Accomplished but seldom inspired. [Aug 2005, p.106]

No shortage of flamboyant tunes. [Jun 2020, p.27]

Something gets lost in translation in these inter-cultural patchworks, sure, but more often than not something weird and wonderful is born. [Jan 2018, p.38]

This seven-track beauty marries the bucolic indie-pop of Woods with Dungen's Scandi Drone. [May 2018, p.37]

There's the sense that primarily, they're out to please themselves, but that's of little issue when the result is a string of three-minute knee-tremblers played with excellent chops and plenty of gusto. [Nov 2013, p.76]

They've been an oddly schizophrenic beast, vacillating between sparse dronescapes and percussive rock jams conducted with primitive intensity. Peer Amid sits in the latter camp, although it constitutes both a sharpening offocus and a step up in ambition. [Feb 2011, p.99]

Today We're The Greatest boasts a gentler nature than Lost Friends. [May 2021, p.31]

This is different (from his last studio album) again, the rhythms of Afrobeat now cleved to an ambitious jazziness. [Dec 2008, p.100]

It's all uncomplicated and focused on instant gratification, capturing that ethic that made The Strokes so thrilling. [Apr 2018, p.27]

Kweli, whose wordy rhymes can often read better than they flow, sounds nimble and at ease most of the time. [Oct 2007, p.96]

[An] eloquent set of songs about absence and change. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Even at times it's over-polished, at the very least, it's super-sized. [July 2008, p.113]

The results are dark, dangerous and utterly compelling. [Mar 2011, p.94]

Lightly experimental and laced with playful wit, this is quality gear from a seasoned elder statesman. [Apr 2013, p.71]

This follow-up to last year's impressive debut, Dear, is no less musically intense or lyrically unflinching, but now Henson's quavering anxiety has flesh on its bones. [Mar 2013, p.]

There are hints of Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom, but the air of doomed beauty is Bruland's own. [Dec 2017, p.26]

More fully realised than 2014's Season Sun, this second album adheres its predecessor's summery disposition while adding new elements. [Sep 2018, p.30]

Kleyn's songs sung to a rugged, vaguely Celtic harp accompaniment with electric piano, bridge the gap between Judy Collins and Joanna Newsom. [Sep 2011, p.88]

It all sounds closer to 1990s David Bowie studio funk than the man who once went commando with the likes of Sabotage/Live and Music For A New Society. [Nov 2012, p.71]

Still square, then, but they're loosening up. [Feb 2008, p.93]

The rest of the album freewheels around American music with a virtuosity and spontaneity that belies the group's indie-rock roots. [Dec 2013, p.67]

There are some outstanding songs here, and Jagger turns in a series of performances that are their match, full of much defiant flouncing, strutting bitchiness, preening arrogance, snarling haughtiness and a typically provocative misogyny. [Album of the Month, Oct 2005, p.92]

Simultaneously dry, jaunty and eerie, As If Apart takes time to get lost in, but it's worth the effort. [Jul 2016, p.71]

If the tunes and attitude don't grip as strongly as they did in either man's era-bending pomp, both parties still sound better for getting together. [Mar 2024, p.27]

Possibly cloying in large doses. [Jan 2006, p.112]

More rock music should be this reduced and addictive--but they'll have to think long and hard about self-parody some time soon. [Sep 2011, p.105]

Uneven it may be, The Palace Guards s just as often sublime. [Feb 2011, p.90]

This vaguely "concept" album comeback mostly consists of polished jazz-pop and coffee-table Americana with faint echoes of Steely Dan, Tom Waits and Prefab Sprout. [Nov 2011, p.83]