lined Chelsea boots. [Mar 2018, p.27]

Is by turns light, sunny and soulful, if a bit self-satisfied in places. [Feb 2025, p.34]

This 15-track album is daft, sprawling, naive and full of contradictions--but rarely less than entertaining. [Jun 2018, p.37]

The finest tracks here update the duo's attitude as well as their sound, dissecting anew cultural and emotional climate with a bittersweet detachment reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys. [Oct 2002, p.124]

A touch of monotony creeps in, although they keep it at bay through sheer volume on the closing, eight-minute "Harpooned." [Jun 2015, p.84]

It feels like a meeting of worlds. [Feb 2023, p.25]

There's nothing profound about Electric Version. But classic pop has seldom sounded so much fun. [Jun 2003, p.98]

It's a record this restless artist can settle into and build on as he continues to mature, because it solves his chronic problems while presenting huim with a newfound sweet spot. [Jul 2014, p.82]

Nothing wildly new here, yet Cutler's full-time escapist fantasy is pretty persuasive. [Jan 2022, p.30]

This pairing with the UK Soothsayers collective proves an easy fit, framing Campbell's precise, melodic vocals with intricate horn-led arrangements and adding judicious dub effects. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Peyroux's smoky, Holiday-esque voice has seldom sounded finer as the trio's jazzy ambience is lent a wonderful natural reverb by the vaulting acoustics. [Nov 2016, p.35]

A more concise affair [than II], with only one of its six tracks over eight minutes. It's also more laid-back. [Jan 2021, p.28]

As noise records go, it's a thing of relative restraint, and enjoyable in its own way. [Jan 2016, p.81]

The result sees them maintain high energy levels while showing off a richer musical palette and a keener sense of flow. [Sep 2023, p.31]

The blend of early Cure and gnarly grunge of "Soft Like A Flower" produces an indie-ish racket, the dance pulse of "Wild Times" and the smoky brass curling around "Golden" show new facets to her sound that work just as well. [Nov 2023, p.26]

There's often a giddy, even ecstatic feel to Pierce's exercises in personal exorcism, one that connects the exuberant indie-pop that was The Drums' stock and trade during their breakout a decade ago with his more smiths-y and synth-laden music here. [Dec 2023, p.28]

Ejimiwe has made a record filled with quiet bubbling tension yet also leaves room for lightness, offering a glimmer of hope amid the brooding dread. [Jun 2020, p.29]

The duo's sophisticated feel fro arrangement, the primary point of interest, is on display throughout. [Feb 2014, p.71]

A series of convoluted psych-pop romps, some drizzled with synth-sax, that perplex and please in equal measure. [Jun 2016, p.76]

Their fondness for 17-minute improvisations demand a certain stamina, but there's a strung-out beauty to Infinity Machines that eases you in gently. [May 2015, p.73]

The dentist-drill whine of Klachefsky's voice will scare off all but the hardy, but Boats rock regardless. [Jul 2013, p.71]

The end result is something that's freaky and funny, as rigorously experimental as it is gleefully entertaining. [Sep 2015, p.82]

Kikagaku Moyo sound more assured than ever on this fourth album. [Nov 2018, p.32]