2013's Delta Machine saw Ben Hiller help them access their mid-life pain in dark post-dubstep. This stint with James Ford, though, has effected a more overt compromise. [Apr 2017, p.26]

At its most ascetic, Fog sees Broder kicking down the same fence post of convention as Tortoise, the Beta Band and latter-day Radiohead. [Mar 2002, p.111]

Sunny funk pours from most tracks, veiling the odd lyric about single moms, and the slowies are lit by noble torches. [Jun 2003, p.104]

As wilfully indulgent as it is breathtakingly advanced. [Apr 2004, p.101]

[An] intimate, woody collection of fractured folk. [Nov 2004, p.120]

Spend The Night emerges as the dumb-riffed album Courtney Love tried to make with Celebrity Skin. [May 2003, p.94]

A slightly disappointing attempt to hammer their quirks into a more commercial rock shape. [May 2004, p.99]

Mostly Kin is a deeply rewarding immersive experience. [Oct 2012, p.81]

Whether flirting with doo wop, mixing psych and a cappella gospel or channeling John Cage via TV On The Radio it charms at every turn. [Jan 2015, p.74]

These crafted tracks are built for dancefloor delirium, yet darkness and unsettlement abound, awkward elegance and cool beauty twinned with repetitious abandonment. [Sep 2016, p.74]

Nice, but not quite essential. [Jul 2017, p.40]

A certain gravitas is restored. [Sep 2019, p.46]

Opener "Ocean Mouth" is similarly enticing, as are the crystalline synth hooks of "Don't Believe It Now", as his singular approach to lo-fi dance pop continues to charm. [Sep 2023, p.28]

This is an exciting debut.

Short, but invigoratingly sweet. [Jun 2015, p.77]

Some tracks sail a little too far into MOR but Meiburg takes care to balance these out with more robust moments. [Mar 2010, p.95]

The Brutalist Bricks isn't quite the match of 2004's career highlight Shake The Streets. But "Gimmee The Wire" mixes punky, Mission Of Burma dynamics with a garrulous, troubadour storytelling, while "Bottles In Cork" unfolds as a bar-hopping travelogue as colorful as anything Craig Finn has put his pen to. [Jun 2010, p.92]

Out Of Touch may be sophisticated and complex, but it's also damned groovy, hugely heartfelt and packed ti the gunwales with fizzing tunes. [Feb 2013, p.71]

Traditionally, country music and club-derived electronics make for awkward bedfellows, but it's a testament to the strength of Gibson's strange vision that Me Moan might well become a touchstone of modern-day Americana. [Aug 2013, p.66]

Brilliance and beauty, abounding in equal measure. [Aug 2014, p.79]

The Mood is subdued but cavalier, more of a mixtape. [Nov 2016, p.24]

Folila is an unhappy attempt to amalgamate two records, one that mostly swamps their playful sound with noisy overlays. [May 2012, p.65]

It's a surprisingly varied record, the mood darkening towards the close, the band ever occasionally busting their habitual one-minute barrier. [May 2014, p.78]

The overall mood is The Band given Taylor Swift's budget, on heartfelt and easily wounded love songs. [Sep 2014, p.78]

Overall there's a sense of a moment having passed. [Oct 2006, p.123]

A substantial return to form. [Mar 2014, p.73]

It's the kind of listen whose rich but unfussy loveliness belies its deeply personal lyrics. [Dec 2021, p.24]

Boland’s previous releases (stretching back over 20 years) have only hinted at such levels of ambition, but The Light Saw Me is expertly realised, as playful as it is metaphysical.

The antic hippie of Banhart's early work is long gone on this depressed but not despairing record, warmed by the melancholy, spacy hush of his voice over drifting synths and the bass's heartbeat pulse. [Oct 2023, p.25]

At best superfluous, at worst that very thing he dreads most. Forgettable. [May 2005, p.113]

Yet vocal gymnastics cannot compensate for an unmemorable set of tunes. [May 2011, p.91]

Warmer and more upbeat than One Day, Another Day hangs around just long enough to make an impact. [Sep 2024, p.32]

High art, low humour and deluxe filth: a hugely seductive combination. [Jun 2009, p.95]

It's not always successful...But older songs fare better. [May 2012, p.72]

The result is both pensive and romantic, a work filled with vividly poetic snapshots. [Jan 2013, p.79]

There are some beautiful moments here.... Also some difficult ones. [Nov 2013, p.67]

Along with kitchen-sink detail, there's real poignancy in the Canadians' second set. [Mar 2016, p.77]

These are tender anthems, even if some won't be readily singing lines like "eating your ass like an oyster" in a festival field. [Nov 2019, p.22]

His honeyed, Elliott Smith-esque vocal adds to the lush warmth of spare but forceful arrangements, softening the blows soaked up by his songs’ baffled and blitzed Angelenos. [May 2022, p.29]

The material here moves in the jazzier vein of Zappa's early '70s LPs. [Aug 2023, p.51]

The technology has evolved, but the Plaid Aesthetic remains constant. [Jul 2014, p.78]

For the most part, Ben Kweller simply suggests Jackson Browne reared on Weezer. [Oct 2006, p.114]

The result is a promising record that's much closer in tone and sentiment to an act like Hurts than they'd presumably be comfortable with. [Dec 2010, p.88]

Partygoing contains a handful of vintage Merritt moments. [Aug 2013, p.71]

It's All Right... functions almost like a best of. [Nov 2017, p.32]

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]

[The] results [are] worryingly like a jam session between Ben Folds and John Bonham. [Apr 2006, p.110]

The bulk of these puttering analogue scowls can be filed as John Carpenter castoffs alongside half the Not Not Fun label roster. Luckily, splashes of color appear in the widescreen drama of "Dome Horizon" and "Inhale." [Jun 2012, p.67]

Wit's end is so sparse and downbeat that it occasionally verges on the drab. [May 2011, p.91]

Self-indulgent in all the best ways, their third album isn't afraid to explore an idea for nine minutes, locating that revelatory moment when structure caves into soul. [May 2009, p.105]

These make an effective pairing. [May 2012, p.72]

Jello is still in good voice, so this could basically pass for a mid-80s Dead Kennedys album, were it not for the contemporary references. [Jun 2013, p.69]

It helps that The Child Of Lov, while not big-studio slick, is so imaginatively realised. [Jun 2013, p.70]

Soulfire is a portrait of the E Street Band guitarist as a rock'n'roll renaissance man. [Jul 2017, p.32]

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]

A festive 10 tracks. [Feb 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]

The album is rarely as memorable musically as it is lyrically. [Sep 2020, p.31]

The likes of "Downtown" and "1000 Miles" are modest but sumptuous ballads which suggest something of lo-fi Blue Nile, while "London Bridge," from the title downwards, is basically a Blur song, to which he is surely entitled. [Feb 2023, p.35]

There's nevertheless an easygoing air to the duo's otherwise experimental-minded pieces, which began as spare guitar instrumentals by Portner that were then warped, distorted and reshaped into beguiling psych-folk forms. [Jun 2026, p.29]

Working In Tennessee resonates with much of the cool, complicated clarity of his very best work. [Nov 2011, p.85]

Persist though, and there are countless fascinating poly-rhythms and concealed melodies in the sub-strata. [Jan 2011, p.91]

Parallel Memories is, in places, almost too minimal.... But Mitchell's softness of touch leads to some moving moments. [Jan 2015, p.75]

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

Their strongest and most coherent records. [Jul 2018, p.28]

There’s a new sense of maturity, even kindness, starting with “More Power”, a song of odd, regretful sentiments, reputedly addressed to Noel and full of family references. ... Songs mostly remain Frankenstein stitch-ups, though: Jeff Lynne’s softly simulated psychon the Threetles’ “Real Love” seems the production template, when not mixed for terrace power, minus tunes. [Jun 2022, p.26]

There are a handful of stunning instrumentals, but the revelations here are Lanois' singing and songwriting. [May 2003, p.102]

Silver Lining finds her on top form as guitarist, writer and interpreter. [May 2002, p.108]

The addition of Chad Kelly's orchestral arrangements to the band's initial recordings strikes decisive new ground. [Jul 2025, p.30]

Wong works up from trickling sounds as seemingly innocuous as mid-morning TV music to a rumbling, looped ferocity. [Mar 2012, p.107]

[His] voice bulldozes everything in its path, flattening melody and obliterating nearly every sentiment on this overzealous album. [Feb 2018, p.24]

It's an ingenious arrangement, featuring juddering, minimal percussion, spare piano chords and vocoders that soar to the edge of the studiosphere, worth the price of the album alone. [Mar 2012, p.84]

An album as heartfelt as it is musically and thematically ambitious. [Jul 2012, p.67]

The most rewarding moments, though comes on those tracks which retain a more authentic Ethiopiques mystery. [May 2020, p.31]

Evocative of Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman at their most extroverted, McKenzie’s songs provide great warmth, too. [Sep 2022, p.28]

No One Is Lost does what Stars do: uplifting songs with catchy hooks and gorgeous arrangements. [Dec 2014, p.80]

Finds itself caught between emulating the original's enviable qualities and overhauling its almost four-decade habits. [Aug 2023, p.36]

While the ideas are sometimes thin, the delivery is invariably wry and charming. [Aug 2013, p.77]

They're immersed in keyboard-assisted '80s pop and brooding white soul, with overtones of New Order and Lloyd Cole, while XCox's Morrissey-like vocals again underscore their love of The Smiths. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Most of the songs are breezy reflections on romance--even two Q-Tip productions lack bite--but its melodious artiness is engaging. [Apr 2012, p.84]

Contains flashes of his finest work. [Aug 2006, p.84]

Her blowsy voice now seems happier in those quieter settings. [May 2008, p.104]

Snotty wit can be heard on the droll "Down On Loving" or the splenetic "Parasites," probably the best examples of the Ramones-via-Replacements sound that defines the album. [Apr 2010, p.90]

Utter desolation never sounded so lovely. [Apr 2012, p.84]

A definite return to form. [May 2012, p.77]

This impressively diverse and full-bodied debut by 22-year-old Parisian producer Jeremy Guindo is a heartening advert for electronic dance music's blissful spirit of perpetual self-renewal. [Jan 2013, p.71]

She fails to stand out in a crowded marketplace. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Seductive, maybe--but it rather lacks character of its own. [Sep 2013, p.92]

It's hypnotic and mind-altering, like a fruitful collision between Boredoms, Neu! and the Grateful Dead. [Jul 2013, p.78]

This time the compositions are still thoughtful and exploratory and, although a tendency to emphatic angst dulls on the over-earnest, producer Mark Hutchinson is fully attuned to Dunlop's musical resourcefulness. [Jun 2014, p.75]

The skinned-back arrangements on the self-produced Madman isolate his voice's primal expressiveness and the plainspoken emotion of his songs. [Nov 2014, p.81]

Something on High obsesses on matters of faith, most compellingly on "Bodies," a dystopian reimagining of the Ark story. [Nov 2014, p.83]

To their credit the quartet's swaggering garage rock, stuffed with grit and glam, has a certain edge, largely due to frontman mark Saunders' Welsh-accented sneer. [Apr 2016, p.81]

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

The resultant tracks are dominated by Allen's fidgety, polyrhythmic Afrobeat rhythms, particularly the Fela Kuti-ish "Bade Zile." But the Haitian singers and FX-laden soundscapes of Glasgow guitarist Marc Mulholland take things into other dimensions. [Aug 2017, p.69]

Lacking only a killer single, Big Box Of Chocolates has a great balance of rockers, ramblers and ballads, giggling throwaways and low-key philosophising. [Dec 2016, p.30]

The Jayhawks provide a diverse, autumnal foundation that amps up when needed. Stace's deceptively winsome voice, meanwhile, delves deep into memories, dreams, relationships and life's absurdities. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Guild takes a few listens to really seep in, but there are some truly hallucinatory moments here. [Oct 2019, p.39]