Jay-z attempts to balance his great wealth, tough history and news responsibility while retaining his grit. Magna Carta... generally pulls it off. [Sep 2013, p.90]

After a sequence of fierce, squelching avant-R&B, Jerkins makes his excuses and leaves Brandy with some old hacks and their dispiriting, saccharine ballads. [May 2002, p.89]

LL's best album since 1987's Bigger and Deffer. [Jan 2003, p.122]

Her passion may be sincere, but the songs are a mixed bag. [July 2008, p.108]

Visceral thrills for those who like thier punk served piping hot. [Jan 2008, p.104]

Nashville's elite session men construct an intimate acoustic framework for Souther to cast himself as crooning confidant, but it all feels a little polished and polite. [Sep 2011, p.95]

It's a more anthemic, traditional and radio-friendly Feeder that greets is on their eight album. [Apr 2012, p.77]

Although the title track holds a sliver of adventure with its fizzing electronic flourishes, the absence of evolution elsewhere reveals a band hanging too tightly on to the past. [Jun 2016, p.81]

While this second effort has its engaging moments, Leftwich has stuck dispiritingly close to his early template of delicate folk with hushed vocals and lyrics about bruised hearts and rain. [Sep 2016, p.75]

Too one-speed to attain the subtlety of Zep, too constipated to really funk out. [Oct 2006, p.99]

Plaintive desert rock and gilded chamber pop with heart and poise. [Nov 2002, p.122]

They've burrowed a slick, haughty electro-pop slot between Propaganda and [Gary] Numan. [Sep 2004, p.108]

It wouldn't be wildly inappropriate to identify American Life as an early 21st-century update of Love's Forever Changes, effecting as it does a similarly eerie ambivalence with its fusion of mind-altering sonics and mellow acoustics. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Sees them attempt the same move The Charlatans made with their last LP, but less successfully. [Jul 2003, p.111]

All round, an unsettling development. [Jun 2009, p.109]

As ever, the combination of sincerity and sentimentality is overpowering. [Oct 2009, p.89]

This is in many ways his weakest since Kill Uncle. [Dec 2017, p.20]

The lovely packaging far outshines the formless and dated rumblings within. [Nov 2002, p.113]

This album is uneven, undisciplined and overlong, but much the same could be said or Lloyd's sporadically brilliant career. [Apr 2009, p.95]

The intent is admirable even if too many of the songs feel flimsy and pedestrian. [Dec 2014, p.81]

Overall, the album feels insular and stultifying introspective, despite the undeniable earnestness of Lee's intent and the passion fueling his ambition. [Dec 2011, p.89]

What Peace lack in originality, they make up for in charm. [Mar 2015, p.80]

For much of Majenta he seems content to lie back and think of Prince. [Jul 2012, p.71]

The arrangements are meticulously layered rather than stripped down, dynamic drum tattoos, dramatic basslines and an epic amount of reverb ensuring the sounds is as panoramic as the "unplugged" tag can accommodate. [Dec 2016, p.37]

Stina Tweeddale is very good at this punky Caledonian take on US bubblegum pop. [Jul 2019, p.29]

Knowing what she's capable of, it's impossible not to feel disappointed. [Feb 2002, p.120]

The bland, fist-punching positivity of "Hole In My Soul" and "Parachute" are pitched somewhere between Cold Play and The Killers, but occasionally the reinvention works. [Nov 2016, p.31]

It’s all interestingly varied stuff, although the chopping and changing of styles makes it hard to get a handle on who The Voidz really want to be. [Oct 2024, p.33]