Modest and muted they may be, but after the mid-'80s bombast, what comes through is the nuance and intimacy of the songs. [Jul 2018, p.121]

Not quiet as good as 1970's Live At Leeds, but it's still a riot. [Jun 2018, p.119]

Television Themes is entertaining on every count. [Nov 2018, p.102]

It packs copious groove, Monument Valley-scale riffs, decent songs, and an Al Green homage which only lacks a Premier League singer to take it to the heavens. [May 2019, p.119]

Three Demons finds Guadalupe Plata fully charged and on devilishly good form. [Summer 2019, p.111]

A true master in career-best form. [Summer 2019, p.112]

There's timeless wit and energy here. [Nov 2019, p.111]

Sometimes, the groovier, mellower tracks dull the clarity of the MCs' densely witty lyrics. But when the pair's smart humour and indignant ire is given room to shine, as on the chilly grime of I Spy, they live up to their reputation as two of the UK's foremost rap maestros. [Jan 2020, p.107]

Even three decade on, the era's best moments resonate with invention and imagination. [Sep 2019, p.118]

A lovely, soothing aural balm. [Jan 2020, p.113]

Her crystalline, sparse voice shines on melancholic but dreamy break-up songs and dark, cinematic tracks. [Feb 2020, p.115]

Betters his 2015 landmark, Integrity. [Mar 2020, p.119]

The result is an album designed for the feet as much as the head. [Mar 2020, p.106]

An act of liberation as well as creation, it's thrilling testament to a spirit set free. [May 2020, p.102]

It coats its spiritualism in an optimism that is never less than radiant. [May 2020, p.113]

[2018's debut's] Rousing tunes and harmony-rich arrangements marked them out as contenders. This second outing delivers on that promise. [Sep 2020, p.110]

Same Emotions, meanwhile, sounds like a lovingly recreated homage to the soft rock of Journey, Toto, et al. Best of all is his deeply personal tribute to the late Jason Molina. [Aug 2014, p.113]

Memories Are Now is an inventive nine-song affair. [Apr 2017, p.112]

A poised, inventive record, designed to catch you out. [Aug 2020, p.111]

Viewed either as an introduction or reinvention, Williams emerges as a formidable solo artist here. [Jul 2020, p.111]

Personal but detached, fizzling but restrained, it's indie-pop with a brain and a soul. [Sep 2017, p.110]

As a band no one lays down a heavier groove right now. [Jan 2016, p.114]

It's a nocturnal-sounding affair--with the spectrally moody title track, the bleepy poetry of Writer and the Kid A vibes of JFK. Taken together, FLOTUS is a beautiful thing. [Jan 2017, p.108]

It's essentially easy listening for uneasy people. [Mar 2005, p.101]

It's one still stamped with his own sound, a sonic approach that, even at its most drowsy, threatens to blow the walls down. [Oct 2014, p.104]

Celebration Rock delivers more of the same good-time guitar-pop anthems about girls and night on the tiles, delivered at breakneck velocity and near-deafening volume. [Jul 2012, p.104]

Beauty made for basking in. [Dec 2019, p.114]

This is his best in aeons. [Nov 2008, p.121]

The result is a wildly primal and consistently brilliant rock'n'roll record. [Aug 2017, p.112]

It's not always easy, but it is frequently brilliant. [Dec 2018, p.108]

Live At The Cellar Door is the sound of a man enjoying his self-imposed set of limitations. [Feb 2014, p.121]

On most of Patch The Sky, Mould expresses his darkest emotions in way that make you want to shout along. [Jun 2016, p.114]

Circles showed his music was reaching new heights. [Mar 2020, p.116]

Sound[s] authentically retro without ever veering into Lenny Kravitz territory. [Sep 2003, p.101]

Another like this and people will struggle to remember she was ever in another band. [Dec 2002, p.98]

Clark had already mastered storytelling; now she's mastered heartbreak. [May 2020, p.103]

Keeping up with his often logic-defying wordplay can be a challenge. But the payoff is a startling insight into how the world looks from the inside one of hip-hop's most original and consistently inventive minds. [Nov 2019, p.110]

This is a record that demands what's left of your time. [Aug 2015, p.107]

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky isn't all cranium-crushing bleakness, just mostly. [Nov 2010, p.116]

Campbell has picked over the bones of the past and rearranged them into something utterly brilliant. [Apr 2015, p.107]

It's a well-deserved victory lap for the trio and ample proof that growing up doesn't have to mean losing your edge--or your anger. [Mar 2017, p.115]

Boundless and ecstatic, this is house music at its very best. [Dec. 2001 p. 126]

He's a terrific piano player, a gift put to exquisite use on this collection of old jazz standards. [Jun 2009, p.132]

This is high-pedigree pop-soul in the style of Costello's 1982 song Tears Before Bedtime. ... Gostello's lyrics are subtle, penetrating and often written from a woman's perspective. [Nov 2018, p.107]

The Navigator feels like a mighty, empowering antidote to 2017's many spiritual agonies. [May 2017, p.105]

A sprawling, ambitious 18-track behemoth, its size and constant stylistic shifts belies its cohesiveness. [Nov 2018, p.106]

Though rhythmically powerful, it's Hutchings's fluttering, forceful sax that is the totem around which this album prances with energy and adventure. And it's a blast. [May 2019, p.108]

A musical vigil primed to cut a path from bedside to festival stage. [Dec 2009, p. 111]

Beautiful and inscrutable, it runs very deep indeed. [Sep 2019, p.117]

Classic Roots. [Oct 2006, p.126]

It's his sharp, searching lyrics that elevates 3.15.20 to giddying heights. [Jun 2020, p.106]

Konnichiwa is not just hit-packed, but almost flawless. [#361, p.115]

But for a little judicious editing, it's a pleasure we could have shared with him. [Oct 2012, p.99]

Intriguing abandoned avenues and sketches towards masterpieces. [Nov 2018, p.115]

A concentrated shot of charisma, undiluted and intoxicating. [May 2012, p.92]

One to watch. [Jan 2006, p.128]

Anyone who's ever loved a record by Midlake or the Fleet Foxes should investigate immediately. [#361, p.117]

Flabbergasting... a genuine revolution in the head. [Dec 2006, p.133]

Ellison's reliably single-minded approach will appease seasoned Flying Lotus followers, but Until The Quiet Comes might just attract new followers. [Nov 2012, p.95]

Amygdala is the sort of wonderfully slowed-down and spun-out electronica that suggests DJ Koze should get himself into the studio more often. [May 2013, p.104]

This third effort sees the band step into darker territory, blending detuned guitars and Sonic Youth-esque dissonance with infectious pop-punk hooks. [Mar 2012, p. 100]

It's seamless, silly, but seriously good stuff. [Jun 2016, p.113]

From the off, it's beguiling stuff. [#361, p.108]

Saturn isn't afraid to show her playful side. [Dec 2018, p.105]

Gargoyle takes the electronic bedrock of its 2014 predecessor Phantom Radio and kicks it up a notch. [Jun 2017, p.109]

The whole album flows like a rainbow-hued river animated by the spirit of generosity and wonder. [Aug 2016, p.116]

Idlewild have added a new "dirty bomb" to their armoury: the emotional resonance of prime Morrissey/Marr. [Aug 2002, p.128]

Seductive, breathy and forlorn, [Trebeljahr] sounds like a more ethereal Sarah Cracknell. Oh, and the songs are top drawer, too. [May 2004, p.104]

Mixed by Philippe Zdar of Cassius fame, the whole record feels bright, poppy and fresh. [Jun 2011, p.105]

Drew's work is lyrically dense and confrontational, but the music is blissfully rich and specious. [Sep 2012, p.100]

[Noody's Fault But Mine is] A career-high in an album of highs. [Jul 2018, p.111]

The sound is raw, yet dense and intense, each track a microdrama of shifting textures and competing motifs. [May 2015, p.113]

His world-weary vocals are leavened by his winning way with clinging melody and an overpowering sense of impish, but committed adventure. [Apr 2016, p.108]

Lennon would be proud. [Oct 2009, p.114]

This is a record of fiery energy, spinning into sight like a chunk of chrome off a satellite, fierce, funny and beautifully unpredictable. [Jul 2018, p.116]

There are meandering moments on Skying--closer Oceans Burning's day-trip into prog palls after a while--but it continues The Horrors' fast-forward evolution from their dark larval form into lepidopterist's delight. [Aug 2011, p.110]

Things perk up on the lovely Where There Are Pixels and the choired-up I Must be Jesus but it's one for the fierce-hearted and, as such, highly recommended. [Dec 2012, p.111]

A dazzling alloy of vintage progressive jazz and synthetic digital funk fired by unashamedly cosmic aspiration. [Aug 2013, p.106]

Underachieving alternative heroes finally come up with the goods. [Nov. 2010, p. 110]

In its elegiac tone, its gauzy production and its sense of impending finality, The Ghosts is Williams' Time Out Of Mind, the album on which Bob Dylan pondered his own mortality. [Mar 2016, p.117]

The Eastern motifs on Infinty are trite. Ultimately, it's not enough to derail this engrossing record. [Jun 2011, p.116]

An album that shows just how ambitious, fresh and vital-sounding guitar music can still be. [Jun 2018, p.108]

A masterful collection of songs from an overlooked, but truly brilliant artist. [Apr 2016, p.113]

Intriguing, unpredictable and far from ordinary. [Mar 2007, p.110]

Where Grinderman 2 does possess unique ace is its skillfully employed shot of psychedelia. [Oct 2010, p.102]

Lilac6 is as effortlessly subtle and debonair as 1999's reformation album.

Still a stunningly individual reinvention of hip hop and R&B, with great songs swimming in a murk of bizarre arrangements. [Apr 2002, p.119]

Her jazz-tinged voice soars; the music manages to be both wonderfully austere and subtly strange. [Jun 2004, p.98]

This collection is laced with a compelling sense of psychosis. [Dec 2003, p.156]

45 bonkers minutes. [Jun 2004, p.103]

The Dallas-born singer is still making music that's deep and unorthodox. [May 2008, p.141]

The whole album passes without anything you could call a tune, but there's a keen intelligence at work: while fiercely odd, it's frequently electrifying, too. [Feb 2010, p. 112]

Eyes On The Lines is the follow-up to his excellent 2014 album Way Out Weather and it finds Gunn rolling down the same never-ending dusty highway. [Jul 2016, p.108]

The Return may feel long and complex, but time and space reveal a unique new voice. [Oct 2019, p.113]

Moving, in every way. [Apr 2020, p.113]

Listeners so far unhipped to the contemporary avant-classical may find themselves pleasantly intrigued. [Feb 2018, p.117]

Wounded Rhymes is the moment Lykke Liu has edged ahead of the pack. And she still understands the value of a mighty percussive wallop. [Apr 2011, p.100]

Fans of Fleet Foxes will find much to enjoy on his seventh album: there's a backwoods feel to much of his material and no shortage of sublime melodies. [Jun 2012, p.101]