Plaintive desert rock and gilded chamber pop with heart and poise. [Nov 2002, p.122]

Guitarist Dan Moss writes the songs, but it's Katherine Whitaker's voice that give them life, and the more space she has, the better the result. [Jun 2012, p.71]

It's an album inspired by Camus that's never less than intense. It;s also overwrought, as the taciturn voice and glum lyrics wrestle for space with manically busy strings and an unfortunate folk feel. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Songs, without exception, are well crafted but more often than not collapse into cloying jauntiness. [Dec 2004, p.153]

Behind the abundance of route one hooks and rather beige, Gary Barlow-esque vocals, however, there's evidence of emotional heft in the lyrics. [Aug 2014, p.70]

It sounds more like sketchbook of snippets rather than fully formed tracks. Even so, it still tickles the pleasure zones with its goodtime swing and verve. [Aug 2011, p98]

Too many songs sport frumpier styles. [Nov 2018, p.34]

Their thing is Troubadour-era rootsy rocking rather than harmonic rapture, but American Goldwing's free-wheeling charms are still hard to resist. [Oct 2011, p.81]

His latest is no less a mixed bag. [Oct 2013, p.75]

Not quite a match for the smoky blueprints, yet entertaining enough to inspire a trip to their source. [May 2006, p.128]

On the last Foos album, "In Your Honour" rock and acoustic music were exiled to different discs. Here, a satisfactory compromise is brokered between the two: the excellent 'Summer's End' is easy on the ear, easier still on the brain, and sets him up in the radio-friendly 'Wonderwall' district one imagines is his spiritual home.

After a promising start, the LP soon defaults to a brand of quirky, over-stimulated electropop that doesn't really do justice to Woodhead's smart, conceptual lyrics. [May 2015, p.72]

Now bolstered by Joanna Bolme of The Jicks on bass, American Gong feels like a calculated attempt to juice up thier smart, literate rock. [Apr 2010, p.97]

A succinct pastiche of junglist, breakbeat and chill-out fare. [Sep 2016, p.75]

A charming composite of Damon Gough's homespun insight and Edith Piaf's anguish. [May 2005, p.106]

Introspection clearly suits him. [Nov 2006, p.119]

It's ultimately a record that struggles to step outside the shadows of its influences. [Feb 2018, p.27]

His willingness to scribble over the pretty surfaces of his songs brings a bristling edge to his Beatlesque pop. [Feb 2008, p.79]

It's all very pleasant, but somewhat weightless. [Jul 2017, p.26]

That quest to explore her true colors is tenderly juxtaposed with some grand arrangements--woodwind, strings, marching drums--that bring to mind Minnie Riperton, Bond themes and '40s Disney movies. [Aug 2018, p.24]

Krieger's fuzzy, sustain-heavy guitar solos drift along pleasantly. [May 2020, p.28]

The idea was to expand Gogol Bordell's palate to accommodate the Ukrainian-American's recently adopted homeland of Brazil. The Good news is that it doesn't matter--if Gogol Bordello still sound like an Eastern European answer to The Pogues, it still means they're doing something nobody else is. [Jul 2010, p.108]

While no reinvention, Paper Gods is both entertaining ad typically Duran-esque. [Oct 2015, p.75]

A return that is as warmly welcome as it is wholly unexpected. [Oct 2002, p.122]

Two Vines mostly sticks with the tried-and-true. [Dec 2016, p.26]

The dozen sly and witty songs are all Setzer originals, but it takes a liitle suspension of disbelief to imagine "Calamity Jane" and "Cock-a-Doodle Don't" could've been authentically written 60 years ago. [Oct 2014, p.79]

Ultimately it's a record that happily exists in something of a fog - wilfully embracing hazy, almost groggy textures. [Jul 2023, p.30]

A fairly conservative affair. [Nov 2006, p.101]