From austere, absurd materials, the cumulative effect is remarkable. [Dec 2011, p.76]

It features a stellar setlist built around tracks from that album, liberally peppered with Horse classics and deep cuts. In all this, the Horse prove themselves dependably elastic. [Apr 2021, p.49]

As much as these graceful and meditative pieces became threnodies for Sakamoto's condition, 12 is also something of a personal and creative victory for the composer. [Mar 2023, p.30]

With Fox Confessor, she has defiantly come into her own. [Apr 2006, p.106]

These songs, dehydrated after 50 years, sound bright and timeless. [Jun 2012, p.97]

Generally excellent, sporadically sublime. [Aug 2019, p.39]

The songs boast a quality of spaciousness and delicacy that was rarer on 2018's otherwise very fine Lionheart. [Sep 2020, p.32]

Where Ryan Adams replicates old records, this is something new. [Album of the Month, Feb 2005, p.72]

Not bad for four young men barely out of their teens playing rowdy, undiluted hardcore. That has a lot to do with the excellence of their debut album. [Jun 2011, p.85]

A mesmerising slowdive into the sonic depths. [Nov 2020, p.31]

Musically, too, he became far more adventurous than both Roxy Music and the New Romantic legions who echoed the original glam-rock innovations, his work paralleling that of questing artists like Scott Walker and Talk Talk.

The more one listens to Ever-Roving Eye, the more details emerge to elevate it from a mid-60s tribute to something wholly rooted in the present, and far stranger. ... An outstanding record. [May 2020, p.18]

Combines Richard’s quietly soulful voice with sparse soundscapes in even more affecting style. [Nov 2024, p.41]

By far the most compelling persona on Mr Morale & The Big Steppers is the Kendrick who is trying to make sense of his own family. ... ["Mother I Sober" is] a tour de force, almost but not quite as revelatory as "DUCKWORTH", a similar family saga off 2017's DAMN. And the best moment is when the strings swell and Lamar's voice changes. [Aug 2022, p.24]

What sticks with Space 1.8 is the focus of its vision: precise like mathematics but imbued with a rich, cosmic breadth. [Nov 2021, p.32]

Third is the most stunning, stark and superb Portishead album yet. [May 2008, p.84]

The entire album sounds as if it was made to be heard on a Fifties jukebox rather than a state-of-the-art super-audio digital system. [Sep 2002, p.112]

Forsyth's imperative to find new possibilities from a classic format shines through. [Sep 2017, p.28]

Uncompromising, adventurous score. [Dec 2018, p.27]

Hark! I Inside the Old Year Dying is a singular thing. [Aug 2023, p.18]

An album that is as imaginative as it is innovative. [Feb 2025, p.39]

Diehard Moggers fans may bemoan the omission of obscure personal faves, but the belters title is well-deserved. [Nov 2015, p.95]

Listening to Daddy's Home brings a sense of exhalation, a filling out, an openness, that is as unexpected as it is wonderful. [Jun 2021, p.20]

A debut album bursting with character. [Feb 2022, p.37]

A near-masterpiece.... It's hip and urgent, formal and exhilarated, everything guitar pop aspires to today. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Mostly brilliant. [Aug 2005, p.88]

Impossible Truth says more with six strings than most records manage with a thousand words. [May 2013, p.79]

He's best on matters of the heart: "Father" is a spectral journey to a lost 1970s of family intimacy and may be the most affecting song yet in a catalog stuffed with heartbreakers. [Jul 2024, p.32]

Singer Joe Casey tacks flattened vocals to songs that move with a bristling crawl and occasionally explode into repressed fury. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Staggeringly good.

The songs are very much of their time, reflecting shifts in popular taste and featuring numerous covers. [Dec 2017, p.43]

Valentine is typically sturdy--piquant observation and low-key philosophy played against an impeccable musical backdrop. [Aug 2012, p.80]

This set is a good primer for Cooder’s soundtrack work.

True, this may have benefited from the inclusion of, say, 2013's "Lucinda Byre," but the man's unerring ability to quietly lift the heart with melody as he foes in "Rumer" and "Josephine" is ultimately the more valuable sensation to hang on to. [Nov 2017, p.30]

An album that feels comfortable and confident, and made by a group of people who have found their own idiosyncratic rhythm. [Mar 2025, p.32]

An a cappella "I'll Find A Way" provides clearest evidence, but their talents stretch beyond voices. [Sep 2025, p.31]

The way Eric evokes the "shabby shires" brings to mind Ray Davies, while "Land Of The Faint At Heart" swings with the bruised energy of Springsteen (if the Boss had been raised on suburban terror and garden gnomes). [Jan 2026, p.36]

Just about every song's a banger, but pay particular attention to the jagged metal shredding of "Persuasion Architect"; then contrast with the outstanding country rocker "Twins". [Aug 2023, p.29]

While this Dublin quintet's latest stops short of total reinvention, the changes are marked - John Congleton brings the darkly spangled, alt.rock power, and textured synths do a lot of the melodic lifting. [Feb 2023, p.32]

One small quibble, though: while it’s great to have documentation of the band’s early live sound (and in many ways the versions of the songs from Bleach are superior thanks to the sprightly energy), you don’t really get a sense of the sheer ferocity and electricity Nirvana generated in a tiny, cramped college bar.

An aquatic, slow-moving work, rich with melancholic atmosphere. [Oct 2017, p.35]

The sound of a major talent gone major league. [Apr 2003, p.105]

For all its muddied textures and sideways lurches, it is a magnificently engaging and expansive work. [Jul 2003, p.112]

There are many wise, deceptively simple insights on this wonderful album. [Jun 2015, p.82]

This expertly wrought debut is an impressive platform for twentysomething polymath Heloise Letissier. [Apr 2016, p.71]

Beautiful, weird and wasted, Songs For Judy never lets us forget it. [Jan 2019, p.28]

Stylistically promiscuous and consistently inventive, Martin remains a maestro of multiple mutant genres, many of his own making. [Oct 2021, p.25]

The Sniffers sometimes sound limited by their studiously low-brow, lo-fi aesthetic. Even so, Comfort To Me offers a mostly exhilarating mix of headbanging riffs, profane wit and gutter-punk attitude. [Oct 2021, p.24]

if Shannon Lay's solo expression has been a steady blooming across three albums, Geist represents its full-blown folkish splendour. [Nov 2021, p.29]

She has crooned before, but the freight of intimate emotion here, letting low notes waver within the ferally alive arrangement, is masterful. Ending an album of looking back, this is the new prime of Chrissie Hynde. [Oct 2023, p.22]

Arab Strap songs mostly have a strong, vinegary flavour, and this is abracingly sour album over the long haul. The relentless misanthropic grind can drag in places. But as ever, Moffat’s withering scorn is sweetened by beautiful poetry, tender emotion and self-aware, bruise-black humour. [May 2024, p.36]

13 songs of luminous, impeccably judged country-folk. [Nov 2025, p.36]

The xx have expanded their horizons without sacrificing any of the emotional intimacy that makes them one of the most compelling acts around. [Feb 2017, p.22]

Too often the crossover strategy mires these songs in the most banal cliches of dream pop and arena grunge. [Sep 2018, p.29]

Helplessness Blues is as passionately desolate as anything on Closer, the record which documented Ian Curtis' romantic guilt and existential confusion. [Jun 2011, p.74]

Confirms System Of A Down as one of the most innovative bands in modern rock. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Only a couple of tracks into Bonny Light Horseman’s third album, it’s clear this is something special. Beauty erupts from the vocal harmonies of Eric Johnson and Anais Mitchell, who lift the Technicolor folk-rock of “Lover Take It Easy” into something close to heaven. And then it keeps getting better. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Edan's punch and broad vision distinguish him from the rest of the pack. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Purple is a formidable show of power and resilience, the band--with the help of produce Dave Fridmann--achieving its most consistently thrilling fusion of metal, southern rock and the edgier end of '90s alt.rock. [Jan 2016, p.72]

These elegant, cosmic soul-jazz excursions are a fine fit for Sumney's extraordinary voice. [Oct 2017, p.40]

As with all of Le Bon's projects, the claustrophobic, wonderfully awkward whole is very much her own. [Mar 2022, p.31]

A charming, confident voyage through sonic moods he's explored throughout his career. [Apr 2025, p.27]

Every song contains a clever new idea. [Mar 2024, p.35]

By turns darker and more challenging than 2003's dazzling Electric Version. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Benji is brutally sad, which may prove a deal-breaker for anyone who appreciated the comparatively light Among the Leaves, but it never feels gratuitous or exploitative. [Mar 2014, p.84]

Running over with ideas. [Nov 2006, p.128]

While what was lost with Smith is immeasurable, what he left was amazing, and New Moon is an appropriately spectacular monument. [Jun 2007, p.112]

Interplanetary Class Classics smears Saoudi's nihilistic euphoria across throbbing new-wave and singalong Glitter Band boogie. [Apr 2017, p.35]

In melding ethereal production with clarion narratives, Korkejian has created a beautifully dynamic work. [Jun 2019, p.24]

This debut LP often sounds familiar but never in the same way too often. [Feb 2025, p.33]

Seething electronic undercurrents dredge depths of barely concealed rage. .... And amid the storm, moments of tenderness. [Jun 2025, p.33]

It's often raw, venerable, painful stuff, as on the impassioned charge of "Breathe", but it's also peppered with moments of joy. [Aug 2025, p.39]

This is a record that genuinely sounds like nothing you have heard before. If you can rise to its portentous challenge... The Drift will prove to be a frightening, bewitching and rewarding experience. [Jun 2006, p.96]

The fifth album to feature Kentucky's Joan Shelley has an immensely welcoming ease that was absent in 2014 anxious solo breakthrough, Electric Ursa.... A major talent. [Oct 2015, p.83]

A hugely enjoyable, idiosyncratic ride. [Sep 2023, p.37]

it's a densely layered, frictional set that matches emotional heft and musical invention in equal and impressive measure. [May 2025, p.39]

No single track grandstands, but the Black Midi-ish epic roll of "Senegal" is a laser-tooled highlight. [Mar 2026, p.36]

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

Compared to so many noisemongers, TOD understand that restraint enables unleashed firepower to be exhilarating and awesome. [Apr 2002, p.111]

Streetcore negotiates a resolution between the ethnocentric beats that hallmarked the two previous Mescaleros albums and the classic Clash sound that remained pivotal to Joe's live performances. [Nov 2003, p.110]

With martial trumpets, cheap-sounding Farfisa organs and raspy baritone saxes, there are certainly nods toward Ethiopiques legends like Mulatu Astatke or the Wallas Band, tracks like "Rite Of The Ancients" and "Golden Dunes" add a rugged garage rock, and riff-based funk of "Black Venom" has a breakbeat that's just begging to be sampled by a bright hip hop producer. [Nov 2010, p.83]

Even as Atrocity Exhibition plumbs depths, Brown remains a savvy operator. [Dec 2016, p.25]

An impressive deepening of Marling's explorations, and a timely testament to change as a positive force. [Apr 2017, p.24]

Pinning this endlessly complex songwriter’s work down to a single tagline or meaning is unwise. His songs are not always easy, they’re not always straightforward, but 10 albums in, they’re mounting up to create one of the most impressive bodies of work of the century so far. [Sep 2022, p.16]

It is, at 78 tracks, quite a meal. But fine work lies within. [May 2011, p.96]

[A] hugely satisfying album. [Jul 2016, p.66]

Each song is so confident and perfectly formed, unravelling with cascading flurries. Orcutt is so confident and comfortable in his own skin that he has become a maser oif phrasing and economy. [Jun 2023, p.35]

This is Clark, now in his 72nd year, as the rumpled poet of American folk-blues, imparting these semi-brisk, string-driven tales with his own unique brand of sad, funny, dry wisdom.

Both sonically and lyrically, it's an album that is explicitly, thrillingly transgressive and is already an early contender for one of the albums of the year. [Mar 2018, p.33]

It is not only Wild Beats' finest album to date, but one of the best you're likely to hear all year. [Jun 2011, p.90]

To devotees, however, it sounds very much like a second masterpiece: a different kind of epic to "Ys," and one with enough hooks and charms to ensnare at least a few Newsom agnostics. [Apr 2010, p.82]

Ba Power feels like another dramatic leap forward and a further landmark in the integration of African tribal rhythms and western rock'n'roll. [May 2015, p.85]

As ever, you wish they'd stretch out and jam a bit more in the studio, but this might just be the most satisfying CRB set since 2012's Big Moon Ritual. [Sep 2017, p.37]

Childers is blessed with a timeless voice and an ear for the plurality of mountain music, these songs roaming between bluegrass, folk, straight-up country and R&B. [Sep 2019, p.26]

It's by some ways the finest of the three iterations. [Oct 2020, p.36]

Here are nine songs that confidently mix Station To Station piano, Beach Boys harmonies, Kosmische guitar and even free jazz. [Jun 2021, p.31]

Infectious, silly and even a little dangerous again. Through it all — even on the two quieter tracks, which stick outa little awkwardly among the Killing Joke fuzz — Brett Anderson is the consummate guide, vocally at his peak. [Oct 2022, p.34]

This is as much a celebration of collaboration, camaraderie and community as it is a noted personal evolution. [Jan 2023, p.17]