The album may be even bolder and more bracing than the theatrical experiment that preceded it. ... She sounds fearless in every sense of the word. [May 2023, p.20]

Deep and heartbreaking. [May 2023, p.35]

The Window Is The Dream is sonically richer than Horn's often sparse 2022 debut, Optimism, but each choice - the temporary Band-esque folk-rock swagger of "The Dream", the way "Old Friend" hovers at the edge of an extended jam that never quite breaks - is in service of, rather than overpowering, the song. [May 2023, p.30]

Each song is so confident and perfectly formed, unravelling with cascading flurries. Orcutt is so confident and comfortable in his own skin that he has become a maser oif phrasing and economy. [Jun 2023, p.35]

Confirm that the brothers have fully absorbed their influences in a work of stunning sophistication. [Jun 2023, p.32]

Nelson remains the supreme interpreter of American song, and age has wearied his fretboard fingers not even slightly. [May 2023, p.32]

Playful wordplay and minor-chord ingenuity bound. [Jun 2023, p.23]

Joan Of All rarely feels ordinary. ... As a whole, this is a work of strength and variety. [Jun 2023, p.24]

Villagers' sleeve is telling: a pile of disparate old junk that somehow sites together as a piece. The remarkable thing is that this album achieves that so spectacularly. [Jul 2023, p.16]

Thrillingly pioneers its 21st century sound. [Jun 2023, p.26]

Delivers intimately detailed tales set to hushed arrangements. [Sep 2023, p.37]

A potent, heavy distillation of everything the group have done. [Aug 2023, p.30]

LaVette remains at the peak of her considerable powers at the age of 77. [Jul 2023, p.37]

Demonstrates that PSB are without peer as exponents of the pop single. [Aug 2023, p.50]

It's this mix of songwriting voices as well as the tight thematic concept of The Dirty South that makes this such a strong LP, and the new songs don't diminish that. [Jul 2023, p.44]

The more menacing "Fuzzbuster #09" could almost be an interlude on Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex. A few other discoveries are equally astonishing. [Jul 2023, p.48]

Hark! I Inside the Old Year Dying is a singular thing. [Aug 2023, p.18]

A stunning record. [Aug 2023, p.23]

Here are profound expressions of timeless love, nostalgic memories of relationships past, reflections on fulfillment, grief, desire, belonging and habitual non-belonging. [Aug 2023, p.35]

Just about every song's a banger, but pay particular attention to the jagged metal shredding of "Persuasion Architect"; then contrast with the outstanding country rocker "Twins". [Aug 2023, p.29]

Clarke is both perpetuating and recontextualising the music of the mid-20th century. [Sep 2023, p.24]

through his efforts to convey a profound experience of loss in a long-gone summer, these songs offer an uncommonly generous wealth of grace and beauty. [Aug 2023, p.32]

Throughout all nine songs, Glenn-Copeland's voice seems to exist on the eternal plane, powerful and vulnerable in equal measure, an elder sharing his knowledge in stirring sonic form. [Sep 2023, p.26]

The group confidently flits between low-key funk, lush symphonic Philly soul and the more punchy post-Motown dance grooves of Chairman Of The Board, the constant being Rowland's powerfully assured vocal delivery of his mea culpa confessionals. [Aug 2023, p.28]

It's a calming, beatific experience. [Aug 2023, p.34]

In isolation, it’s a dozen of Young’s best songs, powerful no matter how many times they’ve been reshuffled since. But in reality, it risks getting lost in the shotgun spray of Young’s self-curation. [Oct 2023, p.49]

This is the most approachable and therefore unexpected Osees album for some years. [Sep 2023, p.32]

The extraordinary power and jaded romance of Suede, which has been given renewed depth and sparkle in this new version. [Sep 2023, p.49]

This is the Slowdive you've been waiting for. [Oct 2023, p18]

What should have been the next step in Branch's innovative career became a tragically beautiful final document that captured an artist cresting a peak. [Oct 2023, p.30]

Bursting with warmth and character even when nearly tweaked beyond the point of recognition, Murphy's voice has rarely had a more satisfying showcase. [Oct 2023, p.31]

Striking successor to 2021 breakthrough Pohorylle. .... Her phrasing is exquisite throughout. [Oct 2023, p.26]

It's a dozen of his finest compositions reworked as bluegrass tunes, and it's magnificent. [Oct 2023, p.31]

From the moment you heard her with Our Native Daughters, you knew it was only a matter of time before she made her album for the ages. The Returner is that album. [Oct 2023, p.27]

Together, the North Carolina instrumental trio revel in heady improvisatory zones. .... There's no lead voice here, just three musicians moving as one. [Nov 2023, p.32]

Even better [than Time Skiffs]: consistently inventive rather than merely quirky, it makes sincere effort to get to the emotional core of what they do. [Nov 2023, p.25]

Cousin is deliciously weird and intoxicatingly angular, but it still sounds like a Wilco album. [Oct 2023, p.24]

It's an embarrassment of riches. [Nov 2023, p.40]

It's an album that unfurls like a flag on a battlefield, glorious, tattered, defiant, full of big choruses, vaulting harmonies, a brazenly windswept sound. The guitars couldn't be louder, bolder, more heroically deployed. [Nov 2023, p.28]

A masterpiece in any time zone. [Dec 2023, p.26]

It may be the most accurate representation of her vision yet, a singular blend of abrasively charming feel-bad noir rock. [Jan 2024, p.28]

A mighty musical exorcism. [Dec 2023, p.30]

Iechyd Da feels a culmination of all he set out to do. It’s a record that beckons you over and invites you in, that rewards your faith and careful listening with moments of extraordinary beauty, unflinching honesty, a sonic exchange of love. [Review Of The Year 2023, p.16]

The Smile take Radiohead’s privileges seriously, rewarding our attention with music that demands and – crucially – holds it. No frills, no distractions. A little like Radiohead, then; but there’s nothing wrong with that. [Feb 2024, p.29]

This is an album that sounds like it’s had time spent on it. It’s brilliantly recorded, pristine and perfectly imperfect. [Jan 2024, p.20]

A Jaime 2.0 likely to secure her status as an auteur in terms of both conception and execution. It's bigger, freer-thinking and more dynamically audacious record. [Feb 2024, p.20]

While Phasor standouts such as "Flores" evoke Os Mutantes in a narcoleptic fugue. .... On "Colores Del Mar" and "Out There", he strikes an equally deft balance between aqueous abstraction and buoyant, big-hearted avant-pop. [Mar 2024, p.34]

It's a modern masterclass in psych pop. [Feb 2024, p.31]

An album that is leaps and bounds above anything else Shah has done before – a record that’s layered and detailed, coated with beautifully rich production, yet also spacious and considered. [Feb 2024, p.23]

While Waxahatchee has never sounded more suited for mass approval, Crutchfield has never seemed truer to herself. [Apr 2024, p.30]

There is something about this music that is warming, aqueous, immersive and endlessly engaging. [Mar 2024, p.18]

Every song contains a clever new idea. [Mar 2024, p.35]

This set is a confirmation and welcome addition to the catalogue of recorded Alice Coltrane music and spiritual jazz. [May 2024, p.48]

Beautifully now. [Mar 2024, p.29]

An impassioned and resolute statement imbued with clarity of vision, emotional depth and the hum of boundless creativity. [Apr 2024, p.33]

Bold, brilliant and experimental. [Apr 2024, p.34]

By comparison [to 2019's Father Of The Bride], Only God Was Above Us is off its meds - grimier, sonically and spiritually; more compressed, more stressed. Lyrically, conflict is everywhere and nothing is stable. .... It would all be so much showing-off if the narrative ache Koenig displays wasn't so palpable, and the craft wasn't so meticulous. These guys listen hard, sometimes applying different processing effects on each word, even syllable. [May 2024, p.33]

Lyrically and vocally, Houck is as witty and insightful as the come, with that cacked voice making everything sound sacred or profound. [Mar 2024, p.33]

There are surprises everywhere. While "R&B" and "Nearly Daffodils" are sprightly, irreverent post-punk, the influence of Black Country, Nee Road nd Radiohead are evident on the complex, proggy title track and the diverse, hushed final third of the album. Lily Fontaine's lyrics, to are deep and funny. [Apr 2024, p.32]

Supremely inviting, warm and ruefully radiant. .... A crown on a career still going strong. [May 2024, p.31]

Another radical musical/ psychological metamorphosis. [Jun 2024, p.39]

A sublime composition. [Feb 2024, p.37]

The music here swells, surges and rages without ever losing the vulnerability at its core. [May 2024, p.31]

The LP opens with “My Golden Years”, a delectable mélange of Harrisonian 12-string riffs, Wilsonian harmonies and layer-cake hooks, and reaches its apex with the glorious Beach Boys homage “In The Eyes Of The Girl”, with Sean Ono Lennon co-producing and playing bass. [Jun 2024, p.35]

Ranging from explosive Afro-funk workouts by Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi and Les Bantous de la Capitale to more psych-influenced stunners by Abeti et Les Redoutables and Zaiko Langa Langa, these rediscoveries are thrilling enough for Congo Funk! to deserve a place next to African Scream Contest among Analog Africa’s most indispensable collections. [May 2024, p.53]

A cresting, rolling record of complexity and depth. [May 2024, p.24]

What strikes you is the sheer variety of styles and textures that Keenan and Cargill were playing around with. It’s a shimmering patchwork of ideas and moments, some more realised than others, some beautiful, some stark. .... Spell Blanket is a glimpse at what might have been. A memory of the future. [May 2024, p.42]

The man is as affecting as ever on this most traditional of collections. [Feb 2003, p.77]

The music here is intimate yet remote. [Dec 2002, p.140]

Provides a gentle but subtle introduction to the sometimes onerous world of avant-techno. [Apr 2003, p.122]

Definitely a return to psyche splendour. [Oct 2002, p.122]

There's real poeticised emoting here. [May 2003, p.108]

An album of tough-edged, passion-fuelled songs full of real emotion. [Jun 2002, p.109]

Music at its most passionate. [Sep 2002, p.112]

Terrific stuff. [Aug 2002, p.122]

This is mostly acoustic guitars lovingly plucked, drums delicately brushed, fiddles softly sawn. [Oct 2003, p.113]

As ever, BBR's absinthe-flavoured acid drops give you a great deal more to suck on than the rest of pop's confectionery selection. [Mar 2003, p.112]

Their hedonistic sex-dance anthems go down a treat. [Apr 2003, p.103]

An album that, on first listen, glides by doing nothing wrong. Second time around, you realise that, more accurately, it's doing everything right, and you're spellbound. [Jun 2003, p.92]

The group allows O'Rourke to indulge his songwriter instincts and Tweedy to exert an often-suppressed experimental imperative. [Feb 2003, p.82]

Busta stampedes through a survey of current rap styles with boundless wit, energy and quality rhymes. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Packed with big, epic pop. [Jun 2003, p.102]

A sustained soft explosion of hushed, aching indietronica. [June 2003, p.91]

There are a handful of stunning instrumentals, but the revelations here are Lanois' singing and songwriting. [May 2003, p.102]

A dozen vivid and deeply personal songs.... Gray has made a record that anybody who cares about great songwriting should hear. [Dec 2002, p.130]

The entire album sounds as if it was made to be heard on a Fifties jukebox rather than a state-of-the-art super-audio digital system. [Sep 2002, p.112]

At its most ascetic, Fog sees Broder kicking down the same fence post of convention as Tortoise, the Beta Band and latter-day Radiohead. [Mar 2002, p.111]

To be filed alongside the Root's recent Phrenology. [Mar 2003, p.95]

As powerfully evocative as a French arthouse flick. [Sep 2002, p.116]

The arrangements... are ambitious and richly textured, producing work that rewards repeated listening. [Jan 2003, p.117]

A fierce, defiant record. [Apr 2003, p.108]

The perfect soundtrack to summer in the city. [Oct 2002, p.111]

Natalie Merchant has made an album of elemental beauty... she's never sounded better. [Jan 2002, p.140]

A far more ambitious affair as producers Black Dog and Custom Blue underpin her crystalline vocals with subtly pattering lite beats, clever jazz inflections and humming electronic textures. [Dec 2001, p.102]

This is Calexico on downers, Lee Hazlewood on jolly pills. [Dec 2002, p.131]

By the time we reach "Surripere" we could be listening to a toughened-up Aphex Twin, poignant harmonies battling against oblique but splintering beats. [May 2003, p.92]

The second solo album still sounds like a wilful jukebox stocked on the disparate taste of someone attempting vinyl hari-kari. [Apr 2003, p.116]

A near-masterpiece.... It's hip and urgent, formal and exhilarated, everything guitar pop aspires to today. [Dec 2001, p.118]