Abstract, but curiously engaging. [Mar 2011, p.83]

Their fourth album amps up the synths-and-beats side of their new wave Scandi-rock aesthetic, with broadly positive results. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Excessive emoting is unfortunately typical of the record's exhausting inclination toward overwrought histrionics. [Sep 2014, p.74]

Intriguing and hauntingly lovely, if almost totally one paced. [Sep 2013, p.72]

The standout tracks here are the most melancholy and experimental. [Nov 2012, p.71]

The listener who experiences this album as physically as it is delivered will be rewarded with calories burned, an endorphin rush to die for, and heavy sweating indeed. [Aug 2010, p.94]

Static's production is bright and punchy, which has the unintended effect of sabotaging softer moments. [Jan 2014, p.73]

They build on the West Coast blueprint for strung-out, psychotropic darkness, tracking back to The Crystals via Mary Chain and leaning heavily on the reverb and delay. However, it's hedonism, not retro homage that floats the Crocodiles' boat. [Jul 2009, p.84]

The outcome is a raucous, rough-and-tumble blues-rock album. [Jun 2015, p.71]

Their debut is a good deal more engaging thgan any number of Bloc Party or Daeth Cab For Cutie comparisons might imply, however apt. [Mar 2010, p.88]

Ejimiwe's lyrics are often vague, but the music has echoes of Tricky, Roots Manuva, and the minimal end of dubstep. [Mar 2011, p.91]

With Ring, Mesirow concocts a fractured pop that accentuates the layers of electronic composition, though her voice is the guiding instrument. [Dec 2010, p.104]

A prophetically titled record that does exactly what it promises. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Album number five is the sound of the law of diminishing returns finally kicking in. [Jul 2012, p.73]

Gena Olivier's pallid vocals sound frozen stiff rather than disaffectedly cool by the halfway stage. [Feb 2005, p.78]

Thanks to her Valley Girl charisma and omnivorous sexual gaze she mostly succeeds. [Dec 2012, p.73]

Wash the Sins Not Only the Face proves they have the songs to match their mood but too often tend to wallow in kohl-eyed cliche. [Feb 2013, p.71]

This is adequate debut, but La Roux will need to move beyond brittle pastiche if they hope to reinvent such overfamiliar ingredients. [Jul 2009, p.91]

A little more zip wouldn't go amiss. [Aug 2019, p.36]

Happily, the music Stewart's art rock collective make on their seventh studio LP tells a more playful and diverse story, incorporating vivid punktronica, delicate ambient moodscapes and icy chamber-pop. [Mar 2010, p.107]

Pants gas ditched electro-funk in favour of the kind of woozy, nu-gazing reveries crafted by Beach House, Girls and teenage Fantasy. Not that it's all whacked-pout bliss-pop. [Jul 2011, p.93]

While Winfield's pompous lyrics and over-earnest tone sometimes grate, the supple disco-funk of "Sparks" shows definite promise. [Aug 2015, p.81]

Rattle That Lock turns out to be a modest achievement for the most part. [Oct 2015, p.82]

A tough job hitting both funny and funky bone at once, but they mostly pull it off. [Apr 2005, p.102]

While there are plenty of new lyrical Bejarisms to enjoy, the packaging feels a little stale. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Pipes is the weaker collection--no remaster can disguise this. [Nov 2015, p.93]

Ballads like "Chill In The Air" and "Burden" have a stately gait, but Lee is more engaging when he turns playful huckster. [Jan 2014, p.75]

Liverpool 8, which stands happily beside Starr's recent hits compilation, holds its own as a companion piece to McCartney's similarly vital "Memory Almost Full," and makes a nice day off from having to like Radiohead.

Touching new folk-rock compositions sit alongside spirited arrangements of trad songs and sturdy instrumentals. [May 2017, p.26]

The atmosphere is organic and engaging, the only problem being that amid the fug of good vibes, no one remembered to write a killer song. [July 2008, p.94]

Morello's guitars tend to dominate, Riley's best lines get lost, and none of the songs here have the tunes to convert floating voters. [Nov 2009, p.106]

City of Refuge finds her back in Appalachian mode though, the songs shaded with fiddle, banjo and dulcimer and borne aloft by Washburn's airy voice. [Mar 2011, p.92]

Heavy on stately soul pianos and produced by singer-songwriter Richard Swift, its strength-through-adversity feels is held back from flight by Burhenn's entirely earthbound voice. [Jul 2010, p.115]

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

It's a little too polite to beak new ground, but it certainly draws attention to more than a dozen fine--and largely overlooked--melodies from Elton's golden era. [Sep 2012, p.91]

FoW's impeccably assembled works rarely stir little more than fond memories of their obvious influences. This is largely true of Sky Full Of Holes, though there are moments of irresistible sticky sweetness. [Sep 2011, p.84]

More conservative than 2001's Melody AM, with little of the twinkling, yodelling mania that distinguished them from their late-night-friendly peers. [Aug 2005, p.103]

This largely instrumental set is a nicely ambient version of their usual hellacious harmonics, but also a reminder how the band have attained creative control on a major label. [Feb 2007, p.85]

The results are sometimes too meta to be particularly satisfying, but when but coheres - as on the bracing, static-smeared "Backwash" - it's worth the effort. [Nov 2022, p.29]

Here We Go Magic's faintly tropical, fuzzy, circular grooves are beguiling, if a little slight. [Aug 2009, p.92]

It's sleek, groomed and genetically engineered to within an inch of sonic perfection, but there's very little that's memorable. [Nov 2004, p.120]

Their take on electric jazz can seem airless: the sax leads are worthy but venture nowhere near the outer limits chartered by Ayler and Coltrane. [Mar 2011, p.93]

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

Growls and blast-beats come decorated with guitar work that explores scale after scale of diabolical pleasures. [Aug 2008, p.101]

Sadly the album’s latter stages revert to type, as Jónsi Birgisson’s quavering choirboy falsetto illuminates glacially paced piano and strings. All achingly lovely in a Coldplay-meets-Clannad way, of course, but Sigur Ros play too safe when they clearly have much more to offer than misty-eyed Celtic abstraction.

The best moments ion this latest from Francois Marry come with added West African sparkle. [Feb 2012, p.86]

Peer behind the pose, owever, and you'll find a sparky outfit whose towering tunes, such as 'Sun comes Up,' match their lofty ideas. [Sep 2008, p.115]

Their literate, grandly melancholic '80s-influenced rock rarely transcends familiar reference points, but Lou Hill is a passionate, distinctive vocalist. [Apr 2011, p.103]

Its themes are plainly evident in the earworm metal stomp of "Many Doors To Hell" and gothic menace of "Fingers In The Wounds", although more subdued (but equally sombre) hues inform the portentous, piano-led power ballad "Shadow Of The Gods". [Mar 2024, p.25]

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

There are moments where the weirdly wonderful pagan pixie princess pokes through. [Jul 2011, p.90]

Back to the future, but intoxicatingly so. [Sep 2015, p.78]

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

Sun Gong is minimal in the extreme, its two sides entirely dedicated to the eerie resonance of an electronically treated gong. [Nov 2017, p.30]

This electronic pop set mostly convinces. [Nov 2016, p.31]

Under the deft guidance of Alabama Shakes producer Andrija Tokic, even her tendency to outbreaks of over-shrill soprano trilling sounds strangely compelling. [Oct 2012, p.79]

As spirited as this effort is, there's not much here to worry James Murphy. [Jul 2007, p.99]

It contains some amusing satires, some witty observations about the degeneration of rap and some why-oh-why philosophising. Some beats are a little dated. [Dec 2008, p.94]

It's hard to imagine a less workable hybrid than antifolk and disco pop--respect to Deez, then, for not simply avoiding disaster but also making music of a dangerously infectious nature. [May 201, p.86]

Her seventh solo album is effectively her third LP of self-penned pop songs, and it suits her bawdy contralto voice rather better. [Jun 2011, p.79]

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]

If anything, though, this pop machine is too tightly drilled. [Jul 2005, p.94]

Another entry in Cornell's catalogue of partial successes. [Jun 2007, p.91]

It's business as usual for The Godfathers. [Mar 2017, p.30]

There are moments where the strings and backing vocals lurch into sickly sweet. But at least half of this album successfully unites two of America's greatest songwriters. [Oct 2010, p.109]

This is desert blues that doesn't just trudge into the horizon, but stops to admire the sunset. [Feb 2013, p.69]

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

Predictably, it's all over the map, but The Golden Hour fizzes with invention. [July 2008, p.106]

Singles Collection Volume 3 betrays its genesis as something of a grab bag. [Apr 2014, p.94]

It's all very becalming, but not quite the nu-psychedelic staging post that we were hoping for. [Jul 2012, p.79]

A curate's egg of tested pop styles.... Though hardly the album-length E-rush of career peak Tellin' Stories, this approach still offers small gems. [Jul 2004, p.101]

The whole work glides in one long, soft landing. [Apr 2022, p.35]

It strives shamelessly for the widescreen appeal of U2's Big Music. [Aug 2006, p.88]

There's an intriguing version of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" and tunes by Monk and Ellington alongside originals that lurch from freaky modernism to stately classical. [Oct 2010, p.108]

Their selections here are a predictable roster of left-field rock dosed with Anglophilia. [Jan 2014, p.78]

There's a sense that he's doing little more than cobbling together offcuts from his recent stream of projects. [Dec 2008, p.105]

Headhunter's laboratory productions are probably just a bit too clinical to transcend their genre. [Jn 2008, p.96]

It's a faintly sparkling, wistful listen, where from her vocal monotone, you wonder if she's mocking those sexually stereotypical longings. Perhaps that's optimistic, but either way, it's satisfying that she's taken a different tack. [Mar 2011, p.98]

The vocals feel a bit hammily gothic at times but it’s a small complaint compared with the album’s intoxicating density. [Jul 2021, p.33]

While often inscrutable, it's seldom boring. [Jun 2006, p.110]

The RAA's narratives are as expansive as the prarie where singer-songwriter and guitarist Nils Edenloff grew up, but they're also full of resonnant, intimate detail. [Aug 2010, p.94]

Robbed of Godspeeds's crescendos, a melancholy gloom dominates. [Mar 2018, p.28]

Influenced by visual artist John Baldessari, Pure Beauty explores strange sonic vistas. [Apr 2018, p.35]

Red of Tooth & Claw sometimes feels too much like style over substance, but the best moments here are in the detail. [July 2008, p.106]

While there is no doubting the power of Marc Ribot’s off-kilter twanging or the noirish density of the music, the songs don’t really work on their own.

"Runaway" and "Head Into Tomorrow" sound like the songs that Joy Division might have written if they'd hung out with Ewan MacColl. Good, but slightly disorienting. [Nov 2009, p. 81]

She still refuses to knock up any memorable tunes, but arthouse divas thus obsessed with ghosts and personal (if ill-described) demons are always fascinating. [Jun 2003, p.109]

Their eight album of earnest, limpid lullabies is notable once again for the spangled guitar of long-term collaborator, Ghost's Michio Kurihana. [Jun 2011, p.80]

Accomplished rather than exciting. [Jul 2015, p.83]

While he lacks a killer song here, Mraz is cute enough to keep his Lemonheads-lite ballads bubbling along. [Feb 2006, p.74]

It's a poignant, occasionally awkward addition to their catalogues, pitting Stills' earthy burr against Collins' soaring soprano. [Apr 2018, p.35]

The Feist-like 'My Favourite book' and the triumphant 'Today Will Be Better, I Swear!' are songs of rare craft but you'll need to suspend disbelief to make it through to curtain-down. [Nov 2007, p.123]

There's no denying the wind-rush thrill of the title track, nor the malevolent pull of "Fall Out Of Love," but you'd expect such a capable band to disguise their affection for MBV, Ride and Kitchens of Distinction rather better on their second album. [Jan 2014, p.78]

Effective, if not quite thrilling. [May 2018, p.30]

Their heart is evident; they need to find their voice. [Oct 2009, p.115]

Oddball, but articulate, brimming over with a delight in language, "Bury" is a wonderful example of Mark Smith's transformative science fiction, and pretty much what one would hope to find on The Fall's first album for Domino records.

Its fuggy electronics and lyrical non sequiturs not giving up their secrets easily. Still, a few moments stand out. [Nov 2018, p.32]

There’s a sweet sadness to the end-of-relationship duet with Dave Gahan on “Stop Speaking”, but while the melancholy romantic meditations of other tracks can also be initially intriguing, the songs then lack the peaks and troughs to keep you from disengaging. [Jun 2022, p.29]