From the moment you heard her with Our Native Daughters, you knew it was only a matter of time before she made her album for the ages. The Returner is that album. [Oct 2023, p.27]

“Hello, Hi” is one of Ty’s most lean and focused albums to date. But the closer you get, the more you spot its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down in the dumps and head-over-heels in love: here is Ty Segall in all his wonderful contradictions. [Aug 2022, p.18]

A darker and dramatically more cohesive collection than its predecessor. [Sep 2003, p.108]

The Ramones, like Warhol or Lichtenstein, were masters of doing one thing brilliantly and repetitively--something reinforced by the second disc of this set, which contains singles and unreleased demos, including tracks that would appear on subsequent albums such as “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl”, “You Should Never Have Opened That Door” and “I Don’t Care” but could easily have fitted on Ramones.

What strikes you is the sheer variety of styles and textures that Keenan and Cargill were playing around with. It’s a shimmering patchwork of ideas and moments, some more realised than others, some beautiful, some stark. .... Spell Blanket is a glimpse at what might have been. A memory of the future. [May 2024, p.42]

Whoever is singing, the beats are choppy and the mood intense. A revelation. [Oct 2018, p.24]

Sometimes ethereal and meditative, and at others blowing his sax and flute with an intensity that belies his seniority. [Nov 2025, p.33]

The quintet's most vibrant album in two decades. [Apr 2025, p.35]

These are songs to be treasured. [Apr 2014, p.73]

So while Lazaretto may sometimes appear to be a more nakedly emotional collection of songs than we've come to expect from its creator, the contents also rate among his wittiest and his wildest efforts to date. [Jul 2014, p.63]

Quite a lavish package. It includes some very rough demos from Headley Grange. .... Both the high-water mark of the prog concept album, and the most potent example of the genre's glorious, boundless absurdity. [Nov 2025, p.40]

Manning Fireworks, his third studio album and maybe his best, sounds like the Drive-By Truckers backing Vic Chesnutt. [Sep 2024, p.36]

Thrillingly pioneers its 21st century sound. [Jun 2023, p.26]

She's brought feelings to the surface that previously she may have kept veiled. It feels like a significant breakthrough. [Feb 2023, p.22]

Dream River [is] among Callahan's very best. [Oct 2013, p.63]

Kings of Leon zeroed in on their gifts for visceral rock grooves and soaring hooks--lifting standout tracks on their sixth album to a Springsteen-like level of gritty grandeur. [Oct 2013, p.70]

The Nashville Sound sees Isbell swaggering confidently along the rockier edge of his range--as usual--he's at his best on the reflective ballads. [Jul 2017, p.32]

Woodstock 50 is an archival feat, an exhaustive capsule melding bygone sentiments with timeless performances. [Sep 2019, p.49]

A Place Called Bad augments such high-water marks as 1983's Blood red River with rarities and live tracks like a 1983 demolition job on Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot." All of it whets the appetite for explorations of Salmon's sprawling post-Scientists oeuvre. [Sep 2016, p.88]

11 raw but gorgeously melodic songs. .... One of the least cliched [breakup] records you're ever likely to hear. [Nov 2025, p.31]

On No Name, he’s done something special on his own terms, delighted and surprised his audience, and provided one of the great rock moments of the year. [Oct 2024, p.30]

With hindsight, the Rough Trade album with its seamless mix of folk, blues country, cajun and rock can be seen as the album that launched the phenomenon we would come to know as alt.country. [Feb 2014, p.97]

The intimacies of David Briggs' production and the pure strength of the songs suggest an album that, with a few overdubs and a bit more polish could have worked as that desperately anticipated follow-up to Harvest. ... Pride of place, though, goes to the two unreleased tracks {Give Me Strength and Hawaii]. [Oct 2017, p.

A mutant strain of noisy funk, hip-hop, subversive art punk and dirty disco. [Dec 2019, p.35]

It's a calming, beatific experience. [Aug 2023, p.34]

With echoes of Rickie Lee Jones and Gram Parsons at times, it all feels deceptively effortless. [Aug 2025, p.39]

A near-faultless record. [Apr 2005, p.97]

On The Spur, Shelley captures the ache and the sweetness, the loss and the love, the coming and going of it all, with greater scale and skill than ever before.