The Independent (UK)'s Scores
- Music
For 2,193 reviews, this publication has graded:
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47% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: | Radical Optimism | |
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Lowest review score: | Donda |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,176 out of 2193
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Mixed: 988 out of 2193
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Negative: 29 out of 2193
2193
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Despite a few obvious omissions (Sun Ra, Marvin, Curtis and others), it’s an endless source of sonically challenging, mind-freeing ambition.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 4, 2018
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- Critic Score
Twenty-five years ago, Lifes Rich Pageant found R.E.M. metamorphosing from what was effectively a turbo-charged folk-rock cult indie outfit into a proper rock band capable of filling stadia.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 15, 2011
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Unlike most gothic pop, Lanegan’s art is not a matter of fashion or mascara: it’s a genuine cri du coeur, as rare and beautiful as anything in music.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 10, 2014
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Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, lands with devastating precision. These 13 tracks are finely wrought works of art that draw as much influence from Purcell and Mozart as they do scuzzy Nineties post-punk.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 14, 2020
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It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 25, 2013
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Faithfull lifts them from the page with a compelling combination of crispness and tenderness. She doesn’t use that soporific “poetry voice”. Instead, she can make 200-year-old visions of beauty, love and death feel as urgent as the latest true-crime podcast.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 29, 2021
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Centralia is by far the most satisfying release to date by the Brooklyn-based minimalist post-rock duo Mountains.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 18, 2013
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The warm but haunting Trouble Will Find Me will surely cement their accession to the rock mainstream.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 16, 2013
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Making perfect pop isn’t easy, but Troye Sivan is a star who’s done his homework. With one foot in pop’s past and another in its present, Bloom is a record that could turn its considerate maker into one of mainstream music’s most revered and fascinating talents.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 30, 2018
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Ultimately, it’s his own, most career-defining work to date. ... The record progresses--in every sense of the word---he allows himself to become more vulnerable, more considerate.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 6, 2018
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Haim take us through a dark place and they do it frankly. But they never let the momentum dip. And they never lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 25, 2020
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It’s wonderful to find so many moreish layers in music that was, apparently, composed so quickly. Grab yourself a bean bag and settle in for the long haul with this one.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 26, 2024
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Notionally a five-track EP, M3LL155X is in its fullest realisation an art film/performance (co-directed and co-choreographed by her), freely available on YouTube.... Musically, it’s a more focused, coherent application of the same kinds of sounds and vocals used on LP1.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 21, 2015
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 2, 2016
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An album heralding a talent as intriguingly fully-formed and distinctive, in its own way, as Marling, Mitchell and Bush.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 26, 2017
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["A Little Bit Of Everything"] is a thoughtful, mature conclusion to an album that seems to summarise one of the more welcoming trends in American rock- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 26, 2011
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Dec 14, 2012
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- Critic Score
I’m pretty sure that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is going to be one of my albums of the year. Because few records managed to be this soothing, and interesting too.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Two Hands is Big Thief’s best to date, and undoubtedly one of the best of the year.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 10, 2019
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Most of them slot together with an appealing combination of simplicity and enigma – like those little puzzle cubes made of three types of wood. All the while, you can hear the careful questioning with which the songwriters have honed one another’s thoughts until they slot smoothly together to become satisfying tactile emotional experiences.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 30, 2023
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A surprising meditation on fatherhood, family and friendship. Kendrick Lamar’s work has always been introspective, but Mr Morale and the Big Steppers – with guest spots from artists including Florence Welch, Beth Gibbons, Summer Walker and Sampha – has a delicacy and tenderness to it that is unprecedented for the father of two from Compton, California. Because of this, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers is most redolent of Lamar’s second album good kid, m.A.A.d city.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2022
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Dec 7, 2016
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The good news is that the perma-brilliant James Blake has flooded his fourth album--Assume Form--with euphoric sepia soul and loved-up doo-wop. His trademark intelligence, honesty and pin-drop production remain intact.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 18, 2019
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The wonderful Wildflower is cause for celebration, its Zappa/Beasties-style collage of voices, samples, beats, sounds, and especially laughter offering a joyous affirmation of life.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 7, 2016
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It’s an album fuelled by southern heat, with plenty of grit to boot. Their best yet.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 10, 2022
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The subtle melodies on The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We can take their time to gleam through the murk. So give it time and space at night, when you’re alone, to allow its wild darkness to shine.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 15, 2023
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I was rendered wonderfully weightless by a journey that delivered whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context. Trust me: the force is strong in this one.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 24, 2020
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This is the most country she has ever sounded. The most lavish, too, despite the album having been stripped back to only its most necessary parts.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 26, 2020
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FKA Twigs emerges the high priestess of R&B's latest corruption, and the world will kneel at the altar.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 5, 2014
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With results both as pleasurable, as inventive and as absorbing as these, there seems no danger that the impact of {Awayland} will be merely momentary.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 14, 2013
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The sheer ambition on We Are Not Your Kind is just as staggering. ... This may be one of the band’s most personal records, but the rage they capture is universally felt.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 7, 2019
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It’s a terrific, family-friendly smorgasbord of a record that delivers all the classic ABBA flavours.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 4, 2021
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It’s all delivered with welcoming warmth and humility, over impeccably buttoned-down soul-funk grooves.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 7, 2016
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- Critic Score
It remains one of pop's most impervious generational touchstones.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 14, 2013
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There's a consistency and homogeneity about the 11 tracks (seven from The Red Shoes, four from The Sensual World) which echoes her work on Aerial, and which lends the project a character entirely its own.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 18, 2011
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Re-Animator packs global anxiety and paranoia into exquisitely crafted songs. A superb album.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 10, 2020
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Despite restlessly exploring hitherto untrodden musical terrain, there are precious few wasted seconds in these three hours.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 18, 2012
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Everything about the album is fragmented, and dizzying in the vein of Samuel Beckett’s Not I or T.S. Elliot’s The Waste Land. Even the lyric sheet is a glorious mess.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 3, 2016
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At only nine tracks long, but with every one of them worthy of single status, it displays, as pop albums go, both rare economy and staggering consistency.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 21, 2014
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Lone soul genius Cody ChesnuTT's in dazzling form on Landing on a Hundred, which must be the most impressive crowd-funded album ever.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 29, 2012
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It's music that slips between the generic niches favoured by broadcasters; but isn't that exactly where the most interesting music comes from?- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 12, 2013
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 23, 2012
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- Critic Score
It's a relief to report that Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down is his best effort by far since Chavez Ravine.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 1, 2011
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- Critic Score
Inspiration Information [is] repackaged with an extra disc of pieces recorded since then, which show his abilities undiminished by age.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 15, 2013
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Across 27 tracks, almost all with compellingly muscular melodies, she whips and neigh-neighs through every conceivable form of classic and modern country, roping in elements of opera, rock and hip-hop at her commanding, virtuosic whim. .... Cowboy Carter keeps on dealing aces.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 29, 2024
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For the most part, this is an album that restores faith in the sheer joy of music.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 17, 2015
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As with many great albums, successive hearings reveal more clearly the elliptical tunes at the heart of these eight quietly intense pieces, climaxing with the eight-minute “Age Old Tale”, a masterly band performance.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 12, 2016
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Max Richter’s only motive here is beauty, drawn from all corners of his musical interests, which are many and varied. The result is a journey that takes one from Renaissance choral polyphony to the inventive precocity of teen duo Let’s Eat Grandma, via Bach and Handel, minimalism, post-rock and electronica, with nary a misstep in sound, selection or sequence. ... A rare treat.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 17, 2017
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Once I Was an Eagle is a work that demands to be taken as a whole, another reminder of the peculiar power of the album form, despite frequent premature declarations of its redundancy.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 24, 2013
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A very brave, strong record. Hats off, Raye. These blues are smoking hot.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 2, 2023
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The result is a lush, immersive work which is sonically more homogeneous than her earlier albums.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 21, 2011
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 4, 2019
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- Critic Score
Across the next nine tracks they deliver pounding pop thrills and arena-sized catharsis, in a style that refines their distinctive sound instead of pimping it up, Noughties style.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 24, 2022
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Freedom Jazz Dance features the entire session reels for tracks from Miles Smiles and Nefertiti, complete with studio dialogue, enabling us to hear Miles discussing and directing the music, ironing out details. ... The point when they all seem to realise, as one, what to do with “Nefertiti” is a moment of pure, transcendent joy.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 3, 2017
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Few pop acts are making heartbreak so straightforwardly danceable at the moment. All hail to Years & Years for continuing to hit us with those laser beams.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 21, 2022
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Her rap flow has a terrific tensile strength. When singing, she delivers as both a belter and a breathy balladeer. ... Special is good as hell.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 15, 2022
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Caustic Love may be the best UK R&B album since the 1970s blue-eyed-soul heyday of Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 11, 2014
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The intimacy and evocative atmosphere of previous releases has been retained, but there’s a fresh, barnstorming spirit brought by the team surrounding the core duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino: where earlier releases sometimes felt too meticulously crafted, this one has the sound of a proper band, its members constantly egging each other into uncertain territory.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 17, 2018
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At an age where the pressure is on to have everything worked out, Harding sounds delightfully free.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 25, 2019
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Merging their asymmetrical early math pop with the deep space atmospherics of Total Life Forever and Holy Fire, plus added innovations – ambient rainforest throbs on “Moonlight”, deadpan EDM on “In Degrees”, Afro-glitch Radiohead on “Café D’Athens” – they’ve created an inspired album of scorched earth new music that, in all likelihood, will only really be challenged for album of the year by Part 2.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 7, 2019
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Wood is one of our finest songwriters, a brilliant exponent of the topical troubadour form, and rarely on better form than he is with None the Wiser.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2013
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Dec 1, 2011
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I’m Your Empress Of is a bold statement of her individuality, nodding to her Honduran heritage but also her clear love of electronic music and Chicago house. ... This is an album that bristles with life.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 3, 2020
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It’s a revelatory affair, bringing a fresh, raw focus to brilliant songs steeped in lust, death and loss with a blend of sly rockabilly and blues-tinged country-rock.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 19, 2017
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Even by Wilco’s adventurous standards, Star Wars is possibly the most unusual, exploratory work of the band’s existence.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 24, 2015
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A record that captures nostalgia without devolving into anachronism or retrograde – a fine line that Nas is well-versed in toeing. As ever, Nas is his own lynchpin. Tracks including “Store Run” and “Moments” demonstrate the rapper’s gift as a lucid narrator of his own experience.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 6, 2021
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An album which contains no filler at all, each track blooming in its own way like a collection of strange desert succulents, with a whole lot of hollerin' and a touch of Lieber-Stollerin'.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 21, 2011
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Rebooting the euphoria of their 2004 debut, Funeral, WE is a big old blast of an album. One destined to lift the spirit, inflate the soul and get fans dancing giddily through the carnage of 2022.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 5, 2022
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Close your eyes as you listen to Montero and you can almost feel the rainbow confetti falling from the ceiling and sticking to your tears. This album isn’t the creation of a gimmick-spinner. It’s an album bursting with technicolour heart.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 17, 2021
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If such bittersweet reflections came packaged on a solo Albarn release, they’d probably be set to sorrowful, detached, acousto-electronic sounds. But his old friends have alchemised those sentiments into songs that elevate his suburban tristesse into moments of sheer ecstasy.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 20, 2023
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His brilliant fourth album Love Is Magic takes listeners on a similar thrill ride [as his 50th birthday], dominated by swirling loops of grand, romantic melody, sly twists of sardonic wit and heart-stopping drops of sheer honesty.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 11, 2018
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A record that will go down as a milestone not just as a work of art in its own right, but as the perfect celebration of queerness, female power, and self-worth.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 27, 2018
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It sounds – for the first time in a decade – like Clark has slipped out of her high heels and found an equal strength in this barefooted soul.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 13, 2021
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Thoughtful, engaging and utterly contemporary, it’s one of the albums of the year.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 28, 2016
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 2, 2011
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A record that finds the 52-year-old Grant on his most romantic, melodic form, as he looks back on the pleasures and fears he faced growing up as a gay kid in America’s Midwest. ... A lovely, generous album.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 24, 2021
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[Wrecking Ball is] unquestionably his most potent album so far this century.- The Independent (UK)
Posted Mar 1, 2012 -
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There’s so much deliciously analogue texture to cherish here – all bakelite, mahogany, coconut shells and bougainvillea, with woodwind you could drink and percussion you could tuck behind your ear. It’s 2023’s hippest release. Get up, get down, kick back to it.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 11, 2023
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 26, 2015
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Popular Problems--note the drolly contradictory title--finds his agreeable baritone growl applied as usual to romantic disappointment and political venality with vivid, jolting metaphors (“I see the ghost of culture, with numbers on his wrist”) cutting to the quick.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 19, 2014
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It’s an album that makes a church of its elegant electronica: all vaulting arcs of yearning melody and glimmers of stained glass that dance upwards, to the familiar urban spire of Thorn’s beautiful, hangdog voice.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 21, 2023
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The result is beautiful, visceral and, predictably, emotionally devastating.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2016
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Though already condemned by Van himself, there's much to appreciate about this 4-CD expanded edition of one of the greatest albums ever recorded. It's fascinating to follow the development of a track such as "Caravan" across half a dozen takes.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 23, 2013
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In its commitment to euphoria, Dance Fever is an album that looks forward to the release of all the pandemic’s pent-up energy at this summer’s festivals. ... I hope she never learns to keep a lid on her wonderful wildness.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 12, 2022
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It's an enchanting snapshot of British rock'n'roll at its moment of greatest revelation, the point at which the Tin Pan Alley production line of ersatz Elvises was rendered utterly obsolete.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 14, 2013
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One of the most thoughtful, moving and necessary albums of 2019 so far. ... Tracks are at once astute and deeply personal in how they capture vignettes of everyday life and spin them into important lessons.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 11, 2019
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On Noonday Dream, he expands the Cornish landscape that has impacted his previous work and brings in sounds and instruments that spark the imagination for places further afield, in the most exquisite way.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 1, 2018
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Although the sonic mood mellows after the first two tracks, listeners will be invited to share the transcendent joy in memories of a lost child; the awe of an uxorious lover whose prayer-like love for his wife is a continual saving grace; and the frustration of a caged man with an “open road” of a heart.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 25, 2021
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For the most part Gold Record is a deftly woven and cosily feathered little nest of songs. Settle in.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 4, 2020
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Even when required to accommodate passing trends like mambo or funk, Hooker’s blues simply bent a little, but never broke. Its atavistic power, he knew, resided in its hypnotic grip, which effectively crystallised rock’n’roll years before the style was recognised.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 12, 2017
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There’s no fuss in the instrumentation, either, mostly just gentle picking or brisk, deep thrums on Wall’s acoustic guitar, which are bolstered by icy laps of pedal steel and the occasional harmonica. It’s effective in the simplest of ways--and allows the listener’s imagination to do the rest- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 11, 2018
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In Jeff Tweedy, singer-songwriter Joan Shelley has surely met her perfect production partner. This, her fourth album, is simply magical.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 3, 2017
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The live recording of this record really helps deliver that communal feeling. They feel so present and close that listeners might feel they’re violating the pandemic rules.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 22, 2020
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So although Cave’s adept grasp of vocal expression, from aching melancholy to erupting hysteria, guides the narratives of these songs, this is not simply a singer backed by a band, it’s a unit striving for collective expression, by whatever means possible.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 10, 2017
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It’s excruciating in its honesty – even for Lenker, who’s hardly known for shying away from her feelings. Now she bares her pain with complete abandon. It’s quite extraordinary.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 22, 2020
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There’s barely a moment on Distance Inbetween that doesn’t ooze new-found strength and inspiration.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 4, 2016
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Taken as a whole, it's a marvellous piece of work, boasting a rare congruence between lyrical themes and musical evocations, and fronted by one of the most broodingly characterful voices in rock music.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 3, 2012
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 13, 2016
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Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is the most thrilling album of the year.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Sep 2, 2021
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As with Visions, this third album sees the band hopping between styles – folk, garage rock and shoegaze – only now they’re steering deeper into the corners and controlling the skids.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 3, 2021
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