Here, the presence of a harmonium updates some lava lamp pyschedelic freakouts, David Axelrod's jazzy grooves and the feathery female harmonies of The Free Design, whose Chris Dedrick provides sleevenotes for the vinyl. [Jun 2009, p.101]

It's all hugely engaging. [Jun 2009, p.96]

It's a wonderful pop album and there's a genuinely delightful innocence here. [Nov 2013, p.69]

The likes of John Lee Hooker's "Dimples" and Sam Cooke's "Laughin' and Clownin'" are intimate, effortless-sounding exercises in sublime jazz phrasing, his voice at 73 as supple as ever. [Jan 2019, p.22]

Finn seems more at home with the melancholy Paul Simon-isms of "Little Words" than with "The Struggle," a strained attempt to get weird and wired. [Aug 2011, p.84]

Fucked Up Friends isn't that great of a departure from this year's "Eating Us." [Aug 2009, p.105]

There are still missteps--the ungainly "Chain My Name" and "Spilling Lines"--but between these sit a brace of casually innovative slow jams. [Nov 2013, p.76]

As a rule, the more breakneck the pace of these instrumentals, the less effective they are. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Saint Etienne's most far-reaching album since Fox Base Alpha. [Nov 2002, p.124]

It's arrogantly risky. That's their best feature. [Jun 2003, p.100]

Despite its DIY origins and almost hallucinatory feel, this is a peach of a pop record. [Apr 2004, p.108]

As a send-off... it's not quite the full parade. [Sep 2004, p.104]

This sounds more like the Pixies than any of Francis' other solo albums. [Oct 2007, p.83]

The surprise of C'est Com...Com...Complique is not that Faust continue, four decades after their inception, but that they do so with such inventiveness and sense of play. [May 2009, p.85]

One new track, "universal Child," fails to lighten the mood. [Jan 2011, p.94]

This is a seriously dense and elaborate album. [Nov 2011, p.94]

The sparser moments are undoubtedly tender, but the reverential glow soon dims, and the cliched cries of empowerment don't help. [Apr 2013, p.74]

It's not easy to ooze insouciant cool while pounding out febrile garage-punk, but LA quartet Feels manage to pull that off throughout this spiky debut. [Jun 2016, p.73]

Somewhere on the feral fringes of indie civilisation, Half Japanese remain kings of their own tiny jungle. [Feb 2017, p.28]

The follow-up sees them cutting all ties to their bleak kosmische past, shaping Jana Hunter's songs--which reflect politico-personal anxiety about our collective raging competitiveness, among other things--into darkly gleaming and hopeful synthpop panoramas. Hunter's rich contralto is always at their centre. [Oct 2019, p.29]

It doesn't always hit the mark, but it's terrific fun while it lasts. [Jan 2020, p.30]

Suggest the euphoria of whooshing through infinite space past astral displays of imagined beauty via a blend of disco funk, dream pop, electronic exotica and '70s highlife. [Apr 2020, p.33]

There's a flightiness that lends the album a showreel quality. [Apr 2005, p.97]

Compelling in its way, but a bit Isobel Campbell when it should be Joni Mitchell. [Nov 2011, p.81

The album sound stultifying, but this is far from the case, thanks to a steady stream of surprises and a depth of detail that reveals itself incrementally.

The emotional imprint of The Fall moves beyond the pining, wistful tones that are her trademark in favour of Sex And The City scenarios bursting with heartbreak, regret and emotional devastation.

The results are--as ever--compellingly inventive and seductively imagistic. [Oct 2011, p.100]

Disappointingly, there's a lack of biting vocal interaction between the half-sisters, nothing ti match the delectable harmonies that graced the McGarrigles or less feted Roches. [Dec 2015, p.81]