The miraculous, heartbreaking conjunction of found text and ancient lament, forged together in the alchemy of Elkington’s production, feels the most perfect realisation yet of Fussell’s project: tradition sparked back to life by unexpected everyday encounters. [Aug 2024, p.24]

When bassist Anna Butterss breaks free for a lubricious solo around the 14-minute mark of "Life Swimwear", it's to usher in an exquisite passage of dubbed-out psychedelia threaded through with Josh Johnson's tender saxophone. [Jun 2026, p.34]

Their music is an intoxicatingly vivid evocation of the mythology of the American west and its Hispanic heritage, and Feast Of Wire lays down an optimistically early marker as one of the albums of the year. [Mar 2003, p.98]

CD2 is a quirky new mixtape which proves he's still up to his old tricks. [Dec 2008, p.116]

Feels more like a refreshment, refinement or even fulfilment of Radiohead core principals, rather than an extracurricular dalliance. [Jul 2022, p.24]

Halvorson's string arrangements admit complexity without overwhelming, and the Mivos String Quartet play gracefully and authoritatively. [Aug 2022, p.26]

Yes, it's largely tuneless, the guitars and drums about as co-ordinated as a set of blindfolded square dancers, but the sisters' naive approach yields endless wonder. [Nov 2016, p.52]

Hood's gift for the character study abundantly justifies the extra room to roam, and the ambitious arrangements spanning folk to jazz to electronica are fleshed out by a stellar cast of collaborators. [Feb 2025, p.35]

To The Sunset suggests that she's not growing ay more inclined to sit still, and is her best yet. [Sep 2018, p.28]

The album feels disciplined and enormously funky. [May 2012, p.61]

A formidable demonstration of what can still be done with guitars. [Jan 2004, p.114]

Soul Of A Woman proves to be so much more than your average swansong. ... Sly, spirited and sublime, it packs a whole lot of action into its 36 filler-free minutes. [Dec 2017, p.16]

With Chavez Ravine he has performed another ethnomusicological miracle, opening a can of worms while drawing us deep into the musical heart of a lost community. [Jul 2005, p.90]

Newman is at his most affecting when he plays it mercilessly straight: his flickers of sincerity all the more beguiling for only appearing rarely.

Featuring gently swooning arrangements by Nico Mhly, four duets with Beth Orton, three nimble reworkings of children's singing games and an affectionate R Kelly cover, I See The Sign inhabits an enchanted universe, not a million miles from Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan." [May 2010, p.83]

Mick Barr's guitar work is hugely impressive, apparently concerned with documenting an infinite number of riffs, but the length of the compositions--often around 12 minutes--rather test the limits of endurance. [Aug 2011, p.90]

For the fourth album in a row, they've moved the goalposts, challenging themselves to apply their whooping idiosyncrasies to a new aesthetic framework. [Mar 2014, p.70]

Fish finds a gorgeous middle ground between lambent guitar soli, all slow rivers of singing steel string guitar, and richer, more resonant arrangements. [Nov 2015, p.72]

His most classically minded, complementing the film's setting with its own opulent old=world beauty. [Apr 2018, p.27]

The set's ordering is exemplary, especially given its size, but diving in at random reaps the richest rewards, throwing up unexpected complements and contrasts. ... It's a trip for devotees and newcomers alike. [Jan 2019, p.41]

Impressively inventive and diverse material. [Dec 2019, p.35]

It's bolshy, uncompromising and demands to be played on repeat. [Aug 2020, p.36]

Playful wordplay and minor-chord ingenuity bound. [Jun 2023, p.23]

An expansive, soulful set that embraces modern West Coast fusion, Hancock-style funk, , psychedelic soul-jazz and more. [Nov 2023, p.26]

Fratti delivers some of her most musically and emotionally rich work to date here, her dreamy voice and impressionistic Spanish-language lyrics adding an extra layer of magical realism. [Aug 2024, p.36]

If 2021’s Homecoming marked Du Blonde’s transition from the psychedelic experimentalism released under her birth name to a take-no-prisoners glam-punk persona, its follow-up is that of an ascendant star honing her craft. [Dec 2024, p.33]

This LP could serve as a document of an improvising four-piece at its best. [Review of the Year 2024, p.32]

Ghedi expertly shapes traditional tunes, covers and dazzling originals into a deeply personal vision. [Feb 2025, p.35]

The Road To The Sea is a blithe but bittersweet affair. [Jun 2025, p.35]

The core of the album lies in a cluster of gorgeously restrained, piercingly evocative pieces built mostly from acoustic instruments. [Jun 2007, p.94]

Its 15 tracks are filled with cheery major-key singalongs, sitar-soaked synth-pop bangers and whimsical waltzes that serve as ecstatic celebrations of life, rebirth and reinvention. [Mar 2026, p.20]

It’s an album that’s constantly shifting, almost restless at times, yet it also remains poised and coherent. [Jul 2021, p.27]

It's a record that walks a fine line between joy and sorrow. [Apr 2026, p.36]

This is Forster in excelsis. [Mar 2023, p.22]

For him a song is no older than the last time it was sung. His fifth album, Good And Green Again is his most thoughtful, his most eloquent, and his most poignant explication of this idea. [Feb 2022]

The overall effect is almost hallucinatory. [Jul 2014, p.83]

Simple Songs is a major statement from a brilliant, mischievous singer-songwriter. [Jul 2015, p.80]

Few other performers have electrified country blues to such plaintive and non-parodic effect since the heyday of Led Zeppelin. [Sep 2001, p.100]

There is more raw drama here, a prevailing starkness. [Nov 2014, p.65]

His primary source is a pipe organ in an Icelandic church, which he processes, filters, deconsecrates, muddles and distorts, and therefore liberates in the course of this album, enabling its latent potential to escape from its wooden room and form a burgeoning cloudscape. [Apr 2011, p.83]

Created in a similar manner [to 2023's Curyman], Curyman II is every bit its equal. If anything, Verocai’s arrangements feel more baked-in this time, shaping the melodies and hugging Rogê’s playfully darting tenor and fragile falsetto. [Dec 2024, p.30]

American Dream is a triumph, then, and possibly LCD Soundsystem's finest album so far. [Oct 2017, p.18]

These 16 ineluctably lovely songs are his most personally reflective for some time. they're also among his most structurally straightforward. [Sep 2025, p.33]

Under the direst circumstances, he has painted his masterpiece. [Album of the Month, Sep 2003, p.96]

On The Cinder Grove he has a simple, yet profoundly effective modus operandi - setting streams of notes afloat and listening for the way their resonances commingle with strings and piano. [Mar 2021, p.31]

Through its adventuresome twists and well-considered combinations, this record acts a a necessary treat amid a turbulent and uncertain climate. [Feb 2021, p.22]

It’s always going to be tough to unequivocally celebrate your hometown when the everyday reality is poverty and disenfranchisement. But as Sadam says, Imarhan’s music aims to bring those issues to wider attention while simultaneously representing the richness of their culture – a feat that Aboogi pulls off with passion, skill and no little style. [Feb 2022, p.30]

This is another set of brilliant, beautiful, occasionally frustrating songs themed around ideas of ending and death. [Review of the Year 2024, p.24]

Outstanding. ... Aside from the supple elegance of Landes' warm voice, the most arresting element is her sharp songwriting, which succeeds on a number of levels. [Oct 2018, p.26]

This scintillating set pulls and pushes extant studio ideas into wonderfully weird new shapes. [Apr 2021, p.32]

The album is tethered by Roberts' spoken-word poetry. [Oct 2023, p.33]

Its watery, dreamlike soundscapes are totally immersive on one of those records that - temporarily at least - can make the cares of the world seem to melt away. [Mar 2025, p.29]

While the blues, folk and country moments are excellent, the most striking offering on Saving Grace is its most primal, namely their savage version of Low's "Everybody's SOng". .... It's hard to see a limit to their powers, such is their skill with both sweet and the sour, the delicate and the bruising. [Nov 2025, p.22]

Two albums on and they're still assembling a uniquely imaginative mythology. [Jul 2011, p.82]

Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of his staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible, re-takes not merely the occasion for refinement, the honing of a song into static finality, but serial re-imaginings.

Lost In The Dream is calmer and more confident than previous efforts, songs stretching out beyond the six-minute mark if the feeling is right. [Apr 2014, p.83]

The band's pivot away from fuzzed-out jangle pop to something closer to shoegaze adds to the dreamy feel. [Nov 2022, p.25]

Pleasingly grubby debut LP. [May 2021, p.25]

An abrasive but soulful post-punk. [Jul 22017, p.23]

Gold Record is very assured, marking a refinement of the Callahan sound. [Oct 2020, p.28]

The arrangements are bigger, the language more dense, the symbolism darker. [May 2013, p.72]

He sings plenty, with engaging huskiness, while leading his band down ever more inventive tangents. [Nov 2014, p.76]

While Teardo's shines, balancing a tendency toward simple melodic cells with sweeping trawls of tonality, Bargeld's dry humour still comes through. [Jun 2016, p.81]

The set follows the progression of Mersey music from Yachts and Big In Japan through to The La's, who re-engaged with the Cavern sound and signalled where Britpop would soon be heading. [Mar 2018, p.47]

The scatterings of Muscle Shoals-y horns aren't particularly muscular, but they don't need to be to let the class of these '70s-style soul-pop songs glow. [Feb 2020, p.23]

Regular frontwoman Ninja remains a ferocious force of nature on several tracks. ... Consistently great, routinely underrated. [Mar 2023, p.26]

Resounds with the liberated feeling of an artist who not only has something to say but an audience to say it to. [May 2024, p.35]

The result is a highly engaging, emotionally rich debut, where defiant working-class pride anthems like “Dig!” jostle for space alongside the soaring urban blues confessional “This Here Ain’t Water” and the joyously puerile playground chant “Shithouse”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

The final 25-minute-long “Fünf” is most thrilling, revealing what “Animal Waves” could have been had they not been drifting in different directions in the studio. [Dec 2024, p.47]

C Duncan's fifth album, like Ricard Hawley's catalogue, is imbued with an old-fashioned, Technicolor warmth. [Feb 2025, p.34]

There are a number of lovely themes that repeat through “Unraveling In Your Hands”, though its central phase – an unrelenting, hypnotic stream of shivering strings, tiny flecks of light dazzling as you plunge deep into the repetition, while following a snaky melody through the thickets – is certainly unforgettable. [Jan 2025, p.33]

Live Forever crackles with outrage and compassion. [Jun 2026, p.32]

This is acoustic roots music at its most glorious, and Giddens is fast becoming the genre's brightest star in the firmament. [Jun 2019, p.33]

Will prove a delight to punters pursuing a Best Madchester Compilation Ever! as long as they forget The Stone Roses ever existed, and assume Morrissey came from another planet. [May 2002, p.116]

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

This record’s full engagement with its modern moment refuses to engage on that moment’s terms, instead offering its own blissful, unified escape.

This Zen archer lets fly with his second straight bulls-eye. [Sep 2015, p.79]

Moonchild Sanelly guest on “Streets Is Calling”, woozy dub soundscapes accompany “The Traveller”, Afrobeat and Afro-Cuban rhythms collide on “Shaking Body”, and the sense of jazz as a hybrid, liberating form is unselfconsciously embraced. [Oct 2024, p.33]

Folk songs given a rarefied air by his elegant wordplay and multi-tracked chamber strings. [Mar 2005, p.108]

This duo's songs are genetic pop mutations, scampering out of control. [Apr 2013, p.73]

A tightly visionary work addressing the isolation and mutilation of World War I soldiers; if it’s unforgiving and unflinching in focus, that’s needed, to give voice to such suffering. [Oct 2022, p.29]

The intimacies of David Briggs' production and the pure strength of the songs suggest an album that, with a few overdubs and a bit more polish could have worked as that desperately anticipated follow-up to Harvest. ... Pride of place, though, goes to the two unreleased tracks {Give Me Strength and Hawaii]. [Oct 2017, p.

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

The Window Is The Dream is sonically richer than Horn's often sparse 2022 debut, Optimism, but each choice - the temporary Band-esque folk-rock swagger of "The Dream", the way "Old Friend" hovers at the edge of an extended jam that never quite breaks - is in service of, rather than overpowering, the song. [May 2023, p.30]

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

Warmth and easy elegance dominate, yet Korkejian's songs aren't without mood upsets. [Aug 2017, p.25]

A strong start to a (hopefully) fresh chapter. [Dec 2024, p.37]

The musical tone of Panhandle rambler is rich, yet supple. [Dec 2015, p.70]

From clanging rock songs to eerie ambient pieces to sensual acoustic reveries, it's all highly detailed and perfectly weighted. [Aug 2008, p.98]

Runaway's Diary is a record with hugely impressive depth and emotional range. [Jun 2014, p.79]

The follow-up comes from a more confident place musically. [Sep 2018, p.31]

Collins' first album since 2013 sees the singer in pleasingly superb form. [Apr 2019, p.26]

A dozen young singers from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, Algeria and beyond [lend] a youthfully purposive and fearless energy to songs about misogyny, sexual identity, force marriage and FGM. [Mar 2020, p.30]

The result is both viscerally corporeal music, full of gristle and breath, and richly ambient. [Oct 2022, p.27]

13 toe-tapping and soul-stirring treatises against hate, inequality and violence. [Apr 2023, p.26]

Swamp Dogg shows how music can speak truth to power on the ballad “Songs To Sing” and rousing “Rise Up”, which features that rarity in bluegrass: a face-melting electric guitar solo, courtesy of Vernon Reid. [Jun 2024, p.39]

This new pin-sharp remaster of Talking Heads: 77 emphasises the freshness of the whole endeavour. .... But the real find of this Super Deluxe Edition, and the main justification for its existence, is a previously unreleased live set, forged in the white heat of CBGB on October 10, 1977. Taped a month or so before the performance featured on Side One of The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, it underlines what an incredible live band Talking Heads were from the get-go. [Dec 2024, p.44]

On this inspired album, jittery characters sketches alternate with introspective ballads bearing echoes of Simon & Garfunkel, astride variations on the exotic rhythms that have propelled his music since Graceland. [Jul 2016, p.79]