The lyrical intricacy and rhythmic playfulness of old are still there, but an arthritic creakiness creeps in, especially when he indulges in hackneyed poetism and dodgy wordplay. [Feb 2012, p.71]

Like Urge Overkill or The Velvet Monkeys at their grossest, Trans Am's genre exercises don't stand up to close scrutiny, but as a dim soundtrack to your next beer bust, you might want to bring it on. [#220, p.66]

The results are mixed. The album never fully escapes the feeling of rootless hipster genre-rifling. But the skill of Mast and Stroud at engineering riffs cannot be denied. [Jul 2010, p.60]

Some Say I So I Say Light's uniformity can become a little wearing across 11 tracks. [May 2013, p.52]

There's a lingering sense of calculation to their weirdness, the feeling that this is someone's specific idea of what next-level hiphop is supposed to sound like and not the type of batshit creativity bursts that can lead to truly transcendent experimental hiphop.

Cutting through the tedium reveals a moderately engaging narrative of low level criminality with solid insights ranging from the cloying to mildly provocative. [Feb 2017, p.59]

Clams is one rap's most distinctive producers, pushing his vocal collaborators to new emotional depths; but as an instrumental electronic producer, that choice is muddled by a sea of similarly charged chillwave types. [Jun 2011, p.60]

Zubot’s production creates a sense of vastness, placing Tagaq’s voice low in the mix with strings and drums or conversely counterpointing it to instruments to create icy thick layers of noise. However, his maximalist approach fails the more poppy tracks. [Feb 2017, p.45]

They have edited a tightly bound collection of six monstrously loud tracks with titles like “Cuts On Your Hands”, “Starres” and “Dark Inclusions” that read like they have been torn from some eldritch book of spellcraft but are in fact informed by the cosmos and attempts to make contact with alien intelligence. Unfortunately any insight regarding this is hidden behind the pleasingly crushing avalanche of guitar shrapnel, thundering bass and percussion that muzzle Baker’s already clouded vocal. [Jun 2021, p.54]

It's easy to imagine more time and effort infusing these tracks with more colour and variety. [Apr 2016, p.55]

Because of the time lapses involved in recording the material, the album sounds uneven and sometimes stale, sadly lacking the Misfits punk rock kick that he managed to reboot into early Danzig offerings with producer Rick Rubin. Of note, however, is the closing “Pull The Sun”, a majestic hovering ballad where Danzig drops the Jimbo stance to elevate his group and his more subdued vocal to a higher rock pinnacle. [Jul 2017, p.60]

The Divine Feminine is well-intentioned and well-staffed, but ultimately lacks the sort of specificity in vision that would do its subject matter justice. [Nov 2016, p.61]

It's a pity that the albums is slight, with five songs, one of them a minute-long interlude, in just over half an hour, and settles for revisiting a sound Carlson knows rather than anything more daring. [May 2018, p.44]

Those who find Anticon's selfconsciousness and self-flagellation a bit hard to stomach may be able to digest Odd Nosdam's maddening instrumental collages. [#230, p.71]

Where the jazz content is foregrounded however, the music is less convincing. ... Garcia’s tone bears more than a passing resemblance to Kamasi Washington’s, with a similar paucity of harmonic complexity and grandstanding solos conveying an earnest seriousness that mistakes widescreen emoting for genuine emotional content. [Sep 2020, p.52]

Let’s Start Here has a middlebrow sensibility, with plenty of grooves Calvin Harris would approve of. Its best moments come when he unleashes his oddball trill, an evocative sound that bland sentiments like “So surreal, the vibes I feel” can’t quite diminish. [Apr 2023, p.68]

Jenssen can't maintain the balancing act throughout Departed Glories and only really pulls it off intermittently. But when he does it casts a lovely autumnal light somewhere between Folke Rabe’s pastoral minimalism, Andrew Chalk’s haunted pools of tone, or even the lambent string arrangements of Debussy’s Jeux. [Oct 2016, p.48]

Lux is OK, while it's on. But that's all. And that's a shame. [Jan 2013, p.64]

If anything, it sounds over-finessed at times, the slick mixing resisting the rawness and density that is the album's most vital quality--the duo is at their best when the few fragments of eclectic prettiness get swamped in cacophony. [May 2015, p.58]

When it works, it’s pretty thrilling--as on their version of Joe Henderson’s “Earth”. Whether bassist Domenico Angarano will ever forgive himself for fluffing the galaxy-unlocking riff at the start of Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda”, however, is between him and the Creator. [Dec 2018, p.63]

Too often though, and as is almost always the case with live sets, the album is cloistered and airless.... It doesn't so much scourge New York as embody the place it has become. [Nov 2014, p.71]

There’s a sense of indecision to the overall sound of the album, which results in a fragmented listening experience. [Apr 2017, p.52]

More often than not the group sound like they're going through the motions. [Jul 2012, p.57]

Alc has already produced better songs for the actual Ghostface. So it is unclear why this album--or the rapper who made it--needed to exist. [Jan 2013, p.79]

Despite the lack of actual bass frequencies on Advaitic Songs, Om frequently sound weighed down which isn't the same thing as sounding heavy. [Jul 2012, p.61]

Poorly sequenced instrumental epics and rap cuts leave Something Wicked sounding disjointed. [#217, p.56]

Having all this material together is bittersweet – rather than four distinct sets, couldn’t these styles have been brought together in a more innovative way? Arca’s work is invariably surrounded by much chatter about disrupting musical forms, but four albums divided into four distinct moods feels like an unusually conservative vehicle for her ideas. [Jan 2022, p.59]

It's so sweet and monotonous they should try [naming the album] something instead like Strawberry Ice Cream. [Jul 2012, p.62]