Both sonically and lyrically, it's an album that is explicitly, thrillingly transgressive and is already an early contender for one of the albums of the year. [Mar 2018, p.33]

Despite convoluted explanations about their relationship with nature, these compositions are surprisingly straightforward, with "Everyone Sleeps" and "Hands In The Anthill" almost primly formal. [Mar 2019, p.29]

A supremely sassy swansong. [Jan 2012, p.90]

They've pulled together their most digestible record yet. [Feb 2008, p.84]

It's the personal element that underpins this record's appeal. [Oct 2008, p.92]

A band that couldn't ddcide if they preferred the caustic post-grunge of The Jesus Lizard or the absurdist, singalong witticisms of Half Man Half Biscuit, so choose to do both. Happily, the band have the muscular riffs and eloquence to pull off both. [Jul 2009, p.88]

She has fashioned a still eccentric but bracingly focused collection of songs that blend her acrobatic and soulful Afro-jazz vocals with a collage music that defies any attempts at categorization. [May 2011, p.96]

Like a rolling stone made of avant-garde music and sadness. [Sep 2020, p.27]

Let England Shake is the sound of someone as maddened as they are enthralled, aglow with anger and passion.

Bursting with raw energy and renewed vigour. [Feb 2023, p.25]

All suggest that this band is in the process of remaking itself for a vital midlife. [Mar 2010, p.85]

The songs on Tare's fourth solo effort brims with joy, wonder and the sheer pleasure to be found in making sounds. [Mar 2023, p.25]

Lyrically, relationships dominate, if unconventionally. ... Her effervescent voice like muted Liz Fraser. [Jun 2023, p.32]

John Lee Hooker was the most adaptable bluesmen. ... King Of The Boogie is a career-bridging overview that highlights these abundant qualities across five discs. [Nov 2017, p.50]

So Runs The World Away is vivid, artful, expressive and more besides. [Sep 2010, p.100]

Northern Passages is just that [promises both new delights and reassuring old comforts], their banked harmonies as warm and familiar as the blissful psych-country of "Riverview Fog" or the Clarence White-era Byrds stylings of "God Bless The Infidels." [Mar 2017, p.39]

It's Hit-and-miss but lots of fun, with real skill and joie de vivre behind the incessant experimentation. [Jan 2012, p.90]

Wonderful, Glorious sounds, throughout, overwhelmingly like an Eels album.... This consistency has to be admired as testament to the robustness of E's vision. [Mar 2013, p.74]

Presley's righteous fury and mordant wit burn even brighter on this follow-up. [May 2017, p.28]

While Forsyth is mindful to retain his more spontaneous impulses, this wonderfully intense set is dominated by "Techno Top", a pounding 20-minute groove that recalls both Talking Heads and Television. [May 2019, p.29]

It may sound like a gimmicky stunt but it produces mostly beautiful results. [Jun 2018, p.30]

In short, it's a quietly beautiful record: anthemic but not bombastic, introspective yet universal, simply drawn but beautifully coloured in. [Apr 2011, p.82]

Apocalypse is a wild thing which dances from one side of that line [between brilliant and bizarre] to the other with never-less-than-compelling abandon. [May 2011, p.89]

As guitarist Russell Marsden steps aside to let bassist Emma Richardson sing, it's less White Stripes, more Brody Dale, but momentum is maintained. [Oct 2009, p.91]

Particularly interesting among the demos (and these really are early sketches) is the entertaining “Out In The Country” (banjos, acoustic guitars, an Eagles vibe), which is taken two radically different ways; seeming to show that the band didn’t just have one route out of the perpetual summer of 1964 and into the introspective, soft-rock 1970s, they had several – this one even involving country rock. [Jan 2023, p.28]

Strong on characterful production, writing and lyrical fronts, it's a country-pop tour de force that showcases her insight and humour as she addresses everything from the economic precarity of her homeland to the devastating harm done by body shaming. [Sep 2025, p.29]

Innovations are few.... Still, when these nocturnes, crescendos and intimations of apocalypse remain so musically rich and emotionally powerful, it seems churlish to demand more. [Dec 2002, p.130]

Musgraves' willingness to address a life built on knotty contradictions give her songs resonance far beyond Golden's borders. [Jul 2015, p.82]