Most crucially, Costello manages--apart from the previously cited cringe-worthy lapses--to play along with Burnett’s in-soft/out-LOUD approach, making this his most engaging album in a very long time.

Those who enjoyed "Noise Won't Stop" smoochier moments will relish Liquid Love. [Mar 2010, p.95]

The sonic darings of his own recordings has clearly fueled the imaginations of The Cure's Robert Smith and Beck, although the likes of Snow Patrol and Beth Orton stay closer to the originals. [Oct 2011, p.102]

All totally fine, of course, but next time a little passion and personality won't go amiss. [Jan 2012, p.103]

City Awakenings mostly retains the meatier arrangements of MacIntyre's solo work. [Feb 2012, p. 92]

She builds on that promise [from her last album, Lights Out Zoltar!] with a skittish yet evocative album that draws on surf-rock. [May 2012, p.72]

[The album] churns and lumbers with ominous, swampy certainty. [Oct 2012, p.83]

The fizzing alt.rock of the follow-up sounds like a determined effort to be his own man. [Apr 2013, p.77]

While there's nothing wildly original on In Technicolor, the energy and attitude that relative youngsters Georg Conrad and Marius Bubat stir into their psychedelic synthpop and off-kilter electro suggests that they know the rules well enough to be able to gently subvert techno cliches. [May 2013, p.69]

In common with a lot of records called Fantasy, this is ultimately a pretty pedestrian affair. [Aug 2013, p.72]

Sleeper Agent rise to the occasion on their major-label debut. [May 2014, p.80]

Global fusion at its most democratic and exhilarating. [May 2014, p.73]

The dream-logic mixing is a strength, where folk songs from Adele Diane and Songs Of Green Pheasant tumble to the forefront, but most tracks are limp, effete and boring. [Mar 2015, p.84]

Loving, not by the spoonful but by the bucketful. [Oct 2015, p.80]

The band haven't sounded quite so spirited for some time. [Jun 2016, p.74]

It's the instrumental miniatures that impress the most. [Oct 2016, p.31]

Slight and derivative, but stylish when it works. [Dec 2017, p.29]

No one seems to know quite how he does it, but Donovan keeps going, quietly, from strength to strength. [Jun 2018, p.27]

[A] chilled collection both soothing and intoxicating. [Jul 2018, p.30]

For every blissful "Mannie's Smile" there's some Bontempi bossanova or a fretless bass ballad like "Breathing Easy" that swims in kitsch. [Sep 2018, p.30]

It's less punky and psychedelic than anything they've done before, sounding more like a piece of self-conscious, well-crafted Americana by, say Richard Hawley or Alex Turner. [Feb 2019, p.30]

It suffers somewhat from inevitably diminishing returns, in that it simply isn't anywhere near as good as their canonical records; that said, not much is. [Oct 2019, p.33]

Well-crafted compositions. [Jan 2019, p.31]

While Ward's phrasing is very much his own at times, the gambit yields the most compelling results when he best approximates Holiday's silvery delivery and weary air. [Jan 2021, p.33]

You need a surfeit of great songs to justify a double album in these attention deficit times, but Malin seems to have them by the bucketful. [Jan 2022, p.27]

It's not always on the right side of cliché but, when it works, it's glorious. [Nov 2021, p.29]

Thanks to a glut of albums by introspective piano students, there are elements in these largely reflective pieces that may seem familiar, but James Heather is still capable of subtly defying expectations. [May 2022, p.29]

At low volume, the album could serve as dinner music, but crank it up and its hushed intensity will gut you. [Jun 2022, p.25]