Their fifth long-player finds them back at their corrosive best. [Apr 2011, p.102]

This instant familiarity is their strength but also the source of the mild disappointment that nags through the rest of the record, since it mostly amounts to variations on a theme, few of which scale those initial heights. [Apr 2010, p.116]

Teeters between over-studied perfection and heavenly pop glory. [May 2004, p.101]

Finds him in fine rhyming form... even if the beats aren't always there to back him up. [Mar 2005, p.104]

What makes it even more interesting is that the themes and execution are unashamedly grown-up throughout. [Oct 2014, p.116]

Impossibly energetic, joyously extreme and a little bit exhausting. [Jan 2018, p.114]

A move to [Spain] has imbued Rouse's songs with sunshine. [May 2006, p.130]

Not so much a wholesale reinvention as an impressive readjustment. [Feb 2018, p.112]

The Straight Hits! feels so unlike 2011's exquisitely miserable Last Of The Country Gentlemen. Pearson wrote the LP according to five songwriting "pillars" and the constraints, paradoxically, have freed him up. [Jun 2018, p.114]

Exhuasting but rewarding too. [Dec 2008, p.135]

They veer with a refreshing lack of caution from toytown techno and smart-alec wordplay t the squeaky space-hopper electro of 'Discover Your Colors.' [Aug 2009, p.104]

They rarely threaten to run out of steam. [Aug 2009, p.101]

The mood is largely sombre, quiet reflection the order of the day, although the odd striking lyric does leap out.... A grower. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Issues of assimilation aside, [sounding similar to Spoon] the songs are excellent. [May 2012, p.109]

Adding bassist Jonana Bolme has sharpened focus, but its' frontman Sam Coomes's guitar that brings a new strut to typically droll psychodrama such as "repusion." [Apr 2010, p.119]

Music Go Music are talented mimics, but Impressions still makes its own presence felt. [Oct 2014, p.116]

While the depth of the band's musicianship and production skills continues to impress, Road To Rouen feels emotionally blank. [Sep 2005, p.111]

As long as you're up for more mood and texture experiments there's plenty of interest. [Dec. 2011 p. 135]

Side one isn't bad either, even if it doesn't quite scale the same heights.... A mostly impressive set. [Jun 2015, p.103]

Given Mascis's croaking rasp this shouldn't work, but it does, because he's turned in his best collection of songs for a long time. [Apr 2011, p.104]

Its grit and graft will keep his cult following happy. [Apr 2010, p.112]

This seems just to mean lots of beeps and bloops and using a theremin, rather than any structural inventiveness or lyrical avant-gardisms. Still, he's conjured a neat package of 10 perfectly listenable songs. [Sep 2017, p.106]

It's not for everyone. It's certainly not for Blur fans of Country House vintage. Nor is it the best dinner party album in the world ever. But it's no knottier than 13 and in its own noisy way, great fun.

Blood is all about accentuating the positives, an ambitious and assured album that refuses to move any direction but up. [Aug 2015, p.105]

They appear to have tired of Love and have been listening to far more Velvet Underground. [Oct 2016, p.105]

Long-vowelled and nasal - Redman without the charisma - and with a tasty line in mortuary slab terminology, he's never knowingly caught short of a rhyme.

This fifth album doesn't differ radically from the previous four.... Newcomers, however, should start with 2003's more cohesive Transatlanticism. [Oct 2005, p.115]

There are a few missteps along the way--the attitudinal stomp of Wicked being one--but it is otherwise executed with authority. [Jan 2018, p.114]