Nina Nastasia’s contributions to “Iron Bones”’s Enomeets-Yorke somnolence reminds us how Strawberry Hotel, like so much of Underworld’s catalogue, frequently renders the prosaic romantic and the banal consequential. [Dec 2024, p.34]

Lives Outgrown is a quite different prospect to Gibbons' previous work - more intimate, more personal, coloured by the grief and goodbyes se has weathered in recent years. But it is still possible to find a thread that runs from here to Out Of Season, and back to Portishead. [Jun 2024, p.23]

Grandiose, overwhelming, pretentious and absurd, Before The Dawn Heals Us is one of the first great albums of 2005. [Feb 2005, p.79]

The best moments of Inferno are tender hymns to everyday pleasures. [Apr 2019, p.29]

The warm homeliness drifts into untethered territory. [Dec 2021, p.31]

He returns in double-quick time with more selections from his 80-song lockdown splurge, but this time in a gentler, almost uplifting mood. .... Radical optimism rather suits him. [Jul 2024, p.31]

Either of Dwyer's bands would be a fine fit for Yonkers' primitive but inventive garage rock - best examples are the pummelling "sold America" and "The Thunder Speaks," both hyped-up takes on Yonkers' originals - but Damaged Bug are better equipped to tackle his more tender moments. [May 2020, p.26]

There's something deeply satisfying about the way the songs fit together as an album, their sequence strengthened both by the homogenous tone of the music with its air of wistful melancholy, and by the way each song seems to push the next one forward. [Mar 2013, p.61]

These are McCartney's most arresting songs for a long, long while. [Oct 2005, p.94]

This is a thoughtful, empathetic showcase of his interests, of intense feelings translated into a dreamy sonic atmosphere. It’s an album that meets the world in its moment, where global issues and far-flung international voices are more amplified and connected than ever.

The album feels disciplined and enormously funky. [May 2012, p.61]

Hallelujah Anyhow may have been recorded swiftly, but the abandonment is still exquisitely detailed, as every listen to "Domino" reveal further nuance beneath the swagger. [Oct 2017, p.22]

Clarke may not have the tools to open you up emotionally to quite the same degree [as Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds' Ghosteen], but he's found an elegant and absorbing mood of despair like few have managed so far. [Apr 2021, p.24]

Utterly thrilling. [Sep 2020, p.32]

Though the variable recording quality of the later tracks can hinder their impact, the performance captured at First Ave and newly restored by engineer Beau Sorenson roars and gnashes and seethes with enough intensity to collapse the 40-year gap between then and now. [Dec 2025, p.45]

A work of lyricism and maturity, this is one of Veirs' finest yet. [Sep 2013, p.97]

Ad hoc, anything goes is the mood of what follows. Much is accomplished and playful. ... When he allows himself to forget who he is and just remember what it is that he does, he can still come up with songs to surprise you. More impressively, maybe even surprise himself.

Start Walkin’ emphasises the team’s many deviations from the mean, demonstrating how inventive and subversive Sinatra’s music could be even before her music with Hazlewood took a more avidly idiosyncratic direction with Nancy & Lee. ... 23 concise chapters that are thrilling, surprising and sometimes sublime.

Some of the best moments here are twitchy funk miniatures, driven by tuba basslines, distorted Fender Rhodes riffs and chant-based vocals, which leave you wanting more. [Aug 2021, p.35]

Girly-Sound to Guyville is something much more revealing than an anniversary commemoration. It's a document of an artist finding and raising er voice: a souvenir from an era that questions long-held assumptions about the sex and the business of rock'n'roll. [Jun 2018, p.38]

Her voice alone is worth preserving humanity for, hitting peaks of gorgeous, sleek torment on the cosmic beauty of "A Given Thing". [Dec 2022, p.36]

Spare, beautiful, outstanding. [Jul 2003, p.128]

What strikes you, above all, is the innocence and affection in their breezy blues, at odds with the heavy weather White has made of his post-Stripes career. [Feb 2021, p.49]

It's the vivid, virulent product of the Maels' warped imaginations. [Mar 2006, p.90]

It’s the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Daniel Collás, as producer, who brings Jackson’s long-lost creations to life. The eight tracks here, written during the Scott-Heron era, re-emerge more relevant than ever, courtesy of a strong backing band. [Jul 2022, p.26]

This is audaciously modern in its textural absorption of outre sounds from the 21st-century dance underground. [Dec 2002, p.136]

For him a song is no older than the last time it was sung. His fifth album, Good And Green Again is his most thoughtful, his most eloquent, and his most poignant explication of this idea. [Feb 2022]

Whatever the provenance of these songs, Indoor Safari is marvellous, by any reasonable critical metric a glorious confection. [Sep 2024, p.26]