There are surprises everywhere. While "R&B" and "Nearly Daffodils" are sprightly, irreverent post-punk, the influence of Black Country, Nee Road nd Radiohead are evident on the complex, proggy title track and the diverse, hushed final third of the album. Lily Fontaine's lyrics, to are deep and funny. [Apr 2024, p.32]

Plum feels very much like a landmark in his still-fresh career. [Oct 2017, p.38]

A fabulous treat it is too. [Apr 2021, p.37]

If there’s any justice, Mug Museum should break Le Bon out of her current cult status. [Dec 2013]

Serves as both a potent primer on the traumas and triumphs of life in a not-so-racial America and an enthralling demonstration of her playful musical sensibility. [Jun 2019, p.37]

A sublime composition. [Feb 2024, p.37]

Although What If's nine instrumental tracks are heavily rhythmic, this is a refreshingly gridless and affecting music, with serrated clicks and muted arpeggios wandering organically in and out of time. [Apr 2017, p.30]

A soulful, adventurous, state-of-the-nation classic. [Apr 2013, p.73]

For all its muddied textures and sideways lurches, it is a magnificently engaging and expansive work. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Secret Love, produced by Cate Le Bon, obliterates the thought [they would struggle to surprise a second time] entirely. [Jan 2026, p.29]

A highly original band in its prime. [Jun 2005, p.107]

Opening up the album to new ideas and interpretations without obscuring the man himself. [Mar 2020, p.35]

An exhilarating band set that mixes electric and acoustic instrumentation, it’s at once fiercely modern and as ancient as the Niger river. [Jun 2021, p.22]

The results are spectacular. [Jul 2014, p.66]

While the album is rooted in Ennio Morricone’s dusty spaghetti western soundtracks and Daniel Lanois’ high-lonesome ambient, songs like the spacy “El Fantasma” and the kaleidoscopic title track ground their psychedelic drift in the intense chemistry between the two brothers and the way they play off each other supernaturally. [Jun 2024, p.33]

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

A previously unreleased version of Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” mesmerisingly set to the narcotic pulse of The Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, a take on country tearjerker “Oh Lonesome Me”, weirdly reminiscent of Leonard Cohen. .... The set ends with Ferry’s first new song in a decade ["Star"]. .... Its smouldering brilliance sounds less a postscript to everything it follows than a new beginning, Ferry nearing 80, still alert to the sound of tomorrow calling. [Dec 2024, p.90]

More mellifluous than menacing despite its formidable display of power, Life Metal may be the richest work in the band's 21-year-mission to reconfigure Tony Iommi-worthy riffage into a soundtrack for mindful meditation. [May 2019, p.34]

Dion's unknown recordings are a lavish tour de force of folk-into-rock and blues-into pop. [Jul 2017, p.50]

Offers the kind of transcendental electronics that burrow into your brain. [Mar 2021, p.37]

A record that yields a procession of hidden treasures. [May 2017, p.38]

The group's commitment and almost minimalistic sense of repetition resulting in a metal longplayer of unrivaled scope. [Jul 2012, p.96]

Finely honed reflections that add a new perspective to the conversation of politics. ... The songs here are simple, but they contain multitudes. [Oct 2019, p.25]

A debut album bursting with character. [Feb 2022, p.37]

It's one of those records that is somewhat sui generis, and yet with an appeal that is universal and accessible at the same time. [Apr 2018, p.33]

It's not only Jones' most absorbing album since 1997's beats-drenched Ghostyhead, but a record that crowns her career, not as an end but as a culmination. [Jul 2015, p.85]

Epic debut, an emotionally rich and stylistically broad mediation on homeland, exile and identity. ... A lavish feast of an album. [Nov 2019, p.30]

An unqualified triumph. [Jul 2016, p.73]