The fact this collection of originals is inferior to 2001's Ultraglide In Black (a covers album) reveals [Mick Collins'] songwriting has never matched his energy. [Nov 2003, p.118]

Her aching voice is more lived in than her years suggest. [Jul 2011, p.92]

Both fierce and mellow, this is smooth-jazz with an alluringly punky heart. [Sep 2011, p.96]

Although it's hardly Green's fault, Mark Ronson's retro-soul ubiquity makes this record sound less fresh than it otherwise might have. [Jan 2011, p.86]

Fair play to Jones, He's a trier. [Sep 2010, p.96]

For this fifth album, she changes tack again, gaining in clarity what she loses in originality. [Aug 2011, p.94]

Nothing is a strong as 'Hey Lloyd...' and Traceyanne Campbell's lachrymose croon is struggling to find new melodies, but on tracks like 'French Navy' and 'Honey In The Sun,' CO remain heartbreakingly lucid. [May 2009, p.80]

It's the skeletal accompaniment that lends the sound real brawn--primitive and intuitive, yet sophisticated at the same time. [Jun 2009, p.113]

Delivered with conviction and defiance these timely tunes benefit from the input of longtime pal and collaborator Rod Picott. [Jul 2013, p.72]

It never gets deep. ... It's stupid, daft, and no wonder that when Josh Homme's looking for a night of goofy escapism he goes to see The Chats. [May 2020, p.26]

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

The world-view is challenging and heart-felt, the playing deft, the conviction clear. [June 2008, p.88]

The Delgados have made a fine follow-up to 2000's The Great Eastern. Problem is, it's the same album, more or less. [Nov 2002, p.115]

Are You Alone? hints at a Blue Nile-like melancholy beauty; otherwise the album could be prescribed as a treatment for insomnia. [Dec 2015, p.74]

Attempts to blend leftfield electronica, Broadway balladeering and voguish trap beats are technically impressive but stretch his minimal melodies to [the] breaking point. [Apr 2019, p.26]

Some tastefully lightweight, pleasantly inessential filler ultimately make Fuse a minor late-career coda. [Jun 2023, p.26]

All Of A Sudden... rather falls under the shadow of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but there's ample majesty in its climactic moments to recommend it. [Mar 2007, p.79]

The pace and register of the record seldom alter: the soundscape is always more baked earth than lush foliage. [May 2005, p.103]

The only consistent thing about Infiniheart is its inconsistency. [Sep 2005, p.116]

It's an intense, at times crazed live-in-studio session. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Harvey maybe a bit too in love with a crunchy delay/distortion footswitch combo, but the likes of "Space Monkeys," he and his younger guys make a creditable, spacey blues. [Jan 2017, p.27]

Silver Age revisits Sugar's thick-set pop style. [Nov 2012, p.79]

The Staten Island quartet blend the fixtures and fittings of noisy US slacker rock--Sonic Youth drones, Pavement squalls--but add a bubblegum pop sensibility. Their vocalist Joseph D'Agostino, however, remains something of an acquired taste. [Oct 2016, p.26]

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

The finest moments... prove to be the same stripped-down verbally deft hip-hop that made their name. [Oct 2005, p.100]

Depending on your mood or generosity, these are either indulgently doleful or movingly ascetic in their dutiful repetitions--worth investigating either way. [Jan 2015, p.71]

Sundfor's first for Bella Union suffers from an occasional excess of affectations, her melismatic vocal style an acquired taste. Fortunately, she's best at her most intimate, this sixth collection's dominate quality. [Sep 2017, p.38]

The Trio's third album is similarly, unconventionally earnest, often doing for the New Romantics when Gayngs did for 10cc. [Nov 2011, p.84]

It ain't always pretty. [Oct 2009, p.104]

Plenty of liturgic rumbling, but it really works when she aims for something greater. [Dec 2020, p.39]

Wolf's twofold skillfulness and stirring guest performances compensate for the sometimes overcooked arrangements. [Apr 2010, p.109]

That it works at all is thanks to a dense, cartoonish production that sees dusty breaks. found sounds and snippets of conversation tossed together like the contents of an upturned toy box. [Jul 2005, p.96]

The results are alluring warped but this groovy nostalgia is now a well-trodden path. [Dec 2015, p.76]

Theirs is a sophisticated, finely nuanced sound, lynchpin Aaron Turner's vocals notwithstanding. [Jun 2009, p.88]

Lenses Alien harnesses the singular vision of singer and guitarist Joseph D'Agostino to finely nuanced, feedback-soused art-rock. [Nov 2011, p.83]

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

Son's patchwork of fluttering loops and vocal delays align Molina with kindred spirits Animal Collective, though her listless delivery can dull proceedings. [Jun 2006, p.106]

This is pretty gloomy going, not rendered much easier by the lugubrious baritone in which Beck delivers his emotional autopsies, or the vague, amorphous melodies. [Nov 2002, p.116]

The album is most fun when it plays up to the contours of Karen O's idiosyncratic voice. [Apr 2019, p.32]

Over the full 82 minutes, though, 93696 can feel a little relentless, undone by the scale of its own ambition. [Apr 2023, p.32]

Fiendishly clever, but not easy to love. [Oct 2009, p.104]

May has a knack for hooks and titles. [Oct 2017, p.32]

Power pop without the escapism. [Apr 2005, p.105]

"Die" is generic glam riffage, and "Magic" is a tedious Britpop stomp, but there are many successes. [Oct 2011, p.86]

If there's a signpost that Cripple Crow isn't quite the record it could've been, it's that the most engaging moments here recall Banhart records past. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Too often La Vie Est Belle, produced by Boxed In's Oli Bayston, has all the flair of an Editors potboiler, so a potentially uplifiting record becomes quite draining. [Nov 2015, p.80]

At 15 tracks, it outstays its welcome, but in small does this is deliciously addictive. [June 2008, p.86]

He may be treading water a little until he really gets into his groove as the 21st century Sondheim, but Distortion at its best is beguiling and quietly devastating.

It has its Mr. Fox-y moments but this feels like a minor clanger. [May 2012, p.83]

Finn remains an astute and supremely compassionate songwriter, but musically, New War is often mellow to the point of lethargic. It's best when it showcases his deep eccentricities. [May 2019, p.27]

Mixes have the tracks - stacked guitars and vocals, bustling basslines, played and programmed drums - hurtling along as if crammed into a tunnel. [Mar 2024, p.25]

Much of Drum's Not Dead suggests a Ligeti score for The Blair Witch Project as played by The Residents. [Mar 2006, p.88]

Enchanting arrangements, glistening instrumentation, and Griffin's hypnotic vocals carry the day. [Mar 2010, p.86]

Her follow-up, produced by Mark Howard, adds country-gospel choirs and fussy arrangements to her palette, steamrolling any nuance she might bring to these characters. [Apr 2018, p.23]

Too often a limited voice and over-egged arrangements strain to little effect. [Aug 2009, p.94]

If she began coasting on 2002's Under Construction, here pop's most innovative black female is on repeat mode. [Feb 2004, p.72]

Light and airy, pretty in parts, but devoid of muscle, grit or originality. [May 2002, p.96]

For chunks of the album there's an unshakable feeling of familiarity. [Jul 2018, p.27]

There's nothing here to surprise anyone familiar with Mogwai's chiefly instrumental, epic soundscaping. [Mar 2005, p.120]

His tools may be blunt, and too many tracks sound like unfinished sketches, but Zomby manages to summon a uniquely unsettling atmosphere. [Aug 2011, p.107]

If a few concessions are made to mainstream mores here, it still works on its own idiosyncratic terms. [Mar 2022, p.25]

Sade Adu and co return with more snoozy, expensively produced, quiet-storm soul. [Mar 2010, p.95]

Elegant backgound music, better live, you suspect. [Dec 2007, p.98]

Good, but the exciting notion of a genuine career left turn feels increasingly unlikely.

Throughout, his mellowness of tone is the album's defining feature. Miraculously, thanks to the minutiae of the arrangements, it's a sound that never becomes one dimensional. [Oct 2009, p.96]

Tindersticks have returned refreshed, but some of the old dissolute glamour is gone.

Living With Yourself showcases McGuire's playing with minimal adornment. [Nov 2010, p.94]

Too much of it is lost in homogeneous country balladry more often associated with Trish Yearwood and all the other Nashville guff. A pity, because Moorer's voice is an expressive thing. [Mar 2010, p.94]

"Normal" offers the most accessible punk foot-tapper that races past but leaves you wanting more. [Nov 2010, p.97]

The music does not so much take off as forever taxi toward the boundary fence. [Dec 2013, p.70]

An acquired taste. [Jan 2005, p.124]

Her decision to forgo electric guitars on @#%&*! Smilers results in the aural equivalent of watercolour washes, lovely and tasteful but lacking presence. [July 2008, p.102]

This, assembled by Menahan Street Band guitarist Tom Brenneck, painstakingly recreates the tropes of classic '60s Southern soul--impassioned vocals, shimmering guitars and fruity horns. [Mar 2010, p.85]

It's not much of a move forward, and arguably a step back. [Sep 2013, p.85]

It's bombastic, but you can't fault its ambitions. [Jun 2007, p.115]

They've mastered the basics, but still have miles to go. [May 2017, p.26]

Big Dada, Beans, Sayyid, Earl Blaize and High Priest riffle through more fresh ideas in the opening six tracks than contempoary hip hop will in as many months. [Oct 2009, p.91]

A curiously uninvolving affair. [Jun 2004, p.95]

On first hearing, it's a record to admire rather than love, but its insidious appeal soon gets under your skin. [Sep 2002, p.112]

22-year old singer and songwriter Dylan Baldi still sounds like an angst-wracked teen. [Jun 2014, p.73]

Full of hits and misses as it sways back and forth between indie and electro, never quite finding its feet. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Not as muddy as one might have hoped, then, but this was definitely a revisit worth making. [July 2008, p.96]

Swirling and malevolent, "I&I" and "Beneath The Concrete" are compelling enough, but wading through so much posturing becomes a slog. [Jun 2016, p.76]

Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at.

When you live in Florida, it is summertime all the time, which might be why this Palm Beach quartet have developed such a seasonal vibe on their sun-spotted indie-pop debut. [Aug 2010, p.96]

The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999's Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. [May 2003, p.108]

Cat's Eyes has nice moment's has nice moments, but it makes you realize how much we'll miss Broadcast, who explored similar terrain with more aplomb. [May 2011, p.86]

He's let down by the lyrics, which seem, to have been assembled from a collection of fridge magnet soul cliches. [May 2014, p.78]

Riley has mellowed with age, so the politicking is shot through with humour. [Jun 2006, p.94]

These are good songs, but they're so boldly signposted, you can see them miles away. [May 2011, p.85]

She approaches the material with understated expressiveness. [Sep 2020, p.32]

Lyrically, there's little to cling onto, but it's not inconceivable a song like 'Soldier's Grin' could see them follow labelmates The Shins into indie ubiquity. [Sep 2008, p.115]

Guest spots from vocalists Andrea Galaxy and Jessy Lanza make explicit the R&B influence, but the most emotive, intimate moments come when Abdel-Hamid makes her synths sing to themselves. [Jul 2017, p.32]

McCraven's label debut deploys his own musicians with Horace Silver and the rest, giving a steamy hip-hop stutter to Blakey beats already halfway there, and letting the aching melody of Kenny Burrell's "Autumn In New York" simmer under new rhythmic cross-winds. [Dec 2021, p.31]

An unusually exciting attempt to revitalise past glories. [Oct 2002, p.111]

It all sounds like The Beta Band swapping confrontation for contentment. [Apr 2002, p.93]

Certainly it is a record of two halves, its first batch of corroded box jams smothered in hiss, including two listless cuts with Sampha. [Jan 2021, p.21]

Breakup Song is all right, but ultimately, it's an unnecessary listen. [Nov 2012, p.72]