No prizes for adventurism, but bracingly fat-free, with attitude in spades. [Apr 2014, p.77]

The band must from time to time stray from their stomping ground of doomed sailors and pining maidens, but one hopes the band will not steer too close to plain old indie rock. [May 2011, p.96]

It's only the Can-meets-Canned-Heat avant-boogie of "Bees" and "Barnowl" that escape a sense of academic contrivance. [May 2005, p.95]

Exhilarating or jarring, depending on taste. [Dec 2016, p.26]

All too often, though, slick jams such as "Drugs" and "Party With Children" resemble library tracks, exercises in style that pirouette exquistely, but shy away from becoming anything meaningful. [Aug 2010, p.93]

Scialfa's third is the most complete and satisfying of her career, the lyrical candor matched by the open-ended optimism of the band which weaves doo wop, gospel and rockabilly influences into a convincing whole. [Oct 2007, p.102]

Dr. Dog have stepped up to the plate for the fifth album and hits a homer. [Sep 2008, p.88]

It's bracingly experimental throughout, if a little difficult to fully love. [Jun 2017, p.30]

Seductively decaddent, but a feeling that The Raveonettes are living on borrowed time persists. [Nov 2009, p.99]

Born In The Echoes feels a bit Chemical Brothers by numbers. [Aug 2015, p.72]

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

Retro-kosmische pastiche is now firmly established as a lazy good-taste signifier, but it does not excuse mundane plodders such as "Turncoat" or "Motorbath." Thankfully, Soft Error move beyond retro-hipster orthodoxy on their best tracks. [Feb 2017, p.38]

It may be no great leap forward, but on this showing Nelson can still produce graceful electronica with a rare poise and reserve. [Mar 2009, p.95]

This affinity with Muse is impossible to escape on pounding epics like "That Golden Rule" and "Mountains," but the slight personal "God & Satan" and intriguingly angular "Born On A Horse" offer respite from the bombast, while Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme brings a welcome touch of class to "Bubbles." [Feb 2010, p.79]

Gore's brittle choirboy voice lacks the depth and grandeur of Gahan's, but he still gamely takes on some adventurous choices. [Jun 2003, p.108]

Despite the scattered and itinerant nature of the process, there's a pleasing coherence and warmth to the record. [Apr 2023, p.26]

It is definitely deserving of the cult status that it will inevitably earn. [Dec 2004, p.138]

It's certainly more assured and less wilfully angsty than Cast Of Thousands. However, it still lacks the special unified mood or thread of Asleep. [Oct 2005, p.110]

The seven unnamed tracks here are often surprisingly straightforward in form given the two musicians' penchant for demolishing conventions. [Jan 2018, p.22]

The Surfing Magazines offer a cinematic surf-themed perspective that adds an interesting layer to a skeleton of spindly indie-pop. [Oct 2017, p.40]

The key moments are covers. [May 2007, p.104]

Lush as it sometimes is, too often disappears into an indecipherable cloud of smoke. [Apr 2020, p.30]

Collapse Into Now can only sound like an afterthought, but it nevertheless one which bristles and fizzes with invigorating qualities of wit and fury. [Apr 2011, p.76]

The pulse of the blues still beats deep in his soul but the emphasis here is on Taylor's poetic sensibility on an emotionally charged set of songs loosely dealing with the darker side of the human heart. [Sep 2009, p.96]

It has a peculiar charm. [May 2011, p.77]

Air Museums doesn't quite have the same freewheeling energy of Moebius and Roedelius' pioneering kosmische, and at time the music seems to hang oppressively in the air rather, instead of questing forward. [Jun 2011, p.91]

An auspicious introduction. [March 2002, p.96]

Affairs of the heart dominate Batmanglij's lyrics which, when combined with his unfeasibly Christmassy production across all 15 tracks, tends to leave the listener gasping for air. [Oct 2017, p.39]

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

A deceptively sweet concoction. [Aug 2010, p.79]

It can sometimes feel like a band trying on a variety of hats, although the songs themselves generally ring true, anthemic and delivered with a fistful of grit. [Apr 2020, p.30]

The only thing lacking is a sense of rhythmic discipline, without which these overlong - and occasionally overwrought - songs can tend towards the self-indulgent. [Jan 2010, p. 123]

Strictly for the committed. [May 2011, p.80]

On "Operator Error" and "Less From You", the duo nimbly reintegrate the post-punk and power-pop elements of their mid-'00s selves with the more avidly dance-oriented direction of the band's last decade. [Apr 2023, p.38]

For an international pop act on a major label, this is a daring album. [May 2005, p.109]

You're willing him to succeed, but ultimately it's hard to listen to a lot of this album without cringing. [Aug 2010, p.78]

It might be playful, and it might be versatile, but however light-hearted it may sound initially, it ends up sounding serious.

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

Cabic’s limited vocal powers are part of the problem. His dusty delivery is allusive when wrapped in instrumental swirls--asked to front up a song, it sounds merely flat.

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

Sometimes it's grating - "The Ocean" could be a Belinda Carlisle album track - but the supremely catchy likes of first single "Hell" deserves daytime radio ubiquity. [Jan 2010, p. 131]

It's a potent combination and one made all more alluring by their refusal to settle for one chorus when about 12 all being played at once will do. [Nov 2007, p.98]

As an artistic exercise, it's interesting enough. [Nov 2023, p.33]

Best are tunes that showcase Cash's plainspoken lyricism and mould his musing into fully formed songs. [May 2018, p. 37]

Musically it's toytown folk, like Jonathan Richman with out the complicated buts, but Green's narrative lyrics grow increasingly weird and witty, recalling early '70s Lou Reed. [Feb 2010, p.86]

On her 2019 debut album Keepsake, Harriette Pilbeam, who records as Hatchie, showed an inclination to take her shoegaze-infused pop onto the dancefloor. That’s something continued on Giving The World Away. [Jun 2022, p.28]

[A] slight tendency toward wishy-washiness is kept at bay through deft deployment of collaborators. [Mar 2015, p.81]

Ultimately, Cardinology serves as another minor indictment of Adams’ famously lackadaisical internal editor. Neveretheless, it is still, almost infuriatingly, a stretch better than most people at their best.

Smith's squeaky, adenoidal vocal, long a barrier to Danielson's popular acceptance, has softened somewhat, while the band are in fine form. [Apr 2011, p.78]

Occasionally, though, the songs resemble fragments of poetry, signifying little more than unfocused emotions, with Diane undecided about whether to be pretty or strange. [May 2011, p.82]

It's not always on the right side of cliché but, when it works, it's glorious. [Nov 2021, p.29]

It's those who deviate furthest from Fela's template who reap the greatest rewards. [Dec 2013, p.71]

The group's fourth, recorded in Berlin, pulls a few new shapes but a lack of any truly transcendent moments suggests a group destined to remain middleweights. [Sep 2010, p.83]

In fine and fiesty form, Auchtermuchty's Craig and Charlie Reid effectively slap you round the face with their latest batch of songs. [Nov 2007, p.116]

Lambs Anger zig-zags from the sublime to the silly. [Feb 2009, p.89]

At 14 tracks, what begins as a demonstration of impressive ambition ends up dragging. [Apr 2011, p.78]

The real problem is the corporate production--the cleaner and slicker it gets, the flatter each song sounds. [May 2011, p.86]

Long stretches of listless strumming may test your patience, but the reward is the gorgeous psychedelic folk reverie of 11-minute closer "Do Soto De Son," as hypnotically lovely as anything that they've laid down since. [Feb 2010, p.79]

A set of 12 original compositions steeped in his ongoing addiction to muscular '60s blues-rock. [Oct 2018, p.24]

The sparkier La Liberacion goes some way to restoring their reputation as festival favourites. [Sep 2011, p.81]

An album of sometimes stark simplicity, West is in many places rather drab and charmless. [Mar 2007, p.72]

The sequel is at least that record's [Just Across The River] equal as he again revisits some of his best known songs. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Brun's vocals can be spine-tinglingly gorgeous and annoyingly mannered, often in the same song. [Jan 2012, p.81]

The group's ambition is admirable, but they come unstuck on the over-egged samba shuffle of "Lost Winter," while even Florence Welch might consider "Mellotron" to be a bit much. [Mar 2013, p.76]

Johnny Whitney's helium-pumped, Brian Molko-meets-Freddie Mercury squeal is very much an acquired taste--perhaps for some it will prove insufficuently offset by his bandmates' post-punk adventurism. [Sep 2008, p.92]

Her lyrics remain to-the-point, just more upbeat, with her wispy, whimsical vocals sitting snugly on top of crunchy guitars. [May 2009, p.85]

Beneath its appealing veneer this remains a work wracked with personal anguish and doubt, and any positive engagement with life is welcome in it--even if, from necessity, it has to come from someone else. [May 2011, p.84]

The result is sparkling, if substance-free, historical re-enactment. [Aug 2017, p.30]

Bratty autobiography still peaks though the clean and healthy Californian veneer. [Aug 2019, p.26]

The addition of a horn section brings pleasing texture to the likes of "Hotel" and "Revisited," but it's rarely enough to lift The Antlers out of their willfully wounded torpor. [Jul 2014, p.69]

Many of these songs also feel like polite recital pieces, stripped of high drama, so that Wilson often sounds like a shadow of himself. [Dec 2021, p.35]

It initially seems as if the moments of inspiration between self-indulgences are becoming scarcer. A bracing middle section resuces Amputechture. [Sep 2006, p.89]

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]

Sometimes, in hunting a mid-point between noise maelstrom and Espers-style chamber psychedelia, Fields come out sounding merely ordinary. [May 2007, p.90]

Faithful and reverential throughout, there's nonetheless clear signs of Joe's own personality shining though. [Nov 2023, p.27]

It's dark, powerful and groovy, but some more variety wouldn't go amiss. [July 2008, p.90]

The poacher has turned into a sophisticated gamekeeper, plotting a course on this fine debut between pulsing cosmic electronics and trippy, after-hours pop. [Apr 2011, p.78]

It's a lovely document of Higgins' loose, rambling songs. [May 2011, p.88]

It is uneasy listening. [Oct 2009, p.107]

The songs may work better in short, sudden bursts; over 11 tracks, you can feel bludgeoned by the band's blunt force. [Apr 2005, p.112]

Gleefully adulterated here with generous slugs of dubstep, dancehall, rock, R&B, baile funk and anything else that fits the fervent party mood. [Jan 2012, p.82]

Ironically, the straight country of Jessi Colter's 'I'm Looking For Blue Eyes,' suits her best, while the busted drones and banjos of Julie Miller's 'Orphan Train' suggest there is better still to come. [Apr 2008, p.98]

It proves a diverting tour round Seeger's perennial concerns. [Jan 2008, p.111]

Grainger's first solo outing swaps the lascivious intensity of his former outfit for a rakish new wave ramalam somewhere between Cheap Trick and The Strokes' "First Impression of Earth." [Apr 2009, p.86]

His voice isn't built for such poignancy. This is a 74-year-old's dance record, not an elegy. [Jul 2018, p.27]

It's one of the most straight-up enjoyable records they've put out in a long time. [May 2011, p.88]

Wit's end is so sparse and downbeat that it occasionally verges on the drab. [May 2011, p.91]

It's craftily composed, and on individual tracks like "24-25," sparely beautiful but cumulatively lacking some of the spice of their side-projecvct affairs. [Nov 2009, p.90]

The strident approach... doesn't quite work. [Jul 2005, p.100]

Warnings/Promises was written on acoustic guitar and fleshed out in the studiio--a tactic that bears mixed results. [Apr 2005, p.97]

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

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

The devil is in the detail--and Skinner's devilish side is his most appealing.[Oct 2008, p.108]

Though Lucky One is his first collection of orginal material in seven years, it's still rooted firmly in Malo's familiar enthusiasms. [Apr 2009, p.91]

There's a sense that it trawls the finest moments of his 15-year carreer. [Jul 2009, p.93]

There's a whole gamut of compressed pop guitar stylings; some leap out, others don't. [Feb 2011, p.95]

The Pet Shop Boys and Ladytron have elbowed their urbane ways into his affections, but Maps makes the move sound more like a case of personal growth than populist payoff. [Oct 2009, p.104]

Amid this poor material, the Chili Peppers still manage t deliver a handful of very very good songs. [Sep 2011, p.86]