There's much to admire in the fretwork of [Darren] Rademaker and Ben Knight, too, joining the dots between Johnny Marr, Roger McGuinn and Felt's Maurice Deebank to underpin the hooks with sun-blonde crispness. [Jul 2003, p.116]

Nakedly intimate narrative of self-discovery. [May 2023, p.35]

In Wedding Present terms, Torino is Cinerama's Seamonsters. [Aug 2002, p.99]

These songs offer a smart inversion of the usual gender roles in mainstream music, all set to a propulsive, bass-heavy backdrop. [Oct 2015, p.81]

"Lately" is a wonderfully uplifting finale to a finely conceived record, an eloquent testament to an unlikely partnership that's only now delivering its full potential. [Sep 2010, p.97]

Dream Attic has the brio that matches any of Thompson's past few studio albums. [Sep 2010, p.84]

Lament is a startling, eclectic listen. [Jan 2014, p.72]

It's all charmingly rendered and, as in the wigout 'Pigeonhold,' teeming with joyous abandon a la the Arcade Fire. [Sep 2008, p.98]

A batch of songs that snap and snarl in all the right places. [May 2018, p.27]

The album's highpoints, particularly "Show Me Everything" and "This Fire Of Autumn" showcase a band who seem to have rediscovered new ways of putting together their already impressive constituent parts. [Mar 2012, p.101]

You can choose to interact with this theme [an alien visiting Earth] or let it drift to the background, instead sinking into ¡Ay!'s gently shifting moods of innocence, curiosity and delight. [Nov 2022, p.28]

He signs off with a collection of mostly familiar songs, including three others by Webb, Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's All Right," Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" and a sublime version of the Dickey Lee heartbreaker "She Thinks I Still Care." [Aug 2017, p.15]

It's fastidiously realised, taking in gorgeously orchestrated jazz, hi-octane funk and a pristine slow jam featuring Lauren Faith. [Aug 2020, p.39]

Open-hearted vulnerability is what sets them apart--the desire to be cool dissipates with age, leaving them to restore funk, the album's major underpinning, to its maximalist glory following years of sublimation from bedroom musicians. [Jun 2015, p.76]

This set of sentimental cappuccino funk is as intimate and provocative as anything Murphy's put her name to, the eight songs a fussy fusion of Balearic soul and bohemian synthpop. [Jun 2015, p.80]

Ultimately, Phrazes For The Young testifies that the qualities that made Julian Casablancas so noteworthy in 2001 remain in place, just a little more difficult to predict.

Their brutal beats are married to fabulous pop songs. [May 2003, p.106]

Tough, funky and proud, she sounds like she could have been the new Aretha. [Feb 2004, p.87]

Sparer yet wholly captivating displays of psych-pop iridescence. [Oct 2017, p.37]

It remains a somewhat foreboding listen, but one compelling in the intensity of its vision. [Aug 2011, p.97]

The nine-piece evoke America's open spaces in a beautiful bluster of feedback and reverb. [Nov 2017, p.28]

Makes good on the promise of 2022's Big Love Blanket by finetuning their melodic instincts without sacrificing the anything-goes chaos that makes them such a thrilling proposition. [Sep 2024, p.37]

Trent is as solid as an anvil in his straightman's role, while Hearst is a real firecracker. [Sep 2012, p.85]

A reawakening to be reckoned with. [Jan 2018, p.21]

A downbeat, solipsistic but utterly beautiful amalgam of mood-altering substances and 1980s alt.rock. [Mar 2006, p.100]

Simultaneously her most formally experimental and melodically palatable yet. [Jan 2019, p.25]

A career highlight in low times. [Mar 2018, p.31]

The songs are uniformly strong, for one thing; the delivery is smart, a kind of airy, gently gothic arch-pop, completed by Jean's conversational vocals. It's a wonderfully dynamic set of songs. [Apr 2020, p.28]