["Around The Horn"] inflates over a final few minutes into something uniquely epic. ... Lyrically, it's pretty baffling where "These Rocks," one of the albums' standout tracks, is the most openly confessional song Houck has written, set to a churchy musical swell, congregational and healing, the sound of a lifetime burden lifted by love. [Nov 2018, p.28]

His willingness to scribble over the pretty surfaces of his songs brings a bristling edge to his Beatlesque pop. [Feb 2008, p.79]

There's a winning mix of mist and muscle on this debut. [Jul 2016, p.69]

[A] sonically rich, mostly great album. [Jan 2017, p.28]

The formula remains potent. [Aug 2015, p.71]

Their inimitable fury and drive is intact. [Sep 2019, p.18]

Their ability to turn despair to joy even stretches as far as being able to turn a song called "Everybody Dies" into a thrilling, fuzzed-out blast. [Sep 2025, p.39]

An explicitly confessional record attempting to make sense of, and give vent to, a degree of personal turbulence. [Jan 2026, p.25]

The Walkmen are weathering the iPhone age with panache. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Album lurches bizarrely from the heart-rending to the goofy to the simply spaced-out, but what it lacks in polish it makes up for with buckets of charm.

A couple thin tracks aside, Exile is a richly layered sonic feast slathered in alluringly discordant noises. [Sep 2017, p.26]

The King of Limbs passes like a breeze, and has you skipping back to the start as soon as the final track fades out. [May 2011, p.90]

The Julie Ruin are best when playing it a little goofy. [Nov 2013, p.74]

Their sixth sees Mark Ronson step in as producer on all but two tracks, and although he;s resisted the temptation to slather on Stax horns and apply his slick finish, he's given this tough, roughly energetic band focus and finesse. [Aug 2011, p.79]

Despite a perennial weakness for soppy whimpering, Blake always delivers spine-tingling jewel-box beauty. [Nov 2023, p.25]

What's surprising is how structured it is, even if little will have been recognisable to devotees. The pleasures lie not only in lengthy stretches where they lock together instinctively. ... It's also in the tension leading to these moments. [Jan 2022, p.38]

A wonderful pop album that reads as both a studied tribute and a welcome update. [Apr 2023, p.35]

It's like John Bonham playing with Can, or Floyd-meet-Spiritualized with a barely repressed pop consciousness. [Jul 2004, p.95]

The finest moments... prove to be the same stripped-down verbally deft hip-hop that made their name. [Oct 2005, p.100]

Snaith's take on minimal dance music is brighter and more immediate [than his Fabric mix in 2007]. [Sep 2017, p.24]

An unqualified triumph. [Jun 2006, p.122]

His keen-eared blending of Beatles-style melodies and psych jangle with the snarling attitude of Mudhoney and Melvins' malevolent heaviness is oddly invigorating. [Nov 2012, p.81]

A downbeat and occasionally poetic work with some unexpected reference points. [Oct 2013, p.71]

On Apricity, Syd Arthur brings a blessedly light touch to their breezy psych. [Dec 2016, p.38]

K Bay probes the Richmond, VA-based artist's teeming psyche while advancing his anything-does record-making style. [Oct 2021, p.34]

"When The End Is Over" offers a glimpse of his sweetly ruminative side, but the amped-up riffs and recorded-in-a-garage fidelity keep things firmly in the red. [May 2023, p.32]

The many versions of that song [Ballad Of A Thin Man] sprinkled throughout the discs illustrate the fluctuations of interpretation, form and commitment that were a feature of Dylan’s first tour in eight years, unremarked at the time but now on full view. [Nov 2024, p.48]

It's notable for uncensored emotional gloom and an evergreen college sound. [Feb 2024, p.37]