Snotty wit can be heard on the droll "Down On Loving" or the splenetic "Parasites," probably the best examples of the Ramones-via-Replacements sound that defines the album. [Apr 2010, p.90]

The attempt to stir his inner shitkicking garagepunk isn't always successful but a handful of tracks here are creepily sensual. [May 2010, p.85]

Davis tends toward the archly self-conscious, and at times her music sounds oddly dated, but there is promise here. [Feb 2016, p.73]

Harte's voice is sometimes a little thin to carry some songs. [Oct 2007, p.104]

It's a shouty, attitudinal set that connects Ke$ha to Britney Spears and Cyndi Lauper. [Feb 2015, p.75]

If you wish The Hold Steady didn't look so clean, this is the band for you. [Aug 2008, p.113]

It's certainly a bold move that will either send them stratospheric or sink them completely. [Feb 2013, p.71]

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

There's still an organic, soaring bluster to the music, too, though a shortage of obvious anthems this time. [May 2008, p.100]

There are epic power ballads, which just manage to avoid faling into Keane/Coldplay territory; there are terriffic, drone-laden stomp-rockers....The use of saxophone, however, is ill-advised, and Lightburn's voice can get a little ponderous. [Dec 2008, p.88]

The pair sometimes get slow and mellow, but the dominant tone is better expressed by the brattish beat explosion of 'Daylight,' the madly bleeping 'Don't Slow Down' or the clatteringly chaotic 'Cutdown.' [Sep 2009, p.86]

In less successful moments, the album idles in a mid-tempo gaze. [Jun 2019, p.30]

This album is uneven, undisciplined and overlong, but much the same could be said or Lloyd's sporadically brilliant career. [Apr 2009, p.95]

This post-genre approach allows them to take cumbia, mambo, porro, carnival music and ceremonial song, and mash it together in unpredictable and deeply psychedelic ways. [May 2018, p.35]

Lurking beneath the placid surface is an undertow, subtly stirring the songs and arrangements. [Oct 2017, p.32]

He can be relied upon to sprinkle a few brilliant tunes on each release, and this is no exception. [Oct 2012, p.81]

Breathless power-pop offset by an innuendo-laden lyricism. [Mar 2006, p.98]

Their approach is eclectic, esoteric, and not easy on the ear, though it does have a restless energy which suggests it might work better live. [June 2008, p.97]

Wilner hits a few gorgeous highs. [Mar 2012, p.90]

The sparser moments are undoubtedly tender, but the reverential glow soon dims, and the cliched cries of empowerment don't help. [Apr 2013, p.74]

An artfully dishevelled, emphatically Gallic racket. [Feb 2011, p.95]

Carson Cox's over-emotive delivery and a bombastic arrangement tip the album's power-ballad finale, "I Will Not Sleep Here," into Night Ranger Territory. Thankfully, the trio is more careful about its point of reference elsewhere. [Oct 2016, p.35]

They sound positively in-your-face rather than isolated on garagey, throbbing stomps. [Jan 2021, p.27]

The faux-naif schtick still grates somewhat, but there's also real substance, wit and heart here. [Nov 2011, p.91]

Sugar, by comparison [to "Wrecking Ball"], feels laboured. [Sep 2010, p.91]

What once seemed an aesthetic springboard for the band to make truly great music now seems rather like retreading old ground. [Jun 2017, p.33]

Though featuring young musicians, this album is antique rathe r than groundbreaking in feel, pleasing evoking a sweet, after hours blues cellar fug, all slide and sax. [May 2010, p.83]

It feels like a step up in terms of songwriting. [Feb 2011, p.96]

Kath's basic approach to synth-pop means most tracks adhere to a glitchy arpeggiated formula that resembles a Faithless record, but with added indie weirdness. [Jul 2010, p.104]

Unpredictability is its greatest asset. [Dec 2021, p.31]

Although the The Courteeners are newly mature, they're oddly not yet their own men. [Oct 2014, p.69]

Ultimately, too much easy-listening stoner-tronica makes Prism yet another pleasant but inessential late-career Orb album. [Jun 2023, p.35]

After Ready For The Flood, Mockingbird time feels dense, and somewhat cluttered. [Oct 2011, p.85]

For better, and for worse, this is a band who still haven't figured out who they are. [Jul 2006, p.95]

The mechanised backbeat rarely strays too far from the dancefloor, but the ever-shifting textures keep it interesting. [Nov 2011, p.91]

Things get increasingly glum and disenchanted as the album grinds towards the cop-out of "The Troubles." [Dec 2014, p.81]

Some delectable details pop up early on, like the swirling organ that shape-shifts "Thirsty Man," but the nearly unrelieved combination of Early's tang and the Cripple Creek cadences grows wearisome by the LP's second half. [Jan 2014, p.71]

Just Us Kids in part repeats the forumla, targeting SUV drivers, filthy corporations, and Dick Cheney, in an affecting but familiar preach to the converted. [June 2008, p.97]

Sketchy beginnings, but lots of promise. [Nov 2010, p.100]

The shock is that Goddess In The Doorway is really rather good. [Dec 2001, p.114]

Enjoyable stuff. But you have to wonder how this really aids our understanding of what Hendrix was up to, other than by reminding us that whenever he rehearsed, he recorded the session. [Apr 2010, p.108]

As inventive and well-meaning as these bastard pop blasts are, they're still not a patch on the originals. [Dec 2004, p.153]

Chops-wise, all is unimpeachable--but one ends up craving novelty. [Sep 2011, p.98]

At first it's too Linda Perry; soft-rock with feminist principles. [Mar 2006, p.96]

Migration, road-tested in SJ sets, finds Green cruising into that emotional landscapes occupied by the likes of Jon Hopkins and Mark Pritchard. [Feb 2017, p.23]

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

Glass Swords places him squarely out there on his own, programming the kind of computer-game fluoro-rave crunk that's easy to admire but hard to love. [Nov 2011, p.97]

Weird--but in a generally good way. [Feb 2016, p.75]

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.

There's sparse evidence of their supposedly influential stay in Mali with desert bluesmen Tinariwen here, and ultimately their sonic porridge ends up a tad unsalted. [Mar 2010, p.98]

This traverses dancehall, lovers rock and jungle, and adds in more UK-centric bass styles, with some success. [Sep 2011, p.96]

The bland, fist-punching positivity of "Hole In My Soul" and "Parachute" are pitched somewhere between Cold Play and The Killers, but occasionally the reinvention works. [Nov 2016, p.31]

Cropper stays fairly faithful to the originals. [Oct 2011, p.83]

"Comic" interludes like "Tie My Pecker To A Tree" lose them a point, but electronic-strafed epic "I Told You I Was Crazy" shows these proto-grundge "three dumbasses" have interests beyond neolithic riffing. [Dec 2013, p.70]

Vandervelde's second album only really hits its stride in the six-minute centerpiece 'Someone Like You.' [Oct 2008, p.114]

There is an occasional excess of histrionics, particularly on "Boat Yard," but her teenage talent has found a convincing adult path. [Sep 2011, p.96]

On Heritage, [they're] jettisoning practically all trace of heavy whatsoever. [Oct 2011, p.86

The raw machine clap has been replced by Chaotic deconstruction of house music. It's a frequently awkward fit, lacking the fluid styling that makes the best hip hop. [Apr 2008, p.84]

At its best, Margins is unobtrusively impressive. [Nov 2010, p.101]

A more layered dreampop with faux-epic tendencies. [Apr 2017, p.30]

It takes a while to get over that initial disjuncture, and the title track is a headache-inducing mes that sounds like a Bo Diddley rhythm played on electronic toys. Other tracks slip down quite appealingly. [Jul 2016, p.76]

Texis sounds like a band having more fun than they have had in years. [Dec 2021, p.33

The result is neither an especially loud or revelatory one. [Sep 2018, p.32]

[The songs] shows, ultimately, the heights to which Jaffe can rise with time. [Jun 2012, p.158]

An uneven mix. [Feb 2006, p.70]

Contains flashes of his finest work. [Aug 2006, p.84]

Vocalist Nicholas Wood's doomy proclamations are frequently buried amid murky guitar and electronic textures, which can obscure the songs somewhat. [May 2016, p.75]

Spedding's ever-luscious quiff a measure of his stylish, if eternally backdated MO. [Mar 2015, p.83]

Embrace plies its trade with a neat mix of musical proficiency and stylistic flexibility. [Jun 2009, p.93]

This kind of hackneyed loungecore grammar sometimes sounds timeless and inspired, of course, but Adamson has a tendency to crowd routine melodies with superfluous guitars and clumsy beats. [Oct 2002, p.102]

His long awaited debut sees him adding endless waves of muzzy kosmische, softly burred guitar loops, Fripp-like trippiness and heavy psych/space-rock grooves to his arsenal. [Mar 2011, p.83]

Nashville's elite session men construct an intimate acoustic framework for Souther to cast himself as crooning confidant, but it all feels a little polished and polite. [Sep 2011, p.95]

The result is state-of-the-art pop played by a meat-and-potatoes indie band, and sounds a bit like the Stereo MCs. [Oct 2011, p.89]

While the deliberate shapelessness can sometimes appear strangely listless, the rhythmic intensity of "Abstract/Actress" takes things to another level, with the pair working the sound into a primal fury of feedback and clamour. [Dec 2016, p.25]

Gravenhurst prove that kicking arse is neither beneath nor beyond them. [Oct 2007, p.93]

As reassuring as Nine Lives will be to longtime Winwood fans, it’s bound to leave them wanting more--like a full album of Winwood-Clapton interplay.

Presumably bucketloads of fun live, the novelty wear thin on record. [Nov 2010, p.101]

For all their faults, The Levellers will happily go where other feat to tread. [Sep 2008, p.92]

Rules finds The Whitest Boy Alive turning noticeably paler, peddling a shade of Ralph Lauren yacht-rock that would make Hall & Oates blush. [May 2009, p.105]

It's hard to see how much satisfaction this laconic talent must gain from fiddling with a formula he perfected in 1987. [Nov 2002, p.114]

She has all the signifiers of deep soul experience: the husky, rich timbre; the confident testifying; the honeyed transitions. But the ruefulness, grime and pain... aren't there. [Feb 2004, p.73]

Seductive, maybe--but it rather lacks character of its own. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Rather fine. [Mar 2002, p.95]

A continuation of a grand tradition rather than a feeble descendant, Jones' custom tunings strike sourly sweet notes, occasionally--as on the title track--touching on raga modes. [Oct 2011, p.89]

Stupendously silly but... indisputably proficient. [Nov 2005, p.103]

[It] isn't so much More Fish as it is Cheap Fish. [Mar 2007, p.81]

A full LP exposes their limitations and suggests that the songs may work best as soundtracks to their elegant stop-motion videos. [nov 2007, p.108]

Kelley Stoltz is one of the millennium's great unsung auteurs. To Dreamers is frustrating though. [Nov 2010, p.102]

Ploughing through the second disc's "Electronic Battle Weapons" techno jams is a stifling experience, punctuated by rushes of euphoria.

An LP that once raved shamelessly now shuffles, twitchily. [Oct 2009, p.95]

It's hard to take it quite as seriously as it seems to take itself, although there are certainly stirring moments. [Aug 2019, p.32]

And though his long-running solo project has hitherto been a private sketchbook of laptop doodles, for this latest release Atlas Sound engages with the widerworld to great effect: the best two tracks are collaborations: the ambient bubblegum of "Walkabout" with Animal Collective's Panda Bear and the ectoplasmic Krautrock of "Quick Canal" with Laetitia from Stereolab. [Nov 2009, p. 81]

With Lanegan, Nick McCabe and Ani DeFranco along for the ride, Dulli's roiling, captivatingly haunted songs detonate with incandescent splendor. [Mar 2011, p.

Sea Of Cowards is undeniably a major rock record in terms of production and personnel, but is caught between two camps: What is contains is neither major, nor indie, simply enjoyably minor. [Jun 2010, p.94]

With its mix of electric piano and harp, gospel choir, distorted bass and rap, Halcyon seems uncertain where it belongs--low-lit lounge or heaving club. [Nov 2012, p.75]

Album four sees tracks pushing more into more arcane territory, but otherwise we see Zero 7 putting a subtle electronic spin on Elton John, Syreeta, Pentangle and Nick Drake. [Oct 2009, p.123]

It's familiar territory for the mercurial Jon Langford and company, perhaps punk's most persistent ideologues. [Oct 2011, p.93]

Amid all the dirty, clanging glam, there are unfinished moments. [Apr 2007, p.119]