It's a challenging, ambitious combination of words and music that becomes increasingly absorbing over time. [Jun 2015, p.103]

[Randy Newman returns] to what he does best: write and sing songs that veer from wild sentimentality to ambiguity to deep cynicism. [Sep 2017, p.113]

Illuminate is a powerful, sometimes overwhelming debut that pushes all the right buttons. [Jul 2014, p.103]

Jamie is a thrilling first step into her future. [Oct 2019, p.106]

Wild World is the right album at the right moment. [Oct 2016, p.112]

She's created an album that discovers an uncanny balance all of its own. [Feb 2018, p.109]

This 20th album is his most overt and conscious attempt to wrestle with specific demons that [diagnosis of being in the autism spectrum] raises up. [Nov 2013, p.113]

Oracular Spectacular is a triumph of conceptual ambition, a series of fantastic voyages that avoids any of the navel-gazing such notions normally provoke. [May 2008, p.138]

Given an open mind and time to unfurl, Working Out is a wholly absorbing record. [Mar 2014, p.107]

Allen keeps it reliably real. [Mar 2009, p.92]

It's been a long time coming, but Brit-rap's first genuinely huge album is here. [Oct 2009, p.104]

Suffused in African melody and harmony, the touches of house and hip-hop more decorative than foundational, it reads like Esau's love letter to his homeland. [Jun 2015, p.113]

Not an experience to be rushed, but it makes for quite a trip. [Summer 2019, p.112]

Sam Owen's milky vocals give these songs a bloodless, etiolated quality that's as sinister as it is pretty. [Summer 2018, p.114]

Like Willy Wonka, Jack White is a strange, dramatic and otherworldly figure. Lazaretto amplifies all these character traits to electrifying effect. [Jul 2014, p.106]

She's still in her element luxuriating in that crisis point where comfort is soured by paranoia. ... Relative stability suits her just fine. [Nov 2019, p.112]

The hit rate is impressive. [Oct 2015, p.109]

The two troubadours don't miss a trick bringing sepia-tinged majesty and tragedy back to life. [Nov 2016, p.102]

Z proves they have not lost the magical intimacy that touched 2001's At Dawn and '03's It Still Moves. [Nov 2005, p.127]

A swinging selection ranging from Lonnie Johnson to The Milk Carton Kids, from folk, country and blues to rollicking R&B, stripped down, hot and sweaty. [Dec 2015, p.108]

This all-original 20-tracker works even better as an intimate, end-to-end, night-drive companion than a snack tray despite Williams's often grueling vocal intensity. [Nov 2014, p.119]

You'll fall for Peter Broderick's humour and ingenuity in the end. [Nov 2012, p.90]

While lyrically Kings Of Leon remain underdeveloped, how they've grown musically. [May 2007, p.119]

On every possible level, this album is a total blast. [Jan 2015, p.128]

These songs sound as if they could have echoed around soot-stained ports and roadside taverns for generations and can still cast 21st-century listeners under their spell. [Mar 2018, p.117]

This all Peters's show as she shines a light under some very dark roots. [Mar 2015, p.114]

Wu-Tang devotees won't be disappointed. [Apr 2013, p.94]

Exhilarating debut album. Its 11 breathless tracks bottle the barely-controlled explosion of energy that masquerades as their live show, then sprays it all out again like cheap lager. [Jul 2019, p.111]