Unfortunately it ends up as the kind of glossily produced "perfect pop" you can spin a dozen times without ever remembering a single tune. [May 2011, p.77]

The remaining quintet have lent their cosmic retro-rock both better tunes and more surprising detours. [Jun 2012, p.83]

The results can be ponderous, though Franklin's melodic smarts save things. [Jul 2009, p.93]

The Monsanto Years is occasionally rambling, frequently sentimental and sometimes moving. [Aug 2015, p.68]

You can not fault the passion of the songs or the tasteful nature of the playing, but it's difficult to see what of himself, besides an admiration for Bob or Bruce, he's actually serving up here. [Oct 20101, p.101]

While something could have been made of the contrast between Francis's keening howl and Paley's guttural slur, proceedings are let down by the songs. [Oct 2011, p.95]

Pretty, but pretty vacant. [Aug 2004, p.102]

There's no denying the monstrous likes of "AO" and "Fast Seconds" are well constructed, but they're little more than assemblages of over-familiar parts. [Nov 2013, p.78]

The performances are ahead of the songwriting at this early stage, but the loping "Trojans," the rip-roaring "Electric" and the Police-like "Centered On You" engagingly introduce Atlas Genius' genetically taut sound. [Mar 2013, p.67]

The record's best moments are slow-mo funk cuts like "Laughter" and "Praise" where Jones' silky falsetto finds a sweet spot east of Prince and Earth Wind & Fire. [Mar 2014, p.78]

This new project--fronting a five-piece band made up of mystery members who apparently contacted him on spec--has reined in his more wayward tendencies with positive results. [Dec 2010, p.105]

Guitarist Hugh Harris can still finesse a scintillating riff, but derivative would-be hipster anthems with hip-hop bolt-on "Around Town" and "It Was London" suggest a band aware that their time has come, and gone. [Oct 2014, p.74]

13 avant-pop gems evocative of Pere Ubu and Talking Heads. [Jun 2003, p.96]

There are flashes of sublimity, but too often hideous flashbacks of Jethro Tull and ELO. [Jul 2004, p.102]

This conservative collection feels more like musical air freshener than any kind of statement. [Dec 2007, p.104]

Dirty Glow is packed with playful, occasionally disorienting tracks. [Jan 2013, p.80]

ZW have sensibly resisted the urge to shape their sound for arenas, the gaseous disco of "Coming Up For Air" and the darkly glittering instrumental "Elusive" underlining the poignancy that was always their trump card. [Nov 2014, p.84]

It's the usual earnestly proficient, blandly yearning fare, every song a Hallmark valentine set to a John Lewis Christmas advertisement. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Wood is in his element, delivering needle sharp licks and belting the classic, while a passing Imelda May adds some serious sizzle to "We Wee Hours." [Dec 2019, p.35]

There's still a stertility to their sound on this third album, but laced with sax, treated guitars and memorable choruses, it ranks as their best. [Jun 2009, p.109]

This mass-market music deserves more than a minority audience. [Feb 2006, p.75]

As with her best material, it's an album to lip-synch for your life to. [Oct 2021, p.31]

Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Fnk's cracked baritone is brown sugar-sweet, '5 Years Time' is a hit, and the album's Jonathan Richman-esque gawkiness makes it double endearing. [Oct 2008, p.94]

Green's songs are memorable and his subtle orchestrations effective, while his lovely, burnished, Dean Martin-ish baritone voice glues it all together. [Apr 2008, p.90]

Seems to be his regular melange of jackboot glam and electro-metal spiced up with those endearingly juvenile stabs at pretension and subversion. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Full of fleeting revelations, Calamity is as bewitchingly fractured as The Red Krayola's subversive attacks on pop/rock form. [Dec 2006, p.106]

As the album Latin music fans always hoped Santana would make, Corazon doesn't disappoint. [Jul 2014, p.80]

The Surfing Magazines offer a cinematic surf-themed perspective that adds an interesting layer to a skeleton of spindly indie-pop. [Oct 2017, p.40]