Holly lacks the heat and fire that makes the best so damn thrilling. [Apr 2014, p.83]

The duo can do softer moments like the melancholic "The Mothership," but are at their best when offering principled and comedic disgust. [May 2020, p.28]

A “Time Of The Season”-like Latin groove powers standout “It Ain’t Over”, syncopated by percussionist Sam Bacco, whose tambourine and shakers are the album’s secret sauce. [Jun 2022, p.25]

As spirited as this effort is, there's not much here to worry James Murphy. [Jul 2007, p.99]

It's an impeccably tatsteful tribute to their record collections, though mystifying they can find no room for anything by The Cure. [Jan 2009, p.114]

The title track;s urgent strums are more claustrophobic, while "Shaking"'s jangles are more prosaic. Largely, though, she's as refreshingly carefree as her lyrics are empowering. [Jun 2020, p.29]

No one can actually improve on the perfection of "Wichita Lineman," but the version of "Rhinestone Cowboy" included here, stripped down to grunge guitar and a Willie Nelson-esque vocal, is bold and definitive. [Aug 2013, p.68]

Favours artifice over aptitude. [Apr 2003, p.122]

An existentialist’s song cycle, Vacilando's grim, lonely songs reinforce each other with an impeccable internal logic, fashioning its own little world-weary universe, wherein less is more, simple guitar strums signal seismic shifts in mood, shadows bump into one another.

The rather prissy album versions are given room to breathe and take on a rather more energetic cabaret feel. [Nov 2009, p.109]

An inspired and fruitful fusion. [Sep 2018, p.35]

The austere brand of retro-rustic Americana sometimes sounds overly tasteful, but there are spine-tingling beauties here too. [Oct 2018, p.30]

Chords is a stark, minimal listen--but one that rewards patience. [Jul 2019, p.24]

This neo-disco banger ["Emotion"] overshadows the rest of the record, leaving the listener longing fir those same types of compact, entirely snackable treats. [Sep 2021, p.25]

The resultant mash-up of Noughties Brooklyn cool and Flaming Lips grand folly can exhilarare, but there is also a worrying tendency for Magic Chairs to strain for significance like Coldplay. [Mar 2010, p.84]

Batmanglij rarely gets out of first gear, fussing through vanilla ballads like "Hardy" and "Forgive Is To Know". [Jun 2026, p.34]

The music is classifed as country, but it's really clinical pop, enlivened by Swift's confessional lyrics. [Apr 2009, p.101]

There's much to admire here, but Flume needs to fix his identity. [Mar 2013, p.72]

Michael Franti has fashioned an inclusive pan-global pop, heard here at its most confident and fully formed. [Jul 2014, p.73]

The raw machine clap has been replced by Chaotic deconstruction of house music. It's a frequently awkward fit, lacking the fluid styling that makes the best hip hop. [Apr 2008, p.84]

Nonetheless, this is impressive, mainstream stuff. One hope their bluecollar heart will win out over their white collar power pop head. [May 2010, p.83]

An interim record before their next assault, perhaps. [Oct 2010, p.87]

It's a consistent Crowell effort, if a bit by-the-numbers. [Jul 2012, p.70]

While the familiar swagger is present and correct both in the Bowie-influenced "Spiderhead" and the crackling "It's Just Forever," these moments are leavened by quieter, more reflective tracks such as "Hypocrite." [Mar 2014, p.72]

Rammed with stinging hooks and ringing harmonies. [Oct 2005, p.112]

Tracks like 'Couples' prove their trademark sound is still as strong (and smart) as ever. [May 2008, p.102]

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 record that's complex, inventive and terrifically free-spirited. [Sep 2013, p.92]

A slight disappointment. [Jun 2007, p.88]

It's a majestic transformation. [Dec 2005, p.102]

Looser in feel and texture than their last couple of discs, with Dylan's husky vocals leading the way. [Dec 2012, p.78]

Robbie Robertson has enlisted Bob Clearmountain to provide a new mix in order to give the recordings more "space" and clarity, and it especially reaps rewards on the woozy duet between Richard Manual and co-writer Van Morrison, "4% Pantomime", and Allen Toussaint's New Orleans brass arrangement on "Life Is A Carnival". [Feb 2022, p.43]

Despite the starry cameos and production turns, Shine lacks a little lustre. [May 2008, p.94]

Weber masks the scale of the enterprise with typical grace. [Feb 2013, p.77]

It's solid stuff. But he's got a way to go to rise above his influences. [Jun 2011, p.86]

Inarticulate, perhaps, but indubitably exciting. [Oct 2013, p.72]

Something more intimate and traditionally crafted, exploring the highs and lows of human interaction. [Feb 2015, p.77]

This new emphasis on alt.rock songcraft can leave frontwoman Arrow de Wilde sounding little constrained, which may be why she sounds so thrilled to unleash her inner Iggy on "Toy teenager" and "Rich Taste." [Nov 2019, p.33]

Often as challenging as Justin Vernon's recent work. [Sep 2020, p.31]

If you like Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star, Low, you'll adore them. If you don't, you won't. [Mar 2008, p.83]

Back to their homespun, unforced, relatably human roots. [Dec 2025, p.37]

Peaches still bangs, in more ways than one. No Lube So rude, her first album in a decade, drips with fluids, fragrances and various viscera. [Mar 2026, p.36]

Molina's at the top of his lonesome game throughout. [Oct 2006, p.117]

Pollard fleshes out his vaguely familiar melodies with inventive, unpredictably expansive arrangements. [July 2008, p.108]

Ultima II Massage is ostentatiously big and frequently clever. [Jul 2014, p.83]

"Remembering" and "In Your Hands" are full of gorgeous, African-influenced harmonies. In fact, Mulvey's arrangements are generally more ambitious. [Oct 2017, p.35]

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]

On record at least, Wu-Tang have made the comeback of the decade.

Through the simplicity of their languid melodies, Beach House access a portal into pop's truly uncanny nature. [Jan 2007, p.93]

A concept piece about man's downfall and a planet in ruins, versed in three chapters and dominated by the kind of skull-splitting metal that marked 2014's I'm In Your Mind Fuzz. [Jul 2017, p.32]

Weird-but-wonderful free-folk explorations. [Jul 2017, p.25]

It's a very fine thing when a writer and craftsman of Gibb's standing embraces his own legacy and finds such persuasive ways of embellishing it. [Feb 2021, p. 24]

A fantastic hybrid of Spacemen 3 and Deep South voodoo. [Oct 2006, p.99]

On her 2019 debut album Keepsake, Harriette Pilbeam, who records as Hatchie, showed an inclination to take her shoegaze-infused pop onto the dancefloor. That’s something continued on Giving The World Away. [Jun 2022, p.28]

There's nothing not to like, but at 13 tracks in just 37 minutes, it's all rather slight. [Nov 2015, p.76]

A kind of Joshua Tree for the heavily pierced and mildly upset. [Dec 2004, p.140]

Mazes proves that San Franciscan guitarist Ripley Johnson has not musically strayed too far from home. [May 2001, p.93]

There's no denying the pair know their way around a perky tune, but their songs are unmemorable because their sound is so heavily recycled. [Jul 2016, p.82]

“Right Hand Over My Heart”, an irresistible number with moody Omnichord and synth motifs, and at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the sinuous “Water Torture”, in which a disgusted Davis addresses his country’s barbarity practised in the name of world order. “Moonlit Kind” closes the set, an existential hymn with an agreeably lazy, Yeasayer-ish groove. [Jul 2024, p.30]

Mudhoney these days, for all their pioneer status, mostly just sound like a regular, decent rock band. [Apr 2006, p.105]

For every textured, tasteful track that evokes Tortoise's mid-'90s peak as a prime exemplar of US indie's brainiest strain, two deviate wildly. [Feb 2016, p.83]

There's something awkward about the whole: the album wins attention but doesn't keep it. [Jun 2010, p.95]

These 10 songs are intimate, graceful and surprisingly hooky. [Oct 2018, p.24]

Shame about the occasional guest vocals, which veer a touch drab compared to their glittering backdrops. [Jul 2016, p.78]

Signals a striking reawakening for a too often overlooked talent. [May 2003, p.96]

This is a less than ideal introduction to the oeuvre of the usually intriguing 'Dolls. [July 2008, p.93]

Her own songs are more intriguing, however; poetic mediations on love and its destructive powers, sung in a tremulous but intense voice. [Feb 2009, p.76]

[The songs] shows, ultimately, the heights to which Jaffe can rise with time. [Jun 2012, p.158]

It's a tart set but not a sour one - concerns are laid bare and life lessons shared, with whip-smart confidence. [Apr 2022, p.25]

In Dreams picks up the thread they’ve been weaving since their 2018 comeback, not too different from their ’90s form: shimmering, chipped guitars; resigned, mumbling vocals; a vague sense of astral longing. [Dec 2024, p.35]

An uneven mix. [Feb 2006, p.70]

Here, we find the mufti-instrumentalist in his natural habitat, leading a band in seven pieces that blend Eastern-tinged melody, courtly medieval music and modern composition. [Mar 2012, p.90]

Eighteen Hours of Static is a brutish rocker with its eyes in the gutter, reminiscent of The Jesus Lizard and Minor Threat in its scabrous mid-pace grind and occasional lurch up to hardcore speed. [Feb 2014, p.71]

Kykeon combines that knowledge [of Greek folk music] with freewheeling homeland psych. [Jan 2015, p.76]

For much of the record the Djangos are the same sweet-toothed bunch. [Feb 2018, p.24]

Erratic but still occasionally sublime. [Jun 2020, p.37]

Alex Cameron returns to the more overtly acerbic studies in modern male toxicity that established the Australian singer-songwriter as a suave provocateur. [Apr 2022, p.25]

Here they come dressed in post-punk garb. The arena singalong "Wild Rut" mutates into a piece of motorik new wave; the toytown confections of "Leave You On A High" and "Loyal" both come wreathed in ice gothic synths and Peter Hook-style bass plunking. [Jun 2026, p.33]

If the initial effect is underwhelming, after several plays you find the tunes have buried themselves in your head and layers of intriguing subtlety are revealed. [Aug 2009, p.98]

They're the true inheritors of the psychic disconnect and crude abstraction that marks out those early Royal Trux albums: less Stones, more stoned. [Jan 2014, p.75]

The result is neither an especially loud or revelatory one. [Sep 2018, p.32]

The Bees' oddball genre-hopping is still evident. [Sep 2018, p.24]

The album is a deeply textural listen, led by Leaneagh’s impressive voice. [Jul 2022, p.31]

There are flashes of grouchy greatness from all three--but only flashes. [Jul 2010, p.115]

Their second album pulls their punched-up, modernist synth pop into tighter focus while softening some of its sharper corners. [May 2012, p.83]

Rich and evocative, The Race For Space is the sound of two young men gazing heavenwards and dreaming. [Mar 2015, p.80]

Grace Potter returns to her stylistic comfort zone with Daylight. [Jan 2020, p.28]

Haines... is shaping up as the most impressive writer of the current wave of Canadian indie. [Jul 2007, p.103]

It's fiercer and denser than their 2009 debut. [Nov 2011, p.107]

It's sleek, goth-leaning alt.pop, but ILYBICD's music ultimately leaves less of an impression than their band name. [May 2006, p.109]

Time that could have been spent on cultivating studied cool, a la The Bravery, appears to have been wisely invested in memorable songs. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Suffice to say that Blurry Blue Mountain is a lovely, oddly charming record. And in the unlikely event that it doesn't move you, there's a whole heap of past glories just waiting to be discovered.

Singles Collection Volume 3 betrays its genesis as something of a grab bag. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Every note of this compelling album backs her up. [Sep 2014, p.72]

What could be a kitschy nostalgia trip, however, becomes something more thanks to the songs themselves. [Apr 2008, p.94]

An intriguingly diverse "double" (well, 53 minutes) album. [Jan 2019, p.25]

It is gleeful and vigorous, full of echoes, pan pipes, samples and shimmering surf guitars. [Jun 2011, p.94]

As befits a compilation of songs that weren't up to scratch the first time around, 24 Karat Gold contains a few tinpot tracks that even the Nashville boys couldn't fix. Most, too, spill over the five-minute mark. But as fresh testament from one rock's great survivors, it makes for a fascinating listen. [Nov 2014, p.82]