The songs here are lean, supple, confident. [May 2018, p.18]

Transfigures smoothly from one hallucinatory half-style to another. ... The playing is both adventurous and textural, and the surprising, soothing result would have made a fine release on Eno's '70s Obscure label. [May 2021, p.31]

What really distinguishes LXXXVIII is its sense of soul. [Review of the Year 2023, p.21]

Here they sound truly alive, impassioned and buoyant on their finest LP to date. [Jun 2018, p.33]

Band Leader David Moore's piano lines are more definable, tinkling through the serene textures in a way that recalls Hans-Joachim Roedelius. [Nov 2014, p.71]

Frozen Niagara Falls is still a rocky ride in places. [Jul 2015, p.81]

Droning brass, atmospheric melodies and Cross's otherworldly vocals blend to absorbing effect on the lush, wild "Ocotillo," while on "Breaking Waves Like A Stone," the vocals lift the melody out of frantic, piano-driven chaos. [Nov 2020, p.33]

Fizzing creativity is audible across the whole record. [Aug 2021, p.35]

This 23-track release is even better than its Britpop-heavy 1995 predecessor. [Apr 2026, p.37]

A set that ranges from funky to subdued. It's a sparser affair than the Tweedy-produced trio. adding only backing voices to a bass/drum/guitar lineup in which Harper's searching playing provides the principal, sometimes sole counterpoint to Mavis's earthy, heartfelt vocals, their power remarkably intact in her advancing years. [Jun 2019, p.22]

These Varsailles dwellers make records that initially seem like delicately generic powerpop, but gradually emerge as vivid, bittersweet epiphanies. [Jun 2009, p.99]

Sparse yet graceful, these 14 songs of love and loss interpret wispy folk and slow-burning country via brittle, lo-fi angularity. [Mar 2003, p.100]

A brave and beautiful album of humanity, hurt and hope from the songwriter best qualified to speak to and for his country.... A towering achievement. [Album of the Month, Sep 2002, p.102]

Her full-length debut confidently and even defiantly collides raw garage rockabilly with distorted blues and ornery old-time folk. [Jul 2016, p.81]

Coltrane, Eno and Metheny are touchstones, but Shabason's abstraction is sensual, his language emotional. [Sep 2017, p.37]

The unlikely collision between Jimmy Webb and Talk Talk that is "Hell" repping particularly strongly for his new sound. [Aug 2020, p.36]

Whether in the propulsive “The Fall” or the more delicate “Desire”, she’s rarely sounded so commanding. [Jun 2022, p.34]

It moves like a Best Of, stacking the hits up top. [Jan 2018, p.40]

The Renaissance offers a compromise between the rootsy East Coast rap he helped to define and the LP you imagine the label wanted. [Jan 2008, p.111]

A tough one to make but astonishingly realised, Fields of Reeds is further evidence that they're out there, on their own. [Jul 2013, p.65]

Eagle is as good as anything he's ever done.

She immerses listeners in the remarkably wide range of textures and timbres she explores on chamber organ, Mellotron, oboe and other instruments rarely combined in such fashion since prog's golden era. [Oct 2021, p.27]

If Heartleap does indeed prove to be the final destination of Bunyan's old horse and cart, it's entirely worthy one. [Nov 2014, p.79]

As a celebration of classic songcraft, it is as sincere as any of Dylan's many forays into traditional American roots idioms. [Mar 2015, p.65]

Steingarten combines clipped, Kompakt-style 4/4 funk with a massy dub sensibility reminiscent of Adrian Sherwood's Tackhead productions. [Apr 2007, p.114]

Like all the best goodbyes, Saint Etienne bow out on top form and affectionate terms. [Sep 2025, p.26]

The sense is of a band confirming their place as among the most enterprising in the genre. [Jan 2022, p.27]

Happily, the overarching bleakness is sugared by Wells' brisk, sometimes cinematic instrumentation. [Jun 2015, p.84]