As poetry alone, it's interesting, but the music's elegance make it something more. [Jan 2011, p.93]

Their one great idea grows tiresome over an album's length. [Oct 2010, p.88]

There's some shrewd commercial nous behind their retro-wackiness. [Aug 2008, p.85]

Majestic, life-affirming and touched by magic. [Nov 2004, p.102]

This is fizzy, superficial pop by a band convinced they're making classic rock. [Dec 2005, p.114]

The arrangements... are ambitious and richly textured, producing work that rewards repeated listening. [Jan 2003, p.117]

It's saved from twee tedium by Campbell's sumptuous orchestrartions and sly wit. [Dec 2003, p.115]

Fly Or Die has more in common with 10cc and XTC than it does Common.... Prog-pop album of the year. [Jun 2004, p.91]

Arid and mannered. [Nov 2003, p.112]

It all adds up to an album that is pleasantly quirky rather than revealing. [Jan 2014, p.71]

Kate St. John's arrangements are suitably elegant, but most of the performances here are proof that Drake's gaunt, under-performed songs do not welcome wobbly bottom-lipped reinterpretation. [Jun 2013, p.81]

Occasional, more straightforwardly anthemic moments approach the mawkishness of Nickelback, but Slipknot remain showmen at heart. [Oct 2008, p.108]

The band's one weakness lies in the voice of Orkney folk obsessive Erland Cooper, a thin, plain instrument that fails to engage. But the unpredictable, symphonic arrangements of "Emmeline" and the title track make exciting connections between ancient and modern with a dark nonchalance, [Apr 2011, p.80]

Moody shades of The National and Tunnel Of Love-era Springsteen abound, though the whole thing never quite manages to fully convince. [Mar 2024, p.25]

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

His cluttered beatscapes suggest random sounds in search of a meaning. [Mar 2006, p.103]

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

Into The Future is a heroic act of denial, nonetheless. The remaining Brains still burn with magnesium-strip intensity. [Jan 2013, p.82]

As with any enduring soundtrack, this collection of songs stands on its own. [Oct 2019, p.24]

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

But this band has no interest in putting everything in plain view; you have to meet them halfway, and that entails traversing bleak terrain on the way to sharing in their hard-earned sense of release. [Dec 2009, p. 98]

There's no grief-striken balladry, though: Michel Poiccard namely sticks to the helium noise vandalism template set by 2008 debut Worldwide, with the addition of some surprisingly winsome pop excursions in a similar vein to The Drums. [Mar 2011, p.86]

Their collaborative debut is inventively dippy. [Dec 2016, p.38]

All too often, though, slick jams such as "Drugs" and "Party With Children" resemble library tracks, exercises in style that pirouette exquistely, but shy away from becoming anything meaningful. [Aug 2010, p.93]

A charming composite of Damon Gough's homespun insight and Edith Piaf's anguish. [May 2005, p.106]

Cadogan's threesome seem an altogether leaner, meaner deal. [Feb 2007, p.78]

Much of [Buckshot's] edge is lost but fans of hip hop's yellowing indie template will find much to enjoy nonetheless. [Sep 2008, p.90]

This debut release on their own label is an uncompromising instrumental beast, rammed with weapons-grade jazz-metal riffing and ultra-heavy No Wave sax skronking. [Aug 2009, p.85]

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]

Not only a welcome "return to form" but sounds like a career pinnacle. [Feb 2015, p.82]

Music Must Destroy finds original members Segs Jennings and David Ruffy in reassuringly rude health, bludgeoning their way through a bunch of songs that weld punk and metal. [Dec 2016, p.37]

The evening set is more dynamic. [Jun 2017, p.23]

The excellent "Misheard" and "Useless" swirl with a cathartic sense of rage and helplessness, but while it's effective, the entirety is a lot to take. [Apr 2018, p.30]

An album you can get lost in. [Mar 2018, p.24]

Like the stormy contents of 2015's Transfixiation, songs like "Never Coming Back" have no lack of velocity and ferocity, though APTBS often fall between two poles, being not quite able to deliver memorable songs yet unwilling to let the music dissolve into purer forms if turbulence. [May 2018, p.23]

Though some of its textures could do with a little more edge, the result is undeniably poignant, with HArdy's voice elegant and expressive as ever. [Jun 2018, p.28]

[The title track's] foreboding gothic folk finds equally despondent bedfellows in the more musically upbeat "Judgement Day" and the bucolic jangle of "Each Manner of Man." [Apr 2021, p.34]

Subtle this isn't, but ironically, for a band once compared endlessly to Interpol and Editors and their Joy Division-inspired brooding indie, White Lies Have probably shown more versatility and evolution than either on their latest. [Apr 2022, p.36]

Opener “I Suck At Grieving” is a musical marvel, a song about losing a parent that’s genuinely fun to sing along to. “Jealous” is a garage-rock Gen Z remake of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”, while “Pretty Good For A Bad Day” – a duet with All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth – offers a clever sense of perspective. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Ian Gillan doesn’t attempt as many sky-scraping howls as he once did but still delivers characteristically rascal-ish lyrics such as “Lazy Sod” and “A Bit On The Side” with swagger and relish. [Aug 2024, p.32]

Bulat's reliably warm-hearted songs still benefit from the rejuvenating effects of the twinkling synths that fill "Spirit" and "Laughter". [May 2025, p.28]

The songs are worthy heirs to that heritage [Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd]. [Aug 2025, p.79]

Power's voice is improving with age, especially confident and commanding on the closing, psych-baroque "Birds Heading South". [Feb 2026, p.33]

Rigidity is a hallmark of electropop, from Numan to Miss Kittin, but Ladytron's plodding rhythms and banal melodies straightjacket their songs. [Sep 2011, p.88]

It privileges technique and texture over hooks, but as a pitch to be the next Danger Mouse, Aquaria is not a bad one. [Jan 2016, p.73]

It's a muscular, Butch-Vig-produced behemoth that impresses. [Dec 2014, p.77]

Tankian combines prog pomp and a variety of vocal techniques, all irritating, to uniformly unlistenable effect. [Nov 2007, p.125]

Street entirely avoids DIA’s flinty spectrality and staticky crackle and turns a bright light on the smart, compact and relentlessly exciting arrangements he’s here coaxed from the band.

The hipster-redneck rhetoric could grate, but O'Death are too good to be dismised as a novelty act. [Dec 2008, p.105]

There is a knowingness to Burning Daylight that sometimes verges on Pastiche, but Cowgill's Mordant deadpan means the mask never slips. [Nov 2012, p.77]

FoW's impeccably assembled works rarely stir little more than fond memories of their obvious influences. This is largely true of Sky Full Of Holes, though there are moments of irresistible sticky sweetness. [Sep 2011, p.84]

With Ash & Ice, they're back on compelling track, cranking their songs' rhythmic drive while focusing as much on structure as mardy atmospherics. [Jul 2016, p.75]

With strictly 1978 sleeve and clothes, and no new ideas, they just don't matter like their models did. [Sep 2003, p.97]

T&C are more approachable than most, replacing numbing virtuosity with a kind of meditative warmth. [May 2002, p.110]

It's far from hip, but unfairly dimissed. [Jun 2010, p.91]

Such self-conscious nostalgia is stifling at times, but the best tracks transcend retro pastiche. [Dec 2015, p.71]

If Sheff's still finding the best way to speak this newly direct, loving language, its naked conviction is touchingly plain. [Jun 2018, p.33]

The problem here is Beans himself, whose verbosity too often resembles a limerick writer who tries to cram, as many syllables into the last line as he possibly can. [Mar 2011, p.83]

Highlights include the waltzing "About As Helpful As You Can Be Without Being Any Help At All" and a breathless canter through the Broken Social Scene stylings of "Post-War Blues." [Jan 2012, p.93]

The Warlocks return with an album that intensifies their drifts into darker and experimental territory while also tipping a nod to some of their US inspirations. [Jan 2014, p.79]

The Luyas concentrate on sounding endearing rather than epic. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Their accomplished bluegrass, folk and country hybrid expresses the heartache familiar to fans of Will Oldham and Damien Rice. [Nov 2009, p.94]

It is difficult, however, to detect any Latin influence upon what is another collection of lilting, lulling Joni Mitchell Pastiches pitched largely between winsome and the twee. [Aug 2017, p.37]

The deep, pulled-back grooves of Critical Equation reveal the harnessed intensity of the songs and performances so deliberately that their myriad pleasures and embedded hooks will sneak up on you. [Jun 2018, p.27]

As daunting as its title suggests. [Jul 2006, p.114]

The themes are invariably dark but there's always a groove. [May 2013, p.67]

A 10-track masterclass in spectral, psychedelicised pop, it's awash with great tunes and soaring arrangements. [Nov 2006, p.117]

If only all music was this fun. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Here they continue their mission with bashes at Wilco, Pink Floyd, and a straight-but-great take on Yes' 'Long Distance Runaround.' [Dec 2008, p.81]

Tosta Mista fades like a film score and then hit you with a bang on "Clap." [Feb 2012, p.89]

It's one for the lonesome and broken-hearted, a great excuse to shut out the world and have a good cry. [Mar 2020, p.35]

Halo's assertive pieces, with Oliver Coates on cello, heighten the experience. [Jun 2020, p.29]

The LP's sonic cocoon bursts apart with the horn blasts and slashing guitar of the Lennon-like rocker "Easy To Love," rescuing the record from suffocating in whimsy. [Jan 2022, p.22]

The best tracks revisit some older collaborations: "Hildebrandlied" is an acid house belter while Belgian techno producer Fabrice Lig hits the synth-pop jackpot with the Pet Shop Boy-ish "Cinema". [May 2025, p.31]

They can do dreamy folk, they can also violently attack their guitars, but best of all is the opening track, 'So Messed Up,' a Neil Young-inspired ballad where the guitars rumble and flicker oiver Ryan Sawyer's Keith Moon-style perpetual drum solo. [May 2008, p.111]

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

He appears, so far as it's possible to tell, a competent ukulelist, and his parched baritone remains effective--but this doesn't to understate matters wildly, seems quite the best use of his skills. [Jul 2011, p.96]

Persson shows she is still a dab hand at melodic indie-pop, as she tackles floundering relationships, failing memories and new horizons. [Mar 2014, p.82]

While they could use a second tune, this has bags of vitality and personality. [Sep 2009, p.84]

By the end of the album, you crave some drama, what you're left with is actually pretty serene. [Apr 2015, p.69]

Though occasionally betraying signs of metal fatigue, mostly Hidden City is vibrant fun. [Mar 2016, p.72]

It's dark, powerful and groovy, but some more variety wouldn't go amiss. [July 2008, p.90]

The new line up and improved prodution give songs more space, but haven't hindered the jaunty, lo-fi, eclectic iindie that made "Moonbeams" such a treat. [Sep 2009, p.101]

Intrepid, but rarely satisfying. [Sep 2012, p.81]

This certainly feels like a rebirth. [Nov 2015, p.79]

Davis tends toward the archly self-conscious, and at times her music sounds oddly dated, but there is promise here. [Feb 2016, p.73]

A power-pop potpourri that falls between the Beatlesque formalism of Cotton Mather and the eruptive emotionality of Car Seat Headrest. [Mar 2019, p.34]

Never quite persuades you if it's sincerely bitter or a knowing facsimile of an early '80s break-up album. [May 2019, p.29]

There's no contrivance or compromise to be found here. [Sep 2020, p.36]

They’re back in the studio together, finding profundity in the commonplace, from a cheap cup of coffee to watching an infant’s first steps, on nine songs which range from the acoustic balladry of “Never Apart”, with its banjo and folk harmonies, to the scorching cowpunk of “Love Of AGirl”, via the classic country-rock of “Country Kid” and the plaintive melancholia of “2020 Regret”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Amos teams up with the Metropole Orchestra to revisit songs from her '92 debut onward, adding sumptuous, bejewelled dimension to the rich expressive like of "Precious Things" and the conceptual epic "Yes, Anastasia."[Nov 2012, p.69]

He's added half a dozen of his own compositions in a similar style to this generous 16-track selection, which pays tribute to his jazz roots rather more successfully than his uneven homage to his R&B origins in September's Roll With The Punches. [Feb 2018, p.30]

It frequently sounds terrific. [Apr 2002, p.104]

A mixed offering, then, from a band still searching, albeit interestingly, for their own centre. [Oct 2002, p.102]

A lush song suite reflective of the grandeur of their native New Zealand's landscapes. [Sep 2018, p.29]

A grouchier echo of that opening shot [their 1983 debut album]. [Sep 2019, p.27]

In essence, Ice On The Dune is pure pop with a twist--like a modern day 10cc, or ELO using synths instead of strings. [Jul 2013, p.75]

The arrangements are pleasingly stripped back--perhaps too much so for those powerful. [Nov 2015, p.73]