Although less immediately catchy, Celebration Castle... soon warms up. [Jul 2005, p.94]

[Casablancas'] remarkable performance enlivens even the album's most underwhelming passages. [Nov 2003, p.108]

They have finally assembled a terrific debut full of scuzzed up guitars, dirty synths, nihilistic lyrics and wood's magnificently bored--though never boring--vocals.[Apr 2014, p.71]

Gamel is an ecstatic return. [Aug 2014, p.76]

The whole thing feels like a dusky gambol through America's musical past. [Sep 2014, p.81]

The album is reminiscent of Kraftwerk in its combination of chilly electronics and haunting, hooky melodies but has a wonkiness unique to Haines. [Nov 2015, p.76]

A seriously strong debut. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Images abound of betrayal, compromise, opportunities selfishly squandered. But a kind of redemptive enlightenment emerges. [Aug 2017, p.34]

Sometimes this nomadic approach produces some sublime pop, but more often the results are erratic--odd even--but never dull. [May 2018, p.33]

Much darker successor to How To Die In The North. Utterly compelling it is too. [Sep 2018, p.26]

Trent and Hearst have always been keen storytellers, digging deep into characters at loose ends, laying them out in the lyrics and then finding new depths and new sympathies in the performances. [May 2019, p.28]

An album filled with soft, tender indie-folk. [Nov 2020, p.29]

This might have worked better as a single LP, but to ensure the collection doesn’t run out of steam, there are two new tracks: the bouncy “Curious” and retro rocker “Billy Goodbye”. [Apr 2022, p.44]

Prochet crafts another bewitching set of songs that weave together strains of vintage Gallic pop and gentle shoegaze with the gnarlier elements. [May 2022, p.30]

It's a dozen of his finest compositions reworked as bluegrass tunes, and it's magnificent. [Oct 2023, p.31]

Rhett Miller’s quartet crank up the cowpunk on the likes of “This World”, “Falling Down” and “Chased The Setting Sun”, but time, inevitably, has tempered their collective experience. [Jun 2024, p.37]

Producer Aaron Dessner’s quick working pace and embrace of imperfection have helped deliver a rawer set of songs written when Atwell was weaning herself off antidepressants and feared feeling’s return. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Precious but powerful. [Aug 2024, p.38]

On this outing it sounds more like step-by-step calculation than natural evolution. [Apr 2026, p.36]

It's very earnest. [Sep 2012, p.79]

Terrific, genre-flipping from Seattle collective. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Odd missteps apart You Are All I see turns out to be one of the year's boldest, most beautiful debuts. [Nov 2011, p.81]

Lewis conducts what navel-gazing there is on The Voyager with her characteristic mordant wit, and she has shed none of her way with an irresistible, deadpan pop melody. [Aug 2014, p.75]

This record has all the earmarks of Vernon's next big thing. [Oct 2013, p.69]

For those of us who prefer Neil when he's plugged-in and splenetic, it's tempting to call the album his best since 1990's Ragged Glory. Living With War, though, is too much of a frontline dispatch, too consumed with the present, to be easily catalogued for posterity. [Jul 2006, p.82]

A collection that feels more art project than album. [Nov 2012, p.71]

Even more affecting are those tracks where he keeps things simple. [Apr 2012, p.83]

Glacial electronic-first compositions like "Vessel" ape the atmospheric intensity of Julia Holter, but even in her exile, Ballentine finds something pretty to latch onto in every song. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]