The curveballs keep flying through the climactic triptych - the Kid A-evoking eruption "Bow Down", the incantatory "Taxes" and the hallucinogenic "Long Island City Here I Come". [Oct 2025, p.27]

Together they make smart but unstudied pop music, as invigoratingly weird as it is instantly winning, stuffed with gleefully incompatible styles and with a broad emotional range. [Oct 2022, p.31]

All Mirrors is her boldest reinvention yet. [Nov 2019, p.30]

Natural Brown Prom Queen revels in ear-catching beats and hooks while still maintaining Parks’ mile-a-minute rate of musical ideas. [Oct 2022, p.34]

Anglo-Saxon sextet Sweet Sweet Lies dress nasty themes in sweet acoustic melodies and sharp suits. [Mar 2012, p.98]

Yes, it’s fascinating at times to be a witness to the meticulous construction of great music, but the contents of this boxset feel a mite desperate, rather than generous, and the flabbiness of its 11-minute jams is entirely inappropriate for an album that famously doesn’t contain an ounce of fat.

In short--a monumental album.

For all the ideas and juxtapositions that illuminate these songs, none feel jarring or tokenistic. [Apr 2015, p.79]

Over two decades on, in remastered form, these tracks have aged well, retaining their multi-layered, bass-heavy eclecticism, and moving back and forth between gentle melancholia and hands-in-the-air euphoria. [Jun 2017, p.49]

It’s an odd sort of idea: a trio paying tribute to themselves. But even if no new ground is being broken exactly, there’s a pleasure in hearing the old space cadets out on manoeuvres. The music of Apollo is meditative and benign, yet strangely inscrutable; a reminder that while you might be able to visit space, it will never be home.

They sound as Zappa seldom does: not over-thinking it, and guilelessly lost in the moment and in the exuberant joy of the playing. [Feb 2020, p.40]

A heroic, controlled crash landing. [May 2020, p.25]

Grief, memory and friendship billow up throughout the nine tracks. [Mar 2021, p.31]

Artists from Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Steve Earle, to J Mascis and Aaron Lee Tasjan, whose "Travelling After Dark" is a strong cut - interpret Casal's lifetime of work, fittingly as radio staples. [Feb 2022, p.37]

Feeding The Machine operates in a bold and unorthodox way. [Apr 2022, p.34]

Recalls both Erykah Badu and Arlo Parks, but there's no heavy shadowing here. [Apr 2023, p.32]

Black Bayou is a showcase for Finley the storyteller, an artist who can convincingly inhabit narratives that may not be entirely based on his own experiences, lifestyle or even beliefs. [Nov 2023, p.27]

Ranging from explosive Afro-funk workouts by Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi and Les Bantous de la Capitale to more psych-influenced stunners by Abeti et Les Redoutables and Zaiko Langa Langa, these rediscoveries are thrilling enough for Congo Funk! to deserve a place next to African Scream Contest among Analog Africa’s most indispensable collections. [May 2024, p.53]

Kim Deal’s solo debut is sonically wide-reaching yet still intimate, exemplified by one of its best tracks, “Are You Mine”. Pensively dreamy, the tune pairs Lynchian doo-wop with an alt.country twang. .... The title track is a stunner too, all swelling strings and booming brass that brings to mind Scott Walker’s avant-pop. [Dec 2024, p.33]

Paradise... brims with life and imagination, humming with the brilliant paradox of a communal spirit imbued with Ahmed’s creative imprint over every note. [Feb 2025, p.32]

Their full engagement in the creative task was never in doubt, and more than 40 years later the result compels close listening. [Apr 2014, p.88]

Down-home majesty. [Sep 2024, p.29]

Four crisply recorded shows.... A super-funky artefact. [Aug 2015, p.94]

The thoughtful intimacies of Wendy Eisenberg make for some of their potent artistic statements yet. [Jun 2026, p.29]

The title, which translates as “breeze”, is a neat metaphor for these eight tracks’ lightness of touch and calm enrichment, whether that’s shivering exquisitely in “Namopi” or tilting at Alice Coltrane’s Kirtan: Turiya Sings with “Rana”, the luminous and trippy, epic closer. [Review of the Year 2024, p.34]

Richer textures, but no luxury-studio sheen or indulgence: the expanded resources are deployed with the care and rigour that characterised her previous use of humbler tools. Her voice is so distinctive and her writing so personal that a strutting backbeat and a flying hi-hat don't affect the essential character of the music. ... Perfect. [Mar 2021, p.36]

Fed is beautifully excessive, ornamented with dazzling soul/pop arrangements. [Sep 2008, p.114]

A vivid storyteller, June approaches traditional music with a similar mix of irreverence and affection. [Apr 2017, p.30]