A return to form. ... If anything this album is neither nervous nor holding its nerve, but powerful, solid, the work of a group who know what it is they do and how best to play to their strengths. [Apr 2018, p.64]

An album both generous and balanced in its patient give and take, upbeat and open, full of enthusiasm and joy. [Nov 2017, p.67]

Almond – who recorded his vocals while recovering from Covid – sounds audibly frail at times. But this works in the album’s favour, working humanity into the glossiness. The most effective tracks are those with sparse backing, such as “Polaroid” and the drolly misanthropic “I’m Not A Friend Of God”. [May 2022, p.53]

The blithe ease with which it slips from unruly quasi-techno to Tony Conrad-like violin drone (“Pumpkin Attack On Mommy And Daddy”; “The Wrong Thing”) keeps this consistently diverting. [Mar 2019, p.62]

The album has almost Wagnerian scope and immersive power, and at just over 50 minutes it's well organised as a start-to-finish listen. [Mar 2011, p.50]

This intelligently compiled collection brings together the best (and sometime worst) of these mostly forgotten groups. [Aug 2016, p.66]

Celestite cannot simply be characterised as pastiche, however, as the Weaver brothers and Dunn have constructed dramatic instrumentals using the material of previous compositions, ensuring a thematic and sonic continuity with their own past. [Jul 2014, p.61]

Denzel’s flows are as hungry as ever, at times managing to channel the untamed spirit of DMX (see “Diet”) while Kenny’s production is the ideal mix of weighty drums and potent bass. It’s an energetic listen and one that can hopefully act as some sort of cure for Old Heads Syndrome – the belief that no one is making real hiphop anymore. [Apr 2020, p.68]

Surprisingly, it works and doesn’t come apart, punctuating a conceptually striking, musically flawed, but altogether enjoyable record. [May 2020, p.53]

An engaging, unpredictable album of Tortoise-like vibraphones, guitars, minimalist repetitions, wry syncopations, occasional duff notes and subtly daubed electronics. [#228, p.69]

Green commandeers her forces, keeps things simple, and makes irresistibly confident and sharp guitar pop. Addictive. [Aug 2021, p.65]

The Moths Are Real is a crisp and atmospheric set of idiosyncratic and finely crafted pop songs. [Mar 2013, p.60]

A minor pleasure of the album is the beautiful way it's edited together, a gently manipulated impression of random accidents. [Sep 2015, p.47]

[An] overstuffed sound hurricane. [#255, p.58]

Barry Walker’s softly rising and falling pedal steel melodies calcify the skeleton of “Memory Of Lunch”, while Patrick McDermott’s distorted guitar lines provide the flesh, shaping a harsher drone as a symbolic border between reality and dream. And while Roped In never renounces its cheerful perspective, the approaching darkness of his guitar overtones dispels childlike innocence. [Dec 2020, p.53]

On four extended tracks, Fennelly’s various keyboards (synthesizer, harmonium, piano) function as kind of bedrock that deftly accommodates a variety of tacks and textures from his partners. [Oct 2023, p.53]

There’s no stridency, special pleading or chewing of scenery, just gentle enactments. This is what folk music used to do before Volk became toxic. Malkmus represents his characters via traditional techniques. [May 2020, p.54]

A warm and thoughtful record. Sometimes the production is a bit light--the first half in particular suffers from a rather MOR unobtrusiveness. But Laveaux’s voice is a treasure, her guitar playing is fresh and prickly, and things get more tangled and interesting the further along we go. [Apr 2018, p.67]

With their reverent, celebratory tone, tracks like “Naked (You Enter & Leave This World With Nothing)”, “I Will Follow You For Life, Everywhere” and “We Must Grieve Together” speak to the music’s function as an integral part of a community’s healing process. Sung together in deep harmony and pulling their inspiration from a source too powerful and mysterious for words, fra fra’s funeral songs offer a glimpse into how the people of this particular corner of West Africa deal with the pain, uncertainty and finality of death. [Jun 2020, p.49]

Blue Songs nevertheless presents a level of poetic inventiveness that isn't easy to trace in the dance pantheon.

Thankfully, her second solo album Blueprint is not a punk revival record, but a great grab bag of tracks showing that Armendariz still has not only her patented hair-raising and blood-curdling shriek from the 70s, but a voice that can reference the evocative beauty found in the pipes of both Patti Smith and Judee Sill. [Jul 2018, p.59]

Still Brazy is thoroughly and unapologetically regional, but its thematic engines are universal. [Aug 2016, p.63]

As a superior melodic rapper, Open Mike Eagle seems to communicate with a kind of preternatural whimsy. Even when he sifts through his trauma, his voice serves as a velvet glove, keeping this 30 minute album from descending into painful self-pity. [Dec 2020, p.54]

Musically it’s a joyous triumph: vocally Estelle is utterly assured but naturally ebullient, the sound of someone totally at ease. [Nov 2018, p.68]

Heavy, expressive and uncompromising, both Wrecked and Analog Fluids Of Black Holes gesture at fresh, purposeful possibilities for noise and experimental music. [Nov 2019, p.49]

At times flush with the meditative air of Alice Coltrane, elsewhere like some whispered about 80s new age obscurity, this album both requires and justifies extensive attention. [Mar 2019, p.62]

It’s hard to believe this is the same band who bowed out with Ghost Stories. There they sounded uptight and reticent; here they are restless and free. The creative rebirth continues. Where to next? [May 2020, p.55]

Lala Belu is his first new recording for decades, and it lives up to the expectation generated by their live appearances. [Apr 2018, p.67]