From the Ground Up takes a heartland rock template and imbues it with tougher, weather-beaten elements asking big questions. [Apr 2013, p.72]

With a live '70s R&B sound fuelled by flower power and, in "Star Now" and "Satellites," some excellent songs, Bilal is as focused as he's ever been. [Oct 2015, p.73]

The strongest songs on Dungeness have Trembling Bells playing at a fierce peak. ... Sometimes, though, things don't quite cohere. [May 2018, p.34]

These 10 art-pop and jazz-inclined abstractions are as elusive as they are instantly likeable, slipping away from definition even as you're listening via sweet melodic overplaying, elegant spaces and meandering/urgent grooves. [May 2019, p.32]

An album s indebted to garage as it is to pop. [Sep 2019, p.27]

Several songs that aim for Springsteenian grandeur but land nearer to John Mellencamp before he dropped the Cougar. Thankfully, Goldsmith's level of craft elsewhere means there's still plenty here to savour. [Nov 2020, p.29]

There’s no brave new frontier here – and perhaps in these strange times many of us don’t really want to be challenged. Rather, these simple pleasures, full of reassurance and a satisfying indulgence, will keep us warm while we adjust to the ‘new normal’ – whatever that may eventually turn out to be.

It's when Slowthai turns the lens inward on the soulful "NHS" and loved-up "Feel Away" - featuring James Blake and Mount Kimbie - that he proves himself something of an original. [Mar 2021, p.37]

Self-reflection is twinned with a rueful survey of the current state of the nation. [Oct 2021, p.25]

Cobb gives them his distinctively sweltering Southern soul treatment - drenching "In The Garden" with humid electric piano, reimagining "Are You Washed In The Blood?" as the Allman Brothers might have played it. [Mar 2022, p.26]

Offers a more intimate appraisal of his state of mind. [Jan 2023, p.18]

His playing can be free and fiery but it's also deeply soulful and sometimes almost aggressively melodic. [Mar 2023, p.29]

Deliciously dark and yet full of an elegant lightness, this is Hersh at the top of her considerable game. [Oct 2023, p.29]

There's a similar vibe here [to the soundtrack they created for BBC drama Gallows Pole] on tracks such as "raised By Hills" and "Tripping In The Graveyard", although elsewhere the psych weirdness is as rampantly eclectic as ever. [Nov 2023, p.29]

Pramuk takes listeners on a rich inner-space odyssey. [Aug 2025, p.37]

Edwards sounds comfortable and confident in this setting, although occasionally she indulges some awkward, first-draft lyrics. [Sep 2025, p.31]

The surrounding circumstances inevitably bring an additional layer of darkness to allusively eloquent, quietly agitated songs. [Apr 2026, p.36]

The eclectism is exhilarating. [Nov 2008, p.96]

Eternally Even affords James the opportunity to take his music to places My Morning Jacket are less likely to inhabit. The result being that his solo albums are rapidly becoming profound statements in themselves, rather than mere sideshows to the main event. [Dec 2016, p.31]

Happy Hollow serves up more emo with prog on the side, then adds dirty blues, cabaret and art-rock garnish. [Sep 2006, p.79]

A set of limber, largely instrumental funk shot through with Asian, African and Middle Eastern melodies, each track sounds like it could have come off as jukebox single purchased from some dusty overseas record kiosk. [Feb 2018, p.29]

All are by turns playful, impassioned, and intelligent. [Oct 2008, p.118]

Her best album for many years illustrates her uniqueness. [Jun 2010, p.97]

This middle ground between jazz and hip-hop is the crux of the record, ad while it's loaded with deft playing, rich production and complex compositions, the constant rotation of differing voices can often kill the flow and coherence of what is otherwise a meticulously crafted record. [Jul 2023, p.33]

The band's arch, apocalyptic howl is frequently interrupted by industrial pummelling and passages of heads-down skronk, to the point where you genuinely have no idea what they're going to do or say next. [Apr 2014, p.71]

Undertow resembles free jazz noiseniks let loose in a junkyard, cooking up a mood of creeping dread with radioactive electronics. [Apr 2017, p.40]

These are anguished addresses of the world's current turbulence, U2 needing to scrabble unusually and interestingly hard in the cinders to disinter sparks of their trademark redemptive optimism. [May 2026, p.37]

Relayted manages to be both comfortingly familiar and devastatingly futuristic. [Jun 2010, p.90]