While Gunn gets in some liquid licks, they’re brief asides, never trips that’ll take you somewhere on their own, and they’re often folded into gleaming layers of keyboards and harp. While the drums occupy considerable sonic space, they are frustratingly unemphatic. ... He has never sung better. However, every time he solos, one wishes he’d keep going a bit longer. Here’s hoping that Gunn can figure out how to showcase his voice without doing so at the expense of his instrumental gifts. [Sep 2021, p.52]

I found myself wishing [the booklet] was three times longer and the music three CDs less. [Nov 2011, p.60]

Live From KCRW suffers from the stilted atmosphere that plagues most live radio sessions, with the audience, Cave and his Bad Seeds all on their best behavior. [Jan 2014, p.59]

Danger Mouse constructs decorative, melodic beats that don’t really bang, resulting in a hazy, slightly funky and psychedelic quality reminiscent of late 1960s pop. ... It’s frustrating to see him [Black Thought] shut off that aspect of his creativity in favour of “bars as hard as Angola’s”. ... Cheat Codes is compelling enough, but one wonders where it’s all going. [Sep 2022, p.42]

Crazy Clown Time is like a sound painting of oddball modern USA done in the style of Old Weird America. {Nov 2011, p.62]

As the 12 minute “The Lure Of The Mine” closes out this odd and enigmatic record in typically relentless fashion, the sensation is one of standing back and watching, impressed but stubbornly, confusingly unmoved. [May 2017, p.56]

These guys mean well. [June 2008, p.63]

With moderately different production, a lot of this would probably sound significantly tougher, but one gets the sense that studio slickness has rendered it a little toothless, blunting what could be a much sharper edge. [Apr 2019, p.68]

It's hard to shake off the suspicion that The Fifth Release contains more than a few offcuts and outtakes that never quite made the final cut of its more assured and inventive predecessor. [#202, p.55]

The risky juxtapositions that mark his best work are critically missing. [#224, p.51]

Overall you sense that the full potential of the encounter is not being realised. [#230, p.61]

It’s a shame the tracks are so short – after a while it all starts to feel frustratingly sketchy and cramped. [Sep 2022, p.56]

There’s a telling lack of conviction when he uses the past tense saying “I used to feel so devastated… now we on our way to greatness”. It’s a shame because when he settles for articulating rage from a less lofty position at the centre of a crowd he’s rejuvenated, alongside Schoolboy Q, J Cole, Styles P and Kirk Knight admitting a burn in his gut and boasting of how he’s “flowing religiously... Amerikkka’s worst nightmare, the super predator”. [May 2017, p.62]

As jazz-inflected triphop goes, it's not even anywhere near as inventive or risky as DJ Spooky's Optometry sounded back in 2002. [Mar 2014, p.60]

For all his power as a motivating force it’s perhaps inevitable that Ye proves weakest of the first four. Left to his own devices West sounds bewildered, somewhere between awe and exhaustion. [Aug 2018, p.63]

Far from consistent, its best tracks are those unconcerned with hooks or choruses, maintaining a stealthy pace but humming with all the frantic, pristine detail of the best Future tracks. [Dec 2017, p.64]

It’s an overegged pudding at times, but to its credit Versus is anything but polite; with brass and bass to the fore, Craig chips away at our preconceptions--he’s here for more than the black tie and polite applause. [Jun 2017, p.61]

Best not to think too deeply about it. [Sep 2022, p.57]

Voyeurs of the disintegration of the human condition will be able to gorge on vicarious thrills to their black heart's content. [#246, p.62]

He raps in a stereotypically ‘white’ voice shorn of regional inflections, and the contrast between his deadpan vocals and the beats ranges from startlingly imaginative (the hammering blapper “Fundrazors”) to anodyne (“Indifferent”). [Sep 2022, p.57]

Supermigration never quite brings these directions--Air, Lindstrom, Neu!--together though; instead of fermenting their own sound, Solar Bears end up falling into the space in between them. [May 2013, p.66]

The speech modelling software used to articulate the narrative generates a somewhat grittier, odder voice than your average online speech synthesizer, but that doesn’t keep the album’s expository moments from being momentum killers. The passages where artificial voice gets fed into some typically squelchy MOM electro beats are considerably more fun to listen to. [Feb 2021, p.52]

There's the sense that the group are holding back a little. Some tracks just don't quite work on a visceral level, as dance or as forcefields of conflicting elements. [Sep 2013, p.51]

“Airavata” falls into kitsch, with Atwood-Ferguson on electric guitar and violin/viola. The album’s often better than that, however. .... In all, a mixed picture. [Dec 2023, p.42]

This level of gross hallucination could risk indulgence... But for straight-up bad vibes to the head, Fast Cars is compelling. [#252, p.67]

Herbert still seems like the same oddball he ever was. But the first half of Scale underlines how much fun there is to be had in playing the misfit. [#268, p.56]

More Light is, on the whole, more of what made him great--songs with airhead titles like "Where'd You Go," which stretch glorious guitar solos over solid chopping riffs--but it's packed with too much filler. [#200, p.80]

The feeling of opiated depressive inertia that weighs it down is compounded by the sugary viscosity of Danger Mouse;s production. Yet it's these slower songs, shaped by Linkous's Country-inflected enervation and Danger Mouse's attention to sonic detail, that work best, while the more up tempo, rockier tracks come off as perfunctory. [Jul 2010, p.53]