Unashamedly shaggy compared to the sibling' meticulously crafted Lemon Twigs LPs. .... An illuminating look under the hood of the creative process. [Mar 2025, p.31]

Clearly, the source material is strong, but there’s also an emotional unity of purpose that works in the covers’ favour. [Jun 2021, p.33]

Over the course of an album even dogs will find the whistle register wearing, but taken individually these are sublime cocktails of post-geographical orientalism. [Apr 2012, p.79]

It all adds up to an album that is as satisfying as it is unexpected. [May 2012, p.79]

Through it all runs an ingrained psychedelic streak which is organic rather than synthetic, James and co tripping out on the glory of a sunset, a beach at dawn, a mile-high mountain view. [Jun 2015, p.68]

The gradual brightening of "Living" feels like some form of private epiphany; "Streetlights And Stars" and "Friend Zone" take on a pale cinematic grandeur. The latter proves Shires' playfulness is still intact. [Nov 2025, p.32]

It's terrific, lively fun--soulful, even--as long as nobody tries to tell you there's something radical about it. [Sep 2004, p.101]

Spewing more words per inch than an IRS vault, the effect is like primal scream therapy set to incidental music. [Oct 2002, p.101]

This promising debut proves they're proficient at penning ragged Buzzcocks-ish pop... but also exposes the limitations of [Masters]. [Feb 2005, p.79]

For Mnestic Pressure, his first for Hyperdub, Gamble again draws on themes of memory and perception to inform his shapeshifting arrangements, which curdle and collapse with familiar irregularity but don't necessarily build on past achievements. [Oct 2017, p.28]

No Tourists positively benefits from its echoes of past glories. [Dec 2018, p.30]

An essential half-term report. [Nov 2005, p.94]

The likes of “Casting A Spell” and “You May Leave But This Will Bring You Back” reassure that Burnett’s formidable facility for waspish wordplay remains intact. [Oct 2022, p.26]

Untamed talent still. [Jun 2020, p.37]

River is deeply embedded in a historical continuum. [Jun 2015, p.71]

old Friends... flows as a set piece but there are standouts. [Feb 2022, p.25]

The music adds majesty to the industrial primitivism which purports to be the output of the fictional band, Memorial Device, with Pastel ensuring period veracity by revisiting cassettes of his teenage jams. [Jul 2024, p.38]

More intimate but still privy to occasional bursts of discordant, unsettling energy. Several tracks are exceptionally brief. [May 2023, p.38]

While there are moments when you pine for Pete Shelley’s distinctive whine, subtle wordplay and clever vocal melodies – for variety’s sake but also straightforward nostalgia – Steve Diggle is clearly committed to maintaining the Buzzcocks’ story and pushing forward into the band’s 50th year. [Feb 2026, p.32]

Playland is pretty much "The Messenger Part 2." [Nov 2014, p.77]

Their terrific Wilco-esque third album, the emphasis is on storytelling. [Nov 2012, p.73]

His fourth album features no immediate bangers in the vein of "As It Was" or "Watermelon Sugar", but Styles does take some interesting risks. [May 2026, p.37]

The belated follow-up is a massive upgrade. [May 2017, p.26]

Much of Agora recalls his 2001 breakthrough album Endless Summer: long, processed guitar drones engendering an atmosphere of extreme, if rather familiar, calm. [Apr 2019, p.29]

There will doubtless be more varied shades on future records, but for now, this pensive debut gives notice of a fine new talent. [Apr 2012, p.80]

[Producer] Wally Gagel, who helmed the 2013 EP "Fade Away" and now California Nights, gets it right, cranking up the reverb and multiplying Cosentino's vocals to achieve the Spector-esque wall of sound the duo has been aiming for. [Jun 2015, p.71]

Woodland concepts aside, the band are most arresting when knocking out groove-locked rhythms with bursts of spluttering electronics. [Oct 2021, p.33]

He combines a fondness for Lou Reed-style New York street theater with anti-folk and '80s out-of-tune jangle to scintillating effect. [Aug 2013, p.76]

An album of well-crafted discreet songs. [Oct 2015, p.76]

Lynne is at his best as the world's greatest Beatles tribute act. [Dec 2019, p.26]

Smart work all round. [Mar 2026, p,31]

Some tracks are more like art installation art. .... But the highlight might be closer "BY Absence", where a single-note drone is slowly orchestrated over the course of 20 minutes. [Mar 2026, p.34]

Peace On Venus is a fine example of what they produce. [Dec 2013, p.65]

The result is quiet success. [Mar 2018, p.25]

Gnod explore a cacophonous avant-garde rock music with elements of Swans, Spacemen 3 and country folk The Fall swirling in its DNA. [May 2017, p.30]

The set charms and thrills. [May 2025, p.29]

The New Eve Is Rising is a confident, adventurous debut, intuitive yet purposeful and full of reinvention’s promise. [Aug 2025, p.34]

Cameron nonetheless hits the mic with the total hip=grinding conviction, as if daring you to proclaim him an ironist. [Sep 2016, p.70]

It's not quite as majestic as last year's self-titled album, but still a cut above. [Nov 2016, p.32]

The result, unsurprisingly, is a downbeat, ruminative affair. [Jul 2022, p.31]

The resulting jams throw up a wonderful ragbag of styles, the highlight being a tribal drum stomp called "Metal." [May 2015, p.83]

A fourth album that feels fervently human for all the machine-tooled precision it otherwise demonstrates. [Jan 2023, p.21]

It's the choices of material and approach that give Jesse Dayton's Mixtape Vol 1 its considerable kick. [Sep 2019, p.24]

Paradoxically, its spare, solo-voice-and-guitar format... comes closer to matching DiFranco's charismatic live performances than prior band-driven efforts. [Mar 2004, p.87]

Animal Races offers few departures, being exploratory and decidedly retro, but it's appealingly rendered. [Sep 2016, p.71]

It's all over the shop, but worth a rummage. [May 2026, p.33]

Prime cuts like "Words" and "City In The Country" bristle with renewed vigour and clarity of purpose. [Jun 2020, p.30]

Rousing epics "Dull Care" and "Genuflection" are soaked in hearty man tears. [Apr 2015, p.75]

Despite occasional hints of tastefully anodyne sonic wallpaper, most of these painstaking musical haikus have a quietly potent and gently mesmerising beauty. [Jun 2019, p.29]

While the lyrics are cliched to a fault, Lloyd is a convincing loverman across the range of backdrops he's given. [Apr 2012, p.81]

Yummy can be lyrically awkward as Tim Booth addresses conspiracy theories and digital addition. Often, though, influences brewed via innocent '80s indie and lusty Emo ambience spark arresting hybrids. [Apr 2024, p.35]

“MC Mambo” by the mixed-heritage German-Ghanaian collective Pepper, Onion, Ginger Salt is aborderline novelty quasirap number that oozes wonky DIY charm, like much of this uneven but absorbing collection. [Jun 2024, p.50]

Aldred's voice has also upped a register, his yearning falsetto perfect for pocket space opera "Progress" or the lubricious Al Greenisms of "Fingers Through The Glass." [Sep 2013, p.94]

As Shirt progresses, grungey riffs begin to cut through on “Itch” and the White Stripes-y chorus of “Rag”. Elsewhere, his slacker songcraft commands evermore empathy as “Voices In My Head” employs a neat acoustic motif and “Music” offers a piano-led lullaby to close a short, deceptively sweet affair. [Oct 2024, p.41]

The theatricality of the Nick Cave-penned "Late Victorian Holocaust" and Roger Waters' "Sparrows Will Sing" perfectly attuned to her autumn-years, grand-dame image. [Dec 2016, p.28]

There's a dusty charm to Little Songs, which lacks the gravity of his 2017 self-titled debut but has higher stakes than his albums since then. [Oct 2023, p.37]

Their horizon expands via garage-psych incantation "In The Roses" and chugging closer "Everybody Knows," which suggests a Granddaddy epic; the Shjips' ragged country-rock opus is clearly some way off yet. [Dec 2013, p.75]

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]

With a '70s/'80s-inspired disco-pop feel, creating a Eurovision-like mood that you probably wouldn't expect to find on a Sub pop release. The lack of top-line sheen, though, ensures this album retains a rough edge without sacrificing any intrinsic appeal. [Aug 2022, p.33]

Taken on its own terms, Novum is an impressive display of retro firepower. [May 2017, p.37]

It's noisy, riotous, guttural stuff - old-school noise rock to its core - that very much picks up where the band left off. [May 2025, p.33]

A flawed masterpiece that infuriates as often as it dazzles. [Jul 2019, p.28]

While the change in the band's output is not revolutionary, its subtle shift proves fruitful. [Jul 2019, p.37]

They run a tight ship, cramming 41 short, tough tracks onto Quakers with verses from indie-rap stalwarts Guilty Simpson, MED and Prince Po. [May 2012, p.80]

Trevor Sensor's very good debut hits its mark. [Aug 2017, p.37]

Fractures sound healed, leaving Sunflower Bean's classicist optimism intact. [Jul 2025, p.37]

"Overrated" tosses in traces of Disintegration-era Cure, with Matilda Bogren's dreamy vocals buried deep in a richly murky, shoegaze-friendly mix, while "Apart" leans towards the gothic and "Hard Ending" adds a little New order. [Jul 2018, p.27]

There's artifice in Booker's make-up but the troubled, strutting loner, serving sizzling sides of electrified psyched-swamp blues, is a role he inhabits with conviction and aplomb. [Sep 2014, p.69]

The passion of a precarious life lived by a gospel of poetry and rock’n’roll is, though, undimmed, in music of acoustic intimacy, helped by Kieran Hebden’s spectral guitars and the Webb Sisters’ choral harmonies. [Feb 2022, p.29]

This middle ground between jazz and hip-hop is the crux of the record, ad while it's loaded with deft playing, rich production and complex compositions, the constant rotation of differing voices can often kill the flow and coherence of what is otherwise a meticulously crafted record. [Jul 2023, p.33]

Joyous cosmic weirdness. [May 2022, p.36]

Melnyk conjures a world that is both sentimental and abstract--a safe space in which to lose yourself. [Jan 2019, p.22]

Despite the silly title and gorilla sleeve, this 3CD compilation proves a respectable primer.

The Breeders are a popular choice, covered by Bradford Cox, Big Thief and Tune-Yards (whose "Cannonball" is almost as fun as the original. [Jun 2021, p.33]

Break It Yourself by contrast [to Noble Beast] feels like an attempt to communicate more directly and is his most affecting album yet. [Apr 2012, p.82]

California Son may not entirely succeed in repositioning Morrissey as a righteous protest singer, boldly crooning truth to power, but in fleeting moments like this [like on "Some Say I Got Devil"], it confirms him as a peerless modern practitioner of deep song, the pop artist who can divine, even in the work of the singer of "Brand New Key," lorca's dark, abysmal spirit of duende. [Jun 2019, p.28]

This debut album sounds as charmingly casual as its inception. [May 2012, p.80]

They've leapfrogged stasis and had what sounds like fun along the way. [Jun 2019, p.29]

The group have said this is their final album, and say goodbye in unsentimental but explosive fashion. [Jan 2023, p.27]

It's Fohr's stunning vocal that drives the album. [Nov 2021, p.27]

Eiesland's emotive vocals and the elegant new wave inspired soundscapes sustain the bittersweet mood even when the songs lack stickiness. [Oct 2015, p.80]

They're back on form, with tow long, lovely drone-outs, buzzing and huffing around an eternal monochord, and "Atropos," a gorgeous, deep, cosmic country comedown. [Nov 2018, p.30]

Crammed with pulse-racing panto-metal par excellence. [Apr 2005, p.97]

These 12 tracks confirm Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook's melodic talents, but leaden exposition lyrics... make the grisly bits last a lifetime. [Oct 2015, p.83]

A Son tilts slightly more towards conventional song structure, minimising electronics in favour of (mostly) acoustic guitars. [Dec 2019, p.30]

Embellished with hints of country and Southern soul, it belongs to the same school of forlorn pop classicism favoured by Dennis Wilson or Emit Rhodes. [Apr 2022, p.29]

It's a mix that captures the zeitgeist appetite for the melding of jazz, R&B and electronic sounds while also celebrating the path that led there. [Jan 2020, p.31]

Fussy productions mires some of these songs, but there are a few that rank among her best. [Apr 2026, p.36]

The Black Album, dubs and all, could use some more of Perry's surrealist medicine. But it's hard to deny that ut's good to hear him in such healthy form. [Jan 2019, p.23]

On much of This Is Steve, he comes off as a one man jam band. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Things grow richer and stranger as the album develops. [May 2007, p.87]

Amid opiated baroque arrangements, Allison's impressive vocal abstraction stays the main attraction. [Feb 2025, p.33]

Here, the likes of "Call Upon The Fire" and "Commanche Moon" continue to mines, as, say Earth do, a folk essence of melody and lore. [Apr 2017, p.23]

Songcraft conventions - choruses, recurring riffs - are daringly absent. On repeat listens, though, the meandering strands - from the dreamy acoustica of "Two Horses" and choral harmonies on "Mary" to the Philip Glass-like horns of "Nancy Takes The Night" - begin to stick, aided by frequently arresting lyrics. [Apr 2025, p.28]

Tracks such as "My Name is Blank" capture the album's essence - a middle ground between metal and punk - on a record that barely lets up for a single second. [Oct 2022, p.25]

There are enough moments of mercurial brilliance on May Your Marry Rich to suggest that the core duo of former student buddies Ryan Hendrix and Nick Turner are finally on to something. [Apr 2014, p.71]

Understated and in, places, unfashionable. [Oct 2015, p.83]

If nothing here is quite touched by the hand of God, then maybe it's all the more engagingly human. [Apr 2005, p.104]