Some good, powerful rock songs aside, this is a strange, honest, but not altogether convincing way to go out. [Mar 2018, p.32]

Gate Of Grief is admirably cliche-free and mostly excellent. [Sep 2018, p.39]

As ever with Pollard, the energy, conviction and imagination are unnerving. [Jul 2019, p.29]

Another graceful tug-of-war between sentimental melody and muscular noise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

For an album that carries such a terrible air of finality, it also feels strangely transitional. [Apr 2020, p.32]

There's nothing mediocre here. [Jun 2020, p.34]

He and the band skillfully avoid any notion of contrivance, instead bending these vintage styles to persuasive effect. [May 2020, p.28]

The net result is unexpectedly charming. [Aug 2020, p.30]

The Vacant Lots might be cool but they still like to boogie. [Aug 2020, p.39]

An album of passion, wit and spirituality that, like its title, invites us not only to evolve, but to revel in our evolution. [Sep 2020, p.30]

A darkly urgent "Saturnine Night" and "The Illuminator" with its wood blocks and linear beat pattern set the tone, but as "Red Sky" with its meaty, psych-folk swing shows, it's not all out with the old. [Oct 2020, p.31]

Its songs run more freely and push at greater abstraction, without losing melodic strength. [Jan 2021, p.27]

There's not a moment on this album when the session players intrude on the song or on White's vocal. ... It makes you forget, if only for a few minutes, that he wasn't actually in the studio with them. Instead, they simply let him tell his stories. [Jun 2021, p.26]

Bovell's take doesn't suggest new approaches, so much as reinforce and highlight what was already there. [Dec 2021, p.45]

Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner’s songs are fragmentary and unpredictable, their springy guitars and elliptical vocals sometimes coalescing into sparkling hooks, at other times deliberately abstruse; think the quirky post-punk of The Raincoats, or a country-folk Deerhoof. [Sep 2022, p.26]

While the length of the album is a little exhausting, there's no denying that this is the band's most accomplished and ambitious record to date. [Jul 2023, p.27]

An LP that's cluttered, incoherent and frequently quite brilliant. [Jul 2023, p.34]

It all seems to emerge from some vast, long-abandoned cistern, though the astonishing degree of detail contained in "Awakening" and "Vigil" rewards listeners willing to be fully immersed. [Review of the Year 2023, p.32]

Kuti plots a way forward with the high-energy "Shotan" and "Corruption Na Stealing", his message ultimately uplifting. [May 2025, p.32]

At times it's too MOTR for its own good, verging on easy listening - but who would blame these two, 82 and 73 respectively, for kicking back in the autumn of their years. [Jun 2025, p.39]

Another chip off the old block. [Sep 2025, p.31]

In looking to ramp up their sound for bigger stages, the Galway trio have adopted a polished style of shoegaze in place of the earthy charm that won them admirers such as Robert Smith. This suits the muscular new songs of Julie Dawson. [Dec 2025, p.36]

Producer Joe Henry keeps the atmosphere warmly intimate, like a slate-night jam session in a smokey club, which keeps the focus squarely on the interplay between the instruments and personalities. [Feb 2026, p.37]

The title track ends proceedings on a high, with Sheryl Crow on backing vocals, a smattering of mandolin and a semi-surreal spoken interlude in which Starr sounds ever so zen. It ends, as it surely should, with a single snare shot, delivered like the most emphatic of full stops. [May 2026, p.30]

It's all very becalming, but not quite the nu-psychedelic staging post that we were hoping for. [Jul 2012, p.79]

The fourth album finds them touting a tougher sound with the addition of a second guitar, but the strident, passionate voice of Erika Wennerstrom remains their calling card. [Jan 2013, p.77]

It's stylistically impressive, but Worden only connects emotionally when she goes for simplicity. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Enderness is more of a brooding country-soul set, with the emphasis on soul. It's also more abstract. [Jun 2019, p.24]