It seems pretty much like business as usual. [Jul 2012, p.63]

It's an intriguing juxtaposition of the crunchy and the smooth. [May 2012, p.75]

Lost In Revelry's trump cards are its sudden, exhilarating turns of weather, its restless--sometimes uncomfortable--soul-searching, and its knack of throwing up instantly-hummable pocket classics. [Dec 2002, p.131]

Some of these experimental mash-ups feel ungainly, but when their chemistry ignites, Algiers sound indestructible. [Apr 2023, p.23]

One's enjoyment of this record will largely depend on the ability to endure a man doing an uncanny impersonation of a youthful Bob Dylan. [Aug 2012, p.80]

It's silly in parts ("Little Things"), deranged in others ("Keep An Eye On Dan") but the "ah-ha ah-ha" chorus on "Just A Notion" comfortably makes up for a multitude of sins. [Feb 2022, p.23]

There’s a sometimes bipolar feel to the 10 original tracks, particularly the first half, before the four singles crash in to save the day. .... Sleevenotes, memorabilia, alternate takes, B-sides and demos galore, although vibrant live cuts such as a 1979 tear through “Message In A Bottle” offer the most value beyond curiosity.

Free Your Mind, looks to the two summers of love--psychedelia in 1967 and rave in '89--for inspiration and is mixed by Tame Impala's guru Dave Fridmann, yet its tasteful blend of chugging acid and euphoric choruses means it resembles an elaborate Screamadelica pastiche. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Holy Fire doesn't quite unfurl its devil horns.... But the production heft from Flood and Alan Moulder, as well as the shameless but satisfying amount of delayed guitar, means it all has serious stadium credentials. [Mar 2013, p.72]

“De-Hibernate”’s depths are murky but its surfaces sparkle, “Does It Go Dark?”s sludgy drones answer in the affirmative (before changing their mind), and “Haze Loops” drifts past in a beautiful blur swaddled in echoing, blissed-out guitars. [Sep 2022, p.30]

Aokohio maintains that momentum [from 2017's Moh Lhean], even if it is typically scattershot, haphazard, surreal and episodic, featuring short bursts of beautiful melody, soul-searching found sounds, unsettling atmospherics and dark humour. [Sep 2019, p.37]

There are several lengthy, furious, deliberately alienating diatribes from the Jamaican feminist poet Staceyann Chin, whole sections in French and Steve Reich-style phase-shifting sound collages. All of this does a slight disservice to some excellent songs. [Sep 2024, p.37]

It's the restlessly inventive guitars, from silvery solos to swaggering glam rock, where Metallica find ageless redemption. [Jun 2023, p.32]

The songs' real power comes from a sense of foreboding that undercuts the easy listening. [Dec 2016, p.30]

Leaning lightly into their love of R&B on the likes of “Proof” and “Stevie”, and relaxing into expansive, stoned-in-the-sunshine grooves on pulsing lead single “Champion” and “Like Sweetness”, it’s a perfect goth summer record. [Jun 2022, p.34]

Despite its heady beauty, a gloomy fatefulness also shapes this set. [Mar 2017, p.30]

Sidi broadly draws on the same blues traditions Ali Farka Toure, but there are subtle differences here, too.[Jan 2014, p.78]

The songs are all traditional but are given a cool Scandinavian edge. [Mar 2013, p.75]

The Follower delicately shifts the emphasis from trance to techno, continuing the slow descent into darkness begun with 2013's Cupid's Head. [May 2016, p.73]

An LP of spooked delicacy and wheezy, wayward charm. [Jun 2003, p.104]

Throughout the record there's a thoughtful restraint tot he compositions, swerving back and forth between quiet euphoria and shell-shocked dystopia. [Aug 2018, p.30]

Here, the Southern rock template of Modern Blues is embellished with loops and 1970s soul stylings. The mood is up. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Helm seems constrained within the immaculate settings, only intimating the emotional lift-off the material yearns for. She makes a deeper connection with the newly penned "Heaven's Holding Me," delivering the LP's most heartfelt, uplifting performance. [Nov 2018, p.30]

There are further pointers to the record serving as a noisy epilogue, its energy and venom a reminder of when they, and their devoted following, were much younger souls. [Sep 2024, p.39]

The album presents the sound of masters at work, not thinking about their legacy, just doing the work. [Nov 2015, p.83]

Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay balance their belligerent side with a refined, progressive sensibility, a side increasingly foregrounded on Woman. [Dec 2016, p.30]

The resulting confluence of country, soul, gospel and R&B is a delight, Langford's originals imbued with a keen sense of time and place. [Dec 2017, p.23]

It strips out their usual psychedelic sprawl, leaving something leaner and more insistent, if no less Technicolor and joyously hypnotic. [Nov 2014, p.80]

This third album sees him turn to songwriting for the first time as he channels his inner Lou Reed for a freewheeling take on New York art-rock. [Oct 2013, p.83]

It's confident work, with faith in the power of a few elements. [Oct 2012, p.79]

Another dazzling yet soulless smorgasbord of bold, modern pop composition that mixes the latest AI with more old-school contributions from Lee Renaldo and Jim O'Rourke. [Nov 2023, p.31]

A delightful, horn-infused love letter to Morrissey's best solo work. [Apr 2016, p.76]

If Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was the album that gave Phoenix everything they'd always strived for, Bankrupt! is the record that finds them trying to come to terms with it all. [May 2013, p.80]

Tosca is now... a band proper as well as a studio concern, and the change shows. [Jul 2005, p.106]

While at times her guitar rages filthily. She branched out lyrically too. [Oct 2014, p.79]

Their unfussy but subtle playing embellishes the simplicity of Nash’s melodies, while experience brings renewed pathos to songs like “I Used To Be A King”, “Man In The Mirror” and even something as straightforward as “You’ll Never Be The Same”. [Jul 2022, p.30]

A set of soft-focused pip imbued with simple but stickable hooks and emotional honesty reminiscent of Brendan Benson or Elliott Smith. [Feb 2025, p.34]

These immersive, synth-driven compositions may never match the brooding atmosphere of the filmmaker's early scores like Halloween and Assault On Precinct 13, but still have much to commend. [Mar 2015, p.73]

It's unquestionably a more electronic record, but the band show that they still know how to make a racket. [Mar 2025, p.33]

The most peculiar aspect here is the sound of Oldham shaking off his customary moroseness in "Poems, Prayers and Promises" and "Milk Train" and positively radiating joie de vivre. [Mar 2013, p.75]

Ultimately it’s this balancing between considered atmospheres and rattling noise that gives Present Tense such a sharp bite. [Jun 2021, p.25]

A predominantly female choir features throughout, boosting Taylor's crises of confidence on "Focus Is Power" and "What Now" into communal rallying cries. But there is fun here too. [May 2025, p.39]

Wexler delivers an alluring lugubrious set that views Fairport Convention, the Canterbury scene and Simon & Garfunkel through a glass darkly. [May 2012, p.84]

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

Flutter[s] between commune jazz, zen folk and straightforward hippy rock. [Apr 2004, p.106]

The ornate multitracked chorales retain a heady intensity. [Sep 2015, p.73]

At times, it's redolent in scope of Paul Weller's 21 Dreams. [Dec 2015, p.78]

With Orange his style cuts loose and shifts around, relaxing into large, at time echoey spaces while recalling '70s Bowie and Lenon and The Verlaines, though not entirely forsaking jangle. [May 2026, p.37]

A different male duetting partner graces each track, with outstanding contributions from Jackson Browne and Willie Nelson among others. Yet all take a back seat tot he preternatural clarity of Collins' own soprano voice. [Nov 2015, p.73]

These four numbered tracks fall closer to dance music, although Föllakzoid's hallmarks - a lysergic dreaminess, tethered by a constant, hypnotic propulsion - remains intact. [Nov 2023, p.28]

Only the too-obvious "Lady Liberty stumbles, but even that song is redeemed by a road-hardened band that adds a twangy stateliness to Farrar's outrage. [Apr 2019, p.36]

[An] unassumingly seductive set. [Apr 2015, p.80]

There are overdubs, Auto-Tune and, most conspicuously of all, songs have been overlaid with Animal sounds. [Jul 2016, p.68]

The music remains a potent mix of stuttering party anthems and post-Biggie street sermons. [Feb 2002, p.114]

In the same jolie-laide class as Red Krayola and Pere Ubu at their most ungainly, its ugliness may be a new form of beauty. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Adrian Thaws is another decent entry in the latterday Trickypedia, rolling along on circular bluesfunk grooves and furtive whisper-croak boy-girl vocals. [Oct 2014, p.79]

Goldblum knows his limitations and never sounds out of his depth. ... Good stuff. [Dec 2018, p.25]

The Haunted Man she's exorcised some of those ghosts and gone some way to becoming her own woman. [Nov 2012, p.70]

Their latest dismantles the genre boundaries often used to pen them in. [Dec 2015, p.79]

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]

A collection of unabashedly hooky '80s-informed rock songs. [Mar 2019, p.30]

Going Places is a felicitous reversion to type, full of mature and nuanced songcraft. [Sep 2022, p.30]

It's a record packed with earworms and a deliciously deadpan charm. [Mar 2013, p.79]

12 pummeling songs of Black Flag-like thump, laced with bleak humour. [Mar 2013, p.76]

As Polica, they go some way to forging their own--snare rim snaps and menacing funk bass constantly chasing with Casselle's Auto-Tuned--but endearingly vulnerable. [May 2012, p.79]

Though her songs deliver a sugar rush and some soar like helium balloons, they're anything but insubstantial. [Sep 2025, p.31]

Nadler's richly layered vocals are especially enthralling whenever she applies her featherlight delivery to ideas and images that subvert her music's surface appearance of serentiy. [Sep 2025, p.33]

What could be esoteric electronica is lifted by Davis' creamy, often harmonised baritone voice. [Sep 2015, p.72]

A bleakly beautiful record that smuggles moments of elation into its ambient dread. [May 2023, p.28]

No longer quite so greasy, but rewardingly slick. [Oct 2014, p.80]

A considerably more fully formed affair, rich in texture and atmosphere, though reprising Familial's aura of downbeat anxiety. [Nov 2014, p.83]

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]

As a metaphor for modern accelerationism, it's slyly provocative. [Apr 2017, p.37]

There may be too much on Electric Lines--including Jess Mills, American nwo R&B upstart Daniel Wilson and an uncharacteristically low energy Taylor on the title track. [May 2017, p.30]

There's an exotic, silk-road feel to her [singer Barbora Patkova's] spectral ululations, often delivered in her native language, that work brilliantly on the seven-minute title track, but can feel samey across a full album. [Jul 2017, p.30]

Sounds a lot more like Haines yammering on about end-of-days cults while Buck ditches his customary Rickenbacker jingle-jangle for brute force Raw Power stormtrooping. [Nov 2022, p.29]

There are some moments her that are mearly shoegaze revisited. But more often than not, Cantu-Ledesma's background in more avant-garde practices helps shake things up. [Aug 2017, p.26]

While these versions don't venture far from a cooing, lullabyish feel, it's a cosy, inviting one. [Sep 2020, p.28]

She hasn't acquired any other new weapons here, though, sticking to her usual palette: intimidating, sludgy-but-spare garage that builds like someone surreptitiously tightening a thumbscrew. [Jun 2013, p.76]

Her voice is every bit as great as her songs. [Aug 2016, p.76]

It's lyrically potent stuff. [Feb 2003, p.76]

A richer chamber-pop style which now reaches its zenith on Strange Dance. [Mar 2023, p.35]

All necessarily mood but never morose. [May 2023, p.32]

Commune is less immediately striking than World Music. [Oct 2014, p.81]

Wet Tuna really find their sound in the spacier moments. [Nov 2019, p.33]

Half Moon Light's much-needed manifesto of hopefulness comes with the addition of uplifting lyrics further designed to keep up our spirits on dark days. [Mar 2020, p.30]

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

A trove of intimate, impeccably judged delights. [Apr 2019, p.29]

Where Moor Mother's usual free jazz band Irreversible Entanglements give warm instrumental life to poem which are ultimately hopeful for change, Sumac offer grinding feedback symphonies. [May 2025, p.39]

If it all seems a little too familiar, the hooks here are undeniable. [Apr 2015, p.76]

Hannon is in his element, from the bittersweet ba-ba-Bacharachian title track to the glam, high-kicking chorus of "Down The Rabbit Hole". [Nov 2025, p.31]

At 15 tracks, The BPM is rather too much of a sensory overload, but this is enthusiasm in context. [Dec 2025, p.37]

His melodic approach remains minimalist, dependent on hypnotic rhythms and crescendo - there's also a Screamadelica familiarity to "The People Say" and "Let It Go" - but his sloganeering encourages unifying empowerment. [Apr 2023, p.32]

The most thrilling moments are those in which you catch a glimpse of the band jamming away amid the aural wreckage. [Feb 2022, p.25]

It's a rich ensemble sound, full and complex, but not overly dense. [Feb 2021, p.30]

She relies on relatively conservative house music tropes sometimes, but the hooks never fail to cut through. [Jun 2023, p.29]

Eyes may be on the US market, but the honesty of Parks' expression holds. [Jul 2023, p.33]

Perhaps they lack the arty flourishes of elder statesman Damon Albarn's solo work, but these bold, brassy tunes serve to remind that it wasn't only about Union Jacks and DMs back then. [Oct 2014, p.69]