Emotional debris permeates almost every song here, but so assured are producer Butch Vig's pop touch and Cooper's harmonies that these pop-punk nuggests sound as sunny as anything on their debut. [Aug 2008, p.143]

A dozen familiar tracks, minus their overdubs. [Oct 2013, p.116]

Without breaking any new ground, Glowing Mouth shows there's a bit more of them than that [sounding like Coldplay's Chris Martin]. [Mar 2012, p.112]

At times, all this loose-limbed craziness can become tiresome but like an excitable friend dragging you onto the dancefloor by the sleeve, they make it very a=hard not to join their party. [Apr 2013, p.97]

It's the orchestral pop of Red Rover, Red Rover and the others that sweep the album along. [Apr 2013, p.113]

Ridin', Porn Star and Slammin' are as disposably trashy as their titles suggest, and even the trowelled-on angst of Slit My Wrists and Whiskey In The Morning sounds like a pool party at a Beverley Hills bordello.

The debut is a mix of styles classic and unorthodox, mythic American themes and sounds overlapping with futuristic textures. [Jan 2010, p.119]

On Desire shows Drowners deepening and darkening the intrigue around them. [Aug 2016, p.111]

There are moments where the glory years are emulated.... Even so, after 17 long years, both band and audience deserve better than a wandful of magic and some rehashes. [Oct 2003, p.102]

[Johnny Lynch's] third album proper features confident, spangly pop music with beats as sneaky vehicles for stories of murder, primal blood rites and near-death experiences. [Nov 2016, p.113]

Shunning those bawdy, mike-tossing rock'n'roll tendencies of yore and aiming at the modish pop/R&B middle ground inhabited by the likes of R. Kelly, he's made what is easily his most cheering, soulful collection in years.

Into The Diamond Sun takes a fistful of seemingly incongruous influences and hammers them into something akin to pop music. [Oct 2012, p.111]

Engagingly eccentric. [Dec 2016, p.110]

His music could still use an injection of personality. [Oct 2018, p.119]

He likes to temper the euphoria with a much darker undertow. [Mar 2012, p.112]

Their ability to transport the listener to an imaginary Deep South truckers' bar in 1973 is peerless, while the deft funk-rock of 'Set In Stone' and 'Play the Fool' pay tribute to the slick musicianship and seemless meld of rootsy American music styles that The Doobie Brothers and Little Feat unleashed in their prime. [Nov 2008, p.110]

The tempo seldom rises beyond a twitch, or Buttery's voice above a murmur, News From Nowhere is warm and confident. [Apr 2013, p.99]

Another quirky, engaging curio.[April 2012, p.98]

At 21 minutes at least it doesn't outstay its welcome. [Apr 2011, p.102]

Despite moments of brilliance, at 15 songs long the self-obsession sometimes grates. [May 2012, p.108]

Not here the gliding elegance of Drive, but an almost self-conscious rewrite of that brilliant debut's mechanical pop rock. [July 2011, p. 106]

It's the vocals of Jana Hunter, an apprentice of freak folk luminary Devendra Banhart, that provides Nootropics' bewitching focal point, the group's gothic meld of gliding guitars and spectral synth noises resembling the Cocteau Twins on a comedown. [Jun 2012, p.107]

Really, though, he's at his best when he tones down the act. [Nov 2019, p.108]

This unabashedly jolly outing manages to be both simultaneously charming and irritating. [Feb 2003, p.106]

It's good in places, sporadically very good, but is no significant step up from their debut. [Oct 2012, p.113]

Second time around their disco shtick remains paramount but they've added traditional songwriting craft. [Dec 2015, p.106]

Ultimately, A New Testament is for converts only. [Nov 2014, p.115]

There is promising variation in places. [Nov 2012, p.111]

There's no doubt they're here to carouse, but beware the hangover. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Some of it is a bit too frenetic. But with Trouble On My Mind and All The Times You Prayed, The Staves' gorgeous harmonies shine out in a new setting. [Feb 2018, p.116]

While Space Gun has its moments of off-kilter brilliance, they are cancelled out by more earthbound, laboured-sounding fare. [May 2018, p.108]

On his incredibly busy album, Light, there are signs of diversification too. [Jul 2010, p.140]

The songs sizzle merrily, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and the relentlessness becomes wearing. [Oct 2008, p.139]

A pointed dig at modern Nashville's dull production line, Sleepless Nights is a collection of covers from a lost era of Patsy Cline and The Everly Brothers, Loveless's classic voice knocking pretenders into a cocked Stetson. [Jan 2009, p.120]

Things calm down in the second half; You Of All People and Join are an angelic two-step, providing a welcome respite to end the album on a hopeful note. [Jun 2018, p.116]

Touring with Coldplay have clearly done little to dim the scale of Meiburg's ambitions. [Mar 2012, p.112]

Their kooky appeal wanes over the course of an album, reminding you that sometimes cults stay that way for a reason. [July 2011, p. 106]

It loses its way in the last quarter, but not before you're convinced there's a unique talent at work. [Aug 2004, p.115]

It often feels as if Aitchison's nasal croon and counter-intuitive toplines are the least interesting bits of her own project. [Nov 2019, p.116]

When the formula gels, it can make for a potent cocktail, even if the arrestingly noirish production and twisted production often turn out to be more striking than the songs. [Aug 2014, p.112]

There are hints of Shoes' mentor Dilla in the woozier beats, and grittier curs such as Nails show where his reputation comes from. [Sep 2012, p.107]

This one is stranger than most. [Oct 2012, p.117]

With Permo, they display a self-starting urgency that keeps them up to speed with the turbulent here and now. [Jan 2018, p.114]

Sounding suitably big and blustery, it's also stuffed with lots of positive thinking and hopes for a better tomorrow. [May 2006, p.128]

Tidy enough indie pop, though the glowstick remains unwaved. [Feb 2007, p.99]

Beyond the just-add-tears euphoria it also shows a band capable of a rawness that their self-created, slightly precious, image masks. [Dec. 2011 p. 135]

Orb nostalgists will find much to savour. [Mar 2008, p.108]

A simple, joyful late-career bloom. [May 2013, p.106]

The resulting clash of classicial forms and electronics is a startling mix of chance and design. [Oct 2009, p.108]

One to be enjoyed in small doses. [Jun 2015, p.110]

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]

Selway is a songwriter still new to the task and yet already leaning in toward middle age, and the perspective he brings to writing adult rock music is both fresh and contemplatively knowing. [Nov 2014, p.117]

Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty sand Bob Dylan makes their presence felt, especially on the title track, but the sci-fi sound collage that starts No Man's Land and Forever Pt. 2 underline the band's subtle warping of the Americana dream. [Feb 2018, p.108]

Award-winning country from the school of hard knocks. [Oct. 2010, p. 103]

It occasionally delivers the eccentric, giant-chorused rock that made Faith No More so great. [Feb 2013, p.107]

The harmonies never reach the heights of say, Toro Y Moi--though Night In The Ocean's fusion of hip-hop thud and buzzing shoegaze guitars shows a welcome willingness to try. [Mar 2012, p.113]

Galoshes largely succeeds as a document of a delinquent soul finally coming to terms with his own past. [Feb 2009, p.119]

This follow-up to their debut shows more polish and a firmer grasp on rhythm. [Apr 2011, p.106]

There are rather too many old-fashioned slow songs here, and as a result, the album is predictable. [Oct 2004, p.114]

Clever, if a little monotonous; very much an LP for our times. [Nov 2019, p.112]

True, even misdirected, Eminem's disaffection sucks you in and the wholesale nihilism can still provoke shivers. But it all used to be more fun.

A smart mixed bag. [Oct 2002, p.106]

To a drumless folk palette of voice, guitar, piano and cello, he deftly blends his own compositions with covers of The Psychedelic Furs, Roxy Music and The Doors into a sweetly morose song suite that examines the heartsick mature male, post-love affair, wondering what it's all about. [Oct 2014, p.110]

Like untidy Casiopeia, it;s not all so absorbing, but the fact Ford and Shaw achieved this much in such reduced circumstances means the experiment must be considered a success. [Nov 2014, p.117]

Even when the music flags, Smith sings his way through these hillbilly anthems and barroom laments with eerie, unwavering conviction. [Nov 2012, p.111]

Three Wu-Tang MCs join forces; bring the pain. [July 2010, p. 136]

Nothing Important is madcap, abrasive and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. [Jan 2015, p.124]

Just enough texture and colour to lift his affecting compositions above the neo-classical norm. [May 2020, p.104]

What this collection leaves you wanting--and what Goldfrapp do most wonderfully--is weirdness. [Mar 2012, p.116]

The instrumentals can feel sketchy, but the vocal tracks shine. [Mar 2012, p.106]

The 41-year-old Frenchman's fourth repeats the same formula 12 times: namely, get someone from the world of hip hop/R&B to sing over a pumping house groove. [Oct 2009, p.111]