A substantive whomp on the butt to typical Nashville superficialities. [Dec 2014, p.83]

The Great Pretenders inhabits that dreamy lysergic terrain staked out by The Flaming Lips and early MGMT. [May 2015, p.77]

The mood is pensive, walking the line between downbeat and quietly uplifting, but this is among the best set of songs Finn has written. [Nov 2017, p.26]

While it lacks flashiness, the 11-song performance is both raw and cooking, reminder of the country-rock/swamp-blues power that's moved bands from The Black Keys to White Denim. [Oct 2019, p.45]

Some of the most effortlessly insightful songs in the modern country-folk canon. [Nov 2020, p.37]

The album successfully tackles the spectrum of human emotions experienced after trauma. [Apr 2021, p.23]

Brilliant though many of these musicians have been in numerous other contexts, this might be some of their finest work: a thrilling 90-minute voyage into the outer regionso f electric jazz. [Apr 2023, p.33]

Best of all might be the ecstatic, heavily orchestrated astral-jazz freak-out of "thank You God". [Oct 2023, p.23]

This is much more of an Esperanza Spalding album than a Milton Nascimento one. But what Spalding has been able to do successfully is subsume herself into the world that Nascimento has created over the last 50 years – a dreamlike realm of folkloric myth, plugged into nature’s heartbeat. [Aug 2024, p.28]

It’s all strong enough to hopefully attract listeners beyond Tindersticks’ hardy fanbase. [Oct 2024, p.43]

The beauty of Coltrane's work, and the way she could transform a personal system of belief into the highest accessible art, is striking. [Jun 2017, p.44]

The result is a meditative, wide-open form of celestial American folk music. [Feb 2014, p.78]

A set of songs about romantic love, self-love and self-actualisation whose confident arrangements sacrifice none of the intimacy of Duffy's earlier work. [Sep 2025, p.32]

The varied works of this Portland-born bassist and singer have suggested a giant talent that spills out of jazz into Brazil, R&B, music theatre and even thrash metal. This semi-autobiographical concept album pushes her deep into art-rock territory. [Apr 2016, p.79]

The results are an intense juxtaposition of the intimate and the universal framed in beguiling chamber-folk arrangements. [Feb 2023, p.26]

An open, compassionate record with a fierce spirit. [Sep 2023, p.33]

Better than simply a personal or a confessional album, The Ballad of Darren is clever in what it does and doesn't say about its creator's life. [Sep 2023, p.16]

It is quite simply stunning. [Apr 2022, p.30]

At times you're left craving some of the eerie minimalism of El-P's classical Cannibal Ox Productions. [Jul 2012, p.71]

Tales of protest, battle, compassion, camaraderie, segregation and loss are recalled in rich tones. [Feb 2014, p.83]

[A] splendid debut for Blue Note. ... Backed by a brilliant ensemble of strings, wind and percussion, Cline's guitar creeps stealthily through arrangements elegant and enigmatic, lush and low. [Sep 2016, p.71]

Songs such as "Heels Over Head" and "Van Gogh's Ear"--like Ben Watt backed by John Martyn's fingerpicking guitar--are digitally mutilated with glitchy effects and field recordings, while Emma Smith provides elegant flourishes on Violin and clarinet. There are also a few witty lines. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Cathartic in its honesty but no less depressing for that. [Mar 2019, p.33]

It's as stylistically free as any GAM record - and as exquisite. [Oct 2020, p.32]

These songs feel as if they were written on the fly (which most of them were), their sense of immediacy reflected in the use of skittery acoustic guitar, banjo, and rattling piano. Slim's voice is geared to match. [Feb 2021, p.26]

Layered with cryptic clues, poetic quotes and fragmentary vocal loops, this lush electronic jazz odyssey is an unorthodox curio but consistently rewarding. [May 2021, p.33]

It’s a wonderfully tactile set, pared back to just fingerpicked guitar and voices, their verité approach welcoming informal chatter and ambient sounds of the surrounding high desert. [Aug 2021, p.28]

At its best here, this produces minor masterpieces like the shimmering romance of "The First Day" or "Circles In The Firing Line," a lithe and bristling combination of John Grant and John Misty. [Sep 2021, p.35]