Painting With is striking because it manages to distill the essence of Animal Collective into 12 slices of bite-sized psych-pop that have the punchy immediacy of a Ramones album. [Mar 2016, p.65]

Tobin delivers fiercely programmed, seriously dark material. [Mar 2005, p.104]

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]

Despite their monotone and their monoxide fuming, it's hard not to warm to Monotonix, especially when they catch fire. [Apr 2011, p.86]

A promising opening gambit. [Sep 2011, p.89]

Self awareness and self-loss are finally balanced, especially on Portaling. [Nov 2011, p.97]

There's nothing in here not to love. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Barrie Cadogan is a guitar phenomenon. [Mar 2005, p.102]

The glossy production on this Montreal-based singer songwriter's second album makes it easy to overlook, but beneath the pedal-steel sheen of songs like 'Other Side' lies a real talent. [Sep 2008, p.88]

Lyrically, the album plunges into some vulnerable and troubling places, but musically it lacks a similar emotional range, instead feeling static and one-note. [Aug 2024, p.31]

Psychedelically strange and outrageously entertaining. [Oct 2006, p.99]

It's a blend of the mostly throwaway and occasionally essential. [Dec 2012, p.71]

The dominant flavor is deliberately faceless and club-friendly electro, but the highly finessed sonics and subtle attention to detail emerge over repeat listens. [Apr 2012, p.88]

Clever-clever, emotional-emotional avant-pop. [Jun 2006, p.100]

Charmingly wistful and twitchily rhythmic pop songs. [Nov 2015, p.71]

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

The overall tone is bracingly sour but surprisingly accessible. [Apr 2006, p.98]

Like all luxury goods, there is a hint of the predictable. [Jun 2012, p.83]

This fifth album gets progressively less fuzztoned and more overtly tuneful as it progresses. [Mar 2008, p.85]

The album, recorded live in a village hall on the shores of Loch Ness, is tremendous fun. [May 2016, p.76]

If Black Ice has a weakness, it’s that it betrays an anxiety. As if AC/DC really might be uncharacteristically worried that their grasp on the planet is in danger of slipping. As if they’ve tried to discreetly update their sound, while hoping that their rebarbative old fans won’t notice what they’ve done. Invincibility suits AC/DC. Self-doubt, even a microscopic hint of it, does not.

What Will We Be stands as a fittingly ambiguous, partly frustrating and altogether fascinating response to that question. Call it artful artlessness, or vice versa.

Though beautifully produced, over 40 minutes these spacious, electronic soundscapes sometimes lacks bite, blurring comfortingly but unimaginatively into one another, their euphoric ambitions too often thwarted by their meanderings. [Apr 2014, p.81]

Even at its best, Given To The Wild sounds like British Sea power without the esoteric charm, which is hardly the heartiest of recommendations. [Feb 2012, p.91]

Feels like the first step in a viable third chapter for a band that has rediscovered its identity. [Apr 2021, p.30]

Three or four songs short of a really strong album. [Oct 2002, p.107]

A sleek and satisfying sixth album--their best since 1994's Snivilisation. [Jul 2004, p.110]

The listenable authority of Campbell’s voice, especially on Foo Fighters' 'Days Like These,' confers the poise you suspect Richard Ashcroft was looking for while solo, but never found.

"Pluze" and "Branches" resemble Air in their languid electro-revisioning of jazz-funk and prog, while the title track pulls back sparkling synths for a noble and histrionic sax break. [Dec 2012, p.68]

The results is an album that's braver, weirder and richer than most of his more sensible and brand-conscious peers could ever manage. [Jun 2019, p.18]

The performances outshine the material. [Dec 2010, p.119]

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

It's beautifully played, and Earle's songs are respectful of their heritage while (mostly) sufficiently confident and idiosyncratic to transcend pastiche. It's just difficult to believe this is the best imaginable use of Earle's time and talent. [Mar 2015, p.72]

It's the inclusion of [Disc 2] that makes this essential. [Dec 2004, p.140]

Luke Haines' trilogy of rock follies concludes with this perverse mediation on New York punk. [Jun 2014, p.78]

There's a certain wonky charm to the title track, but elsewhere Creation is too clean and clearly aimed at a Radio 2 demographic to be much more than background noise. [Jul 2014, p.78]

Remarkably extending to 18 tracks, Absolute… traces the discography from the wide-screen Mary Chain of 'Only Happy When It Rains' to the Bond theme 'The World Is Not Enough' and the Spectorish strings of this year’s comeback, 'Tell Me Where it Hurts'--though 2001’s cute 'Androgyny' is an odd omission.

Feels timid and trite. [Oct 2005, p.98]

This reunion feels like they've never been away. [Nov 2008, p.102]

A follow-up on which original members Eugene Reynolds and Fay Fife seek only to reanimate the spiky, sparky spirit of '78. They mostly succeed. [May 2015, p.80]

Platinum Tips + Ice-Cream sees the duo attack old songs with results both gloriously haphazard and straight-up glorious. [Jul 2017, p.39]

The sweet '70s AM harmonies sometimes sugar the pill too much, but there's no mistaking its artfully bitter taste. [Jun 2005, p.110]

Pitched as the first part of a trilogy, this is a batch of effortlessly lovely tunes, warmly intimate and muzzy with reverb. [Nov 2010, p.81]

It's a beauty. [Jun 2013, p.81]

This polished third album is a feat for fans of puerile humour and glam-metal guitar solos. [May 2014, p.80]

Sometimes, in hunting a mid-point between noise maelstrom and Espers-style chamber psychedelia, Fields come out sounding merely ordinary. [May 2007, p.90]

The rhymes are gangsta shit at its laziest and most drearily noxious. [Mar 2002, p.111]

Mainly, this is brilliant pop music... though Beenie's insistence on asserting his celebrated heterosexuality can grate. [Sep 2004, p.101]

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

Early Man pull off metal with a back-to-basics swagger--even if their relentless assault does get a bit samey by the end. [Nov 2005, p.111]

Now regrouped by leader Jerry Cantrell, the bands' sound is still full of menace, melody and doom, chock full of Cantrell's trademark heavy riffs. [Dec 2009, p. 85]

A reliance on rabbity non-sequiters, plus a tendency to change genres every 11 seconds, makes the point of it all rather hard to grasp. [Mar 2016, p.77]

Main;y, though, we leave Clinic where we always find them: nervously pacing the room, waiting for something to happen. [May 2007, p.92]

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

Offers something for everyone. [Nov 2020, p.25]

Album number five is the sound of the law of diminishing returns finally kicking in. [Jul 2012, p.73]

A return to form, if not a career-redefining masterpiece. [Jul 2005, p.107]

A gleefully malevolent testament to the cathartic joys of furious, poison-flecked songwriting. [Oct 2007, p.113]

An album of sometimes stark simplicity, West is in many places rather drab and charmless. [Mar 2007, p.72]

This follow-up strives to be less ethereal, and with the somewhat mannered twin vocals of Alejandra and Claudia Deheza more to the fore, it brings to mind Madonna's "Ray Of Light." [Aug 2010, p.94]

Simple acoustic music lined with occasional piano and an inglenook voice owing much to early Joni Mitchell or Carole King. [Aug 2006, p.93]

Headhunter's laboratory productions are probably just a bit too clinical to transcend their genre. [Jn 2008, p.96]

The thick broth of Kyle Falconer's Scots vowels remain the signature sound--but don't let it distract you from some genuinely adventurous and witty indie guitar rock. [Mar 2009, p.107]

Overall it's a slow-burn success. [Jun 2012, p.74]

The album is filled with fascinating earworms. [Jun 2012,m p.69]

It's gritty and urgent, but the powerful lead vocals are melodic and traditional, and the lyrics eloquent. [Aug 2012, p.75]

It's a riot of scattershot styles. [Jun 2013, p.81]

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]

While Winfield's pompous lyrics and over-earnest tone sometimes grate, the supple disco-funk of "Sparks" shows definite promise. [Aug 2015, p.81]

A set of atmospheric trance-like improvs that touches only tangentially on conventional song structures. [Mar 2017, p.32]

Cinderland is undeniably, suitably eerie. [Apr 2017, p.30]

II mixes sweeping, retro-futuristic synth-pop with brazenly outre guitar shredding and motorik beats to savvy--and emotionally sincere--effect. [Jun 2017, p.33]

The sinewy electric guitar lines and occasionally stodgy songs at times stray into the realm of windy stadium-folk, as blandly generic as Smith's name. When it does cut to the heart of the matter, however, Headlong impresses. [Aug 2017, p.37]

It's a joyous set. [Sep 2018, p.35]

They've drawn their inspiration from a wider constituency. [Oct 2020, p.25]

Nothing about their sixth album sounds like business as usual. Refreshed by time spent independently exploring their own musical interests (Ansell electronica and production work; Carter an Americana-inspired solo album) and inspired by true crime documentaries and podcasts, the duo sought to explore the darker side of the human psyche, leaning into haunted house synth lines and gothic horror bass. [Feb 2022, p.25]

it's another kaleidoscopic exploration of neo-psych and garage. [Apr 2023, p.24]

A passionate but ultimately rather clean record of angst-filled ballads. [May 2023, p.27]

The teenage tyrants of "Girls From Mars" fame may now be chasing the tail-end of their forties, but they've lost little of that youthful vigour. [Nov 2023, p.25]

Snider's self-effacing charm radiant through the murk of "Stoner Yodel #2", the Chris Robinson co0write "While We Still Have A Chance" and the closing "The Temptation To Exist". [Dec 2025, p.36]

A voyage of rediscovery through terrain whose appeal remains undimmed by time and familiarity. He treats the blues with the respect it deserves, but he aims to have fun along the way, while proving that, at 80, he still has the voice – albeit an octave or so lower than in his early days – to make the material live again. [Mar 2026, p.24]

If the aim was to out-bonkers Joanna Newsom and Kate Bush while creating a compelling album, Amos has more than succeeded. [Oct 2011, p.81]

This terrific album casts its net wider though: as well as Dinosaur fans, this will appeal to admirers of T. Rex, Thin Lizzy, Reigning Sound ad Alex Chilton, too. [May 2010, p.108]

Blue Hawaii are more about atmosphere than impact, with the production clearly influenced by Cowan's time in Germany studying at the university if Kompakt. [Mar 2013, p.68]

Their fourth full-length is eclectic and confident. [Jun 2016, p.78]

Sway, however, doesn't command proceedings quite like Chuck D and the prosaic narratives of tracks like 'That Girl' are no substitute for verbal fireworks. Nearly though. [May 2009, p.101]

The band's smarts and muscle come together with a resounding whomp on the new LP. [Apr 2012, p.75]

What little humanity Colder once possessed has been erased. [Jul 2005, p.96]

Strictly for the committed. [May 2011, p.80]

Devotees of Crover and his stalwart partner Buzz Osborne--joined here by bassist Steve McDonald-get ample does of both the band's stock-in-trade of gnarly, fuzzy bruisers and demonstrations of its more experimental side on the film soundtrack that comprises the second half. [Aug 2017, p.32]

It features vernal song titles and sleeve imagery, in contrast to the half-whispered, wintery beauty of their last LP, which was echoed by its snowy cover scene. [Jul 2010, p.108]

The heart of The Lost Riots is drowned in bombast, and Sam Herlihy's vocals are nowhere near strong enough to compete with the melodramatic, if prosaic, arrangements they're pitted against. [Sep 2004, p.107]

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]

Without Reznor's shouting, they're more hypnotic, even, at times, soothing. [June 2008, p.98]

Oczy Mlody continues the Lips' longstanding mission to explore the joy and sadness of simple human consciousness, so that even when the album loses its footing--which it does, often--it never loses its way. [Feb 2017, p.34]

This recording demonstrates what he was capable of out of his element: a skillful entertainer working the crowd, reaching into his trick bag and pulling out just what he needs to get the job done.

The Messenger isn't an album that will blow any non-believer away. It is old fashioned, in many ways. [Mar 2013, p.65]

If the tunes don't all stun as surely this time around, lyrically they're bolder. [Dec 2019, p.25]