More organic and less electronic... but... still thrillingly left-field. [Jun 2006, p.106]

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

This self-titled debut is a joy. [Dec 2012, p.64]

Overall, Sirens… may be a bit of a stylistic scattershot, but the Muscle Shoals foundation and Isbell’s razor-sharp songwriting mark it as an auspicious debut.

They recreate the mood and spirit of seriously wiggy space-prog excavations. [Apr 2017, p.35]

It's excellent, with enchanting melodies, emotional depth and a few unexpected evolutions. [May 2021, p.26]

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

The most emotionally mature and fully realised work Gillespie has delivered in years, laying grainy, soulful, impassioned vocals over sumptuously old-school chansons clothed in vintage orchestral country-rock arrangements. [Aug 2021, p.27]

It's sensitively poised and technically perfect. [Mar 2014, p.80]

[A] low-key, often gorgeous new project. [Jun 2016, p.79]

Yo La Tengo's 12th album finds them operating well within their comfort zone but it's no less delightful for the absence of envelopes being pushed. [Oct 2009, p.123]

The songwriting basks in his love of music, freedom, friendship, dogs and tractors. [Jun 2013, p.78]

A free and forward-thinking kind of record, but also one that taps into forgotten, mythic resonances of American music without ever sounding ersatz, hokey or remotely contrived. [Mar 2004, p.92]

Another group who make a virtue of the physical and cultural space America has to offer, drawing on the disparateness of their origins. [Ju l 2010, p.108]

Evolving from fairly skronky beginnings, and passing through a great set of ostensibly Greek folk-psych, Redshift at once honours and transcends those influences, chucking in some Dead-style ambulation. [Aug 2016, p.81]

Perhaps his knottiest - though once unravelled, its charms are hard to resist. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

Dave Brock's outfit are still hot-wiring the same motorik grooves and primitive electronics that helped jump-start the counterculture in the first place. [Nov 2019, p.27]

Confirms System Of A Down as one of the most innovative bands in modern rock. [Jun 2005, p.110]

The addition of bassist Bi;ll Herzog lends Earth a gnarliness absent in recent folk-inflected outings. [Oct 2014, p.71]

Their excellent debut album is a neat mix of somnambulant balladry and ragged high drama. [Oct 2011, p.105]

A lively, impassioned record that proudly eschews convention and celebrates its outsider roots. [Apr 2022, p.31]

Here “When I Paint My Masterpiece” has a lovely jug-band lurch, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” loses its country lilt but sounds as if was always destined to be mated with the taut riff from Roy Head’s “Treat Her Right”, and “Queen Jane Approximately”, hung against a latticework of accordion and finger-picked guitars, is almost unbearably tender. [Aug 2023, p.46]

Ultimately dissolves into a beautifully arranged and slightly sickly morass of curdled pop tropes, out of which spurt a bodacious riff or glossy rave arpeggio. Oddly no-one does this better. [Dec 2015, p.76]

Wincing isn't so much a departure as it is an all-out augmentation, taking the best things about The Shins and amplifying them. [Feb 2007, p.72]

Tuttle takes the krautrock flavours even further, with hypnotic Tangerine Dream-ish accents cohering around Michael’s manic melodies. It ends up sounding like nothing else in either Chapman or Tuttle’s respective oeuvres – and there’s where the magic lies. [Sep 2024, p.34]

Layered with cryptic clues, poetic quotes and fragmentary vocal loops, this lush electronic jazz odyssey is an unorthodox curio but consistently rewarding. [May 2021, p.33]

The Jayhawks provide a diverse, autumnal foundation that amps up when needed. Stace's deceptively winsome voice, meanwhile, delves deep into memories, dreams, relationships and life's absurdities. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Arrangingtime functions as both a means of closure and a creative reboot. [Apr 2016, p.82]