An engagingly simple and yet sophisticated third album, full of elegant melodies, shuffling percussion and bewitching Marling-esque vocals. [May 2013, p.67]

It's like John Bonham playing with Can, or Floyd-meet-Spiritualized with a barely repressed pop consciousness. [Jul 2004, p.95]

This is good-time instrumental party music that mixes Turkish Psych, South American cumbia, surf-rock and reggae, sometimes with the poise of Khruangbin but more often with the tequila swagger of a Tarantino caper. [Mar 2022, p.31]

This linear, orderly chronicle i s a faithful overview of the studio career nevertheless. [Sep 2011, p.100]

By turns oblique, soulful, scornful yet rarely dissonant. Rather, it's one of their lovelier, more formal offerings. [Mar 2005, p.108]

Deeply hermetic then, but catchy as hell, too. [Jul 2023, p.34]

His home-recorded approach reaches imaginatively beyond glossy pastiche. [Mar 2006, p.90]

Nobody else writes songs like Treacy. [Mar 2006, p.103]

His songwriting style is pitched somewhere between Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach and early Roddy Frame, displaying a knack for heart-tugging chord changes and delicately deployed Brazilian rhythms. [Nov 2011, p.91]

Prekop's lyrical ruminations on distance and direction never lag. [Dec 2012, p.76]

Mostly, though, it reasserts Bishop's status as wide-ranging guitar master, gently amused by any such assumptions of grandeur. [Mar 2015, p.71]

Contains some of their most objectively beautiful songs. [Jun 2025, p.41]

This lolls with a neat mix of languor and subtle urgency through the kind of smart/funk The Beloved mastered 20 years ago. [Jun 2009, p.90]

At its best here, this produces minor masterpieces like the shimmering romance of "The First Day" or "Circles In The Firing Line," a lithe and bristling combination of John Grant and John Misty. [Sep 2021, p.35]

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]

Lovely, languid melodies disguise bleak sentiments on Erin Rae's solo debut. [Jul 2018, p.34]

Mehldau brings the influence front and centre, with bittersweet, often lovely arrangements of even the darkest moments in the Smith songbook. [Sep 2025, p.33]

May be the most consistent of the four albums to date. [Jan 2003, p.122]

Themes of mind control are sprinkled throughout the record, whose highlights include storm opener "Paradise," the semi-rapped title track, the funky "The Planet Of Straw Man" and closing song "Maria 63." [Oct 2019, p.39]

A deep-breathing, ecstatic joy. [Sep 2019, p.34]

It's best appreciated not as a legend's lap of honour, but for itself. [Sep 2015, p.75]

He's best on matters of the heart: "Father" is a spectral journey to a lost 1970s of family intimacy and may be the most affecting song yet in a catalog stuffed with heartbreakers. [Jul 2024, p.32]

He's a great country singer, armed with the sardonic humour of Todd Snider and the loping grace of Waylon Jennings. [Sep 2014, p.70]

Will massage the shoulders of fans of Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, Neil Young and Kevin Shields.

Orton remains a luminous presence among often monotone peers. [Dec 2012, p.75]

From austere, absurd materials, the cumulative effect is remarkable. [Dec 2011, p.76]

The band hits an altogether richer seam on the Fleet Foxes-like “Mine Forever” and the vast sweep of the string-laden title track, rooted in the lost highway myth but sounding more akin to classic Walker Brothers. [Jul 2021, p.30]

The performances are entirely unmediated, taped in the open air like an old-style field recording with the cicadas and birds chirping gloriously in the background. [May 2025, p.31]