Revisits the kind of understated, politically slanted synth-pop that defined the Minnesota band's last two Trump-haunted albums. Nut Leaneagh also digs deeper on more hopeful, personal ruminations. [Mar 2020, p.35]

Less is more, and the Stones are at their best on the spoof country of Faraway Eyes; and Richards’ attack on You Got The Silver, with Ronnie Wood picking holes in an acoustic slide guitar.

So while it's hard to quote a single memorable line, Yo Majesty's attitude is infectious. [Oct 2008, p.94]

This rather too eager-to-please set doesn't quite live up to its promise. [Mar 2012, p.82]

Although nothing matches the sexy Prince-funk pastiche 'Test' that Yukimi Nagano and co delivered on their self-titled 2007 debut, there is more depth and variety on their secpnd album. [Oct 2009, p.101]

Too much of the rest is forgettable. [Mar 2012, p.87]

He may come to rue the day he traded his trusty ukulele for a cheapo drum machine that makes his attempts at pop-funk sound more gauche than his nifty songcraft deserves. [Jul 2012, p.77]

Like all perfumes, its impact fades. [Aug 2015, p.71]

The writing is strong and Pisano's wracked vocals have pleasing echoes of Justin Vernon, but neither quality is best served by a creative aesthetic which often subjects perfectly good songs to the aural equivalent of waterboarding. [Oct 2011, p.95]

Too often, frontman Euan Hinshelwood's strivings for tragedy come off as merely morose. [Dec 2015, p.81]

Ghostory is supposedly a concept-album song-portrait, but [the album] feels as evanescent as expensive perfume. [Mar 2012, p.98]

The likes of "Stay Here And Look After The Chickens" and "Never Go Home Again" sound as if they've been shaken out of the band in rickety fashion of early Violent Femmes, Tattersall the penurious narrator whose rambling delivery contains flashes of brilliance. [Jun 2012, p.84]

This agreeable sequel boasts a more coherent country-folk sound, ironing out some of its predecessor's quirky, hand-knitted allure. [May 2011, p.77]

The fall and Dead Kennedys are the key influences here. [Dec 2010, p.109]

A sprinkle of Flaming Lips fairy-dust may be just what the genre needs to slip its genre straitjacket. [Jul 2006, p.114]

Tindersticks have returned refreshed, but some of the old dissolute glamour is gone.

Ambitious, orchestral and accompanied by a 45-minute film, it candidly documents singer Charlie Fink’s recovery from a badly broken heart.

It's the thump and clatter of a 1950s backbeat filtered through the boogie of 1970s glam-rock. [May 2015, p.71]

The Black Keys must take credit for negotiating the minefield of the rap/rock crossover without any serious casualties, but maybe an R&B/rock crossover would have reaped even greater rewards. [Jan 2010, p. 113]

Technically, he shows himself to be a better singer than we might have predicted from those early lo-fi recordings, but it all tastes a little sweet. [Oct 2015, p.71]

[A] sturdy ensemble record. [Jul 2005, p.104]

Good enough that you barely notice Macca, Prince and the other obligatory guests. [Dec 2005, p.100]

Agreeably gruff-voiced, world-weary, Yello-ish electro-ballads dominate, but too many lyrics strain for portentous poetic melodrama, accidentally invoking Father Ted’s “My Lovely Horse” instead. [Nov 2024, p.34]

Dirty Glow is packed with playful, occasionally disorienting tracks. [Jan 2013, p.80]

It's as convincing and heartfelt as anything else here--and suggests that by incorporating disco into the rest of his music, even better things may lie ahead. [Mar 2008, p.96]

Their debut reveals a talent for taut, punkish, pivot-on-a-penny songs that cemented their live reputation before they'd even recorded a note. [Apr 2013, p.74]

Larry Klein places the vocals disconcertingly high in the mix, but it effectively emphasises Chapman's poetic sensibility. [Dec 2008, p.86]

Magpies, for sure--but rather brilliant ones. [Jun 2018, p.30]

An album that bounces airly between teen pop sublime and the aging rebel ridiculous. [Apr 2011, p.95]

Weezer's likeabe, insubstantial powerpop has often been infused with somewhat tetchy intimations of latent intellectual heft. On Raditude, this manifests in guest appearances by Amrita Sen and Nishat Khan on the dreadful "Love Is The Answer." Elsewhere, though, Weeaee seem to have ceased to care. [Feb 2010, p.107]

The good news is [single "You Don't Know How Lucky You Are"] is not even the best song on his debut album. [Mar 2012, p.89]

Tracks like "Georgia" and "Holing Out" tear by with sandpaper efficiency and no little impact. Yet they have more than one idea. [Mar 2011, p.107]

Five American Portraits, another collaboration with conceptual art group Art & Language, combines the two [awkward rock music and high conceptualism]: these simple, rough portraits of George W Bush, Wile E Coyote, etc, while each song musically quotes relevant tunes. [Mar 2010, p.93]

These are brilliant songs; but they simply reminds us of too many others who got there first. [Mar 2011, p.100]

Something Dirty captures guitarist Jean Herve Peron and drummer Werner"Zappi" Diermaier plus Bad Seeds James Johnston and the artist Geraldine Swayne-- continually to shape-shift around the margins of rock. [Feb 2011, p.84]

The group's formula is undeniably infectious, with giddy, harmony-enriched interplay outshining occasional lapses into spindly scuzz. [Oct 2015, p.73]

A second cousin to New Pornographers' Electric Version. [Jul 2005, p.103]

Work is less dramatically monochrome than HTRK's debut, the Coil-like angst replaced with a more subtle existential uncertainty. [Oct 2011, p.89]

While lyrics like "this is the hottest summer I can ever remember 'cause the world is on fire" leave little to the imagination, the final product is hard to dislike. [Aug 2023, p.26]

Although brass and strings add muscle, a certain monotony creeps in towards the end. And there aren't enough strong tunes from the least melodically facile Beatle. [Dec 2002, p.134]

As ever, the combination of sincerity and sentimentality is overpowering. [Oct 2009, p.89]

The crashing waves of "O-OnOne" immediately align the new-look Seefeel with the aggressive ambiance of Oneohtrix Point Never and Emeralds, while "Airless," Peacock's serene vocals are assailed by coarse filter sweeps and the squeals of busted circuitry. [Mar 2011, p.99]

On the whole, it's a little in hock to its influences, although the closing eight-minute title track is a fine exception. [Jun 2013, p.73]

It does still summon some of the spirit and occasionally the joyfulness that should attend a first record. [Mar 2011, p.90]

The record plods along nicely but often drifts into forgetful or nostalgic territory, with the fuzzed-up growl of the guitars recalling the bygone mid-90s indie-rock boom. [Nov 2018, p.37]

Alas, too much of this heavily glossed and processed album lacks wit or passion. [Oct 2011, p.86]

In many ways Clay Class is another helping of their broken blues and Stuckist infra-poetry, charting a Fallen landscape, stripped even of grotesque enchantment. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Though Caravan Chateau may match the tone of society's mourning, it does so through a navel-gazing lens. [Oct 2020, p.32]

Your cider-drinking soundtrack for this summer is here. [Jul 2011, p.100]

No No No is limited overall, and finds Condon's filigreed production out of step with the minimalist balladeering peers who have flourished in his four-year absence. [Oct 2015, p.71]

The absence of imagination here is a tad dispiriting. [Dec 2016, p.30]

Despite the defiant attitude and serious subject matter, their excitably chaotic squalls, leaves a trail of sonic pile-ups too often both predictable and over-familiar. [Nov 2013, p.72]

St Jude proves that there is much more to The Courteeners than first meets to the eye.

The second album from Cheltenham's The Duke Spirit sounds every bit the heads-down attampt at chart-bothering major rock album. Except, well, it's on an indie, and the tunes don't always match the band's stadium-echo ambitions. [Mar 2008, p.86]

Clearly full of ideas and enthusiasm, FrYars suffer from a cheapness of sound, the instrumentation often too basic and one-dimensional to give songs od potential the lick of sonic paint they deserve. [Nov 2009, p.94]

It's a more anthemic, traditional and radio-friendly Feeder that greets is on their eight album. [Apr 2012, p.77]

It would be silly to expect surprises from the Fairports at this late point, and their first album in four years proves as well tended and predictable as a Cotswold village. [May 2011, p.85]

There's a swaggering big-band reading of "Just One Of Those Things" and a clever soul-jazz recasting of Rhianna's "Don't Stop The Music", but otherwise Cullum has morphed into a kind of Britpop Randy Newman, which suits him well on the excellent "I'm All Over It". [Dec 2009, p. 87]

Under the bluster, though, frontman Ritzy Bryan adds a consistent emotional intensity best heard on "Cradle," reminiscent ofg Lush at their most bruised and bruising. [Mar 2011, p.93]

Such a stylistic spread can leave it slightly centreless, but a strong emphasis on groove runs throughout. [Mar 2017, p.25]

Much of Intriguer leaves one yearning for the unbound pop of "Now We're Getting Somewhere" or the straightforwardly confident balladry of "Better Be Home Soon." [Jul 2010, p.104]

What has sadly gone missing here, however, is Farrell's voice. [Jul 2007, p.112]

The uninitiated will find it a good place to start. [Jan 2013, p.81]

[Almanac is] pleasantly dreamy for a while, but over the course of 40 minutes feels just a little insubstantial. [Apr 2013, p.79]

Benson's fifth solo album rarely deviates from his established modus operandi. [May 2012, p.67]

They've been an oddly schizophrenic beast, vacillating between sparse dronescapes and percussive rock jams conducted with primitive intensity. Peer Amid sits in the latter camp, although it constitutes both a sharpening offocus and a step up in ambition. [Feb 2011, p.99]

It's hard to shake the feeling that this return to decay-drenched digital rock is the sound of Reznor playing to the gallery. [Jun 2005, p.97]

The duo's artfully woven sonic tapestry is somewhat spoiled by the po-faced new age banalities of their lyrics. [Oct 2012, p.74]

Not quite essential, but a neat genre exercise. [Dec 2016, p.30]

the focus on matters of the heart is limiting, reducing the genre to the level of rusticised boy-band pop. [Oct 2012, p.84]

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

They're feeling the chill of middle age, when a night on the sofa with an M&S ready-meal holds more appeal than feeling like an auntie at the church-hall disco ("I Only Smoke When I Drink," "No Longer Young Enough"), and the wisecracks are harder to pull off. [Jan 2018, p.23]

The duo can't help sounding like they're holding back a little. [Oct 2006, p.99]

No real lost treasure, then, but some interesting baubles. [Apr 2013, p.89]

While Lanegan could sing the Richard Stilgoe songbook and still enthral, there remains a hint of contrivance about Soulsavers' self-consciously cinematic, grungey trip hop. [Sep 2009, p.95]

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]

It's all a very respectable, and closer "P.I.G.S" is great, just slightly disappointing if one had hoped for more than acceptable continuity soundtracks. [Jun 2010, p.90]

The promising flourishes of "Burn It Down" and "Explosions" give way to "Meteorites" and "Is This A Breakdown," mediocre indie rock plods. [Jun 2014, p.75]

It finds her singing in an appealing vibrato somewhere between Dolly Parton and Stevie Nicks. Her Aesthetic, though, is a million miles from the lacquered gloss of either as she delivers her lyrics of desperate melancholia over a raw, all-hope-is-gone sound which conjures the emotional brutality of Tonight's The Night. [Feb 2011, p.99]

The album sounds like one good idea stretched out to a meandering and repetitive 40 minutes. [Oct 2016, p.32]

Their seventh studio album removes some of the widescreen electronica and replaces it with a more, stripped back, acoustic vibe that rather suits them. [Aug 2013, p.67]

Your appreciation of Scab Dates will be predicated on a high tolerance to long bongo solos and songs called things like "Abrasions Mount The Timpani". [Jan 2006, p.113]

[It is] an eclectic patchwork of cinematic techno-rock and beat-heavy vocal tunes featuring stray members of the Chili Peppers, Warpaint and more. [Oct 2011, p.81]

A double LP by name, but distant cousins rather than telepathic twins. [Feb 2020, p.33]

The reggae-tinged "Fol-de-rol" is a definite low, but elsewhere this is a competent, if unsurprising, effort. [Nov 2013, p.71]

It's commendable stuff, but you can't help wishing he'd kept the scattershot, carte blanche approach of before. [Nov 2007, p.121]

Her second LP as Du Blonde plays it two ways: first with unremarkable, lunging dynamics and fuzz-caked riffs, then in a leaner and more soulful style, wit nods to prog and '70s folk-pop songcraft. Tha latter is more convincing and a better fit for her great voice and brutally honest lyrics. [Mar 2019, p.27]

Her blowsy voice now seems happier in those quieter settings. [May 2008, p.104]

These 13 examples can get annoying when they stray into willful atonality, but really hit the spot when he lingers on simple themes. [Mar 2012, p.81]

Sumie blends Japanese and Scandinavian folk, singing crisply over repetitive acoustic guitar patterns. [Mar 2014, p.83]

Honey's intentions are noble but the results are mixed. [Jun 2016, p.69]

It has its Mr. Fox-y moments but this feels like a minor clanger. [May 2012, p.83]

On songs like "Ring Of Gold," the Llamas essay a beautifully melancholic take on sunshine pop that's pure and true. [May 2011, p.88]

Like ...Van Occupanther, The Courage Of Others is texturally rich and technically refined, elegantly capturing the ambience of the folk rock scene to which it pays fulsome tribute. But sadly, there's something cold and unwelcoming at its core.

Miller can't help occasional returns to his powerpop protocol. [Jul 2012, p.77]

A stew of funk noir and mashed-up rhythms--a little too mashed-up at times. [Dec 2002, p.130]

A decade on the formula hasn't change much. [Nov 2016, p.37]

The result is akin to a John Ford film with an indie soundtrack. [Nov 2018, p.37]