Hoodoo is spellbinding stuff, a new high mark in a delightful late-career renaissance. [Oct 2013, p.64]

The Alvins' follow-up [to Common Ground] is highly expansive in a focused way. [Oct 2015, p.69]

A bit of a triumph. [Dec 2017, p.27]

Wildly ambitious in its melding of industrial bombast, free-jazz skronk, horror-film atmospherics and psych freakouts. [Mar 2019, p.34]

There's a more pronounced sense of drive and velocity. [Aug 2020, p.36]

Though the more sweeping likes of “Black Heart” evoke the menace and grandeur of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch, there’s an appealing degree of rattle, clatter and noodling elsewhere as Wallumrød and Silvola commune with the spirits of Harry Partch and Charles Mingus. [Oct 2024, p.41]

The guitar sounds engineered here by Young and Lanois are astonishing, almost terrifying at times in their elemental beauty. [Nov 2010, p.78]

The only danger of such an exercise being the risk of tarnishing the legend. But there's no problem here. [dec 2008, p.100]

Year Of Meteors is no flat-out masterpiece.... Still, Veirs is clearly moving in the right direction. [Sep 2005, p.102]

Having phased out the shoegaze from their sound, Blondes at times struggle to address the dancefloor head-on. [Oct 2013, p.63]

They're now a glorious band. [Feb 2007, p.76]

[A] flat-out sensational album. [May 2015, p.77]

He writes evocatively about his home state of Texas, which lends these songs a vivid backdrop. [Nov 2024, p.31]

The result is a collection that sounds like nothing so much as a modern-day Dock Boggs signed to the Lost Highway label.

Sketchy beginnings, but lots of promise. [Nov 2010, p.100]

The result is a bold but difficult record, dogged but a little hard to love. [Sep 2018, p.25]

An album that can initially feel scatty but is held together by its creator's passion and poise. [Dec 2018, p.28]

There was much more to Stapleton than the Music Row standards he'd been cranking out for others, and Vol. 2 further confirms this suspicion. Under his own name, and own steam, Stapleton cleaves closer to the outlaw ethos of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr and Johnny Paycheck. [Feb 2018, p.32]

The duo take their movie-fuelled visions in directions that are continually surprising. [Nov 2021, p.35]

Tinariwen have created an entire genre of desert blues, as young bands like Tamikrest and Terakaft attest, but they remain peerless. [Sep 2011, p.76]

Black Sun is subdued and ruminative: snaking around dancehall, grime, hip hop, but holding fast to its own uniqueness. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Lekman makes the kind of Nick Hornby-ish "perfect pop" that no one actually listens to. Which is a pity, because his lyrics are Cole Porter witty, and his major-key songcraft delicious. [Nov 2007, p.110]

It brims with psychedelic electro-pop of the most inventively buoyant and sweetly retro-futuristic kind. [May 2008, p.106]

This linear, orderly chronicle i s a faithful overview of the studio career nevertheless. [Sep 2011, p.100]

Marianne's back on her feet theses days, fully recovered, and while reminding us that love is pain, doesn't entirely neglect the funny bone. [Oct 2014, p.70]

Throughout the record there's a thoughtful restraint tot he compositions, swerving back and forth between quiet euphoria and shell-shocked dystopia. [Aug 2018, p.30]

Warts, ugly cousins, blazes of greatness and all, however, A Treasure makes a perfect snapshot of this ornery, shapeshifting moment. [Jul 2011, p.98]

The key is a rhythmic edge--be it tribal drumming or waves of sound--that trip these rainbow drones into full-on euphoria. [Apr 2008, p.94]