Terrific collection. [Mar 2022, p.49]

It’s the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Daniel Collás, as producer, who brings Jackson’s long-lost creations to life. The eight tracks here, written during the Scott-Heron era, re-emerge more relevant than ever, courtesy of a strong backing band. [Jul 2022, p.26]

Noel Gallagher, who has been writing with Weller since 22 Dreams, co-pens one of the best songs he’s put his name to in a while: a stomping piece of glammy punk called “Jumble Queen”. .... Elsewhere, Weller’s own songs are also beautifully enhanced by other collaborators. [Jul 2024, p.24]

It is noticeably better – cleaner, heavier, less muddy and filled with audacious surprises on headphones. Yet there’s no disguising the curiously wayward nature of these compositions. .... The full, six-disc boxset is an impressive package, drawing together vocal-less backing tracks, scrappy but revealing early demos and some superb 1973 BBC sessions. [Dec 2024, p.53]

Total Dive is once again remarkably cohesive. .... There’s a dramatic urgency to a lot of this music that’s sometimes distantly reminiscent of the REM of, say, “Begin The Begin”, or the wild upheavals of “Just A Touch” from Life’s Rich Pageant, perhaps the dark churn of Document’s “Oddfellows 501”. [May 2026, p.20]

The sextet's second effort is both an expression of their anarcho-punk fury and a declarartion of straight-edge commitment, but it's also a radical redrawing of hardcore's boundaries, that reanimates the genre with an aggressively intelligent jolt. [Nov 2008, p.96]

If the music and lyrics are both impressive, though, it's the interaction between them that makes Stumpwork such a triumph. They work together and against each other, pushing and pulling, fighting arrhythmically or slipping into step as the moment demands. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Tomberlin's second long-player seems to semi-consciously urge you to move along – nothing to hear here. Yet it creates its own slow-burning allure on repeated listens. [Jun 2022, p.34]

The Airing Of Grievances is one of the smartest, most joyous records in an age, channelling the spirit of other too-clever-by-half suburban punks from The Replacements to Nirvana and adding a dash of felllow New Jerseyite Bruce Springsteen's eye for detail. [MAr 2009, p.87]

Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America's greats. [May 2005, p.108]

In short, it needs a rigorous editor. [Feb 2005, p.94]

Spare, beautiful, outstanding. [Jul 2003, p.128]

An album that pores over the passing and the past with such defiant, deadpan nobility. [Feb 2012, p.78]

As always they are best when singing of brief encounters and regret. [Jun 2023, p.36]

Finn’s writing is sharper than ever, the various narratives driven less by the wordy exposition of yore than acute observation, devastating detail, by turns exclamatory, epigrammatic and grainily authentic.

Much here, like the outstanding "Silhouettes (I, II & III)," sits elegantly in a progressive tradition that draws on Teo Macero's collage work on In A Silent Way, David Axelrod's string arrangements, and Four Tet's own "Thirtysixtwentyfive." [Dec 2015, p.71]

These compositions are crammed with imaginative flourishes. [Jul 2025, p.33]

As ever, Case finds room for expansive manoeuvres in the gap between her lusty, orthodox pop choruses and droll, deadpan voice. Still a singer-songwriter like no other. [Jul 2018, p.24]

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

Overall, it's a long, strange ride, and Joshua judges ruefully. [May 2017, p.18]

Two Hands is more grounded [than U.F.O.F.]. ... The music is also rawer and more immediate. [Nov 2019, p.22]

For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.

He's made one of the great albums of modern Americana, and one suspects that a reluctant star is born.

Askew's voice and tiple remain distinctively sui generis, as does the air of fairytale enchantment about his songs of children's dream, birds and fishes, city streetlife, blue-eyed babies and brown-eyed boys. [Oct 2013, p.61]

Richter's own work sits as comfortably alongside these as Schubert and Rachmaninov, and there are further contributions from Low and Rachels, as well as Bach, and, inevitably, Steve Reich. [Oct 2017, p.52]

Most impressive is Peel's ability to take the source material and make it her own. [May 2021, p.31]

An occasional change of pace might be welcome, but the craftsmanship is beyond reproach; swings, yes, but those roundabouts. [May 2021, p.24]

Bursting with raw energy and renewed vigour. [Feb 2023, p.25]