Sparse, literate... and full of killer tunes. [Sep 2005, p.105]

Margaret's melodies are often submerged, but her approach is not entirely ambient. [Aug 2023, p.34]

The end result creates an engulfing sonic swirl, recalling the enveloping work of Cluster and Tangerine Dream. [Dec 2018, p.24]

A record that is dreamy and introspective yet teeming with ambition. [Apr 2021, p.37]

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

Steingarten combines clipped, Kompakt-style 4/4 funk with a massy dub sensibility reminiscent of Adrian Sherwood's Tackhead productions. [Apr 2007, p.114]

The trio [Badbadnotgood] create nuanced, immersive contexts for the rapper's narratives: occasionally dialed in, at times surprising. [Mar 2015, p.71]

A brooding, impressive return. [Mar 2014, p.71]

"Living Torch I" is gentle and organic, a hypnotic four-note refrain offering some of the spiritual uplift of her organ work. The shorter "Living Torch II" presents something like the same ingredients, but strafes them with electronic attack. [Oct 2022, p.33]

As poetry alone, it's interesting, but the music's elegance make it something more. [Jan 2011, p.93]

This album feels like a new beginning. [Apr 2014, p.70]

With North African and Latin American angles also explored, this is a throbbing, ominous, rigorous homage to garage basics. [Jun 2019, p.29]

This invigorating swansong by the Anglo-Italian duo finds Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia bowing out at the peak of their powers. [May 2015, p.84]

The results go beyond folk, with flurries of orchestration and discord adding rusty grandeur to Flemmons' pained vocals. [Jun 2013, p.69]

The Open Road finds him rediscovering his form. This is Hiatt cutting loose, heading out on his own metaphor-filled highway of song. [Apr 2010, p.96]

Rare and enchanting understatement in a brash and gaudy world. [Jun 2013, p.69]

Modern nature is an explicitly English affair: unbluesy, unassuming and slightly uptight (in a good way). [Sep 2019, p.36]

Tonight's Music finds Davies returning to The Moles' first principals of beguiling deadpan psychedelia, as if Syd Barrett had lit out to New Zealand in the 1980s and joined The Chills. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Quietly devastating. [Dec 2002, p.131]

[The new remix] is sympathetic and subtly revelatory. .... However, there is one near-unforgivable gaff: on "Hot Stiff", around 2 mins 50, just as Mick comes back after Keith's scribbling wah-wah solo, the new mix inexplicably omits the word "Hot", hitting is only with a mighty - "Stuff!" [Review of the Year, p.41]

However eccentric and laidback his expression, it's as masterfully distinctive as that of any auteur. [Nov 2018, p.35]

A real treat. [Jul 2005, p.92]

A work of rejuvenating power on which Weller and his long-serving band attain a new sense of purpose and focus. [Nov 2005, p.94]

[The] bucolic narratives on the sextet's fourth album are imbued with plainspoken authenticity. [Jan 2018, p.26]

It's an album that delights, challenges and provokes, while reimagining old folk traditions. [Feb 2020, p.35]

They produce a whole lot of full-fat dance-pop joy. [Oct 2023, p.85]

Emerald Sea isn’t your average third album. An otherworldly mix of Gustav Holst’s drama, The Flaming Lips’ psychedelia and Broadcast’s retro-futurist exotica, with hints of the band’s earlier Beach House dream-pop, it breaks a fourth wall of sound with “The Glare”’s saturated reverberations, while “Deeper Surround” offers a chimerical carousel ride of synths. [Aug 2022, p.33]

[The album] fires out volleys of convincing Metalheadz-style jungle breakbeats, embedded in brooding sound collages apparently influenced by Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood. [Mar 2014, p.71]