Arab Strap songs mostly have a strong, vinegary flavour, and this is abracingly sour album over the long haul. The relentless misanthropic grind can drag in places. But as ever, Moffat’s withering scorn is sweetened by beautiful poetry, tender emotion and self-aware, bruise-black humour. [May 2024, p.36]

This is a stark and often moving listen, setting her coldly operatic voice against a backdrop of billowing modern classical and wintry electronics. [Jun 2024, p.33]

The sextet's second effort is both an expression of their anarcho-punk fury and a declarartion of straight-edge commitment, but it's also a radical redrawing of hardcore's boundaries, that reanimates the genre with an aggressively intelligent jolt. [Nov 2008, p.96]

If the music and lyrics are both impressive, though, it's the interaction between them that makes Stumpwork such a triumph. They work together and against each other, pushing and pulling, fighting arrhythmically or slipping into step as the moment demands. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Tomberlin's second long-player seems to semi-consciously urge you to move along – nothing to hear here. Yet it creates its own slow-burning allure on repeated listens. [Jun 2022, p.34]

The Airing Of Grievances is one of the smartest, most joyous records in an age, channelling the spirit of other too-clever-by-half suburban punks from The Replacements to Nirvana and adding a dash of felllow New Jerseyite Bruce Springsteen's eye for detail. [MAr 2009, p.87]

Intermittently funny and never depressing, this confirms him among America's greats. [May 2005, p.108]

In short, it needs a rigorous editor. [Feb 2005, p.94]

Spare, beautiful, outstanding. [Jul 2003, p.128]

An album that pores over the passing and the past with such defiant, deadpan nobility. [Feb 2012, p.78]

As always they are best when singing of brief encounters and regret. [Jun 2023, p.36]

Finn’s writing is sharper than ever, the various narratives driven less by the wordy exposition of yore than acute observation, devastating detail, by turns exclamatory, epigrammatic and grainily authentic.

Much here, like the outstanding "Silhouettes (I, II & III)," sits elegantly in a progressive tradition that draws on Teo Macero's collage work on In A Silent Way, David Axelrod's string arrangements, and Four Tet's own "Thirtysixtwentyfive." [Dec 2015, p.71]

As ever, Case finds room for expansive manoeuvres in the gap between her lusty, orthodox pop choruses and droll, deadpan voice. Still a singer-songwriter like no other. [Jul 2018, p.24]

Margaret's melodies are often submerged, but her approach is not entirely ambient. [Aug 2023, p.34]

Overall, it's a long, strange ride, and Joshua judges ruefully. [May 2017, p.18]

Two Hands is more grounded [than U.F.O.F.]. ... The music is also rawer and more immediate. [Nov 2019, p.22]

For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.

He's made one of the great albums of modern Americana, and one suspects that a reluctant star is born.

Askew's voice and tiple remain distinctively sui generis, as does the air of fairytale enchantment about his songs of children's dream, birds and fishes, city streetlife, blue-eyed babies and brown-eyed boys. [Oct 2013, p.61]

Richter's own work sits as comfortably alongside these as Schubert and Rachmaninov, and there are further contributions from Low and Rachels, as well as Bach, and, inevitably, Steve Reich. [Oct 2017, p.52]

Most impressive is Peel's ability to take the source material and make it her own. [May 2021, p.31]

An occasional change of pace might be welcome, but the craftsmanship is beyond reproach; swings, yes, but those roundabouts. [May 2021, p.24]

Bursting with raw energy and renewed vigour. [Feb 2023, p.25]

Lanois, along with other western guests, fits organically into Tinariwen's desert blues. The collaborations help even the most furious lyrics slip down nicely. [Jun 2023, p.30]

Home Video is Dacus at her most autobiographical and lyrically direct. [Jul 2021, p.28]

It's an album of rich multifaceted complexity that showcases what a truly inimitable artist Björk is. [Nov 2022, p.24]

Her new album whizzes by in a 28-minute blur of finger-tapped melodies, lopsided time signatures and arrangements that, on tracks like "earth Eater" and "Believing IS Seeing", whip from jazz to glitter to metal with neck-snapping precision. [Dec 2023, p.36]

A truly exhilarating 50 minutes of music. [Dec 2003, p.122]

June has given us an album that is powerfully, elegantly subversive. [April 2021, p.20]

Her interest in medieval and early music offers her compositions both a somnolent beauty and a melancholy grasp of simple, slow melody that's refined and tender. ... They're stunning. [Nov 2018, p.27]

["Cheyenne" is] keenly observed and beautifully realised, which goes for most everything on Interstate Gospel. [Jan 2019, p.20]

This collects all that, plus demos and live tracks, into a demonstration of how a fabulously obscure Glasgow indie group became one of the most influential of their time. [Jun 2009, p.105]

The album may be even bolder and more bracing than the theatrical experiment that preceded it. ... She sounds fearless in every sense of the word. [May 2023, p.20]

Landfall is an electro-acoustic patchwork of mostly short, mournful, quietly lovely mood pieces. [Mar 2018, p.22]

With Dave Cobb's production reinforcing their boisterous dynamism, Volunteer surveys the sacrifices Old Crow make for their music, the camaraderie of the bandmates and heroes at the expense of the stability of family and home. [May 2018, p.29]

This is familiar YLT, but that's certainly not a complaint. ... Even with two-thirds of the band in their mid-sixties, a childlike quality remains. [Mar 2023, p.36]

[A] ravishing debut album. [Sep 2015, p.73]

Love In Exile stands as a worthy summation of the trio's alchemical live shows. But there's enough here to dangle the promise that this trio formation could run and run, and this remarkable collaboration is hopefully just the beginning. [May 2023, p.33]

A blissful affair. [Apr 2023, p.25]

The mood is pained, the production suitably spare, pushing the singer's understated lyricism to the fore. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Feels like the moment where the pair's music pulls into focus. [Jul 2018, p.37]

New Bermuda offers a tumultuous post metal that on passages of "Baby Blue" and "Brought To The Water," remind one more of the ethereal wandering of shoegaze. [Nov 2015, p.73]

Bright, socially and emotionally engaged, justifiably righteous in places, and not quite the right sort of fun for the New York scenesters. [Oct 2002, p.104]

The Harrow and the Harvest is kin to not dissimilar works by Uncle Earl, Crooked Still, Kate Fagan, even Steve Earle's rumbustious bluegrass outing with Del McCoury--and blessed by the insuperable advantage of Welch's voice. [Jul 2011, p.74]

What becomes clearest from listening to Live At The 12 Bar is the way Jansch's playing manifests a very particular physicality, working to its own internal logic, voice, and six strings running in refined tandem. [Sep 2015, p.92]

Chorus shows that they are more than worthy of re-examination. [Jan 2016, p.91]

Proves that even when their studio work was in the doldrums, REM were never less than a compelling live band. [Dec 2018, p.47]

Every song here is a miniature gem of its kind. [Nov 2019, p.22]

The whole thing underlines how productive McCartney was during this period. [Sep 2020, p.48]

Cuttin' Grass Vol 1 is Simpson's warmest, most life-affirming record by a country mile. [Jan 2021, p.26]

I Don't Live Here Anymore delivers even more of their characteristic questing wallop. [Nov 2021, p.22]

Her candid, self-interrogating lyrics and glassy, soulful voice take centrestage. [Oct 2022, p.29]

A super-sophisticated set of soul-jazz covers of songs. [May 2023, p.38]

At the peak moments of High Violet, The National are magnificent. [Jun 2010, p.78]

She crafts tightly coiled rock epics with just a few elements, sounding like The Strokes one minute, Liz Phair the next. [Apr 2019, p.39]

This collection is ample testament to one of the last great English avant-pop careers. [Mar 2012, p.84]

Hawley resurrects ghosts of music past and breathes new, poignant life into their forms. [Oct 2005, p.110]

It is without question a wintering record, but out of this muted musical landscape songs of great and complex beauty emerge. [Mar 2021, p.34]

Their most powerful work this century. It's the sound of a band entering a final act with a renewed sense of purpose, and sharp, sober new focus. [May 2023, p.26]

Lookaftering is some kind of miracle. [Nov 2005, p.100]

There are dark undertones--drug references mainly--but Lewis is no moper. [Apr 2019, p.32]

Understated double set, the material meandering gently, but persuasive in the way its interlocking parts both ride the groove and smear lush textures across these four side-long live cuts. [Jan 2023, p.23]

Impressively, it achieves the feat of enghancing Pink's legend with out puncturing his mystique. [Jul 2010, p.105]

Blur have released three compilation albums, but none of them point up the band's engagingly contrary creativity and elastic pop nous quite like these two discs.

If the songwriting at times falls into cliche, the performances--passionate, eloquent, spilling over with regal harmonies--are anything but. [Jul 2015, p.72]

Thomas lurches from surrealist poetry to impressionistic short stories, like a hybrid of Captain Beefheart and Ernest Hemingway. [Jul 2019, p.33]

Leans heavily on the conceptual, but its 13 tracks can be enjoyed regardless of any familiarity with themes of Greek legends and seasonal cycles. [Dec 2020, p.30]

Smart stylistic detours mask something a little deeper. [Oct 2021, p.24]

12-song collection brings together four elders, three younger practitioners and original James Gang singer-guitarist Glenn Schwartz, along with The Black Keys in Deep-blues mode. [Sep 2023, p.37]

The duo show renewed confidence as they strike a balance between pristine electro=pop songcraft and the loopier inclinations that once fuelled Dazzle Ships. [Review of the Year 2023, p.30]

A typically perverse decision to substitute a US remix for the standard version of album closer "Tomorrow" does little to deaden the impact of an album that owned its moment every bit as much as The Queen Is Dead. [Mar 2014, p.94]

A beautiful record. [Nov 2003, p.122]

Doves have delivered, with honesty and affection. All other guitar bands this year will seem like a scratchy sideshow. [Jun 2002, p.110]

Fever To Tell is, quite simply, magnificent.... This is as revitalising a debut as could be hoped for. [May 2003, p.92]

This is a very odd album. [Apr 2003, p.103]

A family of songs that are strikingly evocative, but never overwrought. [Mar 2019, p.25]

A lyrical treasure trove, but the biggest surprise of the self-produced album is the richness of the sound. Nadler’s usual sparse, gothic folk style is emboldened by well-chosen collaborators from Simon Raymonde to Emma Ruth Rundle. [Dec 2021, p.31]

Unique, captivating stuff. [Jul 2011, p.80]

The result is a glorious, dizzy riot with no precursor. [Dec 2022, p.18]

As a State of the Union address, this bold and often brilliant record is less inclined towards optimism than, say, Springsteen’s admirable "Working On A Dream."

More of the same, only more so. [Apr 2002, p.94]

San Fermin proves Ludwig-Leone to be a fantastically ambitious songwriter on the way to finding a voice of his own. [Oct 2013, p.74]

Her most universal album yet. [Sep 2019, p.27

Mental Illness is as elegantly dark as a wrought iron gate. [May 2017, p.35]

Jenkins conveys his obsession with sound beautifully. [Apr 2016, p.71]

These diorama-songs of a Mayberry gone to seed don't sound to different from what you might hear on mainstream US radio--only much more lovingly observed and finely crafted. [Jul 2016, p.71]

A slight problem is that the London quintet are third-generation mimics: "You Are Not An Island" could be Broadcast, and "Magician's Success," complete with cartoon effects, occupies Stereolab's former territory. [Jul 2019, p.36]

Revitalising his finest work with unlikely guests performing unlikely roles. [Jan 2020, p.31]

Every note of this album is saturated with a very particular melancholy that keeps these spacey songs closely anchored to the earth. [Apr 2020, p.28]

The Flatlanders exude joy here. [Aug 2021, p.23]

Some of the best moments here are twitchy funk miniatures, driven by tuba basslines, distorted Fender Rhodes riffs and chant-based vocals, which leave you wanting more. [Aug 2021, p.35]

This record’s peers might be Astral Weeks, Starsailor, Music For A New Society, New Skin For The Old Ceremony and, in particular, Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America. She’s not out of place among these ghosts either. If you’ve ever been spellbound by those songs of love, loss, wonder and despair, you need to listen to Lisa O’Neill. [Mar 2023, p.24]

This full-bodied, all-star immersion into an insalubrious world inspired by late '70s/early-'80s continental disco is somehow more appealing than Matmos' recent foray into Polish mid-century avant-garde. [Dec 2022, p.35]

Introspective and tightly wound. [Sep 2020, p.26]

Violence, guilt, betrayal and despair assail singer-lyricist James Graham's protagonists, while Andy MacFarlane marshals something miasmic, sometimes glistening synth glides and doleful guitars, suggesting Johnny Marr's wilder Smiths experiments. [Feb 2019, p.37]

This 2Cd singles set shows them to be capable of more mainstream, dreamy pop. [Feb 2011, p.96]

Everything on Little Oblivions will make you feel, and it's the catharsis we all need. [Mar 2021, p.26]