Brilliantly executed with Shirley Bassey-like surety in an arresting, always distinctive, lyrical voice. [Mar 2024, p.89]

Lyricwise everything is simple, ready for sing-along consumption and sometimes you can almost visualise that bouncing ball heading a long the bottom of some YouTube screen. [Feb 2010, p. 95]

Three albums in, and King is still full of surprises. [May 2024, p.82]

Whether melodic and mellow or blown out and busy, this exhilarating ride through rock's back pages offers irrefutable proof that these Nordic giants are currently operating at the peak of their powers. [Jun 2014, p.94]

Bella Hardy takes a bold leap of faith on her third album, devoted entirely to a rich songwriting talent only hinted at on her previous two. [Jun 2011, p.103]

Hook-packed mini-album, direct first-person narratives are sung with knowing sweetness over sunny guitar classicism. [Sep 2017, p.96]

This crisp, Rick Rubin-produced outing packs away a machine that was well-oiled to the last. [Jan. 2001, p.107]

Universal Truths is not as raw overall as GBV's earliest efforts, but it seems much closer to their wonderfully chaotic live sound than the last couple of records have. [July 2002, p.104]

These are his silkiest arrangements yet, but shadowy undercurrents ensure the tension never lets up. [Jun 2011, p.104]

[The Selecter] haven't sounded so energised since their 1979 debut, Too Much Pressure. [Nov 2017, p.100]

It could all be too cute for its own good but some inspired darker moments elevate the whole to the level of a Raymond Carver short story collection set to music by Joan Of Arc-era OMD. [Nov 2018, p.90]

A poetic, typically untethered set within bouzouki pecks and mellotron complement Roy's latest voyage into open-tuned land. [Oct 2013, p.90]

[Illuminates] Nash's own cosmic poetry, crunching guitars and swooning pedal steel. [Dec 2015, p.94]

Like a wonderous and very clever piece of musical brain onomatopoeia. [Aug 2023, p.84]

A messy, eccentric triumph. [Aug 2006, p.98]

An engaging, rewarding whole [that] speaks volumes about the breadth of both of his imagination and compositional agility. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr displays the kind of tidy time and delirious brushwork you might have thought went out with Ed Thigpen, while McBride drives the whole with a mighty, old-school righteousness. [Dec 2013, p.87]

This promises to be a hard one to beat for fire and fury. Fela would be very proud. [Apr 2018, p.92]

Its music delivered with an understated, glacial splendour. [Jan 2014, p.97]

It took the reformation of Three Hypnotics, his first band, to get his groove back. It's fully maintained on this second RM album, in gale force determination, resolution and incision. [Apr 2019, p.95]

While autumnal gems like Rabbit chime with recent months' universal experience of isolation and inertia, Earth Trip also mirrors the salvation many have found in nature, its gentle, J.J. Cale-esque country-rock tempos evocative of restorative rustic rambling. [Jun 2021, p.82]

Despite their meticulous craft, these songs don't feel like curated artefacts--they feel raw, unquiet, still moving. Vulnicura might tell an old story, but it still feels new. [Apr 2015, p.87]

Lovely vocals from both Mitchell and Johnson and a mellow, timeless mood. [Nov 2022, p.87]

Geographic's signature--naive oreintal pop meets introverted occidental indie--is bewitchingly realised here in 12 gossamer songs. [Nov 2009, p.101]

Where Dizzee Rascal's deliberately diverse third album "Maths & English" found him flirting with more mainstream pop styles, this leaner, punchier fourth record comsummates that union to entirely gratisfying effect. [Oct 2009, p.96]

However distinguished the guests, though, there's no doubt who the commanding presence is. [May 2012, p.82]

Visionary, exhausting, Dusk To Dawn is an extraordinary experience. [Jun 2019, p.95]

Longstreth still doesn't make it easy on the listener with his frenetic arrangements. But, this time around, the sense of plainly expressed emotions is strong. [Aug 2018, p.91]

Sets a high bar. But she clears it, with soulful, oddball, Jersey-girl-in-Nashville aplomb. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Seven Dials reminds us of the joy Frame finds in craft, its grateful rallentando endings, plum chord-voicing and exquisitely sung choruses elevating a work that seems part break-up album, part understated redemption story. [Jun 2014, p.94]

Even playing it straight, Houck produces songs that skitter round your peripheral vision, hide in the back of your mind, their outlaw mental state playing hide-and-seek behind the classic rock curtains. [June 2010, p. 90]

It's an entirely cohesive record, brimming with energy, invention, humour, lived experience, nifty playing and earwormy melodies: all things that make up a great debut album. [Jul 2024, p.88]

Groovy and moving, in all the right directions. [Oct 2019, p.88]

Tackling eight traditional songs, he plays Just A Close Walk With Thee and Old Rugged Cross relatively straight, but turns the likes of We Shall Rise and Are You Washed In Blood? into glorious Southern boogie, replete with screaming guitar solos. [Mar 2022, p.82]

[A] queasy mix of super-sharp realism, clammy surrealism and elegant melody. [Feb 2005, p.98]

An uncomfortable listen, especially the Big Star's Third-esque When I Think Of You, but also an album imbued with acceptance and dignity. [Nov 2019, p.93]

His most lyrically sharp and melodically inspired material in years. [Jul 2005, p.99]

By this double alum's end, it feels like a breakthrough in every way, the sound of an artist who has not only forged on, but also hit a glorious peak. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Younghusband's second LP pushes bittersweet melodies from under a reverb rug. [Dec 2015, p.94]

Moby Dick's cast-of-thousands approach actually makes it feel more like a smart, funny musical without a stage. [Mar 2020, p.95]

It's Lynn's show, and she and the band are on fine form. [Apr 2021, p.81]

Limber, spacey music, pitched somewhere between jazz, funk and ambience, in the company of an innovative new class of sessioners. [May 2021, p.87]

Born To Sing is a return to classic form. [Nov 2012, p.86]

A succession of sprawling mini-epics--throbbing with energy, insidious basslines and pulsing chords--prevail. [Mar 2016, p.95]

At once as snug as a velvet quilt in a log cabin, yet as challenging and testing as modern architecture, VII is a signpost to a whole new direction for Americana. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Restless, relentless, righteous: this guru of the primeval groove is once more helming an exceptional rock'n'roll band. [July 2008, p.108]

A breathy soundworld throbs with chillout opportunity and toggles toothache-sweet grunge buzz, Laurel canyon lilt and skyward soundtrack The Last man On Earth. Alive with confessional ideas. [Jul 2021, p.80]

There's an appealing stealth and positivity to Ron's writing here. [Jun 2017, p.91]

Twisting the familiar sounds into altogether more challenging forms. [Jul 2020, p.84]

The sounds that Volker Bertelmann creates with(in) a piano is astonishing. [Oct 2008, p.112]

The result is a collage of several kinds of classic U2 album, one that has the beauty of their panoramic '80s Eno/Lanois recordings plus the synthetic experimentation andd dalliances with pop merriment which revolutionized the band's modus operandi from "Achtung Baby" onwards. [Apr 2009, p.96]

More than the sum of its parts, the whole is wonderfully fresh and quite lovely. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Tantalizing use of spare and mostly intelligible, always unsettling lyrics. [Apr 2015, p.98]

If anything, it's darker [than Fenster's debut album], like clotted blood. [Apr 2014, p.97]

This is a sumptuous and personal record capturing universal human themes of hope, fortitude and loss. [Jul 2018, p.95]

songdreaming is by no means perfect; Lee’s version of Black Dog And Sheep Crook comes on a little too much like Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, and his Anglicisation of Robert Burns ballad Aye Walking Oh feels a bit unnecessary. However, Lee does unaffected loveliness very well (case in point: the closing Sweet Girl McRee), and his intense empathy – for the bees, the trees, the birdies and his fellow man – shines through. [Apr 2024, p.80]

All quite stunning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Garvey's lyricism is elevated by the subtle complexity of the music, clarinets, choral voices and churchy keyboards whispering through the vents of these sons, causing a quiet stir. [Dec 2021, p.86]

There's something disarmingly joyous about it with only hints of the darker music that they also create. [Oct 2016, p.99]

The reference points suggest Cerebral Ballzy care little for innovation, but they've nevertheless created the best US punk debut for some time. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Booker's unique sound is a taste worth acquiring. [Sep 2014, p.91]

MacIntyre's creativity is clearly in full flower. [Nov 2018, p.90]

The box set's main selling point is the inclusion of a completely different version of Never Let Me Down, recorded posthumously. [Nov 2018, p.100]

It's easy to see why those indie luminaries were so deeply seduced by Acetone's languid and ever-so lovely drawing together of Doug Yule-era Velvets, Spiritualized and Low. [Oct 2017, p.106]

While relatively straitlaced on hooky earworms Good Mood and Hexagons, it vanishes into a netherworld of hypnotic minimalism amid Tol Circle's warped Mantovani exotica and the title-track's spaced-out disco frug. [Jan 2020, p.91]

The results are equal parts beautiful and unsettling. [Feb 2017, p.95]

Minor caveats notwithstanding, at its best One Breath is, indeed, breathtaking, and an undeniable upgrade on its much-vaunted predecessor. [Nov 2013, p.87]

The result is an album of eminently listenable sonic frontierism, and Butler's most accessible work in years. [Dec 2018, p.89]

The whole album is characterised by a subtle, all-pervading sense of menace that superbly offsets Campbell's snow-pure vocals and sparsely psychedelic orchestration. [Dec 2006, p.104]

Dark humour and combustive noise are proven fine bedfellows, and Flat Worms will soon have you slam-dancing as the planet burns. [May 2020, p.86]

Humanity's end sounds grim; but beautifully rendered. [Jul 2021, p.90]

A very fine album. [May 2019, p.94]

Oldham's typically weary, wavering larynx is rendered imperious as it rises Lazarus-like from the wind-tanned dronescapes and rasping harmonues of an epic 'Cursed Sleep,' while a mistily brooding 'Ain't You Wealthy? Ain't You Wise?' finds him deploying unlikely falsetto whoops a la springsteen. [Nov 2008, p.110]

His third album, with its surprisingly upbeat title, makes good on the escalating promise of his previous releases. [May 2009, p.110]

Music that is dizzying beautiful, but never precious. [Oct 2021, p.88]

Her jazzy instincts and surreal lyrics perfectly offset the music's mosaic minimalism. [Sep 2009, p.92]

His gospel-tinged solo debut withstands most Levon Helm comparisons you may care to throw its way. [May 2012, p.87]

By embracing the space between, Taylor has created a meditative, magical record. [Oct 2021, p.91]

With its stark arrangements, glimpses of social disintegration, and thirtysomething neuroses (see I Need A Mother), it really is close to a masterpiece. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

The imaginative fire still burns. [Jul 2024, p.93]

And if nothing on Killing Puritans has quite the commercial potential of last year's You Don't Know Me (a UK Number 1), it does have the same cheekily opportunistic spirit, Van Helden's sticky fingers busily probing all kinds of forgotten pop cultural corners.

It's tempting to surmise that the songwriting has improved since the Smash Hits years, but an extra CD of acoustically played hits--shorn of period production--reminds you that they were always this good. [Jun 2013, p.86]

Third album proper for San Fran psych quartet. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

Some of the purest, restorative, most unburdened music imaginable. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Dan and his cohorts craft an especially intimate and understated kind of English-born Americana that could easily hold its own in any late night session with the likes of Bill Callahan, Will Sheff or Tim Rutili. [Sep 2014, p.90]

Throughout, Earthling toys with classic radio-rock clichés, only to cleanse them of jadedness via Vedder's trademark wholehearted investment, a trick which still charms. [Apr 2022, p.88]

It's McCraven's gift to integrate radical individuals into his inclusive sound design; exuberant groupthink in action. [Nov 2020, p.84]

Heady, bodily, beautiful stuff. [Jan 2006, p.126]

Confirms her 2019 Rising Star Brit and BBC's Sound Of 2020 awards were no fluke. [Apr 2021, p.83]

Fine follow-up [to 2016's Lovers & Leavers] ... has a wider range of emotions and some new classics. [Apr 2019, p.91]

A winner from top to bottom. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Seventy-five non-stop minutes of high-end squawk and groove. [Jun 2021, p.83]

It's all carried off with the panache and confidence of a group making their first, not 24th, album. [Jun 2020, p.89]

Changes redefines the Bradley Soul sound again. [May 2016, p.87]

This follow-up to The Aliens' debut "Astronomy For Dogs" keeps the faith. [Oct 2008, p.109]

An eclectic gem that namechecks Malcolm Gladwell's social psychological musing as an influence. [Feb 2013, p.91]

From top to bottom, what a joy it is. [Jan 2024, p.88]

Badwan and Zeffira have done him [director Peter Strickland] proud. [Apr 2015, p.89]