This is thrilling, incontrovertible evidence of a major new talent in our midst. [Mar 2006, p.102]

What they achieve here is hard to get right: lush, summery music-for-pleasure that sounds effortless. [Album of the Month, Sep. 2002, p.92]

Since I Left You fuses dozens of different styles -- and over 600 lovingly reconfigured samples -- into one riotously enthusiastic, awesomely seamless whole. [May 2001, p.116]

It is Kweli's diligently intelligent worldview, dextrous wordplay and often breathtaking flow that enrapture. [Jan 2005, p.96]

There's not a single weak link on this excellent record. [Aug 2005, p.100]

A satisfying, and often very moving, body of work. [Dec 2001, p.100]

Compare this latest instalment of vivid, left-wing existentialist pop with past triumphs like Mars Audiac Quintet and Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and it's every bit as good. [Apr 2006, p.102]

This time Linkous lets his gift for fractured folk song to resonate without encumbrance from freaky noise slugs. The results are sensational. [Jul 2001, p.98]

For those new to Sylvian's work or for those who tuned out after Tin Drum, this welcome career cherry-picker serves as a perfect portal to discover some of the most haunting and beautiful music of the last two decades.

Nothing here is naive or inaccessible. [Jun 2013, p.89]

A noble addition to the Giant Sand canon. [Sep 2004, p.96]

(I)NC's pop-punky take on early Deep Purple-ish blues-rock is elegantly streamlined by Rubin's lucid production. [Sep 2004, p.104]

It signals the charged completion of a circuit, the final bridging of a gap between conductors. [Aug 2012, p.91]

The upbeat rockers certainly pull no punches. ... Better still, some gentler tunes reveal his more vulnerable side. [Nov 2017, p.95]

The Window Is The Dream initially seems opaque, but keep looking through and all becomes beautifully clear. [May 2023, p.92]

As Is Now may be his finest and most consistent record since 1993's Wild Wood; possibly even since the days of The Jam. [Nov 2005, p.100]

It's all funny, sardonic, heartfelt and loveable. [Apr 2006, p.106]

They sound joyous even when they're miserable. [Oct 2006, p.96]

The resulting fusion suggests nothing less than an Eastern Astral Weeks. [Feb 2020, p.94]

He and his band sound focused and spry over eight beautifully arranged songs produced by Jackson and Pat Dillett. [Feb 2019, p.90]

All told: here's blues, raw'n'alive. [Sep 2023, p.83]

They do an excellent if eccentric job of evoking the pixelated ineffability of, well, existence itself. [Apr 2021, p.86]

Eccentric yet accessible avant-electronica. [May 2021, p.88]

It's charming, understated and has to be heard in context. [Oct 2007, p.100]

A dizzying tapestry of rave, Chicago footwork, jungle, hip-hop and soulful pop. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

A lively fusion of politically conscious Afro-beat electro pop. [Apr 2017, p.99]

The music swings again, even if Currie's damning viewpoint hasn't lightened. [Jun 2021, p.87]

A more charming and seductive album you're unlikely to hear this year. [Nov 2008, p.116]

The surprises keep coming. [Nov 2008, p.108]

They've upped their game. [Jun 2020, p.87]

This colourful fruit ain't rotting yet. [May 2013, p.90]

It's intimate but also voyeuristic. [Oct 2021, p.86]

The group demonstrate their vocal prowess on Hamba, a relentless dance groove featuring plaintive a cappella harmonies. [Dec 2022, p.89]

Musically and vocally, this is Franti's most confident and varied work to date. [Jul 2003, p.106]

Always a unique voice, Phillipps is as refreshingly conciliatory as he is arrow straight. It may be nothing particularly new, but it's the way he tells 'em. [Oct 2018, p.90]

Live albums often give you the gist of the jam, inviting you to imagine studio details; The War On Drugs invert that expectation, letting the rest sparkle beneath stage lights. [Jan 2021, p.86]

This album is a beauty. [Nov 2018, p.93]

[Tony] Rice would have loved it. [Feb 2022, p.86]

If it has a fault, it is that its relentlessly innovative music can overshadow often superlative lyrics. [Apr 2005, p.102]

Where Kloot's self-titled second had moments of glowing, maximalist production, here the sound is pared back. [May 2005, p.106]

The album's 12 intimate essays, described as "elegies as much as songs," feel like ghostly, poignant testaments to our times. [Mar 2022, p.86]

Their best by a country mile. [Oct 2005, p.118]

Like all the best dreams. [Oct 2011, p.100]

[An] extraordinary beautiful debut. [Dec 2015, p.87]

Snares feels more like No Age's greatest hits than their fifth album. [Feb 2018, p.95]

These 12 tunes pack an almighty sonic punch. [Apr 2007, p.96]

From the vogueish cat on their album cover to the deliberate non-production, Crazy For You comes wrapped in a hipster cloak, but Cosentino is no slacker. [Sep 2010, p.98]

[This album] finds a glorious similitude between the two disciplines. [Jul 2010, p.92]

Tastefully gauzy production elevates Indian-based KK's indie-psych pop second. [Mar 2020, p.96]

They still pack a metallic, tight-as-you-like punch that's more than ready for 10 rounds with Yow's gnarled voice. [Oct 2007, p.98]

Wild abandon never sounded so inviting. [Aug. 2011, p. 104]

Intense. But the much tougher stuff here is emotional. [Sep 2022, p.86]

Blacc's wise-beyond-his-years tenor, sounding eerily alike a young Bill Withers, perfectly fits I Need A Dollar's dignified mourn. Elsewhere, he skillfully evades mawkishness or trite sentiment on the moving Momma Hold My Hand. [Sep 2010, p.106]

There's peace and a wild purity to it. [May 2017, p.92]

He and Lucille are still as one and the guitar licks come exquisite and often. [Nov 2008, p.119]

Serene, mostly, where free improv is usually abrasive. [Jul 2020, p.88]

A fitting, touching elegy for a bewitching talent. [May 2019, p.87]

Urgent, retro-futurist and profoundly absorbing. [Jul 2020, p.84]

Altogether, a brilliant and very welcome return. [Jun 2016, p.88]

Sciubba turns in surreal, lo-fi rock, delivered with the drop-dead charisma of Patti Smith and in the dark-brown tenor of Nico. [Apr 2014, p.97]

No huge amounts of new ground broken... but even a mediocre Kraftwerk album is still a work of near-genius. [Sep 2003, p.101]

Her balance of mesmerising, confessional intensity with sculpted pop instincts remains an unfailing pleasure throughout. [Mar 2022, p.85]

SpiderBeetleBee is part history lesson, park New World exploration; the familiar made strange by glistening harmonics. [Nov 2017, p.102]

Undoubtedly one of his strongest. [Feb 2017, p.97]

Haunted and intimate, Balfe's deep brogue ultimately salvages hope from the wreckage. [May 2021, p.83]

[the Lost Brothers] are most at home in melancholy autumnal folk-lands. [Feb 2018, p.99]

Over and over again, Pratt hovers on the brink of revelation, yet Quiet Signs puts down a code, that, brilliantly, it's not quite possible to break. [Mar 2019, p.89]

Might well be their strongest, most brain-mulching statement to date. [Aug. 2011, p. 106]

After 33 years of intuitive playing together they are able to show you their close-up sculpted technique, as if revealing their workings, and then do something so transcendent, so miraculous, that it causes you to believe in magic once again. [May 2020, p.90]

These 10 acoustic pieces hold a certain stillness within the variety of tempos, instruments and inspirations. [Apr 2016, p.89]

The Watsons' approach is softer, and more affecting, than wry, tack-sharp Lewis. [Aug 2008, p.114]

Wyatt has a knack of making happy song sound melancholic, but conversely brings some wry levity to the lovelorn ennui of jazz standard. [Nov 2001, p.103]

Koenig is a formidable lyricist, and behind the music's occasional larkiness lies a record of high seriousness. [Jun 2019, p.88]

Haunting, unsettling hybrid. [Jul 2020, p.83]

Delivering a deliciously unsettling and artful listening experience. [Sep 2021, p.83]

It is an easy album to like. [Apr 2012, p.85]

With a gift for creating memorable melodies allied with a strong storytelling narrative, he comes across like a sophisticated jazz version of Bill Withers. [Apr 2012, p.94]

Polar Bear remain gratifyingly dislocated from the mainstream. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Their albums from this period were a little low on magic, but this is the real deal, an organic sound full of strange, shadowy moods and adventurous and melodic playing. [Nov 2022, p.104]

He's boosted by a heart-and-soul R&B ensemble, but every hard-earned wrinkle on that still fierce visage remains in working order. [May 2013, p.90]

Kane, like his Puppets partner, is fast becoming one of Britain;s landmark composers. [Jun 2011, p.102]

There's no mistaking this advent of a genuine original, the woozy, whacked-out linguistic precision of A Sufi And A Killer resisiting all efforts at summary. [Apr 2010, p.105]

The aural palette is as wide as ever... but in the service of songs that might be sung on the morning train, under stars on a moonless night or even in the bath. [Apr 2002, p.116]

The Bravest Man impresses on a steadily rising graph as Womack's soul-soaked voice humanises the machinery in ways rarely heard these days. [Jul 2012, p.84]

Real heart pulses behind the earwiggy riffs, the lyrics tracing ideas of love from first stage to last, more nuances being revealed on each play. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Pure class. [Jun 2012, p.92]

With the excellent Roots backing her, she recasts many of the dominant black music sounds of 30 or so years ago on a set of songs which address concerns that are clearly in the here-and-now. [Aug 2012, p.92]

This is miffed and exemplary metal. [Jul 2003, p.108]

Exudes confidence as it cleverly tweaks harmonic principles and discreetly unveils its dramatic arc. [Nov 2019, p.93]

To dismiss Heroes to Zeroes as a mere exercise in rock homage underestimates The Beta Band's charm. [Apr 2004, p.102]

If Not Now... goes a long way to pinpointing just why Marling, Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne, among others, keep calling on his services as both musician and producer. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Reflective but brimming with aching melody. [Nov 2016, p.88]

This darker edge lends substance to some of Vile's best songs to date. [Oct 2015, p.94]

You have to go back to Costello, The Beat or Smiths to find a catalogue simultaneously as hummable and as disturbing as McCabe's. [May 2006, p.102]

This handsome 3-CD box contains both concerts in their entirety for the first time. [Jan 2017, p.104]

A weave of sublimely lysergic folk-pop. [Feb 2017, p.99]

It's conceived, written and designed for the loud appreciation of sweat-drenched pill-poppers at a 'nitespot' nowhere near you. And as such, it succeeds in magnificently silly style. [Feb 2007, p.100]

Well-crafted and unfussy. [Sep 2023, p.92]