Jocular and enjoyable to flip through, but the nagging feeling that leaks through is that this collection is little more than a respite for Giant Sand until Gelb returns from the bunker with enough fresh material to record a real new album. [#216, p.63]

The Automator sounds uncertain, pitching up between a return to boom-bap and less familiar territory. The first half of the album pitches for the former, while later cuts go for reinvention, plunging Keith into a mire of riffs. [Jun 2018, p.54]

The closing title track is a full ten minutes of ethereal synth drift. Tucked between these are a couple of neat facsimiles of the kind of mellow handclap bounce heard on Dance Floor Corporation’s scene-setting 1990 Ambient House compilation. But there are some clunkers too. [May 2023, p.54]

Hebden is clearly striving for dancefloor impact--but Reid's drumming is so untethered and, frankly, messy, that it sucks the explosions out of whatever bombs Hebden's trying to drop. [Dec 2008, p.60]

It's all been very 'civil,' but still no sign of that dang war. [#235, p.63]

One Nation's ability to alternate and combine insolence with detachment yields moments of inspired incongruity. [Jul 2011, p.49]

Ultimately, though, one crucial element is missing: El-P's voice. His desperate, throbbing-forehead-vein rapping is as vital as his sound as the synths or the beats, and this disc would have been vastly improved by even one bilious verse. [Aug 2010, p.61]

It's a shame that the the young skate rat seems to be so caught up in his own hype, as beneath the bluster and amped-up angst, there is something interesting going on. [Jul 2011, p.54]

The production values can't cover for the lack of lyrical pizzazz, [Jul 2011, p.55]

Sound stretches and stretches without ever threatening to crack, and you start to long for some crude and rude collisions; a belch, a digression, a protest, an accident... [Machine guns blasts in the second half come] too late, and too orderly. [Dec 2011, p. 63]

He doesn’t sound quite engaged anywhere on Lady, Give Me Your Key – more like a talented but wayward kid trying out for the school show. [Nov 2016, p.75]

With Hell Can Wait, he inches logically towards a modernisation of the chaotic wall of noise formula that defined Public Enemy than immediately pulls back from it. [Nov 2014, p.76]

It’s not a bad record--if nothing else it goes some way to atoning for the disappointment of AC/DC rather than Ghostface landing on the Iron Man 2 soundtrack--but it could have been so much more. [Apr 2018, p.50]

Somehow unconvincing, it's like beach bar escapism spliced with an incidental tune from the TV comedy show The Mighty Boosh. [Mar 2015, p.60]

Hovering somewhere between offbeat anti-folk and laptop noise terrorism, Kptmichigan falls short of achieving a genuine hybrid but trails some interesting sonic debris in the process. [#249, p.64]

It's a series of blows that fail to connect.... Taken on its own terms, divorced from the genre to which it owes its existence The Ark Work's dogged pursuit of incongruous juxtaposition can be hugely entertaining. [Apr 2015, p.53]

Her latest iteration that limited palette of vintage machines feels trapped in the past; evocative but ossified. [Sep 2015, p.45]

A mixed bag. [Oct 2012, p.62]

The music tends to come up short of its lofty goals, a fact made more frustrating in the moments that prove that they are capable. [Apr 2014, p.60]

Things improve markedly when he plays to his strengths with the nuanced narrative of “A Boy Is A Gun”, but ultimately such moments [are] hard to hear over the pitiable “Puppet” and “Earfquake”, functional pop wisely rejected by Justin Bieber and Rihanna. When the narrative sags and his mind seems to wander, it just isn’t enough, no matter how stylish the trimmings. [Aug 2019, p.68]

Putting it plainly, this stuff sounds really old. The beats are dull, flat and 'blunted' in the least appealing sense. [Jan 2012, p.56]

The jazz moments here are thin, singsongy, almost marcato melodies. [Oct 2012, p.64]

The music is so devoid of anything to grab onto, listening to it is rather like plummeting at speed through the artificial landscape constructed for the film. [Mar 2011, p.48]

"STP3/The Killer," "Silent Witness," and "I Come By Night" are exceptions, however--somewhere along the line a spark's been snuffed out. [Oct 2012, p.67]

If Magic 2 reveals that Nas can definitely still rap, it also continues his unfortunate run of uninspiring production choices. There are enjoyable moments, like the 50 Cent assisted “Office Hours”, the ominous string driven force of “Motion”, and the mesmerizing penmanship on “Slow It Down”, but overall the album falls short for an artist of Nas’s stature. [Sep 2023, p.68]

In the end, it's the aural equivalent of skyscrapers built out of wattle and daub. [Mar 2011, p.49]

It’s hard to tell if there’s irony in all the anachronism but the record’s nostalgic to the point of kitsch aesthetic feels out of touch. [Apr 2020, p.67]

Much of Lil BIG Pac concerns his experience behind bars. It would be eerily prescient if the criminal system weren't so predictable. [Aug 2016, p.63]

Occasionally it threatens to work. [Jul 2014, p.63]

There’s a kind of manic, excessive inventiveness here, as if the song needs just one more bridge or a doubling of the refrain to sustain its ideas. Yet on closer inspection they are often internally samey. [May 2020, p.53]

The finished product proves too studied and reverent of its sources. [Jul 2014, p.64]

Dead Ringers lack the singular vision needed to hold so many digressions and disparate references together. [Aug 2016, p.61]

In spite of the road drill rhythms, punished percussion and damaged vocalising, though, the collaboration fails to fully connect. [Apr 2016, p.46]

While this collection of songs is indeed tremendously soft, too many vibrations are swept under the rug of Taylor's voice. [Aug 2014, p.58]

As awkwardly beautiful as much of dark Comedy is, it's such a tricky album that it is a difficult to warm to. [Aug 2014, p.62]

The production is flawless. ... But the obvious big tunes fall flat.

Until the Quiet Comes is cluttered and schmaltzy. [Nov 2012, p.59]

While 2016’s Painting With was a jumble of interesting ideas lacking direction, Time Skiffs is the opposite: a paint by numbers indie pop affair completed using a quirky palette. While paring down to a more focused format is welcome, the music is suffocated by anachronisms, both within AC’s own and wider pop contexts. [Feb 2022, p.46]

The song ["Yonder Blue"] is as intricately tied into pop and soundtrack tradition as the rest of the album, but it carries an immediacy that otherwise eludes The Catastrophist. [Jan 2016, p.72]

M:FANS sounds way too much of its moment: it sounds just how you expect right now to sound. Worse, maybe: it actually sounds like a few years back. [Jan 2016, p.84]

Promise Of The Real can't match Crazy Horse's lumbering majesty, but their youthful energy and sweet harmonies are infectious. ... The attempts at collage are pretty corny, with crows, pigs and bees all wandering into the mix. [Aug 2016, p.58]

“Carapace” is one worth returning to, an agitated Pixies-style rocker that pogos up and down for three energetic minutes. Equally enjoyable is the kosmische inspired interplay wired into “Lurk Of The Worm”, together with the bolts of grunge that light up “Where Have You Been All My Life?”. Elsewhere some of Pollard’s songs can be compared to those of Peters Gabriel and Hammill, two distinct guiding voices who can occasionally be heard whispering in the hull of this inflated blimp of a record. [Mar 2019, p.52]

He's tightened his flow ever so slightly, but the brutal artlessness of his writing and character remains. [Jan 2012, p.69]

On tracks with genuine maverick talents like E-40, his fundamental lack of character appears (or disappears) in sharp relief. [Apr 2015, p.65]

The voice of singer Rolynne provides a fluency and depth missing elsewhere; her emotional precision and expression cut right through the ornament of this otherwise rather forgettable album. [Nov 2017, p.66]

Brooks builds eight neat instrumentals from gradually layer guitar, playing in a closed circle with himself, a dialogue that is sometimes affecting but more often banal. [Aug 2014, p.59]

Somebody’s Knocking is marginally more rockin’ than 2017’s uninspired Gargoyle – due to a slightly increased emphasis on guitar – but it doesn’t measure up to 2014’s Phantom Radio (or its EP companion No Bells On Sunday). [Oct 2019, p.63]

Aside from the odd flurry of inconsequential Afrobeat-inflected guitar, the style of Someday World is middlebrow session fare. [May 2014, p.61]

The too brief, purely instrumental “Sensational” is the best track, with suggestions of Weather Report’s jazz rock expansiveness. But the general impression is gimmicky and lightweight – effects without causes. [May 2020, p.66]

Sic Alp's latest might make for acceptable audio wallpaper--nice tunes and all, just ragged enough to contrive an illusion of edginess--but it crumbles under closer scrutiny. [Mar 2011, p.58]

It begins as quite a thrilling ride. But at this level of concentration, ten minutes feels like an hour; it soon becomes enervating. [#255, p.55]

Surrender To The Fantasy showcases the latest stage yet of their oddly trad transformation, the unkempt electric savagery of their past domesticated to the point of extinction. [Nov 2013, p.56]

The mirth on offer here is thin fare, for the most part. [May 2014, p.63]

Leaving Meaning has all of the reassuring turgidity and tortured self-importance devotees have come to expect plus a cast of name contributors (The Necks, Ben Frost, Baby Dee, Anna von Hausswolff among others) for that vital essence of “Well, if they’re working with him, he’s probably OK, right?” [Dec 2019, p.57]

The atmosphere is underwrought, miserable, monochrome. [Jun 2015, p.46]

It's hard not to feel that this dense conceptual flotsam is arranged around a lucuna. [May 2014, p.67]

An album remarkable only for just how bland it gets, despite every effort to the contrary. [Feb 2016, p.60]

Urstan can be seen as a remedial effort. [Apr 2012, p.58]

His latest disc is only occasionally compelling. [Jun 2015, p.50]

Celebrity guests or not, this is what Beans is--a densely indigestible acquired taste. [Apr 2011, p.70]

Apart from a few works for chamber instruments, which have a similar pleasing air of fakeness to Michael Nyman’s faux baroque cues for Peter Greenaway, these sketches all have uncertain origins and textures. [May 2020, p.66]

Guillermo Scott Heren's eight record as Prefuse 73 is oddly colourless (or should I just say boring) suite of compositional drifts. [Apr 2011, p.70]

He’s hung up on Jesus rather than pneumatic women. It’s hard to tell if that’s an improvement, but it doesn’t seem like a regression either. ... An album with zero fat, dense in at least three senses, two of them positive. [Dec 2019, p.60]

Not hating the LP, but not liking it much either, seeing it as a mid-level release covering all bases; political interludes, references to reparations and racism, interspersed with rap-frat boy antics. [Sep 2019, p.58]

Parallels frustrates as much as it entrances because it feels like a collection of separate tracks corralled together for expedience. [Sep 2017, p.53]

The music is gentle but ominous, and it’s hard to be sure which impression they want to linger. “Read The Room” and “Teleharmonic” are more conventional rock songs; the former in particular could have come off any 21st century Radiohead album. [Mar 2024, p.52]

Prophets Of Rage can’t help sounding a little male-menopausal even if lyrically the targets remain crucial and the trajectory remains ferocious thanks to the sheer undimmed timbre of Chuck’s meshrattling voice. [Sep 2017, p.55]

The momentum doesn't dip through the sunny but sinister celebration of "T-Shirt Weather In The Manor," Kano's rapid flow over electronic rowdiness on "new Banger" and the stunning dancefloor swagger of "3 Wheel Ups."... The album peters out after that. [Mar 2016, p.46]

Amalie Bruun (aka Myrkur) returns in feral form with a fresh set of frozen warnings and blackened ballads. ... On “Funeral” she teams up with Chelsea Wolfe for a duet that never quite gels and feels frustratingly half formed, while “Kætteren” confusingly slips a sliver of traditional Scandinavian folk music into the mix. Even worse is end track “Børnehjem” where demonic child whispering over Myrkur’s medieval monkish chant evokes Blair Witch memories and ultimately drags the whole album down. [Dec 2017, p.60]

The Saga Continues is a somewhat unwieldy collection of Wu offcuts with seemingly no concept. Less an album than a collection of outtakes. [Dec 2017, p.64]

Sandoval's overly stylised vocals really start to grate over the distance of a whole LP. [#213, p.65]

To run with the cinematic analogies, I'd suggest that Frost is the musical equivalent of Nicolas Winding Refn, all neon lit brutality and state of the art emptiness. [Oct 2017, p.52]

It's only when that rhythm programming is either stripped right back or broken apart that you get a sense of overabundant glee in playing with the blurts and splurts of the synth timbres, and this feels like more than the generic, albeit impeccably executed IDM record that the title rightly suggests. [Mar 2016, p.53]

he way the music suddenly jerks into life from stasis to movement is fine and the whole thing is beautiful and embracing and makes you think peaceful thoughts. By mid-afternoon though things get really ragged. ... Whatever made those earlier tracks sound so great is missing now. [Jan 2018, p.62]

This strained affair makes the party rocking simplicity of 2 Chainz or even LMFAO look absolutely artful. Brown's too smart to make music this dumb effectively. [Nov 2013, p.66]

When the beats are sparse he shines, but the album bloats in its middle with too many R&B assisted dramatic gestures and not enough dead eyed and cracked crack music. [Nov 2013, p.66]

There's no bullshit and no nonsense here, but listening to this album,, you might end up wishing that there was. [Dec 2011, p.68]

It's clear that Bell retains a sure grasp of form and dynamics. Hard to shake off, however, is the nagging feeling that you've heard all this before. [#236, p.62]

It's more letdown than meltdown, as veteran drummer Steve Reid runs out steam about halfway through disc two. [Dec 2011, p.70]

DeGraw's skill for mixing and matching swatches of sound is unparalleled, but without context it becomes much like choosing colours for your living room. [Dec 2013, p.48]

Get Lost is no worse (and no better) than 2010's Living With Yourself. [Oct 2011, p.56]

There is, in the end, something vaguely nauseating about a bunch of popular entertainers in middle age creating state-supported art inspired by the deaths of countless young men caused by an act of state-subsidised slaughter. [Jan 2015, p.61]

Wire’s music is characterised by unusual structures and perspectives, an approach largely absent from Mind Hive, the post-punk group’s 17th studio album. The most prominent themes here are political, with mixed results. [Mar 2020, p.57

Tracks like "Huis Clos"... can drag... And the garage rock of "(I Wanna Be) Waiting For My Plane" is an unwieldy cross between early Sonic Youth and Two Lone Swordsmen's axe-men incarnation. [#253, p.69]

Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst sings over roughly half the album, but his melodies are about as memorable as weak tea. [Mar 2013, p.64]

Tracks have potent moments, but they’re slapped together with little thought for overall flow. [Jun 2019, p.60]

It seems telling for an album about self-discovery that the most convincing tracks are those where he’s openly panicking over his identity rather than those where he’s found an uneasy peace. [Mar 2020, p.61]

For all of its constant activity, [the album] feels stale. It does next to nothing new to build on previous releases, and from song to song there's so little variation that its ultimate effect is numbing. [Feb 2016, p.50]

PC Music Volume 1 resembles the soundtrack to a posh private schooler's teen sleepover--glossy, giddy, sparkly and shallow. [Aug 2015, p.55]

What's lacking on Date Of Birth, though, is any sort of excitement. [#212, p.75]

If music is ever really going to change the world, it's going to need more vigour and vitality than this. [Jan 2014, p.66]

In truth most of it is middling stuff. [Oct 2011, p.62]

There's not much going on texturally. [Nov 2015, p.56]

Pablo grips your attention through an attraction-repulsion effect: the attraction largely pertaining to the sonics, the repulsion manifesting almost entirely in the lyrics. [Apr 2016, p.52]

Mess is more immediate than the past couple of albums, and in context, more baffling. [Mar 2014, p.63]

Rat Farm has only the occasional flash of brilliance. [Apr 2013, p.53]

There’s a lot to unpack, endless fun to be had cataloguing his references from Three 6 Mafia to Octavia Butler, his consummate brilliance as a wordsmith and architect of flow. ... But it gets monotonous quickly. [Nov 2019, p.52]

Phase One impresses more on first listen [than Phase Two].... But it wears thin quickly. [Feb 2016, p.54]