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

It's those who deviate furthest from Fela's template who reap the greatest rewards. [Dec 2013, p.71]

The group's fourth, recorded in Berlin, pulls a few new shapes but a lack of any truly transcendent moments suggests a group destined to remain middleweights. [Sep 2010, p.83]

In fine and fiesty form, Auchtermuchty's Craig and Charlie Reid effectively slap you round the face with their latest batch of songs. [Nov 2007, p.116]

Lambs Anger zig-zags from the sublime to the silly. [Feb 2009, p.89]

At 14 tracks, what begins as a demonstration of impressive ambition ends up dragging. [Apr 2011, p.78]

The real problem is the corporate production--the cleaner and slicker it gets, the flatter each song sounds. [May 2011, p.86]

Long stretches of listless strumming may test your patience, but the reward is the gorgeous psychedelic folk reverie of 11-minute closer "Do Soto De Son," as hypnotically lovely as anything that they've laid down since. [Feb 2010, p.79]

His guitar and bass playing are rather more agricultural than his rhythm-keeping but this all adds to the character of his freestyle philosophising. [Jul 2024, p.39]

A set of 12 original compositions steeped in his ongoing addiction to muscular '60s blues-rock. [Oct 2018, p.24]

The sparkier La Liberacion goes some way to restoring their reputation as festival favourites. [Sep 2011, p.81]

An album of sometimes stark simplicity, West is in many places rather drab and charmless. [Mar 2007, p.72]

The sequel is at least that record's [Just Across The River] equal as he again revisits some of his best known songs. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Brun's vocals can be spine-tinglingly gorgeous and annoyingly mannered, often in the same song. [Jan 2012, p.81]

The group's ambition is admirable, but they come unstuck on the over-egged samba shuffle of "Lost Winter," while even Florence Welch might consider "Mellotron" to be a bit much. [Mar 2013, p.76]

Johnny Whitney's helium-pumped, Brian Molko-meets-Freddie Mercury squeal is very much an acquired taste--perhaps for some it will prove insufficuently offset by his bandmates' post-punk adventurism. [Sep 2008, p.92]

Her lyrics remain to-the-point, just more upbeat, with her wispy, whimsical vocals sitting snugly on top of crunchy guitars. [May 2009, p.85]

Beneath its appealing veneer this remains a work wracked with personal anguish and doubt, and any positive engagement with life is welcome in it--even if, from necessity, it has to come from someone else. [May 2011, p.84]

The result is sparkling, if substance-free, historical re-enactment. [Aug 2017, p.30]

Bratty autobiography still peaks though the clean and healthy Californian veneer. [Aug 2019, p.26]

The addition of a horn section brings pleasing texture to the likes of "Hotel" and "Revisited," but it's rarely enough to lift The Antlers out of their willfully wounded torpor. [Jul 2014, p.69]

Many of these songs also feel like polite recital pieces, stripped of high drama, so that Wilson often sounds like a shadow of himself. [Dec 2021, p.35]

It initially seems as if the moments of inspiration between self-indulgences are becoming scarcer. A bracing middle section resuces Amputechture. [Sep 2006, p.89]

When you live in Florida, it is summertime all the time, which might be why this Palm Beach quartet have developed such a seasonal vibe on their sun-spotted indie-pop debut. [Aug 2010, p.96]

Sometimes, in hunting a mid-point between noise maelstrom and Espers-style chamber psychedelia, Fields come out sounding merely ordinary. [May 2007, p.90]

Faithful and reverential throughout, there's nonetheless clear signs of Joe's own personality shining though. [Nov 2023, p.27]

It's dark, powerful and groovy, but some more variety wouldn't go amiss. [July 2008, p.90]

The poacher has turned into a sophisticated gamekeeper, plotting a course on this fine debut between pulsing cosmic electronics and trippy, after-hours pop. [Apr 2011, p.78]