These sketches give a sense of how Reed’s songs would be finessed. The less familiar tunes reverse the telescope, throwing the focus on the way Reed bullworked his writing muscles, toying with novelty and genre. ... What these early sketches show is that by combining novelty and song craft with the soul of a poet, Reed could reach higher. [Sep 2022, p.42]

The most initially striking thing about Gift Of Screws is that, despite its brevity, it’s actually quite varied.

Screws Get Loose is crammed with infectious pop and arch lyrics that recall The Runaways or Shampoo. [Mar 2012, p.101]

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]

This one is more bluesy and soulful, a kind of semi-protest record that takes stock of post-Bush USA. [Mar 2009, p.88]

Heaton and Abbott's fifth breaks taboos about infant deaths on the quietly moving “Still” and nobly restores self-belief on the uplifting “When The World Would Actually Listen”. They remain impervious to musical snobbery, too. [Oct 2022, p.31]

This set borrows from those same Nebraska recording sessions [of 2017's Tomorrow Forever] with nary a weakling to show. Pounding rock'n'roll colludes with lethal hooks, while jangly guitars and soulful harmonies mesh with ethereal melodies. [Jul 2018, p.34]

It helps that Wilkinson sings sweetly, too, distancing and layering his vocals for that dewy, lost-in-the-woods effect. [Aug 2009, p.87]

It helps that The Child Of Lov, while not big-studio slick, is so imaginatively realised. [Jun 2013, p.70]

Waiting For You echoes something of The Bug's brooding, echo-drenched pressure, but where London Zoo felt dense, the likes of "Meltdown" have a beautifully spectral, washed-out quality, Robinson's sweet, soulful vocals weaving through the night in search of salvation. [Jan 2010, p. 118]

Top stuff. [Mar 2024, p.25]

All round, it's a remarkable electronic musicanship. [Apr 2010, p.124]

He pulls a few originals out of the bag. But it is the sideways eviscerations of "Ol' Man River" and "Over The Rainbow" that resonate the longest. [Sep 2017, p.35]

Skying, The Horrors' third, again brilliantly confounds expectations. [Aug 2011, p.76]

Ireland shows the breadth as well as the depth of the scene. [Dec 2025, p.37]

A beautifully composed record that feels alive with texture. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

While the programmed beats are generic, his fleet-fingered guitar work shimmers with the high-end wit that powers a batch of hooky, sharply drawn tunes. [Oct 2015, p.75]

If last year's engrossing, infuriating Blueberry Boat revealed the Friedbergers as a uniquely strange and perversely ambitious proposition, Rehearsing My Choir, remarkably, trumps it, striking a chord of real feeling alongside the pell-mell fabulation. [Dec 2005, p.110]

The angry bricolage of noises, voices, stabbing guitar and jittery programmed drums sounds like the world splitting apart, the first of a series of scarified dubscapes created by The Pop Group and their perfect collaborators. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Aided by sympathetic vocalists, Wasylyk consolidates a multi-instrumentalist's multiple interests - from New Classical to lounge jazz to lo-fi-pop - into a coherent style. [Apr 2026, p.37]

Ornery eloquence. [Aug 2023, p.34]

Self awareness and self-loss are finally balanced, especially on Portaling. [Nov 2011, p.97]

Minus the lovely, stoned air, Another Fine Day doesn't quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but there's plenty to admire. [Aug 2006, p.106]

It's less gonzoid than previous efforts and more effective for that. [Mar 2007, p.79]

Long Wave Home is full of innovative arrangements and quirky vocals, but it's equally stuffed with great songs. [May 2026, p.30]

It's a culture manifest in Alpha Mike Foxtrot: encyclopaedic. loving, droll, emotionally candid, often adventurous, but never really as alienating or difficult as the legends might suggest. [Jan 2015, p.90]

She has, it seems, reached an accommodation with herself, with her doubts and her strengths. The two worlds co-exist beautifully here, the soft Power and the raw.

Feels like the work of a man who's finally found his calling. [Apr 2017, p.28]