Too often, though, these chant-a-long anthems are too damn chirpy for their own good. [May 2012, p.71]

The template remains intact, with monotony fundamental: The Necks lend the title track's repetitions a shimmering, slowly evolving transcendence, Anna Von Hauswolff and sister maria provide bloodcurdling shrieks on the devastating, pummelling "Sunfucker," and Baby Dee adds voodoo magic to "The Nub." [Dec 2019, p.32]

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

Reuniting her ex-bandmates adds a rock impetus to Doiron's more fragile solo work. [Feb 2007, p.74]

Frequently thrilling, and its pilfering from America's classic rock catalogue - including The Allman Brothers, The Doobie Brothers, Creedence clearwater Revival, The Band and Crazy Horse - is affectionate and celebratory. [Nov 2021, p.33]

Boo! has plenty of highpoints. [May 2008, p.113]

In their careers, this band might prove to be a sideshow. But right now, it's one with the possibility of being as gripping as the main event. [Jan 2010, p. 104]

Drowsily beautiful. [Oct 2010, p.94]

It could all feel a little too knowing were the songs not so exceptionally strong. [Apr 2015, p.73]

A broader exploration of form. ... Like most everything here, ["Geraldine" is] a beautifully weighted moment. [Jun 2017, p.26]

A batch of songs that snap and snarl in all the right places. [May 2018, p.27]

18 tracks--and stylistically it's disparate, but that's the point. It's a one-time postcard. An advert for uninhibited experimentation. [Aug 2019, p.25]

Inside Problems is a rather less meticulous and more spirited band set that examines the questions that keep him awake at night, in ear-snagging songs shot through with ’70s country rock, chamber pop, Balkan and Appalachian folk and Tin Pan Alley eccentricity. [Jul 2022, p.23]

Lifetime Achievement embraces the folksier elements of his sound, paring the music down to guitar, banjo, occasionally a harmonica and even more occasionally a full band. [Sep 2022, p.22[

The resulting 10 tracks, each maintaining a single key throughout, conjure interstellar space in all its sublime beauty and ominous unknowability. [Dec 2023, p.28]

It doubtless works best heard in the cinema or the home theatre, and especially in the context of Julian House's beautifully lurid title sequence.

As ever with Canadian German duo King Khan & BBQ Show, this offers little in the way of subtlety and a lot in the way of entertainment. [Dec 2009, p. 100]

[Super] has some darkly twinkling moments.... The rest is at the very least a reminder that PSBs remain a lively genre of their own creation. [May 2016, p.78]

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

Mala finds his skills somewhat exposed across a whole album as he seeks to balance frisky Cuban percussion with his own muscular poise. [Nov 2012, p.77]

It starts promisingly.... Elsewhere, sadly, The Traveling Kind is rather a plod. [Jun 2015, p.84]

[His] best collection in more than a decade. ... These songs present an entirely unromaticised, often harrowing portrait of the outlaw genre. [Jul 2017, p.28]

Allo Darling' have become more accomplished since their 2010 debut without losing the intimate charm that make their brand of "real indie" an enduring choice for outsider pop fans. [Nov 2014, p.69]

A few underpowered, slate-grey instrumentals miss the mark, but the gorgeously warped "Tied And Bound" comes close to the alien beauty of Mica Levi's sonically extreme soundtrack work. [Mar 2015, p.84]

Its glowering landscape is reminiscent of Actress' Ghettoville, but without a similar supporting mythology Pearson Sound can feel rather cold. [Apr 2015, p.81]

The result is a deeply humane record, perhaps the most vivid in Johnson's long career. [Apr 2021, p.29]

On this ninth album of originals, Rev frontman Jonathan Donahue elects to vocalise in a soft whisper rather than his characteristic starry-eyed warble. It works best when their chamber-pop soundbaths are punctuated by rhythmic hooks and ear-catching lines. [Sep 2024, p.37]

Smart, elegant and affecting, this is surely her best yet. [Nov 2012, p.85]

Many Moons is studied, but graciously so. [Nov 2015, p.73]

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

At its peaks, it remains bracing in its intensity. But between climatic passages defined by Nathan Weaver's hoarse roar and stern batteries of kickdrum, the band seems to recede into misty, ambient washes that are engaging in their heavy melancholy. [Apr 2009, p.105]

If you’re simply after retro thrills, though, these boozy anthems will provide you with one very happy hour.

Where Yorkston's last album was precisely drawn, the follow-up is looser and less beholden to strict arrangements, and more willing to let the musicians dictate the pace. [Sep 2012, p.84]

Fiction's first album is comprised of sweet things shamelessly pilfered from the early '80s pop pick'n'mix. [Apr 2013, p.71]

{The album] bears many of the assured and lyrically deft hallmarks of Basher's own work. [Mar 2014, p.79]

It ends up being a more nuanced guide to the Thompsons' flawed but just-about functioning dynamic, divorces, remarriages and all. [Dec 2014, p.82]

[A] sonically rich debut. [May 2015, p.77]

The resulting appearances from the likes of Calexico, Mark Knopfler, Carrie Rodriguez and David Lindley are subtle and empathetic, blending easily into Brown's spare, atmospheric Americana. [Jun 2017, p.24]

When You're Ready is a sharply confident debut, as Tuttle proves an expressive vocalist and an idiosyncratic songwriter. [May 2019, p.37]

This is a downbeat set, lean and lonesome yet never morose. [Nov 2019, p.38]

Opulent, perverse and reassuringly other-worldly. [Oct 2019, p.30]

It's a rich, well-crafted piece of 1970s AOR, featuring elegantly written verses, choruses and - heaven forfend - middle eights. [May 2020, p.32]

Think Screaming Trees' Dust, or Chris Cornell's Euphoria Morning, steeped in folk and psychedelia, the teenage angst of old weathered if not quite mellowed. [Aug 2020, p.30]

Vertigo Days does not deviate far from the established Notwist formula of soft-focused indie-folk electronica, which can feel too tastefully non-committal at times. But there are vivid beauties here too. [Mar 2021, p.34]

These compact compositions inevitably risk straying into noodling self-indulgence at times. But in general, inspiration trumps masturbation. [Aug 2021, p.33]

Some songs are mere fragments and there's an early version of standalone single "U.S. Mail" in place of Sundowner's stunner "Jamie," but this is otherwise a beautiful and raw selection still bearing the scars and charms of creative birth. [Oct 2021, p.29]

There's a comfort, a natural ease, to Black Lips's Apocalypse Love that could never be mistaken for laziness. [Dec 2022, p.25]

Johanna Warren’s sixth solo record is as masterful as it is enchanting. [Oct 2022, p.36]

Smartly enlisted esteemed producer Dave Fridmann, who illuminates their loose-limbed, self-assured character on kickass Stones-y opener "If I Try To Leave" and the cowbell-powered "Forgiving Ties," with its hooky Harrisonian central riff. [Aug 2023, p.28]

Little Sun is one of his strongest sets in a while, whether he’s lost in the hypnotic reveries of “Bearhead Lake” or finding Michael Hurley-esque playfulness through “Ten Watt”. [Apr 2024, p.39]

“You Possess Me” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” are out-and-out power ballads, while the ramshackle roar of another cover, The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”, is arguably closest in spirit to what went before. [Nov 2024, p.40]

The caustic wit of their first two albums is too often buried under shouty non-choruses and dirgey post-punk bluster, either side of a couple of more notable moments. [Mar 2023, p.35]

A surprisingly introspective album. [Jul 2019, p.37]

While house purists might find it juvenile, and there are some aimless passages, the lo-fi production is beautiful. [Mar 2012, p.87]

Arguably, they are a little one-paced and some looseness would not have gone amiss--but the candid, striking honest lyrics about sex and love bear the strain. [Jul 2017, p.26]

Stephen McBean's merry bunch have toned down the heavier impulses of 2010's Wilderness Heart on this fourth album, plumping instead for a collision of gruff psychedelia, trippy space-folk and pulsing electronica. [May 2016, p.69]

A cover of 'Flower Sun Rain' by '70s Japanese supergroup Pyg sounds like the Super Furries, while a 16-mkinute doom jam with SunO)))'s Stephen O'Malley is as titanic as you'd hope. [May 2008, p.91]

Centipede Hz is an album that both gazes up into the cosmos, and stares down into the dirt--and perhaps that's not so weird.

Songs lurch from amphetamine ballads to sullen dream-pop and always keep you guessing. [Review of the Year 2023, p.23]

The lyrics are still all Rennie's, of course, teeming with mysterious metaphors and fantastical flights of fancy. [May 2009, p.90]

Their combination of new wave rhythms, with such conspicuous use if strings is impressive, but it falls a little short of grandeur. [Oct 2008, p.105]

The result is a richly produced album of breezy, melodic and infectious indie-rock with hooks galore. [May 2024, p.31]

The Inevitable End is a bittersweet triumph. [Jan 2015, p.76]

Arctic Monkeys were never comfortable as the ‘voice of a generation’. Humbug subtly shrugs off that unwanted mantle, and in the same deft movement, promises a much more interesting future.

You could praise individual moments... but it's the overall weave, the daydreamy drift, that impresses. A 40-minute swoon of a record. [Jul 2004, p.112]

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]

It's the gravitational pull of Williams' great jowly voice that remains the defining feature of an often vitriolic set of songs that veer between snake-hipped R'n'B and blasted soul'n'roll.

It's a world away from their introspective acoustic work... but [Producer Mitchell] Froom's airbrushed studiocraft... suits their well-crafted songs. [Apr 2007, p.105]

Not so much a last will and testament. More a case of business as usual, for as long as he still can.

Tracks like "Reticence," "Chrome Rose," and "I Was You" don't quite live up to their off-kilter introductions, but "Exploit Me" is a magnificent mix of Krautrock drones, sluggish tom-toms and a drunken vocal pitched somewhere between Mark E Smith, Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan. [Nov 2015, p.76]

The alleged political subtext is pretty opaque, while the rich sonic mix strays into tasteful inertia in places, but the prevailing mood is eclectic and energised. [Mar 2017, p.37]

What makes Friendship different, though, are Wriggins’ striking songs, minted in the sort of conversational poetry at which Lucinda Williams excels. [Aug 2022, p.26]

It's no drastic reinvention, but the PRS cheques keep on coming. [May 2018, p.37]

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]

If there’s something odd about an authentic Southern girl reworking a singer from Ealing who longed to emulate her American heroes, then it’s perhaps best to judge this record on its own merit. Which, as it turns out, is very high indeed.

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

Translated From Love utterly captures Kelly Willis' oft-wayward talent. [Oct 2007, p.115]

There's a dash of Yeah Yeah Yeahs about the opening scenes of this Brirtsh Columbia band's vivacious third album, which should have them gracing bigger indie dance-floors. [Jun 2010, p.109]

Lux works on a pragmatic and egalitarian level as more or less the ideal ambient record. [Dec 2012, p.66]

Anyone who's enjoyed a fruitful encounter with Ariel Pink's home-recorded oeuvre should also find plenty to love about John Maus. [Jul 2011, p.91]

When the adrenalin stops pumping, the reality is that labelmates The Constantines do this stuff much more effectively. [Dec 2006, p.118]

This great LP is best seen as their Desert Island Discs, a statement of things the band can't do without. [May 2009, p.79]

Together, Harvey and Parish sound confidently experimental, like two soldiers daring each other to ever more stupendous feats of history.

The disguises are so convincingly worn that which one is the "real" Joshua James matters not one whit. [Jun 2012, p.74]

A perfect summer record for those who found the last Beach House album too wintry. [Sep 2013, p.94]

A different, more elegant affair. [than 2014's Mosaic]. [Feb 2017, p.38]

An eccentric collection that only adds to his mystique. [Dec 2017, p.26]

Lofgren's voice is crackly, but plays perfectly. [May 2019, p.30]

This time the material is vivid and freakier. [Jul 2020, p.30]

The result is a deeply eclectic yet remarkably cohesive record that unfurls in pleasingly unpredictable ways. [Oct 2020, p.32]

The album come out riffing, with a packed list of guest guitarists. ... Ozzy sounds world-weary, sometimes a bit knackered. [Nov 2022, p.35]

For all its space-oddity trimmings, Feorm Falorx mostly sticks to Plaid's home planet, boldly going where they have been many times before. [Jan 2023, p.24]

The results--notably 'Cheap And Cheerful,' which suggests that Britney Spears' 'Toxic' made quite an impact on them and the chaotic 'Alphabet Pony'--are a revelation.

A blend of delicate, hypnotic electr-folk and pulsating prog--a tantalizing treat. [Sep 2008, p.99]

It's business as usual, but a welcome return nonetheless. [Nov 2018, p.32]

"Don't Pretend You Didn't Know" is a one-off messing with their recipe, still as compelling a mix of hardcore, jangle-pop, country and speed-metal as it was 25 years ago. [Oct 2012, p.77]

It's an album, like most teenagers, that is sometimes awkward and exhausting, but also joyous, un-jaded, and bursting at the seams with promise. [Apr 2006, p.114]

The results have a clinical, cerebral appeal, but--perhaps predictably--sometimes fail to deliver instinctive musical kicks. [Mar 2007, p.100]