Her elegantly emotive voice locates the dark matter in these songs about the complexities of love, lighten by sweet melodies and a stirring concoction of pop-country and honky-tonk. [Dec 2015, p.75]

Much of Broken Boy Soldiers is fired by the same liberated, intuitive spirit that drives the Stripes. [Jun 2006, p.86]

It's a mixed bag in the best, revelatory sense. [Jan 2016, p.91]

The intense grandeur... is still quite a shock. [Feb 2007, p.73]

Meek and producer Mat Davidson took the band to Sonic Ranch in Texas and gave the record a much more expansive, full-sounding presentation, a resounding and confident tone that matches these optimistic and often unfiltered emotions. [Oct 2023, p.33]

BRMC seem invincible; or back to their searing best, at any rate. [May 2007, p.87]

The vibe is darkly grandiose. [Feb 2016, p.83]

At its best, in its stoned funk and stewed grooves, there’s enough to suggests they could even fulfill their early ambition to be the "Sly and the Family Stone of Salford." Double double good.

{The album] bears many of the assured and lyrically deft hallmarks of Basher's own work. [Mar 2014, p.79]

The deep, pulled-back grooves of Critical Equation reveal the harnessed intensity of the songs and performances so deliberately that their myriad pleasures and embedded hooks will sneak up on you. [Jun 2018, p.27]

It's almost disturbingly accomplished. [Jul 2002, p.103]

Nothing too shocking, then, but their old magic surges through: you won't be disappointed. [Sep 2003, p.112]

Broad in scope, and naturally playful, this is a spectacular, fresh as the proverbial, triumph. [Sep 2016, p.73]

Though Abyss' quieter moments are plenty chilling,m Wolfe's brand of anguish best suceeds when she's out to do serious damage. [Sep 2015, p.83]

Tobin's virtuoso collaging of alien sounds is bracingly vivid in small doses, but a little chilly and disorienting over the long haul. [Jun 2011, p.96]

The result is the friskiest, most rock'n'roll album of his career. [Nov 2020, p.37]

It’s their most reflective and measured set yet, a record of personal experiences with broad-spectrum resonance for our peculiar times, still charged with the thrill of creativity. [Aug 2024, p.33]

[Haxan] presents the Stockholm quartet at the top of its game. [Jan 2017, p.23]

This is another set of brilliant, beautiful, occasionally frustrating songs themed around ideas of ending and death. [Review of the Year 2024, p.24]

Their second album manages to be full of surprises, while never straying too far from what you'd expect. [Mar 2007, p.80]

He's the kind of singer whose voice you instinctively trust. It's a resource that brings continuity to a fifth album touching on greed, death and dogs. [Feb 2015, p.72]

More often wispy and whispery in her earlier work, her voice assumes new strength and vividness here as Trappes dives deep into torch-song mode for “Red Yellow” and multitracks herself into a celestial choir for “Blood Moon”. [Jul 2021, p.34]

The standard violin-mandolin-accordian corduroy rusticity is shoved aside here and there with musical and emotional ferocity. [Jun 2017, p.34]

If nothing can quite replicate the excitement of hearing these songs for the first time, the first disc of this double-CD set makes a good job of restating the importance of The Smiths as a singles band.

Uncharacteristic moves brings an intriguing dimension to Berninger's inward-peering persona. [Jul 2025, p.26]

They continue the template of their superb I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling cassette last year. [Apr 2014, p.78]

We'll be lucky if the year yields another headphone album as sumptuous as this one. [Jul 2017, p.30]

This terrific second album from the ex-jazz singer Shah carries with it a clear air of assurance. [May 2015, p.81]