[Brace The Wave] sounds like it was recorded in a toilet, with Barlow playing an adapted ukulele. The songs, though, are as good as anything he's done with Sebadoh or Folk Implosion. [Oct 2015, p.71]

Occasional throwaway aside, there are some real gnarled beauties on display here. [Mar 2014, p.80]

'The Way It Used To Be' is the best thing here, defiantly struggling against easy nostalgia, but nevertheless suggesting that the PSB melancholy vision of perfect pop is now, commercially, a period piece.

While too soft for the dancefloor, songs like :weak For me" don't scrimp on the songcraft. [Nov 2009, p.96]

The first four tracks are surprisingly limp-leaved, pastel-shaded electro-synth in a decidedly retro vein. From then on, it gets better. [Dec 2012, p.71]

Soft keyboard lines wow and flutter tastefully. [Feb 2020, p.28]

The guest list is impressive. But it'd take a very straight face to refute the frequent echoes of The New Seekers or Fleetwood Mac, while "Silver Jenny Dollar" sounds like something Mike Batt might have knocked up for The Wombles. [Jun 2010, p.97]

jj No. 3 is an irresistibly light-headed trip through lush, electronic pop. [Jun 2010, p.91]

BRMC seem invincible; or back to their searing best, at any rate. [May 2007, p.87]

The emphasis on Jackson's piano is obviously no problem, but his focus drifts from the punchy pop that characterised its predecessor. [Feb 2008, p.81]

Lovely, life-affirming stuff. [Apr 2010, p.97]

Talkin To The Trees finds Young largely preoccupied with matters closer to home. “Family Life” begins as an open-hearted acoustic address to his children – until a jarring reference to his grandchildren, “who I can’t see”. He follows this with “Dark Mirage”, a glowering ball of knotted noise. .... The mood shifts with “First Fire Of Winter”, a hymn to domestic happiness in Colorado with Daryl Hannah and the first of three gorgeous country tracks on the album. [Jul 2025, p.28]

Her brush with the big boys only appears to have strengthen her resolve on a collection of fierce country rockers. [Apr 2011, p.75]

It all kinda works. [Jun 2013, p.73]

Beneath the gliding surface lies Browne the politico, quietly raging at the legacy of imperialism and warning of impending eco disaster. The music occasionally matches such animated sentiment. [Nov 2014, p.71]

It's diverting enough. [Apr 2009, p.82]

There are too many sleepy stretches and not enough memorable songs between these handsome bookends, as a talented young band dredges the past in search of an identity. [Jul 2013, p.81]

The prolific five-piece's cosmic space programme occasionally fails to launch, but at their transcendent best they harness the ragged glory of mid-'70s Neil Young with the epic fluidity of Popol Vuh and the blazing guitars of Spacemen 3. [Dec 2010, p.85]

The emphaiss here is on standalone songs, with each bandmember apparently harking back to teenage memories. [Dec 2012, p.73]

Here he takes four songs from each album and adds a trio of covers to demonstrate their strengths, recasting them as campfire acoustic ditties. This allows some of their lyrical directness to shine through. [Jan 2015, p.76]

A hugely accomplished and banging debut LP. [Apr 2015, p.76]

They've delivered a less disposable, more reflective and yes "mature" set with their latest. [May 2015, p.83]

Atheist's Cornea fares best when shooting for extremes. [Sep 2015, p.73]

It's an upbeat trip down the boardwalk. [Jun 2019, p.30]

They're masterfully groovy and mysterious, at times malevolent, panoramas with a potency that simultaneously historical and futuristic. [Sep 2019, p.27]

He roams a palette of solo guitar modes, from Sonic Youth-y harmonics, through melodic lines, all slight but identifiable his own. [Mar 2022, p.32]

As LaFarge tells it, Rhumba Country is partly the tunes he hummed to himself while reaping and sowing. Fine tunes they are as well. [May 2024, p.35]

If that means she sometimes leans into apparently clichéd sentiments on “Keep Calm Carry On”, “Do Or Die”, the Buddhism-evoking “Om Shanti Om” or even her gossamer-soft cover of Dire Straits’ “Why Worry”, her whispery vocal style, often accompanied by plucked acoustic guitar and understated strings, still captivates. [Jun 2024, p.30]

Alas, it often sounds like hollow noise--but improves when he warms down. [May 2011, p.92]

Waterhouse's big lunged holler is efficiently exciting, but his debut album isn't so much -- 12 songs, but 12 variants on the same song. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Tough, yet seductive. [Oct 2016, p.40]

It begins as stormy Sabbath-inflected psych, but later takes some knowing stylistic detours. [Oct 2015, p.84]

Gorgeously warm, forlorn and wounded. [Mar 2004, p.95]

It's the originals that resonate, contrasting with a featherweight cover of Townes van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die." [Mar 2003, p.97]

Mind you, you're still left wondering why they made a covers album. [Mar 2002, p.96]

This chiming indie-folk LP is uncluttered and cohesive. [July 2002, p.118]

With Ween, nothing is done by halves. [Nov 2003, p.126]

When LAMB is good, it's very good indeed.... It's one of the most audacioius pop albums of the year. [Jan 2005, p.120]

Despite the contemporary sheen too much here is reminiscent of a certain kind of overwrought mid-80s synthpop. [Sep 2012, p.87]

While it all sometimes gets a little too soporific, the overall effect is undeniably seductive. [Jun 2017, p.34]

Tracks like 'Knickerbocker' or 'Pussyfooting' are complemented by David Best's whispering voice intoning gibberish lyrics and rhythmic vocal tics over maddeningly catchy riffs. [Oct 2008, p.90]

Cherish The Light Years is more accomplished, refashioning vintage Mute Records sounds into widescreen pop. [May 2011, p.80]

Beacons Of Ancestorship is rather unlovely beast, sagging under the weight of hoary synths, lumbering dynamics and improvisatory formlessness--not to mention high expectations. [Jul 2009, p.101]

His latest, Bella, is laden with sumptuous melodies and mordant wit. [Feb 2011, p.103]

An unusually poetic songwriter revelling in his proximity to nature. [Jan 2012, p.88]

What it sometimes lacks in surprise, it makes up for in consistency. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Alexander isn't far off great. [May 2011, p.86]

Any Day is their sharpest set of songs to date, but Sam Prekop's languid melodies still prove defiantly elusive. [Jun 2018, p.35]

An album that feels joyously cathartic as well as musically stunning. [May 2014, p.76]

For all his experimentalism, Adamson never once loses sight of the song. [Dec 2008, p.94]

L'Aventura could well be his best album. [Sep 2014, p.78]

It's hard to dispute that Ufabulum find him in the form of his life. [Jun 2012, p.84]

A confident debut, a record that is greater still than the sum of its impressive parts. [Jul 2015, p.74]

While the deliberate shapelessness can sometimes appear strangely listless, the rhythmic intensity of "Abstract/Actress" takes things to another level, with the pair working the sound into a primal fury of feedback and clamour. [Dec 2016, p.25]

Technicolor Health amply delivers on the promis of their 2007 EP, "Burning Birthdays." [Apr 2009, p.86]

Thee Oh Sees manage to simultaneously evoke Suicide, Them and The Fall on their latest album of echoey, dense psychedelia. [Aug 2010, p.96]

While some of these missiles find their target, he is back with less of a bang than he might have hoped. [Jun 2012, p.70]

The success rate is variable. [Oct 2005, p.94]

More than another coaster on the coffee-table circuit. [Mar 2005, p.108]

There's only one possible word for this: rad. [May 2013, p.79]

Nite Fields' debut album is a far grittier prospect than the neon-lit, 1980s-flavoured spelling of their name suggests, thanks largely to its predominant mood of nocturnal gloom. [Apr 2015, p.81]

A career peak. [Oct 2015, p.78]

An album filled with similarly delicious moments. [Apr 2017, p.22]

Further requires an injection of personality that low-key collaborators Stephanie Dosen and Francis Ten just can't provide. [Jul 2010, p103]

Heroes may be elegiac, but it's as spirited as it is poignant. [Jun 2012, p.70]

It’s a majestic, grandiose, machine-tooled album, subtly orchestrated with gothic pianos and doomy organs.

Levi's penchant for cracked-up nursery-rhyme melodies and wry humour elevate what might've been an exercise in wilful primitivism. [Oct 2015, p.80]

An occasionally frustrating listen, but never a dull one. [Apr 2017, p.28]

Too often, Aereogramme's tastefulness veers on the side of caution. [Mar 2007, p.75]

Panoramic, synthetically symphonic and a lot of fun. [Jul 2015, p.77]

Red of Tooth & Claw sometimes feels too much like style over substance, but the best moments here are in the detail. [July 2008, p.106]

there's a little too much here that's predictable or worse still, forgettable. [Sep 2011, p.91]

An expansive, atmospheric reboot of the muscular melancholy of 1985's Once Upon A Time. [Mar 2018, p.32]

It’s E’s lyrics that are the true, bitter joy of this record, sacrificing nothing of their wit in pursuit of heartbreaking, heartbroken directness.

Too many average slow jams.... They just remind you he's still around; short of a tune, but the unique inhabitant of a purple planet all his own. [Nov 2014, p.80]

Kohncke hasn't yet managed to pull off a completely successful, consistently great album. Wonderful Frequency Band is the closest he's come, terrible punning aside, largely due to its focus on the dancefloor. [Feb 2014, p.77]

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

But none of it recaptures the sheer commercial inevitability of his debut. [Nov 2009, p. 96]

Ultimate Painting may sound like a lot of bands--Real Estate, The Feelies--but they set their own beguiling pace, sounding completely untroubled by the passing of time. [Sep 2015, p.83]

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

For the most part [it] is worth the wait. [Feb 2007, p.74]

John Rouse's ninth album is a return to the sound that made 2003's 1972 such a gem. [Apr 2013, p.77]

It's melodically sharper... occupying Stereolab's old ground with a surprising commercial edge. [May 2003, p.106]

Superior adult-contemporary rock. [Dec 2004, p.152]

All told, a class act still in their prime. [Sep 2003, p.97]

John McCrea's sense of subversion skates on the thin ice of their self-belittling grooves without ever quite toppling. [Jan 2002, p.131]

II might as well be a sketch for something more impressive. [Aug 2009, p.94]

Though this showcases the group;'s customary modular wit, it doesn't give Laetitia Sadier much to work with tune-wise. [Dec 2010, p.106]

There's ambition and wit here, and fans of alt.country Texas veterans like The Gourds and Old 97s will find much to admire. [May 2011, p.87]

Air Museums doesn't quite have the same freewheeling energy of Moebius and Roedelius' pioneering kosmische, and at time the music seems to hang oppressively in the air rather, instead of questing forward. [Jun 2011, p.91]

[Their indulgences] can be tiresome--"People On Strong Stuff" plods without purpose--but equally provides passages of uncontained elation. [Nov 2012, p.79]

It's a familiar mode - "instant vaguely leftfield record collection"- but it's beautifully played, and a reminder that Dwyer can occasionally do restraint. [Sep 2020, p.25]

Reinterpreting these sample-and-synth-laden originals for guitar is quite an achievement, and the results are certainly fascinating. [Feb 2011, p.82]

Their full debut is more "pop," if you stretch the definition to lovely multi-vocal interplay, grooves that stay convoluted but move their asses, and songs with hooks and momentum. [Nov 2010, p.93]

At low levels, this record will work nicely as aural wallpaper for cocktail parties, but turn it on and slap on a pair of headphones and the effect is transporting. [May 2012, p.69]

Once Upon A Time In The West may lack the cultural resonance Archer so desperately craves, but it’s widescreen appeal makes most guitar bands sound like they’re on Super 8.

There's nothing fake about the purgatorial narrative of songs such as "Nobody Knows My Trouble" and "My Diamond Is Too Rough." [Feb 2015, p.74]

Cigars all around for these sludge-metal/grunge veterans, then, with a set that values hand-on-heart appreciation over novelty. [May 2013, p.74]