There's no seismic shift here, but the differences--and listening rewards--lie in the indeterminate spaces between their sources. [Jul 2014, p.77]

The follow-up sees them cutting all ties to their bleak kosmische past, shaping Jana Hunter's songs--which reflect politico-personal anxiety about our collective raging competitiveness, among other things--into darkly gleaming and hopeful synthpop panoramas. Hunter's rich contralto is always at their centre. [Oct 2019, p.29]

OnOffOn has an incredibly dense, thick sound, and it sags a little in the middle, but Miller can still write terrifically belligerent pop songs. [Jun 2004, p.96]

Fever Ray's records may be less boldly subversive than The Knife's, but there are plenty of artful thrills and pleasures here. [Apr 2023, p.26]

The trademark humour that seemed less prevalent as a result on 2018's Digital Garbage is satisfyingly back in evidence here, alongside agreeably ragged riffs and an admirable refusal to tighten up. [May 2023, p.31]

Laid-back and loose maybe, but neither lazy nor lacklustre. [Dec 2019, p.33]

Though these tracks are fluid and often meandering, they never lose their immersive, pulse-like groove. [Jul 2023, p.24]

Stills is dynamic vocally and instrumentally throughout, but the underutilised talent pool makes this document of what was incongruously dubbed The Memphis Horns Tour and odd curio that exemplifies the wigged-out extravagance of the era. [Jun 2023, p.49]

Hook-heavy hummability abounds, but most interesting are the newer "My Song" and "Let Me Go"--darkly atmospheric chunks of contemporary R&B/Hip-pop. [Oct 2013, p.68]

For intimacy and authenticity, less musical architecture often proves better. [Apr 2021, p.35]

The choral refrain of the title hook, meanwhile, imposes collectivity on the query--just about the only time on the whole of Storytone that the horizon stretches further than Neil's emotional backyard. [Dec 2014, p.79]

Uneven but mostly engaging third solo album. [Feb 2019, p.30]

This psych soundworld demands full sensory immersion, but once inside there's much to enjoy. [Mar 2017, p.32]

It might skirt the edges of twee but the follow-up to 2010's Die Stadt Muzikanten darkens and deepens as it unfolds. [Mar 2013, p.79]

It's every bit as immediate and listenable as it is confident, and more buoyant overall than the sombre Modern Vampires.... It's also flighty and so wide-ranging, at times it reads like a future compilation rather than the next step from a band now into their imperial phase. [June 2019, p.35]

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

The evening set is more dynamic. [Jun 2017, p.23]

The musicians' off-the-cuff interaction animates cartoonish songs like the boisterous "Burgundy Suit" and the woozy "Sharktooth", but Mccaughey's flights of fancy occasionally tumble into relatable coherence. [Jun 2025, p.35]

"Tired" and "A Couple Highs" rather drag their feet, but the freewheeling "Lies" and terrific title track easily compensate. [Jul 2019, p.34]

Unsurprisingly, the comp is most interesting in its lesser-known material found between bigger names. [Aug 2019, p.51]

They're masterfully groovy and mysterious, at times malevolent, panoramas with a potency that simultaneously historical and futuristic. [Sep 2019, p.27]

An elegantly spare showcase for her radiant voice, a tremulous yodel tinged with gospel and country inflections. [May 2023, p.31]

A little over-joyous for most, but a fair achievement regardless. [Oct 2014, p.73]

Savage Times inevitably captures the tenor of its times as the Left Coast watched America turn rightward. [Mar 2017, p.26]

Girl At The End Of The World extends and advances on its predecessor's spirited reboot. [Apr 2016, p.74]

True to form, Love And War contains its share of impeccably wrought arena-country singalongs, like "Last Time For Everything" and "One Beer Can," along with the occasional bite at expectations, and the hands that feed him. [Jul 2017, p.36]

The spacious, stereo-panning "binaural" sound mix works particularly well as a headphones album. [Dec 2022, p.29]

They've delivered a less disposable, more reflective and yes "mature" set with their latest. [May 2015, p.83]

This second album feels less mannered than 2010 debut Fields. [Jun 2013, p.75]

[Clemintine] has a rich, resonant baritone which adds gravitas to every note. It is also, perhaps, a trick to his songwriting: there are big truths about love, self, family and identity buried in this collection, but Clemintine is careful to keep the details to himself. [Jan 2023, p.17]

It moves at a cracking pace, its 10 concise songs picked clean of fluff and with their sugar content much reduced. [Jul 2014, p.74]

Fragments could have been made any time in the last 25 [years], yet the down-tempo warmth, tasteful orchestrations and immaculate production are still a winning combination. [Feb 2022, p.26]

The signature combination of upbeat music and somewhat gruesome lyrical themes works so well for Shovels & Rope that a few leaks spring when they commit themselves to a dive to the depths. [Oct 2014, p.75]

Another graceful tug-of-war between sentimental melody and muscular noise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Cannell makes good on the promise in that music, interfacing with Bingen in convincing ways, her bass recorder and harp improvs. Warped by delay, both are paced and wild, chimeric and oneiric. [Dec 2024, p.33]

Overall the vibe is more celebration than confrontation, but there's still room for the odd reassuring freakout. [Nov 2023, p.29]

Once again ably embracing a broad range, from the knelling, Marty Robbins-ish "Death Of Bill Bailey" to the string-drenched Billy Sherrill-style ballad "This Crazy Life" to "Jamestown Ferry". [Apr 2025, p.28]

Sparse instrumentation, with Ritter's deftly picked acoustic to the fore, keeps the focus on the lyrics, the post-mortem honesty of which amuse, astonish and occasionally unsettle. [Apr 2013, p.77]

If his guitar reminds of anyone, it's David Grubbs - similar threads of notes that then tangle together into thickets - and Grubbs appears on this album, too. [Jun 2025, p.41]

Though other songs don't escape the inevitable air of redundancy, Gibbard's facsimiles retain all the originals' love and warmth. [Oct 2017, p.28]

Everything here is much as you'd expect. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Ultimately Artificial Dance, stiff and self-aware, is easier to admire from afar. [Oct 2015, p.94]

Beguiling if familiar thanks to the many echoes of Jessie Ware and Goldfrapp at their most forlorn. [Jan 2021, p.23]

"Nights In The Lab" finds scientist Martin pining for a white-coated colleague, one of many tracks that would have fitted just as neatly into his famed '70s stand-up shows as it does a highfalutin hoedown at the Grand Ole Opry. [Nov 2017, p.32]

As much as the likes of "Injury Detail" and "Peach Fuzz" evoke Clock DVA and early Psychic TV at their most unnerving, the group nevertheless achieve a grimy grandeur that feels modern, too. [Jun 2023, p.32]

While the songs sometimes get swallowed up in the maelstrom, Ackermann’s unit proves more than capable of manifesting a sort of grotty malevolence rarely heard since Killing Joke’s imperial phase. [Nov 2024, p.41]

Nova's smoky, sullen vocals sometimes sound a little stilted, but she surpasses herself on "You Wanna See My Teeth," a cinematic mini-symphony inspired by the killing of Trayvon Martin, which moves through nervy electro and anguished rock to screaming rage. [Feb 2019, p.30]

They're lean and immediate in nature, with melodic ease that belies lyrics awash with loss, uncertainty, regret, overwhelm and defeat, feelings that sit on the surface, undisguised. [Mar 2025, p.40]

It's all uncomplicated and focused on instant gratification, capturing that ethic that made The Strokes so thrilling. [Apr 2018, p.27]

Occasional interludes--echoing number recitations; bumbling English voices on crackly wax cylinders---feel integral, while smart Julian House artwork completes the package. [Feb 2015, p.71]

Conceived to celebrate the band's 20th anniversary and features everybody who has ever recorded with the band, which basically means they called in a bunch of old drummers to thump out a backing rhythm for Jason Simon and Steve Kille's incessant groove, snarl and swing on choice tracks like "Here With The Hawk" and "Nobody Home." [May 2018, p.27]

Shadow Of The Sun includes strong takes on the familiar Johnson Schtick of Spacemen 3 throb and ambulatory guitar solos. [Apr 2015, p.80]

What raises Between Places above simple pastiche are the electronic flourishes and surges of pounding drums that pepper the album. [Apr 2013, p.79]

There’s a seam of pop here that his parent band largely lacked, which fills moments like “You Remind Me” with a warm flush of romance. [Oct 2022, p.29]

A much-devalued word--and probably one of the creator despises--still seems apposite for this lovely album: ethereal. [Jun 2016, p.75]

Johnston's own songs, though jauntily paced, come with familiar themes of isolation, despair and the cruelty of love. [May 2013, p.73]

A certain wistfulness pervades this record, as frontman David Best comes to terms with middle age, yet musically they're as sprightly as ever, having minted a shimmering take on krautrock that allows them to explore numerous directions. [Jan 2023, p.18]

His self-deprecating humour and goofball vocals leaven these dark songs about mortality, confusion and alienation, lending both levity and gravity to the staticky guitar riffs and soaring choruses. [Aug 2018, p.28]

They raise a lively ruckus, but never venture far from the sounds pioneered by groups like Steeleye Span and The Albion Band. [Aug 2017, p.35]

At its best, like the gorgeous, nine-minute “Round The World”, his bittersweet sound feels like the work of an art-music auteur. [May 2024, p.30]

There are poppy moments--the churning "What Have You Done For Me," and deceptively tranquil "Dead At The Wheel"--but otherwise the Jarman brothers have restrained their more melodic instincts to create sludgy monsters like "Year Of Hate" and storming closer "Broken Arrow." [Oct 2017, p.26]

Unfurls a desolate systems music that simultaneously feels a love letter to the timbres and patters of analogue synthesisers, and a paean to the post-industrial north. [Feb 2026, p.33]

While the orchestral flourishes on "Beloved Wife" and "River" are nice enough, it's when Merchant pares back the arrangements on "Wonder" and "Carnival" and focuses on her voice (which has become deeper and grainier with age) that these songs really soar. [Dec 2015, p.75]

Returns to the more familiar detuned space of their debut LP Taste, thundercloud guitar squall and all. [Apr 2021, p.34]

Guitars play more of a supporting role, and the tonal shifts suits the band, with Philippakis's voice given much more room to float elegantly through the record, [Apr 2019, p.29]

A bit long it may be, but his 10th studio album packs a punch while light on its feet. [Jun 2020, p.29]

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]

Nite Fields' debut album is a far grittier prospect than the neon-lit, 1980s-flavoured spelling of their name suggests, thanks largely to its predominant mood of nocturnal gloom. [Apr 2015, p.81]

They lurch with satisfying abandon through funereal Slint-like post-rock to unashamedly slovenly pixies-ish riffs to splenetic blasts of screaming hardcore and staccato math-rock scrapes, as Zak Bowker intermittently makes his strangled screams heard above the maelstrom. [Jun 2025, p.41]

Simultaneously dry, jaunty and eerie, As If Apart takes time to get lost in, but it's worth the effort. [Jul 2016, p.71]

It's all enjoyably preposterous. [Jun 2013, p.75]

Mainly, this is brilliant pop music... though Beenie's insistence on asserting his celebrated heterosexuality can grate. [Sep 2004, p.101]

While Ward's phrasing is very much his own at times, the gambit yields the most compelling results when he best approximates Holiday's silvery delivery and weary air. [Jan 2021, p.33]

In the absence of original recordings, it's hard to know what to judge these against. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Here are smoky, jazz-pop elegies, era-defining homages and bittersweet, elegantly orchestrated ruminations, underlining Jackson's reputation as a maverick auteur. [Nov 2015, p.77]

Every element of Certified is exaggerated.... It frequently makes for energised hip hop. [Jan 2006, p.105]

Aventine remains pleasingly measured and minimal. [Oct 2013, p.72]

Sampson has broadened her horizons on this largely self-produced album, mastering a richer range of sounds and styles clipped synthfunk to sleek R&B to sumptuous gospel-pop. [Feb 2017, p.37]

A sense of tin-pot invention run through You're Only Young Once. [Review of the Year 2024, p.35]

A crop of startling, striped-down songs. [Feb 2016, p.78]

Despite also cooking up a glam stomp with "We All Die Young," it sometimes feels overly contrived. The epic "Rusalka, Rusalka/The Wild Rushes" is a notable exception. [Apr 2018, p.26]

Firepower delivers an agreeably familiar mix of skull-pummelling drums, eyebrow singeing guitar pyrotechnics and multi-tracked operatic vocals. [Apr 2018, p.28]

A rich, gothic record, steeped in sensuality. [Jun 2020, p.29]

The title track's anthem of righteous '60s-style fight confirms serious intent to add to Lowell Gregory's legacy. [Jun 2025, p.34]

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

Hushed and humble, it's dominated by her Stina Nordenstam vocal style. [Jul 2019, p.30]

Quieter, more ethereal tracks such as "Lone Wolf" have less of an impact, showing that Landshapes are at their best when they're loud. [Jun 2015, p.77]

Offers a more intimate appraisal of his state of mind. [Jan 2023, p.18]

The rough-and-ready songwriting is all part of the conceptual high-jinks. [Jul 2015, p.81]

This sequel is more focused and song-based. [Jul 2014, p.69]

These shimmery reworkings of Cave classics including "The Ship Song" and "Red Right Hand" are pleasingly free of both solemn reverence and ironic kitsch. [Feb 2022, p.33]

Jimmy Hall's vocals are unremarkable, but it barely matters; it's a guitar album and Beck still sounds as innovative and virtuosic as anyone. [Jul 2015, p.71]

Certainly, there's a familiarity here, the thin guitar lines and washes of synth, topped off with Banks' despondent croon, though in lyrical terms, there is a more confessional tone. [Dec 2012, p.67]

Parenthood proves just another phase in Maximo Park's stubborn stand for empathy and learning through rock'n'roll. [Apr 2021, p.32]

There’s always a risk with these kinds of collaborations – too many cooks, watering down the essence – but that’s largely avoided on Where’s The One?, thanks to the openness and playful spirit of the music. [Jun 2022, p.25]

A bold take on martial oldie "We Want War" brings a fire and brimstone that the more sombre Field Of reeds material conspicuously lacks. [Dec 2014, p.81]

Aggressive bursts of noise and fantastic harmonic singing make this record sound like the result of a happy accident rather than a long-pondered academic exercise. [Apr 2007, p.94]

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]