Work every bit as lush as that which recently propelled Rufus Wainwright to stardom. [Sep 2005, p.119]

There's still something truly magical in the wistful clarity of her voice. [Nov 2005, p.131]

An inspired hook-up that brings out the best in both contributors [Killer Mike and El-P].[Aug 2012, p.109]

Lewis has never sounded on stronger form than she does here. [May 2019, p.109]

Its humongous piledriving choruses, variously recalling Placebo, Wheatus and even Rush, are match by its gloriously knowing wit. [Jul 2017, p.112]

His seventh album bristles with ambition, merging influences ranging from hair metal and Merseybeat. [Jul 2010, p.136]

They haven't completely severed links with the past--the bruising Wonderful Life comes with a cameo from Cradle Of Filth squawker Dani Filth-- but mostly it's a bold leap into the future. [Feb 2019, p.108]

"I need to rebuild a gang spirit," Morrissey said, and you can hear exactly that quality in the album's best moments. [Mar 2014, p.122]

This most recalls their masterful Through The Trees, only with pedal steel, banjo, bowed saw and some of their best harmony vocals yet. [Oct 2003, p.104]

It's a deeply Manchester album: melodic yet substantial, uplifting and acceptable to football fan and student alike. [May 2002, p.109]

An impressive pop artefact, propelling its creators clear of the current garage-rock morass.... It's the sound, if not the smell, of teen spirit. [May 2003, p.111]

Splendid, splenetic stuff. [Apr 2003, p.102]

Despite the weight that hangs on its shoulders, Crushing doesn't feel defeated, rather it's the sound of a fearless songwriter putting the past to bed and regrouping stronger than ever. [Apr 2019, p.112]

Kaputt expresses the Vancouverite's fastidious Anglophilia, rustling up '80s pop opulence while maintaining a scruffy bohemian cred. [July 2011, p. 111]

Satisfying in every way that Aphex Twin's Drukqs wasn't. [Apr 2002, p.110]

By simultaneously preserving the intimacy and honesty that made her initial work so striking, Any Human Friend sees Hackman wholly uncensored, and al the better for it. [Sep 2019, p.111]

These are fine story-songs for any age, era or metal disposition. [Jun 2017, p.107]

Magician's Success and the Can-does-The-Normal bleep of Backstroke could be missing soundtracks to some experimental Cold War animation. [Aug 2019, p.116]

Rather than succumb to difficult second album syndrome, Fontaines D.C. have emerged frontrunners in an already crowded field of vital, important young bands. A Hero's Death is a resounding victory. [Aug 2020, p.100]

While these tracks have definitely been soaked in the dour euphoria that The Cure specialise in, The Twilight Sad are very much their own band. [Feb 2019, p.116]

There's not much to tie it to the present day, but when the template is this well tuned that's no great problem. [Oct 2004, p.129]

Similar in spirit to [Primal Scream's] Exterminator or Death In Vegas's The Contino Sessions, his third album tools up a live rock band with dance music's sonic armoury... it's a claustrophobic listening experience, challengingly thick with ideas.

Thirty-something mother-of-two Giddens's versatility is breath-taking. [Mar 2015, p.108]

He's on top form here: still damaged, still brilliant, still floating in a musical galaxy entirely of his own creation. [Oct 2018, p.114]

Every one [of the songs on] here is a gem. [Jan 2019, p.107]

Punching way above her 20 years, like a wild child Loretta Lynn, it's the sort of country music that belongs in those dives where they've got chicken wire to stop the flying glass. [Nov. 2011, p. 142]

A graceful, beautiful record. [Nov 2014, p.112]

Parquet Courts are a charmingly old-fashioned band, transmitting cryptic, collapsible songs to an anyone who can build a receiver from Guided By Voices-coloured vinyl and Pavement fanzines. [Jun 2013, p.104]

Beauty that can slice down to bone: double-edged and deep. [Jul 2016, p.108]

Before The Dawn snubs modern-day convention and is a throwback to live albums from the last century. [Jan 2017, p.110]

All life's disastrous lows are here on a career-high album. [Nov 2014, p.121]

At every stage the songwriting is relentlessly, almost effortlessly strong. [Jan 2015, p.139]

At its best, this is strangely charming, chiming pop music with a twist. At other times, the bare-boned production hampers the inventiveness, rendering a track such as Y Teimlad (The Feeling) a workmanlike Velvet Underground retread rather than the thing of symphonic beauty it briefly threatens to be.

Kozelek's less-than-euphoric vocals become wearying after a few tracks, though the band shuffle basic resources with some brio. Worth the wait, but only just.

Play's inventiveness will restore his reputation as a puck-like, maverick talent.

The few electronic beats and textures are deft, discreet soundbeds for the lush intimacies of the vocals, which slip from soothing to strident. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Anicca's luminous take on electronica shows Mandowa still prioritises quality over quantity and features some stellar collaborators. [Dec 2019, p.114]

He's equally skilled as a stream-of-consciousness philosopher or gripping storyteller. [Jul 2012, p.98]

Modern folk songs shot through with great melancholy and humour, and embroidered with bursts of electronica and instrumentation. [Nov 2017, p.108]

They nail it from the start. [Apr 2020, p.111]

This is a fantastic record, one of the year's best, but perhaps one that suggests that Murphy has said what he needed to say. [Jun 2010, p.122]

Even if... it never quite adds up to more than the sum of its parts, it's never less than a pleasure to listen to. [Apr 2006, p.119]

They artfully balance soaring interference-cloaked anthems with dreamier My Bloody-style FX investigations. [Mar 2018, p.113]

With A Celebration of Endings, Biffy Clyro prove beyond doubt that they've got the idiosyncratic sewn up. [Sep 2020, p.112]

Extraordinary. [Oct 2017, p.108]

It's well worth the wait. ... Boone's smoky vocals fit the desperation of Vlautin's mini-dramas perfectly, the band's country-soul swing evocatively solid. [Feb 2019, p.111]

Garvey sounds different, too, willing to sit with his fears rather than chase them away with optimism and charm. ... It's all the more moving because Elbow have taken such a raw, self-questioning route to get there. [Nov 2019, p.113]

The production here recalls all those beautifully arranged, rich-sounding Americana records from the '70s, a style to which Healey's mellifluous baritone is well suited. The songwriting, meanwhile, is a large leap forward from his earlier EPs. [Sep 2020, p.108]

Abrasive and addictive, the duo have together discovered a chemistry that not only excites themselves, but almost anyone else who experiences it. [Aug 2010, p.122]

Not a huge departure from the day job, but who cares if the result is as consistently enjoyable as this. [May 2015, p.100]

His best since 1995s Is The Actor Happy? [May 2003, p.100]

It retains all the allure of the most hypnotic electronica with none of the digital cliches. [Jan 2004, p.122]

While dull moments are few and far between, there's little among these 19 tracks to rival such hummable past glories as Time Bomb or Roots Radicals. [Oct 2003, p.113]

For once, the return to form tag rings true. [Dec 2003, p.129]

Even more delicate and autumnal. [May 2004, p.104]

For a band who sing so often about matters of the heart and emotional connection, much of Trouble Will Find Me sounds oddly on autopilot. [Jun 2013, p.106]

Simultaneously disorienting and seductive. [Jun 2020, p.106]

Startling, gorgeous and illuminating, The Practice Of Love sees Hval continue to stretch the parameters of pop. [Nov 2019, p.111]

Let Them Eat Chaos is masterful. [Nov 2016, p.107]

The third album is equally uncompromising, atonal industrial noise offset with melodious crooning, never settling for predictable paths. [Dec 2007, p.115]

This mix proves his skill again. [Mar 2013, p.96]

What gives the routine anew life is Knox's very modern talent for hiding barbed insults under lovely orchestration. [Feb 2019, p.112]

His fourth LP feels like a statement of defiance, strength and unabashed beauty. [Jul 2017, p.112]

Three albums in the air of quirky, mad-scientific investigation is now a constant. [May 2005, p.121]

A clever marriage of weighty words and sonic delight. [Summer 2019, p.115]

However appealing Sugar Mountain may be to some, the storytelling alone will prove too much for others. [Jan 2009, p.127]

This shows they've lost little of their sonic clout. [Jun 2004, p.103]

Such bitter pills are sugared by some stellar Cure/Smiths-style indie arrangements, making this an uneasy treat. [Dec 2017, p.109]

His voice is the one constant, a symbol of defiance against overwhelming forces. [Nov 2018, p.109]

Birgy is a rare talent who, a decade into her career, might just be due her moment. [Aug 2019, p.112]

Petra's songs have an autumnal quality, wistful yet mellow, with his voice providing the earthy centre. [Dec 2019, p.106]

All of [the songs] exhibit the unique charms of the Chicago singer/songwriter. [Jun 2020, p.99]

Mutable Set is best at its most surreal. [Jul 2020, p.110]

It's a bewitching formula. [Jun 2005, p.120]

It's a very strange album indeed. Happily, it's also a very good one. [Nov 2005, p.131]

The shimmering versions of past highlights and the exhilarating title track offer a fascinating glimpse of where Coltrane was headed next. [Nov 2019, p.119]

It's when Moorer drops her guard on Like It Used To Be, Thunderstorm/Hurricane and the self-lacerating Mama Let the World In that Down To Believing bursts from black and white into full colour. [May 2015, p.109]

Soft soul, gibbering jazz fusion and the cyber-futurism of overseer Flying Lotus still works a collective shock. [Jun 2020, p.96]

This compilation once more confirms, Wyatt demands, deserves and ultimately abundantly repays, the fullest attention. [Dec 2014, p.120]

Completists will be delighted that songs as good as Cars Can't Escape and Kicking Television have been rescued from the dead zone of soundtracks and bonus discs but there's a lot of competent Americana and superfluous concert material to get through. [Jan 2015, p.139]

Morbid, maybe, but she handles it all with dignity. [Mar 2006, p.106]

If the delivery mechanism is different, the payload is pure Bruce. [Summer 2019, p.106]

Contradiction incarnate, Yeezus is Kanye's most Kanyeish LP yet. [Sep 2013, p.103]

The psychedelic haze of second LP Kaleidoscope Dream us toned down, replaced by a quixotic take on the R&B and rock landscape that, more than anything, stakes a claim for otherness. [Sep 2015, p.113]

Thrilling and vital sounding stuff. [May 2019, p.111]

The instrumentals stay restlessly creative too, this time absorbing hip-hop cadences, wistful fiddles and dreamy post-punk. [Sep 2020, p.108]

It's no surprise they've held up so well after all these years. But it's the extra features, spread over four different editions that truly impress. [Apr 2009, p.114]

The minimalism only focuses the listener on his searching, spiritual lyrics and lovely, time-aged voice. [Feb 2020, p.111]

There is no waste here. [Sep 2007, p.96]

Hope Downs shows how jangling indie should be done. [Summer 2018, p.114]

It's a thing of grief-blasted beauty, and Gibbons brings tender pain to these words of lost children and mothers, her voice rising and falling impressively to the the occasion. [May 2019, p.112]

Quiet Signs is an utterly captivating record from its first second to its last. [Mar 2019, p.116]

While she could let her hair down a little more, this record finds plenty of sweet spots between melancholy and euphoria. [Summer 2020, p.107]

Takk... [is] a thing of... supple, muscular beauty, throwing off the stultifying air of reverence that has sometimes surrounded them. [Oct 2005, p.116]

It's a pleasant listen but never quite sparks. [Jul 2013, p.100]

Rhythmically complex yet deftly controlled. [Jul 2018, p.116]

Occasionally the vocals soften the edges, but on a record that feels as if it's trying to catch the moment of changing states - geological and mental - it's dynamism always powers through. [Summer 2020, p.104]

Showcas[es] [Shields'] typically speaker-buckling white noise. [Nov 2003, p.126]