Everyone from Hendrix to CSN&Y to Pink Floyd to Led Zep turns up in their dusky psych-blues-folk blended with a symphonic approach to song construction that keeps Sleepy Sun sounding fresh. [Jun 2010, p.98]

There's a lot going on but Georgopoulos makes it all feel unhurried and effortless. [Aug 2018, p.24]

It's poppier than ever before, with big hooks played with funk and bossa nova fills, fat Balkan brass and imaginative lyrics full of bug-eyed images. [Oct 2013, p.71]

Produced by Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos, this latest project sees her moving away from the playful whimsy of her debut in favour of looser, gritter textures. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Not pretty, necessarily, but pretty good. [Jan 2016, p.75]

Among the handful of minor gems, the title track is particularly ravishing. [Mar 2016, p.71]

Hyperactively wordy and exquisitely tuneful. [Apr 2017, p.39]

'Object' is a highlight, as is the lovely 'Sweetheart In The Summer.' [Dec 2007, p.119]

Acoustic guitar features, alongside synths, samples and field recordings, but for all their adventurism, these songs have structure. Still, diversity rules. [Sep 2017, p.32]

Toxicity is virtually unlistenable: thrash metal splintered into a million pieces by unnecessary time changes, topped off with excruciatingly theatrical vocals. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Inarguably easy on the ear, but short on real emotional pull. [Nov 2003, p.118]

The sort of herky, jerky new wave Molly Ringwald might have bopped to in The Breakfast Club. [Jun 2004, p.95]

This time around, Grammy-bagging mixer Tchad Blake has replace T-Bone Burnett as producer and brought added intimacy without sacrificing dreamy magnetism. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Like Arthur Russell, he marries such influences [of Steve Reich and Terry Riley] with an off-kilter pop sensibility. [Oct 2010, p.87]

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

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

It's another perfectly good Ty Segall album, full of perfectly good Ty Segall songs. [Nov 2021, p.32]

An almost comically seductive blend of luxe funk, disco strings (arranged by Owen Pallett) and analogue synths, which he pastiches with affection and elan. [Feb 2026, p.39]

There's a gleeful, shonky exuberance to this debut all their own. [Aug 2006, p.88]

They sizzle with verve and invention. [Jun 2005, p.98]

It's no disrespect to Chesnutt to observer that his songs sound better sung by Margo Timmins--the same could be said about anyone. [Mar 2011, p.86]

With Suicide's spooked primitivism and Depeche Mode's throbbing anguish as blueprints, Sartain's synthesised shock treatment is a compelling segue from his spartan rockin' past. [Mar 2016, p.78]

Static's production is bright and punchy, which has the unintended effect of sabotaging softer moments. [Jan 2014, p.73]

The wildcard element comes in the shape of thier guitarist, who makes much of this album sound as if Brian May had been airlifted into a Devendra Banhart recording session. Disconcerting, but really rather good. [Feb 2010, p.81]

These four compositions are not without precedent, but all push at conventions of melody, space, tonality, rhythm and timbre. [Jul 2011, p.90]

The Sea And The Cake's refusal to budge from their original MO for the last 14 years seems like an admirable show of restraint. [Nov 2008, p.119]

The Information often feels hygienised and missing some grit. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Mostly, he comes across as a one-man Arcade Fire. [Jan 2013, p.79]

Morrissey's rather affectless delivery drains any celebratory urge from "Grease." But "Sunday Morning" is a triumph. [Feb 2017, p.33]

The distinction between their sensibilities remain strikingly apparent. [May 2018, p.33]

'Cave Mouth' rocks with something of Fugazi's technical heft, while 'Perfect Fit' matches Penner's quavering vocals to dancing Klezmer piano and swells of cymbal. [Aug 2009, p.88]

Ten Songs keeps his audacious past and redemptive present in balance. [Aug 2015, p.89]

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

The band's trademark guitars [are] so polished you can almost whiff the Mr Sheen. [Apr 2006, p.98]

Their habit of singing in close harmony can be pretty but leaves little room for interesting vocal interplay. [Aug 2013, p.68]

The beauty of the album is that it draws its charm from the natural collision of styles. [Feb 2015, p.74]

The heavier contemporary numbers hint at a fire still burning. [Sep 2015, p.93]

The best electro-pop debut since La Roux. [Jun 2012, p.80]

Blood, Looms, And Blooms finds the much-missed producer back on track after personal tragedy, peddling her strongest work to date. [Aug 2008, p.96]

As powerfully new wavey as 2009's Backspacer at the start but also a testament to the band's more oddball meandering elsewhere, the commitment of Eddie Vedder's delivery brings a veracity even to some of the more ponderous ballads that can be the band's mature years default position. [Nov 2013, p.76]

This is much more than the sum of its parts, and a richly rewarding listen. [May 2009, p.95]

"Despierta," released in October 2016 as part of the 30 Days, 30 Songs projects aimed at hindering Donald Trump's campaign. If that did not quite work out, their LP does. [Oct 2017, p.26]

Here, the presence of a harmonium updates some lava lamp pyschedelic freakouts, David Axelrod's jazzy grooves and the feathery female harmonies of The Free Design, whose Chris Dedrick provides sleevenotes for the vinyl. [Jun 2009, p.101]

It's all hugely engaging. [Jun 2009, p.96]

It's a wonderful pop album and there's a genuinely delightful innocence here. [Nov 2013, p.69]

The likes of John Lee Hooker's "Dimples" and Sam Cooke's "Laughin' and Clownin'" are intimate, effortless-sounding exercises in sublime jazz phrasing, his voice at 73 as supple as ever. [Jan 2019, p.22]

Finn seems more at home with the melancholy Paul Simon-isms of "Little Words" than with "The Struggle," a strained attempt to get weird and wired. [Aug 2011, p.84]

Fucked Up Friends isn't that great of a departure from this year's "Eating Us." [Aug 2009, p.105]

There are still missteps--the ungainly "Chain My Name" and "Spilling Lines"--but between these sit a brace of casually innovative slow jams. [Nov 2013, p.76]

As a rule, the more breakneck the pace of these instrumentals, the less effective they are. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Saint Etienne's most far-reaching album since Fox Base Alpha. [Nov 2002, p.124]

It's arrogantly risky. That's their best feature. [Jun 2003, p.100]

Despite its DIY origins and almost hallucinatory feel, this is a peach of a pop record. [Apr 2004, p.108]

As a send-off... it's not quite the full parade. [Sep 2004, p.104]

This sounds more like the Pixies than any of Francis' other solo albums. [Oct 2007, p.83]

The surprise of C'est Com...Com...Complique is not that Faust continue, four decades after their inception, but that they do so with such inventiveness and sense of play. [May 2009, p.85]

One new track, "universal Child," fails to lighten the mood. [Jan 2011, p.94]

This is a seriously dense and elaborate album. [Nov 2011, p.94]

The sparser moments are undoubtedly tender, but the reverential glow soon dims, and the cliched cries of empowerment don't help. [Apr 2013, p.74]

It's not easy to ooze insouciant cool while pounding out febrile garage-punk, but LA quartet Feels manage to pull that off throughout this spiky debut. [Jun 2016, p.73]

Somewhere on the feral fringes of indie civilisation, Half Japanese remain kings of their own tiny jungle. [Feb 2017, p.28]

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]

It doesn't always hit the mark, but it's terrific fun while it lasts. [Jan 2020, p.30]

Suggest the euphoria of whooshing through infinite space past astral displays of imagined beauty via a blend of disco funk, dream pop, electronic exotica and '70s highlife. [Apr 2020, p.33]

There's a flightiness that lends the album a showreel quality. [Apr 2005, p.97]

Compelling in its way, but a bit Isobel Campbell when it should be Joni Mitchell. [Nov 2011, p.81

The album sound stultifying, but this is far from the case, thanks to a steady stream of surprises and a depth of detail that reveals itself incrementally.

The emotional imprint of The Fall moves beyond the pining, wistful tones that are her trademark in favour of Sex And The City scenarios bursting with heartbreak, regret and emotional devastation.

The results are--as ever--compellingly inventive and seductively imagistic. [Oct 2011, p.100]

Disappointingly, there's a lack of biting vocal interaction between the half-sisters, nothing ti match the delectable harmonies that graced the McGarrigles or less feted Roches. [Dec 2015, p.81]

Several nuggets of power-pop excellence here that rank with the best on 2002's Lapalco. [May 2020, p.23]

If we can now safely conclude that the Pixies are unlikely to hit the heights of early days, then let’s face it, it’s the rare mortal who can; but it’s also the only slightly less rare mortal who can make albums as solidly good as this one. [Oct 2022, p.30]

Accomplished but seldom inspired. [Aug 2005, p.106]

No shortage of flamboyant tunes. [Jun 2020, p.27]

Something gets lost in translation in these inter-cultural patchworks, sure, but more often than not something weird and wonderful is born. [Jan 2018, p.38]

This seven-track beauty marries the bucolic indie-pop of Woods with Dungen's Scandi Drone. [May 2018, p.37]

There's the sense that primarily, they're out to please themselves, but that's of little issue when the result is a string of three-minute knee-tremblers played with excellent chops and plenty of gusto. [Nov 2013, p.76]

They've been an oddly schizophrenic beast, vacillating between sparse dronescapes and percussive rock jams conducted with primitive intensity. Peer Amid sits in the latter camp, although it constitutes both a sharpening offocus and a step up in ambition. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Today We're The Greatest boasts a gentler nature than Lost Friends. [May 2021, p.31]

This is different (from his last studio album) again, the rhythms of Afrobeat now cleved to an ambitious jazziness. [Dec 2008, p.100]

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

Kweli, whose wordy rhymes can often read better than they flow, sounds nimble and at ease most of the time. [Oct 2007, p.96]

[An] eloquent set of songs about absence and change. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Even at times it's over-polished, at the very least, it's super-sized. [July 2008, p.113]

The results are dark, dangerous and utterly compelling. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Lightly experimental and laced with playful wit, this is quality gear from a seasoned elder statesman. [Apr 2013, p.71]

This follow-up to last year's impressive debut, Dear, is no less musically intense or lyrically unflinching, but now Henson's quavering anxiety has flesh on its bones. [Mar 2013, p.]

There are hints of Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom, but the air of doomed beauty is Bruland's own. [Dec 2017, p.26]

More fully realised than 2014's Season Sun, this second album adheres its predecessor's summery disposition while adding new elements. [Sep 2018, p.30]

Kleyn's songs sung to a rugged, vaguely Celtic harp accompaniment with electric piano, bridge the gap between Judy Collins and Joanna Newsom. [Sep 2011, p.88]

It all sounds closer to 1990s David Bowie studio funk than the man who once went commando with the likes of Sabotage/Live and Music For A New Society. [Nov 2012, p.71]

Still square, then, but they're loosening up. [Feb 2008, p.93]

The rest of the album freewheels around American music with a virtuosity and spontaneity that belies the group's indie-rock roots. [Dec 2013, p.67]

There are some outstanding songs here, and Jagger turns in a series of performances that are their match, full of much defiant flouncing, strutting bitchiness, preening arrogance, snarling haughtiness and a typically provocative misogyny. [Album of the Month, Oct 2005, p.92]

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

If the tunes and attitude don't grip as strongly as they did in either man's era-bending pomp, both parties still sound better for getting together. [Mar 2024, p.27]

Possibly cloying in large doses. [Jan 2006, p.112]

More rock music should be this reduced and addictive--but they'll have to think long and hard about self-parody some time soon. [Sep 2011, p.105]