It's a credible step back into the ring after years on the ropes. [Apr 2013, p.66]

While some of N.E.W. feels a little undercooked, there are also fantastic moments. [May 2015, p.71]

Nicolas Bougaïeff departs from this template [repetitive 4/4 pulse, set to an unchanging rhythmic grid], using disconcerting shifts in tempo, odd time signatures and Aphex Twin-like experimentation. [Sep 2020, p.27]

Quibbles aside, though, this appears to be a partnership with plenty of mileage left. [Jul 2016, p.70]

A largely enjoyable ramble through '90s and early '00s-era soul-jazz and brassy funk. [Aug 2017, p.32]

With echoes of everyone from Big Star to Elliott Smith, Bored Nothing have sufficient promise to be really something. [Jul 2013, p.71]

As the album Latin music fans always hoped Santana would make, Corazon doesn't disappoint. [Jul 2014, p.80]

The songs are simple but seductive; the melodies blissed-out, hypnotic. [Jul 2014, p.78]

Aşk feels like a liberation, bursting out exuberantly in all directions as they boldly rework a set of ancient Turkish folk tunes with characteristic invention. [Apr 2023, p.23]

Restrained, but deeply satisfying. [Apr 2005, p.100]

Often the music sounds aimless in its open-endedness, too uniform in its cruise-control tempos, but the austere, restrained arrangements reinforce the world-weariness of Roberts' vocals, which recall Townes Van Zandt at his most bluesily pensive. [Nov 2016, p.37]

Instrumental understatement and forlorn romanticism define The Jacket. [Apr 2022, p.36]

Collett's debut album reveals him as an alt.country confessionalist akin to Paul Westerberg. [Apr 2006, p.108]

If Segovia had gone electric, one could imagine the results might have sounded something like this. [Aug 2023, p.34]

The results can be stirring. [Jan 2015, p.74]

Promises is an impressive collision of talents, and sublimely lovely in places, but also frustratingly slight. A minor addition to the canon of its two main authors, it earns the double-edged compliment of all half-great albums: it leaves you craving more. [May 2021, p.30]

It's a filthy, fun blend of stripped-back rock'n'roll, punctuated by zombie seventh chords, rasped blues vocals and an Old World punkish intensity. [Feb 2016, p.75]

Parallel Memories is, in places, almost too minimal.... But Mitchell's softness of touch leads to some moving moments. [Jan 2015, p.75]

A blues feast. [Apr 2020, p.25]

What is new is the extensive use for the first time of the Kora, a lyrical embellishment that slots dreamily into the melodic elegance of the classic Baobab shuffle. It's good to have them back. [May 2017, p.37]

As a collection of friendly collisions, an impulsive document of how music can bring people together over musical and cultural boundaries, it's well worth the visit. [Feb 2014, p.79]

Unashamed nostalgia at its very best. [Jun 2016, p.78]

Parish's songs, alternately folksy, swampy and lonesome, are sometimes fleeting, capturing moments in the ether and preserving them in amber. [Jul 2018, p.33]

The new versions of songs are all better than the originals. [Aug 2017, p.45]

First Taste is focused round the self-imposed discipline of not featuring guitars. ... In truth, the challenge barely affects Segall's shred-happy sound. [Sep 2019, p.34]

Producer Joe Henry keeps the atmosphere warmly intimate, like a slate-night jam session in a smokey club, which keeps the focus squarely on the interplay between the instruments and personalities. [Feb 2026, p.37]

No major revelations, but plenty of pleasant surprises. [Jan 2021, p.47]

The country shadings are less obvious, but the mood has darkened, with cinematic strings wrapping themselves around the pedal steel. [Sep 2012, p.80]

Folds stays true to his career-long mission to whisk up a melting pot of musical styles. [Nov 2012, p.73]

His honeyed, Elliott Smith-esque vocal adds to the lush warmth of spare but forceful arrangements, softening the blows soaked up by his songs’ baffled and blitzed Angelenos. [May 2022, p.29]

The emphaiss here is on standalone songs, with each bandmember apparently harking back to teenage memories. [Dec 2012, p.73]

For all the haunting, dislocated atmospheres here, Coombes still has an ear for melodies. [Feb 2015, p.75]

Not everything works on this bloated 18-tracker, but enough hits the target. [May 2017, p.35]

Guild takes a few listens to really seep in, but there are some truly hallucinatory moments here. [Oct 2019, p.39]

Tobacco's stew of narcoleptic beats, tape experiments, Vocoder mutterings and vintage synths in states of distress has lost some potency in the nine years since BMSR's classic Dandelion Gum, but remains wholly idiosyncratic. [Sep 2016, p.81]

The technology has evolved, but the Plaid Aesthetic remains constant. [Jul 2014, p.78]

Punk-rock and post-punk templates are smashed as needed by guitarist Mark Bowen and co-producer Kenny Beats. [Dec 2021, p.29]

An album filled with soft, tender indie-folk. [Nov 2020, p.29]

Its songs run more freely and push at greater abstraction, without losing melodic strength. [Jan 2021, p.27]

KGLW now take their foot off the gas via this countrified, ’70s rock’n’roll set with a warm, relaxed air. [Sep 2024, p. 37]

As challenging as it is comforting. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Thile is in a different class to the aspirational dabbling of contemporary music's most famous interpreter of Dowland, Sting. [Nov 2013, p.79]

A welcome comeback. [Jan 2016, p.73]

It has an effortless momentum and addictive melodic pull that renders serious criticism redundant. [Dec 2012, p.73]

Sonically adventurous, Phase is unafraid of chunky choruses, bedroom confessionals and twisted synth arrangements. [Mar 2016, p.75]

They've expanded on their debut's Goat/Can homage, opting for a rawer sound that leans on funk-charged bass throbs and wildly oscillating synths. [Apr 2019, p.36]

On several songs here Rubin helps peel back the years to reveal an energy and a passion that reminds you just how powerful was the band's initial proposition. [May 2020, p.30]

Her second proper LP is a full-on pop-reggae confection. [Jun 2014, p.75]

Its initial oddness now just sounds like a ramshackle tryout for what was to follow. [Jun 2012, p.91]

This is a wild and dirty, devotional trip that peaks with the shrieking, delay-warped minutes that constitute closer "E Shra." [Jul 2015, p.84]

Carried off with an impressive theatricality. [Jul 2005, p.104]

One-paced but classy. [Jul 2014, p.74]

Cohen displays a light touch throughout, whether spiking “Dog’s Face”’s reverberant honky-tonk piano with detuned guitars and brass, constructing “Sunever” around swinging mandolin or conjuring ’80s DIY indie on “Wishing Well”. [Aug 2024, p.31]

An ambitious and spirited album. [Mar 2026, p.29]

The Dreamin' Kind is far more persuasive when it allows room for his more nuanced tendencies. [Jan 2026, p.30]

They're pleasingly bleak on their second studio set. [Dec 2015, p.78]

Several of the songs seem performed out of affection rather than any sense of artistic adventure. [May 2007, p.90]

An elegant, sculpted electronica that's cerebral of construction but robust enough to beat a dance floor into life. [Jan 2015, p.69]

Plaza, finds them bedding down with a more cautious and concise approach. [Mar 2016, p.78]

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]

While her voice remains breezy, follow-up If You're Dreaming is a different beast: slower in pace and softer in tone, the weariness of touring life sneaking into the party-girl lyrics. [May 2020, p.25]

A reworking of an early Squirrel Flower track, "I Don't Use A Trash Can", and the delicately atmospheric "Finally Rain" bookend the work, showing Williams' quiet strength as a songwriter. [Dec 2023, p.34]

The rest of Mount The Air is tentative by comparison [to "Magpie"]; stylish, and extremely skillful, but a bit too much arr and not enough trad. [Mar 2015, p.68]

Double Exposure can sometimes come off sounding precious, a bunch of genre studies without that mysterious extra something--this grit ain't turning into a pearl. But when they stretch out, as on "Mandorla At Dawn," The Helix move with loose-limbed grace. [Mar 2014, p.83]

SeiTang's solo project is about extracting the trance-inducing goodness from equipment resurrected from the cusp of analogue and digital ages, so Badalamenti/Lynch Twin Peaks and Vangelis' Blade Runner are key reference points. [May 2013, p.78]

A rewarding evolution by a band that could easily coast on their rugged laurels. [Aug 2016, p.72]

Michael Franti has fashioned an inclusive pan-global pop, heard here at its most confident and fully formed. [Jul 2014, p.73]

In looking to ramp up their sound for bigger stages, the Galway trio have adopted a polished style of shoegaze in place of the earthy charm that won them admirers such as Robert Smith. This suits the muscular new songs of Julie Dawson. [Dec 2025, p.36]

There's emotional violence, spiritual leaps and supernatural powers lurking in the shadows. [Nov 2005, p.96]

The raw poetic facade occasionally cracks, but there is something special here. [Mar 2006, p.88]

Moore's delicately stylish piano lines and Liz Fraser-style vocal hiccups combine seductively. [Mar 2020, p.37]

Vermont is a project now--but the outcome is similarly minimal and beatific, with each of its 12 tracks shaded with only the most essential detail. [Mar 2017, p.40]

A darkly impassioned mix of hip hop, art rock and electronics that connects to indigenous street music as well as to Gil Scott-Heron, The Ruts and TV On The Radio. [Feb 2016, p.84]

Undertow resembles free jazz noiseniks let loose in a junkyard, cooking up a mood of creeping dread with radioactive electronics. [Apr 2017, p.40]

The LP's muscular hooks and unpretentious formalism provide Dylan with the ideal setting for his assured wordplay and signature stoicism. [Aug 2021, p.35]

It's a little hard to digest in one sitting, recalling the more outre moments from Linda Perhacs, the Cocteau Twins, or Kate Bush's Aerial. But individual moments are quietly compelling. [Jun 2016, p.81]

Lyrically, Rodgers can be stilted and adolescent at times, but she hits the sweet-spot on the compellingly stern electro-goth chant "Disgrace" and the terrific title track. [Jul 2019, p.33]

Ghost's raps are more Staten Island than Sicily. [Jul 2013, p.76]

The predominant flavour here is a sort of manic hedonism, but scratch the sequinned surface and you find some witty social commentary and a seam of vulnerability. [May 2024, p.35]

Blake's fragmented post-dubstep has always had an air of bleak melancholy, but nothing he's done has been quite as self-consciously miserable as this. [Nov 2021, p.25]

There’s acreaky Sunset Boulevard synth-pop air of nostalgia to much of Nonetheless, but just when you’re ready to dismiss it, they pull out “Love Is The Law”, adream collaboration between WH Auden and John Barry, which shoots straight into the Top 10 of their indisputably greatest songs. [Jun 2024, p.37]

It's to The Felice Brothers' credit that Favorite Waitress never quite becomes oppressively earnest, though it's a near thing at a couple points. [Jul 2014, p.75]

They've reverted to broader strokes on their self-titled follow-up. If few musical envelopes are pushed, the pounding melodic rock of "Like I Had Before" is irresistible, and will sound huge live. [Dec 2025, p.31]

Gendel makes it all appear effortless - as usual. [Apr 2023, p.26]

Alongside matters existential, there are plenty of personal expressions here. [Nov 2015, p.81]

It might seem late in the day to be claiming they’ve hit their stride, but Too Cold To Hold is the sound of a differently aspected and ultimately more satisfying Warmduscher. [Dec 2024, p.39]

Nothing is too self-consciously retro. [Feb 2013, p.71]

"Horns Surround Me" and "Feel You" may lack the intricately orchestrated arrangements of their recorded incarnations, but they're no less thoughtful. [Apr 2017, p.32]

A notably confident-sounding record. [Aug 2021, p.23]

[The interviews with dock workers, WWII veterans and itinerants whose stories inspired nine of the 12 songs make] little material difference to his music. [Feb 2014, p.77]

The dominant flavor is deliberately faceless and club-friendly electro, but the highly finessed sonics and subtle attention to detail emerge over repeat listens. [Apr 2012, p.88]

Little Windows has an easy charm, but doing this stuff well is harder than it looks. [Jun 2016, p.81]

The band haven't sounded quite so spirited for some time. [Jun 2016, p.74]

On his third solo album, he's found a niche that suits him. [Jul 2016, p.81]

On the cautionary rockabilly of "Put Out The Fire" and low-slung raunch rap of "Ain't No Rhyme," he demonstrates a firm grasp of his essential strengths. [Jul 2016, p.70]

Hermetically sealed but beautiful. [Jul 2013, p.80]

With only three of the eight songs clocking in at under five minutes, things can get a little ponderous, but clearly, our expectations are of little concern. [Aug 2019, p.29]

Rhett Miller’s quartet crank up the cowpunk on the likes of “This World”, “Falling Down” and “Chased The Setting Sun”, but time, inevitably, has tempered their collective experience. [Jun 2024, p.37]