The outcome never exceeds the sum of its parts. [Feb 2013, p.73]

Inspired song choices further deepen the spell in a beguiling instant classic from a masterful soul stylist. [May 2013, p.78]

While all perfectly pleasant and expertly played, there's a nagging wish that Richey would break out of her comfort zone more often. [May 2013, p.76]

It works well, the results low-key but luminous. [May 2013, p.69]

The results are so convincing, the only question is what took him so long. [Mar 2013, p.73]

It's a colourful, cartoonish world they inhabit, but its trippy qualities are packed with ambitious detail and worthy of serious attention. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Internal Sounds is a sparkling conflation of '69-vintage Byrds, early Burritos and psychedelic country helped along by the odd splash of boiling surf. [Oct 2013, p.74]

A sharp, stirring contrast to the delicate lustre of its 2012 predecessor, Back Into The Woods. [Feb 2014, p.76]

The second album by this East London singer sees her moving away from the orthodox jazz trio and expanding her sonic palette. [Feb 2014, p.77]

The 73-year-old [is] in fine voice. [Aug 2014, p.71]

Her fourth full-length album effectively showcases the breadth of her sound. [Oct 2014, p.76]

Fear Trending is a fully realised album which stands equal to anything this consistently inventive band have done thus far. [Feb 2015, p.82]

The album captures both Matthew Houck's heartbreaking delivery--rendered even more gorgeously cracked by the strain of live performance--and the sinewy charm of his backing band. [Mar 2015, p.80]

Hardly radical, then, but the familiarity breeds contentment. [Mar 2015, p.72]

It's best appreciated not as a legend's lap of honour, but for itself. [Sep 2015, p.75]

A welcome comeback. [Jan 2016, p.73]

Safe to say Wild Winter is no Mariah-styled bauble-fest, but it's all the better for it. [Jan 2016, p.80]

There are moments, such as in "Crazy Love" and "Monster Again," where the vibe is less open-hearted confessional than "Futurehead Does Andrew Lloyd Webber." Even so, this is a brave and extremely poignant piece of work. [Jul 2016, p.74]

He seems to have found his metier on his new label, Lost Map, where he delights in roving electronica. [Oct 2016, p.37]

This is a holiday fling of a record. Chilled and tempting as a beachside mojito--and just as potent. [Sep 2017, p.30]

Five years in the making seems like a long time for an hour's worth of music, but Jonti clearly had plenty of fun along the way. [Jan 2018, p.22]

Some good, powerful rock songs aside, this is a strange, honest, but not altogether convincing way to go out. [Mar 2018, p.32]

Gate Of Grief is admirably cliche-free and mostly excellent. [Sep 2018, p.39]

As ever with Pollard, the energy, conviction and imagination are unnerving. [Jul 2019, p.29]

Another graceful tug-of-war between sentimental melody and muscular noise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

There's nothing mediocre here. [Jun 2020, p.34]

For an album that carries such a terrible air of finality, it also feels strangely transitional. [Apr 2020, p.32]

He and the band skillfully avoid any notion of contrivance, instead bending these vintage styles to persuasive effect. [May 2020, p.28]

The net result is unexpectedly charming. [Aug 2020, p.30]

The Vacant Lots might be cool but they still like to boogie. [Aug 2020, p.39]

An album of passion, wit and spirituality that, like its title, invites us not only to evolve, but to revel in our evolution. [Sep 2020, p.30]

A darkly urgent "Saturnine Night" and "The Illuminator" with its wood blocks and linear beat pattern set the tone, but as "Red Sky" with its meaty, psych-folk swing shows, it's not all out with the old. [Oct 2020, p.31]

Its songs run more freely and push at greater abstraction, without losing melodic strength. [Jan 2021, p.27]

There's not a moment on this album when the session players intrude on the song or on White's vocal. ... It makes you forget, if only for a few minutes, that he wasn't actually in the studio with them. Instead, they simply let him tell his stories. [Jun 2021, p.26]

Bovell's take doesn't suggest new approaches, so much as reinforce and highlight what was already there. [Dec 2021, p.45]

Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner’s songs are fragmentary and unpredictable, their springy guitars and elliptical vocals sometimes coalescing into sparkling hooks, at other times deliberately abstruse; think the quirky post-punk of The Raincoats, or a country-folk Deerhoof. [Sep 2022, p.26]

While the length of the album is a little exhausting, there's no denying that this is the band's most accomplished and ambitious record to date. [Jul 2023, p.27]

An LP that's cluttered, incoherent and frequently quite brilliant. [Jul 2023, p.34]

The fourth album finds them touting a tougher sound with the addition of a second guitar, but the strident, passionate voice of Erika Wennerstrom remains their calling card. [Jan 2013, p.77]

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

It's stylistically impressive, but Worden only connects emotionally when she goes for simplicity. [Nov 2011, p.93]

Enderness is more of a brooding country-soul set, with the emphasis on soul. It's also more abstract. [Jun 2019, p.24]

It is intimate, sometimes almost conversational, and words are sighed, whispered, confided. Oddly, the more she pulls back, the more epic it sounds. [Jun 2016, p.68]

More style than substance at times, maybe, but invariably rich in promise. [Sep 2021, p.27]

The album is a powerful exploration of faith, with Young circling his own mortality.

This US trio make a more than decent fist of their upbeat retro-music without ever quite shaking off the scent of pastiche. [Dec 2011, p.87]

It's as convincing and heartfelt as anything else here--and suggests that by incorporating disco into the rest of his music, even better things may lie ahead. [Mar 2008, p.96]

A near-faultless record. [Apr 2005, p.97]

While the lyrics are cliched to a fault, Lloyd is a convincing loverman across the range of backdrops he's given. [Apr 2012, p.81]

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

Fine, but no surprises. [Oct 2008, p.101]

The man is as affecting as ever on this most traditional of collections. [Feb 2003, p.77]

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]

He treads a line between loving monogamy and club bangers, emphasising accessibility throughout. [Jan 2003, p.128]

Weird, wonderful and life-affirmingly wise. [Aug 2004, p.96]

Six albums on and Luna have never sounded better. [Jul 2002, p.112]

This collaboration with Athens lo-fi specialists Elf Power isn't his most immediatly appealing set, but it's worth it just for 'Bilocating Dog,' a lovely shambles of a song with an absurd chorus. [Jan 2008, p.88]

Their second is a complex, pile-driving delight. [Jul 2016, p.78]

James Graham's ragged brogue remains deeply affecting, humanizing this unsettling music. [Mar 2012, p.101]

Grandiose, overwhelming, pretentious and absurd, Before The Dawn Heals Us is one of the first great albums of 2005. [Feb 2005, p.79]

Admittedly, without seeing the play--which officially opens in London on November 8--the soundtrack feels an incomplete experience. At its most successful, Lazarus finds new ways of presenting well-known songs; an unenviable task for Hey and his seven-piece band.

Lurch[es] from homecooked early Beck to the expansive hooks of Brian Wilson or Todd Rundgren. [Dec 2005, p.104]

It doesn't require a lyric translator to hear the exquisite sense of regret that permeates a song like "Ha Dvash," but the sheer exuberance of the music keeps spirits soaring. [Feb 2010, p.88]

It drags and trundles in places, opting for plump maximalism over the lean, urgent minimalism of yesteryear.... All the same, Music Complete is easily New Order's best album since Technique, and probably their most musically diverse ever. [Oct 2015, p.74]

With Fool, his focus is as much on method as material. [Feb 2019, p.27]

The results are sparkling, upbeat and infectious. [Apr 2014, p.73]

The washed out pastel shades and electronic frills on the likes of "Doctor M" and "Cross Off" help ensure that any latent familiarity with Johnson's influences is outweighed by reverberant production reminiscent of Broadcast's spooky psychedelia. [May 2015, p.73]

Having scampered down the rabbit hole, COA seem hopelessly confused--and all the better for it. [Apr 2017, p.25]

Rather precious in places, but often enchanting. [Oct 2011, p.81]

At times it bewilders. ... But Pulse Of Defiance has a lushness of texture that makes the compositional knottiness slide down easier. [Apr 2021, p.29]

Songs like “Spanish Steps” and the title track recall the lo-fi sound of her critically lauded ’90s albums, while “Ba Ba Ba” and “Good Side” embrace the polish of her critically denounced 2000s albums. [Jul 2021, p.33]

It's hard to begrudge the Boos this sunny, mellifluous midlife comeback. [Aug 2023, p.25]

This 11-piece ensemble of accomplished veterans positively struts on its third LP since forming in 2011. [Sep 2013, p.95]

This fine collection is actually more enjoyable than the Shjips' second album proper. [Apr 2010, p.109]

Still Woman Enough may be sustained by her memories, but it's not overshadowed by them. [Apr 2021, p.22]

Manners is impressively slick and sparky but probably just a little too toothpaste fresh. [Jun 2009, p.93]

The album’s a gas, a riot, a hoot.

The Besnard Lakes' fourth album doesn't really add anything new to the heady concoction of symphonic shoegaze, doo-wop and spy stories they perfected on 2007's Are The Dark Horse, but it's always a pleasure to hear them work up a storm. [May 2013, p.67]

This power trio makes no attempt whatsoever to hide their stylistic sonic cathedral. [Jan 2014, p.76]

Cohesion, The Men have clearly decided, is not their bag. [Apr 2013, p.73]

Meiburg's troubled tenor is abetted by sinewy arrangements full of the disquiet of that decade. [Mar 2012, p.95]

The musical settings are crisp, spare, folksy, recalling '96's The Doctor Came At Dawn and allowing Callahan to play one of his best roles: a campfire-friendly Leonard Cohen. [Jun 2005, p.97]

The lissom guitars of brothers Dallas and Travis Good still allow for thrilling detours. [Nov 2007, p.121]

By the time the 11-minute whalesong finale "Cease To Know" creeps to its overdue conclusion, the prevailing mood of impeccably tasteful introspection is choking. [May 2010, p.88]

Stomping Eurodisco almost-anthems rub shoulders with crying-on-the-dancefloor confessionals, although the 31-year-old diva's plastic-punkette teen-rebel pose grates at times. [Aug 2010, p.93]

Double Exposure can sometimes come off sounding precious, a bunch of genre studies without that mysterious extra something--this grit ain't turning into a pearl. But when they stretch out, as on "Mandorla At Dawn," The Helix move with loose-limbed grace. [Mar 2014, p.83]

Ganglion Reef configures plenty of their benefactor's favourite modes of garage rock into moderately fresh, often terrific new shapes. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Peace Or Love is their most cohesive album yet. While it’s not a world away from their previous work, the mood is noticeably more stripped-down and melancholic. ... Kings Of Convenience seem to have discovered the purest essence of the music they create. [Aug 2021, p.26]

It all combines to paint a picture of a band entering a distinct new phase. [Jun 2022, p.33]

The Black Keys are on the cusp of greatness--Attack and Release, produced by Danger Mouse, takes them one step closer, but not quite over the edge.

Mercury Rev's power is undiminished. While never resorting to crude hooks, they build melodies to peaks of graceful intensity. [Album of the Month, Jan 2005, p.114]

Alabama Shakes are scarcely the first ornery yet soulful rock sound to have emerged from northern Alabama, but they're abundantly worthy bearers of the standard. [May 2012, p.73]

The biggest surprise is how rarely this scratch supergroup really swings to its full potential. [Feb 2007, p.68]

Features more of the uncomplicated Californian country-rock fare that was hinted at by the cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Save Me A Place" on last year's Between EP. [Jul 2006, p.116]

Alongside the sexually explicit likes of "Pull My Hair" and "Wait" sit conscious soul and creamy R&B. [Nov 2005, p.94]

The music here should captivate anyone who ever imagined what a Burial remix of Arthur Russell's World Of Echo might resemble. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance feels like a creative rebirth for a band who were beginning to feel like nothing more than the day job. [Feb 2015, p.70]

The real leap here, though, is one of songwriting. [Dec 2014, p.77]