Clark is over 70 these days but he's never over the hill--not as long as he and his co-writing buddies keep on providing visions of Texas few can emulate. [Aug 2013, p.93]

His seventh album vibrates with fear, rage and fierce defiance. [Mar 2018, p.92]

Smother sees this singular and intriguing group still on the ascendant--limiting notions of normal music notwithstanding. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Have One on Me is a very mature work indeed, even its resonant, discursive themes are underpinned by Newsom's usual playfulness. [Apr 2010, p.90]

It fits easily alongside Daptone's funky analogue repertoire. [Feb 2012, p.110]

Ba Power is all about intensity, force and electricity. [May 2015, p.92]

This is LaVette's album, start to finish: heterodox song choices, rearranged verses, tweaked lyrics--none of it gratuitous. [May 2018, p.90]

Sangare's voice is pushed to the fore. ... It's deeper and throatier now, and wise enough not to overpower the strings--but you can still hear the youthful street singer having fun on Kamelemba and Mogoya. [Aug 2020, p.84]

Rhys excels at holding anxiety and unease up to the light without becoming harsh; Seeking New Gods keeps that balance beautifully. [Jun 2021, p.83]

Five minutes in her personal company would likely be exhausting, but for this album's duration her brain salad music is fantastical. [Apr 2022, p.82]

Anderson's lyrics have rarely sounded more transparent. ... Autofiction builds its own emotional momentum as Suede, once again, write new chapters of their story. [Oct 2022, p.88]

A musical odyssey across a real and imagined landscape of mountains and cities, dreams and memories. [May 2005, p.95]

Awesome in scope and execution, it's an album that's ultimately easier to admire than it is to love. [Jun 2009, p.108]

If the circus-field antics are superseded by darker, sleeker dance-floor shapes, it remains a volatile, persistently disconcerting record. [Jul 2018, p.93]

The youthful buoyancy of Dogrel has ebbed away, there's a chill deep into the bones of these big, bold songs. ... Fontaines D.C. sound full of new life. [May 2022, p.93]

The quality across this neat primer demands the high star rating. [Apr 2010, p.112]

This is fresh music, making exciting shapes with primitive resources, and though some will find Longstreth's keening bleat and bravura deconstructions show-offy there are constant flowerings of devastating prettiness, and when all the singers blare in unison the beauty they summon is almost overwhelming. [Jul 2009, p.100]

This whole album is a desert rock classic. [Oct 2019, p.82]

A worthy snapshot of a band at its peak. [Dec 2005, p.104]

It's as good as anything in this group's monstrous catalogue. [Dec 2003, p.120]

It's the feeling of almost imperceptible menace that makes Bubblegum so unsettling. [Aug 2004, p.84]

Under Hval's microscope, the seemingly straightforward is anything but. [Apr 2022, p.83]

At times on this impressive debut Dan Willson's alter ego attains the celestial lustre of that holy grail of lapsed evangelical folk nouveau, the first Palace Brothers album. [March 2010]

Even at moderate volume, parts of Life Metal may loosen your neighbours' guttering. [May 2019, p.95]

His violin-led handiwork dazzles and swoons more than ever. [Aug 2019, p.96]

The energetic groove-riding results prove utterly compelling throughout. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Nuanced writing, full of tender challenges to lost souls, and Shelly's warmest sound yet. [Jul 2022, p.92]

Richey Edwards has his words set to the best music his bandmates have made since their last album together. [Jun 2009, p.97]

Her pearlescent, Joni Mitchell-style voice and feel are the clearest yet. [Nov 2017, p.101]

A hell of a production. [Apr 2013, p.87]

Another wonderful, intimate love letter to pop. [Sep 2006, p.94]

Taken as a rollercoaster whole, this will blow any right-thinking rock-action believer's head off. [Nov 2015, p.87]

Stand Up blueprinted the sound that would carry Tull ringmaster Ian Anderson and his troupe through the next decade, [Dec 2016, p.105]

13 evocative songs. [Jan 2020, p.84]

There's much to enjoy in his artistic arc. [Mar 2020, p.107]

An often terrific record with unexpected arrangements, Butler's feral guitars and Davies's perfect diction. [Nov 2020, p.83]

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

Clara is neither ostentatiously glitchy, nor overburdened by its conceptual heft. [Jul 2021, p.87]

More moments of delicate beauty than before. [Aug 2021, p.90]

The whole of Open Arms is much larger than the sum of its parts. [Jan 2022, p.89]

There's a lot of it, nearly five hours' worth, but you don't need to have a working knowledge of the inside of a Lambretta to enjoy the sharp-suited sounds here. [Mar 2022, p.98]

Capture Jackson at his very best. ... These eight songs are both questing and healing. [Jul 2022, p.89]

The music is sneakily sophisticated, buoyed on a mesh of relentless guitar tracks and driven by motorik drums toward a golden pyschpunk horizon. [Nov 2008, p.106]

Vivid, touch-sensitive responses to a world unravelling. [Nov 2022, p.90]

If 2018's fragile debut At Weddings tended to become lost in the beautifully abstract mists as the Pastor's daughter explored faith and its losses, I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This... navigates using sharper corners and edges. [Jun 2022, p.84]

An immersive audio tour that acts as a kind of Baltic analogue to ambient jazz pin-up boy Jon Hassell's more equatorial excursions. [May 2022, p.92]

The group's fusion of emo-core anguish, riot grrrl rancour and bruised indie-rock is the perfect vehicle for songs channelling heartache, rage and betrayal, but the ban's true gift lies in fashioning this catharsis into well-crafted songs. [Sep 2019, p.90]

A DIY epic whose brief sorties into often spellbinding instrumental territory are pitstops in which to muse upon profound, touching or witty lyrics. [May 2005, p.95]

These intimate hushes and lilts would be remarkable even as instrumentals.... Yet it's Nastasia's voice--and the words that it sings--that really sucks the air out of the room. [July 2003, p.102]

Old Ideas remain a quietly surprising album, full of grace, full of sadness, but also, most importantly, full of life. [Mar 2012, p.90]

They've perfected their emo pop. [Jan 2006, p.132]

The whole thing is furious, funny and, not least in the toy-town conscious reggae of Health Is Wealth, deeply loveable. [Jun 2022, p.92]

Ron Mael's lyrics are elegiac, witty and forensically detailed; Russel Mael delivers them exquisitely and they specialise in ear worms. [Jul 2023, p.82]

This time the music is as rich and detailed as [Finn's] wordplay. [Feb 2007, p.100]

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

Wood's most accessible set to date is also her most ambitious, for its Byzantine approach to its concept, but also for her honesty and openness. [Nov 2023, p.88]

Images both earthy and heavenly make repeated showings, but case's vexing concern is troubled humans. [Jul 2018, p.88]

This is searching, quietly profound stuff. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Pure Comedy is quite some trip and one that lifts Father John Misty to another level altogether. [May 2017, p.93]

Sparer but equally powerful record [to U.F.O.F.]. [Nov 2019, p.90]

It's packed tight with wayward ideas. [Jul 2021, p.89]

It is Newsom's voice that provides the stunning balm to bind this strange beauty together. [Dec 2006, p.118]

A debut album of psychedelic gospel-tinged gems. [Mar 2013, p.94]

Full of understated elegance, Ode reminds us that Mehldau's is an increasingly significant body of work. [May 2012, p.82]

Heavyweight and sodden like the starry mills of Satan. [May 2012, p. 103]

Derretirse displays a consistent fondness for gauzy shimmer and hypnagogic atmospherics. [Aug 2019, p.93]

It's another sonically sumptuous milestone for the Northern Irish composer/producer. [May 2021, p.87]

It's the melodic strength of its 15 "proper" songs that's the real mindblower. [May 2021, p.81]

It's bracing, intense stuff, though the bleak wit that runs through Morris's proclamations and Dimitri Coats' brawny riffage ensures the earache is addictive. [Dec 2022, p.90]

There’s only one moment when the production distracts from the players, a brief yet clunky guitar overdub on Arajghiyine. Listeners who love a wide soundstage, however, with well-separated guitars coming at you from all angles, will be in heaven. Thankfully, the guests shun the spotlight, leaving Ibrahim, Alhassane Ag Touhami and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni to concentrate on that elusive sound, the guitars cleaner and crisper than those that introduced Tinariwen to the world 20 years ago. [Jun 2023, p.82]

It possesses a charm and innocence that's genuinely disarming. [Oct 2023, p.88]

Dacus finds the pages of her diary she just can't shake, turning them into songs that are destined to stay with you, too. [Jul 2021, p.78]

It's heavy stuff, but reliably gorgeous musically. [Nov 2022, p.82]

Truly, a glorious noise. [Nov 2003, p.128]

The idiosyncrasies of her voice are showcased to full effect in soul showstopper Call Me A Fool, with dramatic rasping and swooping that some might find off-putting, but which undeniably underlines her distinctive character. There's a delicacy too. [Apr 2021, p.80]

Gave In Rest is melancholy yet beautiful, slow spectral low-end devotional music: creating a complete world that calls for total immersion. [Nov 2018, p.91]

This is a mellifluous and hook-laden, brimming with Russell's quotidian snapshot lyrics. [Jan 2020, p.99]

Much warmer and more inviting [than 2017's Pleasure]. [May 2023, p.88]

It's also the group's most exciting, most engaged, most breathtaking album this century. [Mar 2023, p.85]

It's vintage Boards Of Canada--a beautiful, shimmering, electronic maelstrom of liquid, vintage synths and slo-mo beats. [Jul 2013, p.82]

Impressive--and then some. [Sep 2015, p.86]

While keyboardist Vijay Iyer and bassist/Moog player Shahzad Ismaily summon a succession of iridescent, jazz-ambient drones and stimulating pianistic inventions, the compelling centre here is always Aftab's extraordinary voice, a thing of languorously modulating beauty. [May 2023, p.84]

Sundown is both a bigger sounding LP than Pleasure, Joy And Happiness but also a deeper one. [May 2023, p.91]

Strange Mercy is the shimmering, expansive sound of an artist defiantly coming into her own. [Oct 2011, p.104]

Hulking beats and a cloudy, black electronic roar set the tone, but powerful sound design is the key. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Well-crafted third from the south London art pop duo with a playful spirit to match their impeccable post-punk influences. [Jul 2018, p.98]

One Beat is not an album you slip into. You pick it up, study it, twist it, put it down, pick it up again. [Sep 2002, p.108]

Sparely and intuitively performed, it's simply excellent. [Aug. 2011, p. 94]

It's Bronxie's heart, soul and natural world-inspired epiphanies that charm most. [May 2015, p.96]

There's very little talking and the music is powerful and gentle, thoughtful and utterly riveting. [Sep 2015, p.101]

Chorus probes that the light from Lush's star still shines brighter and stronger than anyone might have suspected. [Jan 2016, p.105]

The sounds of surrounding life collaborating with art. [Jun 2017, p.86]

So rich is their vocabulary of subtly shifting textures ad discreet melodies that lazy ambient cliche or factory setting keyboard predictability are entirely eschewed. [Jul 2017, p.92]

The cast of Beautiful fits with unforeseen subtlety. [Nov 2017, p.103]

R.E.M. At The BBC is not definitive history, but as a corrective to the idea that the post-Monster years were just R.E.M.'s long sweep into elder statesmanhood, it presents a fine alternative one. [Dec 2018, p.101]

Flaming Pie saw Paul McCartney critically asserting his place in the Fabbed-up mid-90s landscape. [Sep 2020, p.102]

An epic ride. [Oct 2020, p.87]

The Sunday Valley songs survive the transition best, particularly All The Pretty Colours, but the psychonaut jiber-jabber from 2014's Metamodern Sounds In Country Music album comes a strong second. [Jan 2021, p.86]