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]

It secures Midlake's future with small yet significant shifts that haven't erased their identity. Not deeper waters, necessarily - but running clearer and on a newly energised course. [Apr 2022, p.22]

It displays a sonic ambition, an openmindedness and a melodic gift that puts so much modern pop to shame. [April 2010, p.85]

This is one record on which his ultimate masterplan to weld R&B sass to thumping club beats comes good. [Aug 2010, p.84]

This study of youthful misadventures gives the 97's ample opportunity to re-immerse themselves in the punk-fuelled exuberance they brought to the alt-country movement two decades ago. [Jun 2014, p.82]

The most infectiously tricked-out rock LP since El Camino. [Oct 2012, p.77]

Neither the songs nor their delivery are perfect, but that's perhaps the point. [May 2018, p.30]

This handsome sequel stays mostly within their comfort zone of melodic, propulsive dance-pop tailored both to clubs and home listening, an impressive balancing act even if the formula sometimes feels over-polished. [Feb 2021, p.25]

It's a record that finds The Jayhawks in pristine fettle, it's country-rock stylings evoking the blithe warmth of 1995's Tomorrow The Green Grass while punching a little harder with age. [May 2016, p.70]

There's a fine line between the sincerely wistful and contemplative and the nostalgic and morose, but Merrie Land understands where the borders are and stays within them. [Jan 2019, p.18]

Occasional interludes--echoing number recitations; bumbling English voices on crackly wax cylinders---feel integral, while smart Julian House artwork completes the package. [Feb 2015, p.71]

Often the music sounds aimless in its open-endedness, too uniform in its cruise-control tempos, but the austere, restrained arrangements reinforce the world-weariness of Roberts' vocals, which recall Townes Van Zandt at his most bluesily pensive. [Nov 2016, p.37]

They nevertheless sound irresistibly fresh and zesty. [Feb 2017, p.23]

Haunting late-career contemplation. [Nov 2018, p.37]

Painted Image is as stylistically omnivorous as it is emotionally acute. [Feb 2019, p.24]

She's at her most persuasive, however, on the delicate waltz of the piano-led "Too Much Of Not Enough," a shimmering showcase for one of the most alluring and arresting female voices at work today. [May 2019, p.27]

Cross has created something of a mesmerising mini-masterpiece. [Sep 2019, p.24]

Overall this double album offers a rich blend of ambient glow, polyrhythmic glitch and absorbing textural detail. [Sep 2019, p.27]

A starting point for rich exploration of the variety of American popular music by a veteran who has previously tried most of them on for size. [Aug 2020, p.37]

Help is overloaded with tastefully spare sketches, but there are enough sublime soundscapes and rich ideas here. [Sep 2020, p.36]

Play loud, and be transported. [Jan 2021, p.32]

He remains a precise craftsman with a bottomless trove of '60s pop hooks and dreamy melodies, but he upends them with acute-angle riffs and scribbled punctuations. [Feb 2021, p.37]

Aambles beyond his band’s already wide palette to embrace ’70s rock and pop flourishes. Squelchy sequencers and double racked guitars add drama to “One-Way Conversation”, while handclaps and a fuzzy synth bolster the details in the verses of “Almost Home.” [Jul 2021, p.31]

There is less than usual here of the breezy country usually associated with his name. More characteristic of Triage are “Something Has To Change” and “Transient Global Amnesia Blues” – fretful, semi-spoken jeremiads set to brooding backdrops. Crowell has the wit and the gravitas to land these, however. [Sep 2021, p.27]

Wilds will continue to content those eager to brandish their knowledge of Ennio Morricone, Os Mutantes or Jacques Dutronc, but it nonetheless cries out for attention from those looking for more primal, immediate pleasures: beauty, bliss and release. [Feb 2022, p.24]

This record is a graceful, seemingly intuitive unfolding into various emotional and/or imagined physical landscapes. [May 2023, p.29]

Weird details stud essentially conventional songs by a band who sound energised, and in many ways The Coral's true kin. [Apr 2024, p.31]

It’s material that’s fascinating just as much for what it tells us about pop culture as it does Lou Reed, from a time where pop and rock hadn’t become overly codified and nobody exactly knew what music teenagers would fall for. [Nov 2024, p.55]