Her latest album is a little more conventional but no less arresting. [Oct 2013, p.99]

Its wilful lack of song structure may make for a think-piece album rather than a jukebox favourite, but it's hard to deny its still-powerful magic. [May 2006, p.137]

[Olsen treats] heavy weather with an impressive lightness of touch. [Mar 2014, p.117]

Singularity is rich enough to let your mind wander through it. [Jun 2018, p.104]

It shows the music, too, is undergoing rapid evolution. [Jan 2012, p.123]

It's an excellent album born out of modern dread. He's in his element. [Aug 2019, p.106]

There's a richness here that's been absent from previous Jicks records. [Jul 2018, p.115]

[It] could easily have been a staggeringly pompous exercise; instead, it's rendered intriguing by a liberated approach. [Feb 2007, p.99]

With its prowling, piano-led menace and barely contained fury, Extraordinary Machine offers ample confirmation that Apple is far darker than your average singer-songwriter. [Jan 2006, p.126]

All Nerve is less the sound of a band trying to revisit the vitality of its youth, than a collection of musicians who don't appear to have ever lost it. [Apr 2018, p.110]

It's an album that weaves in and out of domestic life and musical ambition, and somewhere in the knot of them lies something rather special. [Mar 2017, p.108]

Fans of Four Tet and Jon Hopkins are advised to check out this master at work. [Summer 2018, p.110]

Posthumous albums tend to sound cobbled together, compromised, missing that vital spark, but this loving father-son dialogue has produced a worthy epilogue to one of music's greatest songbooks. [Jan 2020, p.115]

Where The May Queen plugs into a strain of joyous psychedelic folk that owes much to the 1660s as the 1960s, the stark desert blues of the title track showcases Plant's love of North African music, not to mention a voice that's been beautifully weathered by the elements. Who needs a Zeppelin reunion anyway? [Dec 2017, p.112]

Every song here is an exquisitely constructed, shimmering pop gem, and jam-packed with Folick's unique perspective and clarion voice. A special thing. [Jan 2019, p.109]

There's the humanist warmth and simple joy that you hear in The Beach Boys or The Flaming Lips at their best. [Nov 2002, p.114]

This is one of those exquisitely rare records on which maturity and vitality are equally matched. [Aug 2002, p.127]

Here he leads by example, creating wonderfully complex, changeable music that dares to be different. [Oct 2018, p.109]

Big, major-chord jams and subtly political messages abound. [Nov 2015, p.113]

Essential to anyone searching for modern folk's head waters. [Feb 2012, p.101]

With Kozelek's compelling ache of a voice to the fore, his star deserves to wax anew. [Mar 2004, p.113]

Playfullly irreverent and magpie-like as ever, and stuffed with inspired pop weirdness and great titles. [May 2009, p.119]

Visceral, cerebral, utterly lovable. [May 2016, p.112]

A work of baroque detail, crossing between Mercury Rev's psychedelic Americana and The Beta Band's bucolic electronica. [Aug 2004, p.110]

A couple of tracks featuring Kember's spoken word are skippable, but elsewhere such druggily joyous songs as Just A Little Piece Of Me and the triptastic I Can See Light Bend induce pleasant daydream states. [Summer 2020, p.105]

With Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons have made a career-defining album that will resonate with anyone who has ever spent a night with their head in the speaker stacks and gone home marvelling at the ringing in their ears. [Nov 2009, p.106]

The result is music any Dylan admirer should get deeply immersed in. [Jan 2020, p.117]

[Curator Paul] Morley's selection is generally spot on, but those who already own 1998's more concise retrospective Endless Love won't need this. [Dec 2006, p.150]

This beautiful, open-hearted album explores every one of its title's implications, wrapping both the blessed and the lost in its generous embrace. [Nov 2014, p.105]

This is Parker's finest achievement yet, with the lavish soundscapes and dense atmospherics often anchored with undeniably catchy hooks. [Aug 2015, p.102]

It's an experimental, fitful listen that rewards concentration. [May 2020, p.103]

Melodically subtler than Friedberger's past albums, Rebound still swings thanks to her innate, and often-overlooked, knack for songwriting. [Jun 2018, p.112]

His debut album is extraordinary. [Apr 2009, p.110]

By turns wistful, plaintive and overwrought, Solo Piano III is a fitting virtuosic finale to this Renaissance Man's excellent adventure. [Oct 2018, p.111]

Diminished by their willingness to splash about in the post-Tortoise shallows. [Dec 2003, p.124]

While it lacks the polish of a major pop album, it's not dulled by the overthought conservatism that might bring with it. [Mar 2018, p.115]

Like quicksand, it's subtle, surprising and utterly absorbing. [Oct 2007, p.98]

An album rich in swirling emotions, backed by inspired productions from electronica virtuosos Arca and London-based Jam City. [Dec 2017, p.106]

A blistering song set with the playful spirit of '80s Prince. [Jul 2005, p.115]

Everywhere you turn there is something beautiful. [Apr 2020, p.114]

With Electric, Pet Shop Boys have succeeded spectacularly. [Aug 2013, p.92]

The relentless live percussion give Frost's music the structure that makes it more than noise. [Jun 2014, p.111]

Those who think that somewhere, a liberal arts college is missing its creative writing teachers, might not be surprised this is a clever record. It's also, however, one that glows with tangible human warmth, heartbeat never failing to keep pace with its brainwaves. [Jun 2013, p.91]

An unpolished gem. [Feb 2006, p.104]

Cocker's treasurable wit and the band's seventh album have taken a corporation bus ride out for strange, poetic interludes among the trees and the undergrowth.

It's startlingly spirited stuff. [Aug 2003, p.116]

For all their generic tendencies, these are fertile minds. [Sep 2003, p.106]

Imagine if a Morrissey-style frontman--sharp, tender and taboo-breaking--was also sexual. [May 2003, p.107]

Both inspiring and inspired, Godfather completes Wiley's reclamation of self brilliantly. [Mar 2017, p.110]

This is unvarnished rock, primal and exhilarating, songs groaning with their abundance of great hooks, suggesting that El Camino may well prove to be the pair's definitive records. [Jan. 2012 p. 116]

Imagery and music intertwine elegantly on Small Plane and The Sing and if it's not up there with Callahan's very best work, Dream River still runs deep. [Nov 2013, p.102]

There's a wildness to it, a predatory snarl as it bares its teeth and chases down new ways of expressing desire, different ways of being. [Sep 2018, p.112]

It's the voice that carries it all: rawer and more rousing by the minute. [Jun 2020, p.108]

By turns impassioned, thoughtful and thrilling, it makes for a standout debut. [Jun 2014, p.117]

This third LP for the label is both gritty and polished, sung and played with the certainty of an artist who's been doing it forever and will keep on doing it until they're stopped. [Jul 2014, p.107]

Co-produced in the US by Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Twin Shadow is assured hipster status in his adopted New York home. [Jan 2011, p.142]

He achieves an almost architectural sense of scale. [May 2018, p.115]

With the exception of Bob Dylan, there isn't a single artist, living or dead, who has managed a record this audacious 30-plus-years into a career. Wake Up The Nation is that good. [May 2010, p.114]

It's lawless crashing of styles--genres mangled include FM radio rock, queasy disco and a waltz--might appear off-putting, but are, instead invigorating. [Mar 2018, p.115]

Yet tracks such as Moody, You're No Good and UFO are far more than mere sample food, and these original recordings recall The Slits given a rudimentary disco makeover. But where their British peers revelled in sloppiness, ESG's rhythm section is as tight as the JBs in bondage gear.

Heartbreaking, gorgeous and totally individual, these big-production numbers meld the different but complementary beauties of Nashville country and sweet soul while adding a dash of wine-dark weirdness.

Despite the odd bump Sexsmith could be in business at last. [Dec 2002, p.111]

Takes the first steps towards some sonic nirvana.... But overall, it's still not quite the record you know they could make. [Jul 2004, p.116]

These folk and country-tinged tunes are melodic, deft and emotive. [Dec 2002, p.108]

These songs display such moustache-twirling camp that they exert a lively pull despite the undead atmospherics. [Dec 2004, p.136]

For those prepared to dig in, it's another reliably rewarding listen. [Oct 2006, p.125]

Always an intriguing lyricist, her divorce from producer T. Bone Burnett seems to have added a bittersweet dimension to her words too. [Oct 2008, p.150]

Unafraid to be both beautiful and sad. [May 2012, p.95]

Carved Into Stone revisits their sludge-prog-industrial metal roots with impressively honed and effective results. [Jun 2012, p.100]

It's ridiculous and a lot of fun. [Apr 2013, p.100]

The notoriously repressive Ceausescu-era authorities clearly didn't know what to make of Rosca, but his music sounds fantastic today. [Jul 2013, p.109]

Effortlessly tuneful, and swathed in allusions to Greek mythology, this is classic Harper. [Nov 2013, p.108]

The music works best when combined with the lurid wit and fruity, odd sonics deployed. [Apr 2014, p.115]

The dense plot might be confounding on first listen but the MC's high-speed interplay and Younge's cinematic arrangements, recorded entirely live and analogue, make for a breathlessly entertaining masterclass in classic hip-hop storytelling. [Oct 2014, p.121]

Melodic and eccentric, this is a multi-layered beauty. [Feb 2015, p.106]

This second collection of mostly covers after 2013's Memphis embraces some of the best music of his career. [Jun 2015, p.111]

Rest And Be Thankful is as welcome as the first true summer's day in Argyll. [Aug 2015, p.109]

It's charm lies in the warm melodies Sheppard and his supporting cast coax from their mostly acoustic instruments, including marimbas and vibraphones. [Aug 2015, p.112]

While there is greater subtlety at play than when he was in Gallows, he still sounds at his most thrilling on the more aggressive material. [Oct 2015, p.104]

Here he finally found a head-expanding, mind-frazzling voice all of his own. [Jan 2016, p.108]

Their second LP is an aged-in-the-wood delight of fiddle, mandolin, accordion, guitars and keyboards texturing swinging rock'n'roll. [Feb 2016, p.117]

IN Memory he finds his most reflective tone--the hurt still keening, but distant enough now to bring a gentleness and fluidity to his thought. [Jul 2016, p.111]

Studio-recorded, the all-covers Blues And Ballads reels in his wilder live flights to pensive effect. [Aug 2016, p.114]

Earthly's songs of early-20-something kicks and empowerment prove enduringly infectious over repeated listens. [Dec 2016, p.113]

If Angelina's somewhat mannered accent, make for an exercise in second-hand Americana, Vagabond Saint has too much panache to make that a stumbling block. [Feb 2017, p.111]

[A] melting-pot maelstrom. [May 2017, p.107]

Easy Machines is ultimately more engaging, its mangled classic pop recalling Guided By Voices. [Jun 2017, p.105]

A radiant blast of cosmic rock and intergalactic electro-pop that sounds as next-level as the voice of the spaceship, the brain i n the jar, a full-force astral projection. [Jul 2017, p.105]

Big Bad Luv ramps up Moreland's passion for mainstream melody without compromising any of the heartache that sets him apart. [Jul 2017, p.111]

Business-as-usual for Jones, cranked up to 11. [Jul 2017, p.108]

A concept record about femininity that finely balances intelligence with accessibility, The Witch gets better and better with repeated listens. [Jul 2017, p.112]

Occasionally Hawkline veers off the rails, but his overall cryptic psyche surrenders its charms easily. [Jul 2017, p.108]

Only a pair of horribly grafted on cameos from Iggy Pop and Elf Kid threatens to undo the good work. Otherwise, the charm offensive continues apace. [Aug 2017, p.108]

It's a musically diverse set of songs, drawing together folk, gospel, R&B, a collaboration with Kwabs, a cover of Elliott Smith's Twilight, and reintroducing Moore's remarkable voice. [Aug 2017, p.107]

The pint pot-rattling To The Pub reflects on disappointment, while the spine-chilling Melting Man is a horrific account of putrefaction and dying alone. [Aug 2017, p.106]

A compelling new Brit-folk triumph. [Nov 2017, p.115]

With their harmonies having never sounded more like perpetual benchmark The Everly brothers, the cantina guitars and dusty, hazy lyrics conjure a world of adobe bars and lazy roof-top jams as the sun dips behind the cactus. [Mar 2017, p.111]

Depth Of Field styles the same retro sound with greater finesse and raises her songcraft game so that tunes, grooves and arrangements work all of a piece. [Apr 2018, p.106]