This is a bleakly beautiful record which unfolds slowly. [Apr 2011, p.87]

It is raw, retro nouveau, deep house bangers like "When A Fire Starts To Burn" and "Stimulation" that make this a perfect Brit companion piece to Daft Punk's recent rebootings of disco history. [Aug 2013, p.69]

A move into electric guitar, Hammond organ and bass bring mixed results. [Aug 2013, p.79]

No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness. [Sep 2014, p.66]

[An] edifying fourth solo album.[Aug 2015, p.78]

Here are smoky, jazz-pop elegies, era-defining homages and bittersweet, elegantly orchestrated ruminations, underlining Jackson's reputation as a maverick auteur. [Nov 2015, p.77]

these are largely piano-centric tunes, tastefully embellished with pedal steel, guitar and subtle gospel harmonies, armed with a baroque-pop sensibility that claims the middle ground between Harry Nilsson and The National. [May 2016, p.69]

It's a document of poignant intimacy and imagination, characterised by simple melodies, devastatingly heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the odd burst of euphoric pop. [Dec 2016, p.38]

A characteristically indefinable collection guaranteed to please their larger continental fanbase. [Feb 2017, p.35]

A truly futuristic slice of R&B. [Jun 2017, p.30]

There's soulful opulence to "Sister Goodbye," a sultry tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the deathless country-soul of "No 5 Hurricane" reeks with old-school Southern charm, and the sweltering funk of "Sunrise" and the title track sound like lost Muscle Shoals gems. [Jun 2017, p.23]

Admittedly they hit a few soaring peaks, but none that haven't already been conquered. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Open Here is another prog-pop masterclass from a band reflecting our times while remaining stubbornly out of step with them. [Feb 2018, p.23]

Damned Devotion is her fifth album, and feels like a kind of reckoning, a taking stock, and a work of renewed focus. If 2014's The Classic was a high-concept exercise in soul pastiche, here she returns to her core territory, forensically charting the human heart, tracking the course of midlife love, lust and loss. [Mar 2018, p.20]

The album's best tracks are those where Carlile strides beyond the confines of orthodox pop-country. [Apr 2018, p.24]

It's a cinematic experience that reaches a peak on the immense finale of "Ugly And Vengeful." [Apr 2018, p.37]

The choices on Dock Of The Bay Sessions suggest an artist who was refining his songwriting, someone concentrating more on character development. [Jul 2018, p.38]

Few artists combine concepts of arcane and contemporary quite as atmospherically as New York's Odetta Hartman, who uses the banjo to provide melody and age but then embeds songs with dance beats and sound effects, before adding timeless jazz-folk vocals. [Sep 2018, p.30]

Pete Bernahrd's songs speak of humanity facing insanity in many forms. [Oct 2018, p.27]

The lowering, incantatory "Circles," suggesting Peggy Lee fronting a minimalist Warpaint, and the doomy rebetika of "Loving Loving" stand out, but there's much to admire. [Dec 2018, p.33]

The result is lush, beautifully busy-bodied ambient music with a roomy, lo-fi hiss running underneath, as though they're creating these sounds in a basement somewhere. [May 2019, p.30]

Sparse and otherworldly, yet powerful and dynamic. [Mar 2020, p.24]

Some tracks lean too far towards tastefully decaffeinated worldbeat. But there are soulful depths and deliciously supple rhythms too. [Aug 2020, p.33]

This albums marries Tweedy's mature emotional outlook to the workaday manners of Uncle Tupelo or the Woody Guthrue project, Mermaid Avenue. [Dec 2020, p.34]

There's a surprising warmth to his work here as he gradually fills and empties out these eight immaculately sculpted soundscapes. [Dec 2020, p.36]

A notably confident-sounding record. [Aug 2021, p.23]

His verse is relentlessly positivistic and hippy-ish (“I go forward in the courage of my love”), delivered in a conspiratorial whisper, but the highlight is the backing, which drifts between spiritual jazz, skeletal dub and folksy minimalism, all the time featuring Fairbairn’s quiet, quavering tenor sax improvisations. [May 2022, p.26]

Consistently startling and affecting. [Jan 2023, p.21]