The likes of "Born Disco; Died Heavy Metal" and a jitterbugging "New York Minutes" are revealed to be much more robust tunes than was initially obvious. [Mar 2015, p.73]

A hugely entertaining album. [Jun 2016, p.71]

A stew of attractive singalong folk pop that looks to evocative kitchen sink drama for lyrical inspiration. [Feb 2014, p.83]

Understated double set, the material meandering gently, but persuasive in the way its interlocking parts both ride the groove and smear lush textures across these four side-long live cuts. [Jan 2023, p.23]

All in all, a neat side-stepping of expectations and a timely one. [Jul 2013, p.81]

Thanks You For Today marks a further shift towards an ultra-plush, synth-laden soft-rock sound. [Oct 2018, p.27]

Quietly lovely, sporadically sublime solo debut. [Apr 2026, p.26]

Efterklang deal exclusively in Big Music and there are plenty of stirring passages – “To A New Day” could be Take That; Mabe Fratti provides cello – and it all flows, rather too safely, at a steady pace. [Sep 2024, p.30]

"Young" offers brief flashes of a youthful Cure, but the fuzzy "Choke," about cocaine abuse, is underpinned by a malignant industrial beat, and the dominant mood remains that of an emaciated, homicidal Gary Numan. [Mar 2018, p.32]

Even if several songs see them veer too close to conventional power balladry or Joy Division karaoke, Holy Esque are mostly wise to favour the first part of the time-honoured go-big-or-go-home strategy. [Apr 2016, p.74]

If Shirushi’s relentless momentum can leave you breathless, it batters its way into real, mutant rock’n’roll thrills. [Aug 2021, p.35]

It doesn't all work ... but a guest appearance on voice from singer-songwriter Barbara Manning kicks things into the next gear. [Jul 2017, p.30]

Thoughtful sixth album, which sees the songwriter wrestle with the growing challenges of life as she enters her early thirties. [Jul 2025, p,27]

Refines their grandiose panoramics via electronic gurgles and glitches. [Jul 2003, p.111]

The tracks range from the wiry and infectious to the outright transcendental, while some of the vocal effects evoke the sound of those early krautrock pioneer. [Oct 2021, p.31]

It's addictive, delirious and madcap, Martha turning anxiety into exuberance. [Aug 2016, p.78]

Neon Golden often comes on like a radical update of New Order's Lowlife period, where mournful guitar songs are integrated into a mesh of clicks, pops, glitches and samples. [Mar 2003, p.96]

While the unrelenting energy can be somewhat exhausting, it's hard not to get swept up. [Jul 2014, p.73]

An intriguing body of work. [Nov 2019, p.22]

Some songs skirt close to new age naivety, cloaked by subtle eco-critical blandishments--but Perhacs' quietly magnetic character and charm wins out, in the end. [Nov 2018, p.35]

It's impressive... but it will be interesting to see whether his undoubted talent will flourish beyond such a conceit. [Sep 2006, p.83]

Its eloquent yet unfussy nature and thoughtful arrangements are clear affirmation. [Aug 2022, p.33]

The Last Rider is another warm collection of bittersweet pop songs, alternately wistful and playful, freighted with memories of time and place. [May 2017, p.39]

"FBI" sounds like a comatose disco track being sung in a toilet, but the default position is a weirdly bluesy take on Krautrock. [May 2013, p.75]

It's unfortunate that these splendidly rumbustious tracks make the lumbering ballads even harder work by comparison. [May 2014, p.81]

In a genus so often characterised by grandiloquent gesturing, this is drama of the pensive and underplayed kind. [Jun 2013, p.74]

Their second studio album of 2021 has its own idiosyncratic mood board: mariachi horns on “The Bell Gets Out Of The Way”, a string section on “High In The Rain”, unsettling séance speak on “Razor Bug”. Triumphant closer “My (Limited) Engagement”, meanwhile, sounds like (yet another) outsider art tour de force for the primary school-turned-lo-fi visionary. Never indifferent, never quite the same. [Dec 2021, p.27]

The whole world's in crisis and Oozing Wound see no reason to ese off their righteous assault now, though their fifth flashes dark humour in titles. [Feb 2023, p.32]

This is the kind of roughed-up disco-not-disco that would have sold a ton when electroclash was all the rage. It might still. [Sep 2108, p.36]

As a cross-generational experiment, Kissin' Time works. [Apr 2002, p.110]

His is a gentler, pastoral treat. [Nov 2005, p.111]

Their most accessible and melodic yet. [Dec 2018, p.25]

"Ye Ye's" Chicago house snares and claps crop up throughout the record, turning the pretty "Lights" into a sweaty jack-fest and giving deranged effects of "Springs" a rigid framework. [Dec 2012, p.69]

Inspired, frustrating, wayward, indulgent, funny, heartfelt and eclectic, taken in one sitting it's far too much, like gorging on the most excessive turkey dinner with all the trimmings. [Jan 2013, p.97]

The instrumentations are the highlights. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Herbert enlisted more than 1000 extras to stitch together this patchwork of mournful classical music, keening choirs and parpy Brit-jazz. [Apr 2019, p.31]

A rather good LP of socially conscious R&B. [Sep 2021, p.46]

Arthur stacks his vocals throughout, while his arching guitars, concussive programmed drums and resounding handclaps interlock with Buck's springy rhythm beds. [Jul 2018, p.24]

Combined with the rich warm production, this results in a debut of largely seamless retro classic pop-rock. [Sep 2019, p.29]

The overall vibe is naturally more intimate than before. [Aug 2015, p.81]

A Letter Home illustrates that vagaries of sound quality can sometimes enhance the drama of a record, and rarely undermine the potency of a good song. [Jul 2014, p.68]

The Fever are shaping up as America's Franz Ferdinand, taking their cues from Buzzcocks and Wire. [Mar 2005, p.100]

Moody textures outnumber memorable songs, but this is still a stylish and inviting debut. [Jul 2014, p.73]

She's pushed through the looking glass on WOW to conjure a zany world of pixelated pop for her avatar Kate NV to stumble around, dazed and amused. In Many ways she's just as provocative, albeit in a different musical language. [Mar 2023, p.32]

A potential Urban Outfitters house band, yes, but very far from just brainless cool. [Sep 2013, p.87]

A bit of a triumph. [Dec 2017, p.27]

Thankfully, more often than not Eitzel is on great form. [Nov 2012, p.82]

Within its narrow punk framework, the music is reasonably effective. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Its songs were built from jams, which lends them a becoming looseness; they’re also rather more Western rock than global pop, and melancholia has made its mark on pastoral-folk opener “Brave Child Of A New World” and the Zombies-ish “Those Who Came Before”. [Dec 2024, p.31]

Recording at home, [lends] Moh Llean its rougher edge. [Apr 2017, p.40]

Theirs is a likably punked-up take on the noise blizzard thing. [Feb 2013, p.74]

What might have been a dry academic exercise is in fact a seductive display of its polyphonic subtleties, which Bourne bends into mood-shifting soundscapes. [Apr 2016, p.70]

Defiantly lo-fi production rather hampers the attempts at big-budget symphonic soul, but the clubby bangers such as "It's In The Love" and "She Ran Away" work magnificently. [Jul 2017, p.26]

If the acoustic backdrop sometime slacks texture, there are no such qualms with the songwriting that demonstrates a novelist's eye for detail. [Jun 2014, p.83]

The Nihilist feels like a collision of Gotham's manic energy and the otherworldliness that has permeated Kiwi music from Uncle Tim's Splitz Enz to Lorde. [Jul 2014, p.73]

Not all of it works--the ballads sag, and the reggaeton-influenced "Paradise" is ill-advised--but much of Miles's playing is on fire. [Oct 2019, p.45]

A cast of colourful characters liven up Butler's familiar mix of Chicago muscle and diva house. [Oct 2017, p.30]

They've proved here that they're more than capable of escaping from, or expanding on, that familiar sound. [Dec 2018, p.24]

Their angsty post-rock elements have been largely superseded by quivering/rousing chamber pop reminiscent of early Arcade fire and Florence + The Machine, yet a weird emotional intensity remains - along with a talent for self-mythology that inspires audible devotion in an excitable crowd. [Jul 2023, p.23]

Is what might be expected of a song entitled "My Kinda Saturday Night", all growling guitars, pounding pianos and soaring choruses extolling the merits of beer, pickup trucks and jukeboxes. But it is no less irresistibly rousing for that, and the same can be said of the broadly similar "Back In The Saddle" nd "Alcohol Of Fame". [Apr 2026, p.29]

There's nothing quite as genuinely exciting as [the title track's] Aphex-meets-Bee-Gees disco, but its unorthodox elements are sprinkled across the album. [May 2017, p.32]

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

The intricacies and frustrations of relationships dominate, while the arrangements are kept crisp and simple. [Apr 2015, p.76]

There are times when, while applauding Springsteen's attempts to stay faithful to the originals, you wish he'd taken more chance. ... But that was not his intention, and it becomes hard to carp when he brings off something as triumphantly as his note-perfect version of Frank Wilson's "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)". [Jan 2023, p.10]

The arrangements are reserved and understated throughout, gently cradling Merchant's strident but intimate voice. [May 2014, p.77]

The further Merritt strays from her default setting, the more affecting she is. [Nov 2012, p.79]

There are few traces of the more liminal varieties of beauty that distinguish recent Halo efforts like 2023's Atlas, though a sense of eerie gracefulness often imbues the music here as various sonic elements cut through the inky drones like shards of light. [Apr 2026, p.33]

The band aren't afraid to diversity. [Feb 2017, p.30]

Remember The Humans makes sumptuous use of its star talents Feist and Hannah Georgas. .... But a handful of hazier, more ruminative mantras are harder to grab hold of. [Jun 2026, p.36]

It's clear Masin has not catered to his new hipster audience but rather remained true to his elemental vision. [Mar 2020, p.33]

If this is a window to his world, we can barely see a thing. [Mar 2016, p.76]

While much of this is somewhat sentimental, notable moments include Michael Kiwanuka and Kevin Morby's respective takes on the standards "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" and "I Only Have Eyes For You." [Jun 2017, p.26]

As with most "difficult" albums, the more one listens, the more forgiving they become. [May 2013, p.77]

Despite a newfound sound-design sophistication, they haven't lost their love of twisted, Stylophone-assisted pop or tape-recording collage methods, and their arthouse-cinema leaning is still evident. [Oct 2018, p.32]

At its best, JBM's follow-up transcends it's self-imposed cliches. [Jul 2013, p.77]

This Swedish quartet's second album often recalls a mid-90s Matador Records release. [Dec 2018, p.25]

It's his terrific wordplay--sharp, funny, poignant and much more--that really dazzles. [Dec 2019, p.29]

Honey finds Snaith embrace sampling and AI vocal processing to refine a sound that pops with possibility. [Nov 2024, p.34]

The way they smudge together sounds can feel more untidy than enjoyable, but when they get it right, as on the riff-heavy "taste" and "Spend The Night," it's exhilarating stuff. [Feb 2018, p.24]

As the album goes on, the songs gets richer and stranger. [May 2020, p.29]

Over 10 minutes or more, he wisely avoids manipulative builds and drops, leaving a compelling opacity. [Mar 2014, p.76]

So how does that chaos translate into making music in your fifties? With greater depth and variety, it would appear. [Jun 2024, p.36]

[Queens Of The Breakers] is busy without ever feeling overcrowded, its liquid acoustics following the soft contours of Brad's vocals to telling effect. [Nov 2017, p.24]

The cumulative effect is melancholy, generally compelling and often beautiful, a haunted dancehall of memory and loss. [Apr 2021, p.25]

A typically excellent set of unusual songs. [May 2016, p.82]

Auto-Tuned electro-soul, reggae-lite rhythms and deceptively political lyrics are key motifs here, although Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs lends some grungey thrust to "Fall First." [Nov 2022, p.36]

There is less than usual here of the breezy country usually associated with his name. More characteristic of Triage are “Something Has To Change” and “Transient Global Amnesia Blues” – fretful, semi-spoken jeremiads set to brooding backdrops. Crowell has the wit and the gravitas to land these, however. [Sep 2021, p.27]

It's a smart, exuberant set. [Dec 2022, p.32]

For all the fine furies collected on Handwritten, the most memorable moments are those on which The Gaslight Anthem shift to lower gears. [Aug 2012, p.66]

His homespun take on soft rock and '80s Continental pop balances languid dreaminess with a subtle virtuosity. [Dec 2018, p.27]

Her songs don't so much drift as press steadfastly onwards into the unknown--all of them stick in your head despite little trace of a tune. [Oct 2013, p.63]

A downbeat and occasionally poetic work with some unexpected reference points. [Oct 2013, p.71]

The smoother strains of the folk-tinged "Within Each Day" and "If You Are Leaving" make a bigger impression, confidently stepping out from his elder sibling's shadow. [Dec 2018, p.41]

Wilson, now 60, reveals a flair for conjuring up moods on songs that suggest the languorous drift from winding down to sleeping in. [Jan 2018, p.29]

Entirely unoriginal, but the sort of thing that, 55 years after it was invented, it's still hard to get enough of. [Apr 2015, p.77]

TV Priest remain wedded to a very contemporary wading-through-treacle post-punk feel but at times add a little space to the music rather than surrendering to claustrophobia. [Nov 2022, p.38]

The best moments tend to come where the reggae is at its most full-on. [Jun 2014, p.80]

With her voice sounding more like a cross between Nico and Patti Smith than ever, she laments division and bigotry on songs such as "Queasy" and "Overblown," while musically she spans pedal-steel-laden country rock, punk menace and string-driven Velvets drones. [Oct 2021, p.35]