Boldly treads a more adventurous path. [Sep 2025, p.32]

A certain gravitas is restored. [Sep 2019, p.46]

Attains new heights of intoxication on reconvening after four years away. [Aug 2024, p.38]

The entire album is a beauty.... The most adventurous album of their career. [Aug 2002, p.110]

It has everything you've come to expect from a Daft Punk album--innovation, cracking tunes, a palpable sense of its own absurdity--but this time the whole shebang's cranked up to 11. [Apr 2005, p.99]

Old-school techno beats dominate as Flür cuts a dance-pop swathe through his own history and back. [Apr 2022, p.26]

Without altering her style drastically, Orton has broadened her approach on what is her most accomplished record to date. [Mar 2006, p.94]

A fine showing. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Wenu Wenu is at last the genuine article. That it also captures the chaos of his live show is no small achievement either. [Nov 2013, p.80]

Emotional Mugger is as funky as it is twisted--a heavy rock record that truly groves in a way that heavy rock rarely does any more. [Feb 2016, p.85]

On this hometown stop with his Quartet he parallels Monk's freaky, aslant piano attack in the serpentine stutter of his alto intro to "Rhythm-A-Ning", followed by quick, clenched phrases like compressed planets. [Jan 2025, p.32]

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]

The default setting for Venn's debut album is a kind of punky Krautrock, all finger-bleeding ostinato basslines and hypnotic beats wreathed in doomy electronics. [Apr 2017, p.40]

The varied works of this Portland-born bassist and singer have suggested a giant talent that spills out of jazz into Brazil, R&B, music theatre and even thrash metal. This semi-autobiographical concept album pushes her deep into art-rock territory. [Apr 2016, p.79]

Just about every song is not what it seems. [Mar 2015, p.78]

It's frequently infuriating and sometimes amateurish, but nevertheless adds up to the most succinct introduction yet to the wonderul warped world of the Friedbergers. [Oct 2008, p.86]

Down There reveals a lyrical quality to Dave Avey Tare Portner's songwriting that's not always apparent amid the radiant clatter of the full band. [Nov 2010, p.81]

The title is Williams’ name for the world in which her music is set and it’s one where disaster looms large – dark, evocative and minor-key rich; menacing live drums and corkscrew bass hanging heavy in the atmosphere. [Aug 2021, p.33]

From A Room, Volume One manages to pull off that rare trick of sounding both fresh and familiar, as dauntless as it is consoling. [Jul 2017, p.28]

What In Colour reveals is the sheer scope of Smith's skills as a songwriter and producer. [Jul 2015, p.68]

Coombes' fourth is cultivated and considered, its detailed arrangements illuminated by Ian Davenport's muscular productiom. [Feb 2023, p.23]

Eitzel makes the songs his own, re-working them with a degree of affection and passion usually lacking from the covers-album genre. [Jul 2002, p.104]

The characters we meet in many of the album's other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. [Aug 2011, p.86]

A risk of pastiche is never far away, but Presley staves it off with energy, songcraft, cunning and a renewed, relatively streamlined focus. [Aug 2014, p.81]

Asha Lorenz's dreamy, deceptively casual vocals soften the sharp edges throughout and help foster an overall coherence even amid Cosplay's outbreaks of giddy chaos. [Dec 2025, p.36]

Midwesterner Pokey LaFarge infuses would-be moribund styles with rare vigour, though lyrical concerns are anything but nostalgia. [Jul 2013, p.77]

Wave finds beauty in the belief that all's not lost. [Dec 2019, p.35]

The Livelong Day is dark, powerful and disquieting stuff that resonates long after its final note has subsided. [Nov 2019, p.31]