This four-track mini-album is something of a departure from [previous works, this is] a relatively straightforward, stripped down techno work with a few mischievous touches. [June 2008, p.88]

This is a hugely varied set: the title track starts with a barrage of Missy Elliott-style clapping, "New Myth" sounds like a mournful colliery band anthem, while the gorgeous "Daphene" sounds like a folk-rock Fleetwood Mac. [Feb 2011, p.89]

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

This is still a very heavy rock record, but it slithers with a degree of grace that had been missing in the past. [Nov 2015, p.65]

Its 10 minimalist songs mine a vein of laconic broodiness. [Apr 2003, p.110]

They may have opened out their map a little more for Medicine At Midnight, but the Foos' territory remains reassuringly familiar. [Mar 2021, p.38]

Other tracks hide catchier tunes amid the quagmire of guitar. [Mar 2012, p.79]

They sound reinvigorated, if somewhat aimless. [Nov 2016, p.40]

Probably the closest anyone has come to capturing the 40-year-old virgin spirit of the seminal Modern Lovers album. [Mar 2015, p.84]

There are proficient pastiches...[and] there are plenty of chugging, 6/8 neo-soul ballads. [Sep 2012, p.79]

The period pieces--string-laden ballads by Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Forrest and Jo Stafford-provide some light relief, as does the Art Ensemble Of Chicago-style junkyard jazz of Greenwood's "Able-Bodied Seaman." [Dec 2012, p.72]

There are plenty of deft touches but it's perhaps too knowing to truly connect, to sketchy to reward deep listening. [Jul 2014, p.80]

Greys are able to take these influences forward on tracks like "Cold Soak" and "Guy Picciotto," which seethe, howl and rock, combining the energy of hardcore with some of the more abstract sounds found in contemporary noise rock. [Jul 2014, p.74]

Atmospheric, heart-rendering and infused with myriad old souls, Imaginary Man is a richly dramatic, poignant singer-songwriter opus. [Sep 2015, p.71]

A seductive mix of pastoral folk, motorik beats, psychedelic ragas and gnarly '70s rock, transposed to the Japanese landscape. [Jun 2016, p.74]

The follow-up is a considerable upgrade. [Jan 2017, p.23]

The twin voices of Jonsi and Andersen make for an eerie contrast at times, with "Stendur aeva" a ravishing, multi-faceted highlight. [Feb 2021, p.35]

Skinner's brightest, punchiest and most eclectic in memory. It's a welcome return. [Dec 2023, p.36]

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]

Beneath the cheery chug and carnival-like fizz beats a sombre heart. [Oct 2006, p.117]

There's a loose lyrical theme of branding and consumer culture inspiring the maverick meta-pop of "Personal Shopper." ... The Sparks-y spriteliness of "Follower" also stands out, thanks to beautifully falsetto-iced vocal hooks, which further grace the gorgeously forlorn synth-pop of "King Ghost." [Feb 2021, p.37]

Most of the artists here, among them Moby, Miike Snow and Cibo Matto, find rich source material at the melodic end of her catalogue. [Mar 2016, p.77]

Texturally, the mood is one of warm, sensual dreaminess, of hushed vocals and woozy analogue synth. Prins Thomas isn't, though, wanting of strong grooves. [May 2010, p.102]

The veteran New York trio draws from synth-pop, to pomp rock, yet somehow turns the wildly disparate source material into a coherent album that doubles as a tribute to their own roots in The Byrds and Big Star. [May 2010, p.99]

A softly glowing and unerstated album. [May 2006, p.98]

The Flaming Lips remain masters at creating an irresistible sense of sheer awestruck wonder that demands its own emotional reaction from the listener. [Aug 2019, p.24]

Reprieve is probably the easiest album to listen to that she's ever made. [Oct 2006, p.104]

While the duo's tempo remains measured and its atmosphere is typically grand, thanks to a 40-piece orchestra, Iris puts more emphasis on modular synths. [Feb 2017, p.38]

Danilova's vocals have a cadence that hovers between uplifting and exhaustingly overwrought, but fans at least will love these vivid, live-feeling renditions. [Sep 2013, p.97]

The 14th installment of influential Cologne label Kompakt's superlative Pop Ambient series provides plenty of surprises. [Feb 2014, p.83]

In 39 tracks over two CDs, the punk-fuelled folk-rock group that had ruled the ’80s along with U2 magically reappears.

Teeth Dreams is The Hold Steady's least fussy, least mannered, least arch album. Not coincidentally, it's possibility their best. [Apr 2014, p.63]

Patience is still a warm and uplifting record befitting this modest, meticulous band. [Jul 2016, p.74]

The heavy-lidded atmosphere grows stifling on Warpaint, a codeine fog muddled by synthy tricks from the arsenal of producers Flood & Alan Moulder. [Feb 2014, p.83]

Straddling past and present, this is Red River Dialect's most sunny and easygoing record to date. [Nov 2019, p.30]

The band's blend of psychedelia and angular guitar menace is invigorating. [Jan 2006, p.112]

There's plenty to fall for here, but the anguished, bongo-driven 'Love All Of' is especially irresitable. [Feb 2009, p.93]

Their take on electric jazz can seem airless: the sax leads are worthy but venture nowhere near the outer limits chartered by Ayler and Coltrane. [Mar 2011, p.93]

Even if you can't understand the radical message, you can at least revel in the kind of freewheeling summer backpacking soundtrack at which Chao excels. [Jul 2011, p.94]

He still produces beautiful albums of impeccable tone and fine songs. [Dec 2011, p.96]

These 13 examples can get annoying when they stray into willful atonality, but really hit the spot when he lingers on simple themes. [Mar 2012, p.81]

It works well enough that when "Falling Away" pastes on some broiling guitar feedback, it sounds almost superfluous. [Apr 2012, p.77]

Bjork and Joanna Newsom are unavoidable reference pints for her hiccuping poetic whimsy. [Aug 2012, p.79]

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]

A delicate, moving album. [Mar 2013, p.80]

Howe doubles as the "link" drummer for Amorphous Androgynous and his authentic beats bring the requisite darkness to Shadow. [Jun 2014, p.79]

No Sad Songs is close to their masterpiece, each song lovingly rendered, drenched in harmonic rainfall, corralled with sympathetic, gentle arrangements, each song poetic. [May 2015, p.76]

As enchanting as it is, Moon Saloon can inevitably feel overstuffed, such that Adams may best succeed in the album's least ornate moments. [Sep 2016, p.69]

There is a minimalist anti-folk vibe to Dermody's songs. [Nov 2016, p.37]

The playing is empathetic throughout. [Oct 2016, p.39]

Sounding as hale and hearty as they did on last year's The Machine Stops, the rejuvenated band attain the same state of cosmic ragged glory several more times on Into The Woods. [Jun 2017, p.30]

It's moodily compelling, rather than electrifying. [Jul 2017, p.39]

Adams has come up with a captivating set of "sound Paintings" that eschew rock dynamics in favour of slowly shifting abstract patterns in which his guitar is filtered through a polychromatic prism of Tinariwen grooves, Steve Reich pulses, gnawa trance rhythms and droning raga loops. [Aug 2017, p.23]

With Pop Makossa, the music's backbone is exposed--the complexity of the genre, bringing together multiple national musics alongside Congolese rumba, highlife, and later, funk and disco, leads to singularly compelling long-form grooves. [Aug 2017, p.51]

As is the case with his band's startling fusions of space rock, doomy metal and motorik grooves on its four albums, there are many surprising developments here too. [Jan 2018, p.23]

Ackamoor's vision of fusing free-jazz blowing, African tribal grooves and spiritual black-consciousness musings remains unwavering. [Jun 2018, p.23]

Leonard has whipped another rabbit out of his hat. The surprise is that it's his most conventional release yet. [Dec 2018, p.27]

Simultaneously her most formally experimental and melodically palatable yet. [Jan 2019, p.25]

Who Can See Forever stands up fine as a live album in its own right. [Review of the Year 2023, p.29]

His guitar and bass playing are rather more agricultural than his rhythm-keeping but this all adds to the character of his freestyle philosophising. [Jul 2024, p.39]

Ballads Of Harry Houdini brandishes a sharper focus than many of its predecessors, with “Barfighter” and “Devil Tongue” bristling with tension and those signature guitar lines that move like wreaths of smoke. [Review of the Year 2024, p.34]

These songs often have a conceptual bent - take the lyric of "Last Scene Of All", collaged together from fragments of Shakespeare plays - although Lewis' vocal, a world-weary baritone with shades of '80s Scott Walker, ensure they slip down fairly easily. [Jan 2025, p.39]

Haines' references are as forensic as ever. .... Buck, meanwhile, rolls out his repertoire of languid 12-string jangles, swaggering glam riffs, psychedelic phrasing and jittery feedback. [Aug 2025, p.31]

It's a partial return to the jazzy pop sophistication of early-'80s sets Night And Day and Body And Soul, but with more aggressive percussion. His trademark wit is especially evident. [May 2026, p.32]

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

Universal High usually depends more on mood than focus. A little more of the latter and it would be almost perfect. [Aug 2017, p.26]

An adventurous solo outing. [Oct 2002, p.112]

If Doe intended to create an interlocked set of pieces that sustained a mood of pensive reverie, he succeeded, though there's a marked shortage of ear-grabbing, individual songs. [Mar 2003, p.95]

Eating Us is a litle too tidy, their frazzled wildness cultivated into ordered orchards, but on tracks like the typically titled 'Bubblegum Animals,' BMSR still conjure a ravishing, stoned cyber-soul pinic. [Jun 2009, p.83]

A work in progress maybe, but the churchy disquiet of "The River" show them to be songwriters of true craft. [Jan 2010, p. 122]

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.

Sumptuous, orchestra pop lace with lyrical acerbity. [Oct 2016, p.28]

These four numbered tracks fall closer to dance music, although Föllakzoid's hallmarks - a lysergic dreaminess, tethered by a constant, hypnotic propulsion - remains intact. [Nov 2023, p.28]

This is a dark and heartfelt affair. [Dec 2011, p.82]

It's certainly a brave move to furnish it with such exotic pieces, but one that pays off beautifully. [Apr 2012, p.81]

Rapid-fire delivery often make catching his drift difficult, but when spaces allow it, as on the hallucinogenic "Upsweep" or pointed "Retirement Ode," Busdriver's wit and wisdom flash through. [Oct 2014, p.69]

You're The Man is a bitty, madly varied collection. ... But as a series of discrete and individually brilliant EPs, it's a fascinating documents of the myriad directions that Gaye could have investigated at his creative peak. [May 2019, p.48]

Colours Of The Night is mostly served well by the extra hands, the songs breathing with quietly assured movements. [May 2015, p.71]

[A] strong final work. [Sep 2015, p.71]

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]

This second album by Minneapolis trio Night Moves was worth the wait. [May 2016, p.78]

Day Of The Dead is an exemplary way of proving to a sceptic that at the heart of the Dead's digressions are great songs. [Jun 2016, p.66]

Surfing Strange hits similar touchstones to Waxahatchee--Sebadoh, The Breeders, that whole '90s grunge wave--albeit with rather more noisy brio. [Dec 2013, p.74]

The sound of a group entering their prime, Silent Shout--strange, bold and tuneful--is textbook Euro-pop. [Apr 2006, p.110]

The 21-year-old with the bell-clear vocals scarcely puts a foot wrong, sliding easily between solemn country balladry and snappy country rock. [Sep 2010, p.90]

This follow-up is chillier though no less stately, informed as it is by the recent death of her father. [May 2011, p.96]

[A] striking debut. [Jul 2012, p.84]

Some of it is a little too cosy and overly earnest, White tending to excel on the more spirited likes of the swampy "What's So" and "I've Been Over This Before." [Sep 2016, p.81]

He's wisely opted to sound as different from his father as he possibly can, swathing his alt.rock songs in haunting layers of deep electronica, although there are giveaway traces of the family DNA in the voice and in the swirling Indian motifs. [Nov 2017, p.28]

Beware is a body record,, a playful and intimate piece that lyrically and melodically invites you in, where his remote personae have occasionally served to push one away. [Apr 2009, p.80]

If the meandering electronic maelstroms of “Letter To My Daughter” and “Waking Up” don’t have the melodic hooks to gain the same traction, there’s a bewitching feel to it all that endures nonetheless. [Jun 2024, p.29]

There's sparse evidence of their supposedly influential stay in Mali with desert bluesmen Tinariwen here, and ultimately their sonic porridge ends up a tad unsalted. [Mar 2010, p.98]

The result, inevitably, feels much more like a live band at work. [May 2009, p.95]

The band are now reactivated for their seventh, and pick up pretty much where they left off, the strum and twang now augmented by strings, but with the same determinedly old-school indie happysad heart. [Jul 2009, p.81]

These stark, largely unadorned folk-country songs are given added edge by Irwin's faintly metallic voice, with delicate shadings from the like of producer and multi-instrumental wizz Tara Jane O'Neil and pedal steeler Marc Orleans. [Dec 2012, p.72]

Surreal humour, suave style and deluxe Europop make for a potent comeback. [Nov 2016, p.40]

If only Thomas' smart-ass, sing-song drawl was as appealing as his songs. [Feb 2017, p.38]

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]