Their best for a while. ... An extended, uncharacteristically rocking release. [Nov 2018, p.34]

The result is a varied, disjointed, entirely unpredictable yet utterly singular record. [Oct 2023, p.29]

Everything Everything continue on their quest to make intricate yet seamless electronic art pop. [Sep 2020, p.29]

There is much, meanwhile, to recommend the O’Brien remix, or “deconstruction” as he puts it. What O’Brien has mostly done is strip away the more ornate layers of the Palmer mix and cutting back on the album’s moments of more florid melodrama.

It's a warmer interpretation of Fay's celebration of and concern for the state of the world than on 2015's icier Who IS The Sender? [Feb 2020, p.22]

It's entirely addictive--one fix and you're hooked. [Jul 2018, p.36]

She brings Gorecki's great classical prayer to life beautifully, an expression of empathy that feels deep and profound. [May 2019, p.25]

It's beautifully recorded, carefully multi-tracked, but with the freshness and integrity of the live performances feeling intact. Most crucially, it never sounds overcooked. [Sep 2020, p.20]

Pratt doesn't recreate the lo-fi sound of her previous records so much as she elaborates on it. [Mar 2019, p.32]

A rich saturnine, baroque-pop set full of romantic drama. Strings, piano and keyboard combine with muti-textured guitar in songs that, though engaging, tend toward the florid. [Feb 2024, p.30]

Sigur Ros' alien beauty prescribes its own definition. [Oct 2005, p.112]

MCII hits you with the immediacy of a record that you're listening to for the first time but feel like you've already heard a thousand times and yet still aren't bored of. [Jun 2013, p.70]

A welcome development is Owens' voice: this time, when deployed, it's positioned centrally. [Sep 2020, p.35]

Shields' four contributions are everything you'd hope for. [Oct 2003, p.126]

Waits -- now in complete mastery of his unique art -- knows what he's doing, and the stark, unforgiving brutality is leavened, or granted grace, by passages of purple pathos. [Co-Album Of The Month, June 2002, p.106]

The title of her new album describes its woozy pull. [Mar 2021, p.39]

On The Worse Things Get, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet. [Oct 2013, p.76]

It's a pity that the immaculate construction that is Ghosts now has an extension tacked on to it. [Apr 2006, p.119]

You Belong There is an album rich in moments of beauty and wisdom, even as it confesses that there are no easy answers. [May 2022, p.18]

The songs are rendered sincerely, with elegant, understated phrasing. [Jun 2016, p.69]

Burn Your Fire for No Witness feels like a big step forward from its predecessor, Half Way Home. [Mar 2014, p.81]

Smart, sharp and endlessly stimulating. [May 2022, p.36]

Even if the landscape is occasionally a little too pleasant, the overall trip is well worth taking. [Jun 2018, p.32]

Haunting, bassy and electronic. [Jun 2017, p.35]

The characters we meet in many of the album's other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. [Aug 2011, p.86]

Though feisty honky-tonk numbers like "I Don't Do Windows" shimmer, the worldweary ballads--especially the Johnson/Alison Krauss duet "Make The World Go Away"--are Sublime. [Feb 2013, p.74]

Anima feels like a dive into an inner world, profoundly intimate and emotional even as it remains enigmatic and blurred at the edges. [Sep 2019, p.25]

Despite ts sometimes laidback nature, Sparkle Hard also bristles with an energy that proves he's got a place in the present, and a new accessibility that compromises none of his eccentricities. [Jun 2018, p.18]

Everything sounds deliciously grubby and unpolished.

A real grower. [Feb 2007, p.73]

There's now a sardonic wit to these break-up ballads. [Dec 2005, p.120]

Some of the guest vocalists on this LP approach this level of militancy but, in places Black To The future is also poppier and dancefloor friendly than anything Hutchinson has ever released. [Jun 2021, p.30]

As vital as any of their previous four LPs. ... All Nerve's highlights are myriad and frequent. [Apr 2018, p.24]

Lamentations furthers Basinski's reputation as an empathetic conduit of tragedy, mirroring societal tribulation as a necessary act of communal release. [Dec 2020, p.27]

Another stunning album. [Mar 2022, p.29]

Sophie Allison's ascent from teenage bedroom-pop savant to incisive chronicler of Gen Z angst hits a crescendo on Sometimes, Forever, an improbable but rewarding collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin. [Aug 2022, p.33]

It is easy to make music that is difficult and it is easy to make music that is beautiful. But it is quite the trick to be both at the same time, and on Hey What, Low mark themselves out as masters of the art. [Oct 2021, p.16]

[An] excellent debut album. [Nov 2014, p.73]

Highlights--there are many. ... Masterful. [Jul 2018, p.28]

Thanks For The Dance has the intimacy that characterised Songs Of Leonard Cohen and Songs From A Room half a century ago, only rarely making the listener conscious of the resources at Adam Cohen's command. [Jan 2020, p.14]

The rootsy exuberance of Lullaby giving way to a mixture of romantic longing and social commentary. [Nov 2017, p.22]

It would be a magnificent way to end a magnificent career, but Simon probably has more ideas in him. [Jul 2023, p.20]

Even by their standards, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is astonishing.... Plainly, this is music abnormally alive with possibilities. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.96]

Negro Swan sees Hynes thoughtfully explore themes of racial and sexual identities and anxieties within songs that can be a s gorgeously vaporous as "Take Your Time," as ecstatically funky as "Charcoal Baby," or any state inbetween. [Oct 2018, p.24]

While Forsyth is mindful to retain his more spontaneous impulses, this wonderfully intense set is dominated by "Techno Top", a pounding 20-minute groove that recalls both Talking Heads and Television. [May 2019, p.29]

An unambiguously terrific album. [Nov 2015, p.78]

In the space of an economical 40 minutes, crystallise everything that makes Crosby such an alluring, vital and still relevant force. [Sep 2021, p.22]

The old-timey accompaniment and Dalton's bluesy vocals perfectly suit Hardin's exquisitely sad songs. [Feb 2012, p.83]

A record where mature contemplation and a relative flexibility triumph over despondency and formula. [Mar 2004, p.94]

The charm here is in hearing a veteran band who still really enjoy the process of getting in a studio and playing music together. And it’s great, still.

Largely instrumental, but with some strong vocal hooks, this is music of ascension. [May 2016, p.76]

An outstanding record which you'd be unwise to miss. [Aug 2004, p.91]

He has clearly been galvanised creatively. What an excellent record. [Jul 2020, p.37]

He sounds more like a loner--intense, precise, impervious to fashion--than ever. [Jul 2007, p.102]

Andrew Weatherall has been employed to help build Tarot Sport a beaty backbone and the results are brutally mesmerizing. [Nov 2009, p. 88]

Their scratchily rhythmic guitar music with dour, sardonic vocals has proved immensely influential. [Dec 2006, p.114]

Snaith has perfected his recipe for bite-sized psychedelia. [Nov 2014, p.71]

Currents may be equally exhilarating to any listener willing to adjust to Tame Impala's new paradigm. [Aug 2015, p.65]

Lo-fi and understated, the twin vocals of Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith are also strong throughout. [Nov 2015, p.76]

He's clearly referring to something much broader and deeper than artistic definition but Andrew's mercurial mindset is again the key to Liars' singularity. If The Apple Drop is more, in light of their history, a considered experiential teaser than a synapse frazzler, it's his choice. Once more, expectation can go to hell. [Sep 2021, p.32]

Sonically, the album has a muted palette, an approach that suits the colourised introversion of Mitchell's writing. even so, there are occasional flashes of illumination. [Mar 2022, p.24]

Eleanor Friedberger is rejuvenated on fourth solo album Rebound. [Jun 2018, p.27]

Apparently Stith shied away from any musical expression for years--in which case Heavy Ghost represents a quite spectacular plunge. [Apr 2009, p.87]

Reid's follow-up to 2015's gorgeous debut, Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs, is no less bewitching. [Apr 2017, p.37]

That these 15 vignettes sound effortless does nothing to detract from their elegance. [Oct 2018, p.29]

As a lyricist, she remains the understatement queen, “Let’s keep all our doctor’s appointments” from “Be Careful With Yourself” perhaps one of the most superbly subtle statements of devotion in recorded song. Nobody underdoes it better. [Sep 2022, p.26]

Setting out their stall with mannered glitch-pop and sardonic art-rock, both usually entangled. [Aug 2023, p.38]

The LP plays like the soundtrack to a pedal-to-the-metal road trip between Willaimson's LA base and her native Texas, desert air whipping through the open windows. [Jul 2023, p.36]

With pleasing inevitability, A Shadow In Time does not disappoint. [Mar 2017, p.25]

On "The Thing Itself" the pair are at their most graceful, rising airborne and serene above the disorder. [Apr 2021, p.27]

Together, the North Carolina instrumental trio revel in heady improvisatory zones. .... There's no lead voice here, just three musicians moving as one. [Nov 2023, p.32]

His most expansive statement to date, a swaggering collage of blues, boogie, hip-hop and fuzzy rock riffs on which - unlike with, say, Joe Bonamassa - the songs are never subjugated to grandstanding guitar pyrotechinics. [Apr 2024, p.31]

It is, by any measure, a quiet revolution.

Muttered vocals and jazzy trumpet combine on the unsettling “God Save The Queen”, and even Mary Lattimore’s harp and Lonney Holley’s graceful voice can’t disguise “Guilty”’s uncomfortable challenges. [Jun 2024, p.37]

The highlight is "I'll Do Whatever You Want", a gentle nimbus of melody featuring fellow flute convert Andre 3000 and Floating Points' Samuel Shepherd on twinkling Rhodes. [May 2024, p.39]

This is a record of rare beauty and poise. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Multiply marks the full flowering of a singular talent. [Jul 2005, p.99]

Her lyrics and voice remain major draws. ... Soothing balms following the drama of Songs. [Nov 2020, p.26]

12 luminous and inventive songs. [Mar 2020, p.36]

Price's maximalist approach is largely successful, producing vivid, neon-lit dancefloor monsters like "Axis" and "Fluorescent." [Aug 2013, p.74]

It's hard-going at times, but "Nolan" and "Soda Fide" are oddly stirring. [Jun 2014, p.78]

A more enjoyable pairing of words and music this year it's hard to imagine. [Jun 2013, p.63]

It's the vocals that will seal this deal for you--or break it. [Feb 2006, p.79]

In The Vines reveals more of its peculiar candlelit charm with every play. [Dec 2007, p.106]

Send is pure gristle, a vicious statement of musical intent. [Jul 2003, p.129]

It's human where Radiohead are impenetrable, but complex where Coldplay are banal.... Elbow remain unquantifiably great. [Sep 2003, p.100]

Gibb's mixture of gay and Christian imagery is potent, and his vision of music as a grand communal experience is backed up by some memorable tunes. [Apr 2003, p.112]

Throne might be her boldest and most intimate statement yet. [Feb 2019, p.29]

Pohorylle is classic Americana - mostly carried by piano, guitar and strings - awash with gracem wisdom and allusive wordplay. [Dec 2021, p.26]

Supremely satisfying comeback album. [Jul 2023, p.36]

This is an album about distortion, not just of traditional folk instruments but of the emotions - grief and rage and bewilderment - that he experiences as a black trans person in America. [Oct 2023, p.23]

[The album] follows a familiar trajectory: martial climaxes and blackened ambient passages, bombast and afterburn. Rarely, though, has that trajectory been charted so effectively. [May 2015, p.82]

El Camino feels like the dawn of greatness. [Jan 2012, p.76]

Dream River [is] among Callahan's very best. [Oct 2013, p.63]

There's still a lingering sense of promise not quite fulfilled about Anna Clavi, such that Hunter feels like a make or break album. [Oct 2018, p.24]

At 32 minutes, the album doesn't hang about, but offers in that time Shellac's signature intensity and repetition. [Dec 2014, p.80]

Opening with the dolorous drones of "They Being Dead Yet Speaketh," Johannsson slowly builds to the rousing "The Cause Of Labour Is The Hope Of The World," a transcendent fanfare for the common man. [Jul 2011, p.88]

The seemingly simple yet thoroughly conceptualised material here, all held within specific harmonic language, is beautifully realised. [Oct 2022, p.26]