It's clear that Brown is still capable of being sonically adventurous even while pausing to take stock. [Jan 2024, p.27]

The Kid is a hugely satisfying example of Smith';s wholesome and harmonious vision, one that manages to enmesh the wonders of music, memory and nature via analogue synthesis with out explicit reference to the healing properties of crystals. [Nov 2017, p.38]

Imagine a jam session between King Crimson, Fugazi and '70s Miles. Now imagine it working. That's the Mars Volta. [Aug 2003, p.98]

The band's love of jamming bears fruit when they find a real groove on "Bulldozer Love." [Feb 2014, p.71]

It's every bit as immediate and listenable as it is confident, and more buoyant overall than the sombre Modern Vampires.... It's also flighty and so wide-ranging, at times it reads like a future compilation rather than the next step from a band now into their imperial phase. [June 2019, p.35]

It might just be the best record of this year, and the best of Rowland's career. [Jul 2012, p.66]

There's nothing profound about Electric Version. But classic pop has seldom sounded so much fun. [Jun 2003, p.98]

Point is a quietly beautiful, low-slung beach house record, a chill-out soundtrack to the distant sunrise over Tokyo bay. [Feb 2002, p. 120]

Despite his recent move to a major label, these songs do retain the malicious edge that made its predecessor so enjoyable. [Sep 2016, p.75]

It is, in fact, a portrait of life’s triumphs and travails, its joys and sorrows rendered in wholly compelling detail.

While Prass's gossamer tone is still light and distinctive. The moods, textures and themes, however, have evolved. [Jul 2018, p.35]

Highlights are the playfully bobbing rhythms of "Geruhsam" and epic closer "Aus Weiter Ferne," a masterful interplay of harmonic sweetness and menacing drone. [May 2020, p.32]

Not a disaster = almost a triumph. [Jul 2020, p.39]

If at times it's a little too knowing for its own good, the music itself is less claustrophobic than before. [Nov 2007, p.121]

This LP captures him very much on the up. ... A delightful heaviness to songs like "Irrational Poison" and "Sin King" that gives the whole thing real heft and drive, protecting it from whimsy. [Mar 2019, p.32]

In his communions with nature, Elverum continues the American tradition of Whitman, Thoreau or Emerson, immersing himself in hymns to the land. [Mar 2015, p.78]

Always confident in his ability, here he conjures sublime moments with "Retrograde" and ""digital Lion" before violating each with curdled klaxons, his voice throughout pitched persuasively somewhere between Antony Hegarty and Jeff Buckley. [May 2013, p.67]

A disappointing triumph of retro-goth style over substance. [Jul 2013, p.80]

Their last LP, 2014's Gamel, was their best for yonks and Nijimusi maintains that strong form. [Feb 2020, p.26]

City of Refuge finds her back in Appalachian mode though, the songs shaded with fiddle, banjo and dulcimer and borne aloft by Washburn's airy voice. [Mar 2011, p.92]

Thile is in a different class to the aspirational dabbling of contemporary music's most famous interpreter of Dowland, Sting. [Nov 2013, p.79]

The extent of [Caleb Scofield's] bandmates' shock and grief is palpable throughout the eight songs they built up from the demos recorded with Scofield. All that sadness and fury adds further turbulence both to the more melodic likes of "Winter Window" as well as "Led To The Wolves." [Jul 2019, p.26]

The third outstanding album of his career. [Mar 2007, p.103]

Mutilator is very much in the vein of a 2013's career-topping Floating Coffin. [Jun 2015, p.83]

Raw in texture but ambitious in scope. [May 2011, p.86]

A powerful example of how songs reverberate through the years to accrue contemporary meaning. [Jun 2006, p.92]

Volume 2 contains more talk than its predecessor, and by linking the 39 songs on these two discs with snippets of dialogue, the compilers attempt to replicate the mood and flow of those shows, showing us how the group broke through the barriers of formality hitherto erected between performers and audience. [Dec 2013, p.77]

This cosmic suite evokes a steamy union between Vangelis and Santana, and is Lindstrom's strongest work by far. [Oct 2008, p.96]