Literate, idiosyncratic power pop, ploughed from a furrow between Fountains of Wayne and The Posies. [Mar 2020, p.33]

If you like your pop super-sweet and synthy, fill your boots. [Mar 2020, p.25]

Revisits the kind of understated, politically slanted synth-pop that defined the Minnesota band's last two Trump-haunted albums. Nut Leaneagh also digs deeper on more hopeful, personal ruminations. [Mar 2020, p.35]

The group's ninth album feels low-down and dirty. [Feb 2020, p.25]

The mini-album finds this talented duo running in place. [Feb 2020, p.30]

Much more inconsistent and rather less immediate [than 2017's Dear]. [Feb 2020, p.25]

While rarely adventurous or surprising, is reassuringly familiar. [Feb 2020, p.27]

A double LP by name, but distant cousins rather than telepathic twins. [Feb 2020, p.33]

As the strident piano ballads and flatly aggressive production pound on, though, it's more AGT than Kanye. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Drawing on a palette of classic Beatles/Queen influences via plenty of heavy metal sturm und drang. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Their fourth LP together sees them ditch the punky uptempo tracks and instead wallow in mournful, funereal meditations that don't leave White with much to do. [Dec 2019, p.35]

Some good songs emerge--"Ego Central High" is a glammy gem that makes its repetitiveness a virtue--but otherwise this is heavy listening that too often edges towards stodge. [Dec 2019, p.29]

As is the case with most of his releases the past decade or so, Ringo addresses his own career with a heavy dose of nostalgia. [Dec 2019, p.32]

It's a polite, rather repressed formulation and the most appealing moments come when they go off-piste. [Dec 2019, p.32]

Spending a little too long in the shallows of pastel-shaded easy-listening minimalism. That said, there are sublimely beautiful and lightly experimental touches here too. [Dec 2019, p.30]

Song structures are over-egged, resulting in blunted hooks and lost momentum. [Dec 2019, p.25]

As ever, the technical chops are indisputable--but it does, with fewer brains on board, feel somehow less substantial. [Nov 2019, p.22]

Temples seem to be in the thrall of Tame Impala's retro-futurism, but their in-studio moves fall short of Kevin Parker's aerodynamic wizardry, although they come tantalisingly close on "You're Either On Something," nimbly balancing delicacy and majesty. [Oct 2019, p.36]

Something of a grind--repeat helpings of grimly strummed acoustic guitar and keening vocals becoming the folk equivalent of consecutive courses of muesli. [Nov 2019, p.29]

So much of Okie is overly sentimental, mono-paced balladry. [Nov 2019, p.27]

The best songs here are the instrumentals. As a songwriter he relies on too many cliches, remains fiercely devoted to a stiff ABAB rhyme scheme and offers too few insights into his underworld characters. [Oct 2019, p.36]

Occasionally a little too meandering. [Oct 2019, p.26]

It suffers somewhat from inevitably diminishing returns, in that it simply isn't anywhere near as good as their canonical records; that said, not much is. [Oct 2019, p.33]

Alas, genuinely surprising moments are scarcer on much of Wallop, with rudimentary workouts outnumbering the fresher like of "$50 Million" and its super-charged Chic groove. [Oct 2019, p.23]

The soft-rock paradigm with its classic Fleetwood Mac/Carole King references is self-limiting, but the songs are lucid and heartfelt in their graceful ruminations on the passage of time. [Sep 2019, p.34]

Forever Turned Around hovers in a midrange that's objectively nice, but lacks the vigour required of something memorable. [Oct 2019, p.39]

A robust if not radically groundbreaking set of hook-laden heartland Americana with occasional detours into college indie rock. [Oct 2019, p.39]

Across the record's 12 tracks, it's never entirely clear what the group are aiming for: anthemic indie rock by numbers, more introspective songs or something heavier. [Sep 2019, p.26]