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

Beginners is sweet and sorrowful with a writerly eye. [Sep 2020, p.31]

Youth Novels attampts to repeat the trick [the single 'Little Bit'] 13 more times, with varying degrees of sucess. [July 2008, p.103]

The suspicion remains, though that heavy cosmic rock is probably the best vehicle for his apocalyptic romances. [Jun 2009, p.99]

In places it's impressively monolithic. [Feb 2011, p.82]

Everything flows and nothing jars, but Craft's soft voice and often orthodox songcraft makes Blood Moon merely pretty rather than stunning. [Jul 2016, p.73]

Forever Turned Around hovers in a midrange that's objectively nice, but lacks the vigour required of something memorable. [Oct 2019, p.39]

Its muted feel is accented by folk-blues tones that rarely break out of a shuffle, enlivened only by some buzzing electric guitar cameos by guests including Johnny Depp and Bob Mould. [Mar 2015, p.84]

As a whole, 4everevolution lacks the decisive sonic focus his fierce and funny lyrical barbs deserve. [Oct 2011, p.98]

His blurry lullabies, full of crimson moons and devils' wings, carry a Biblical sense of foreboding and disquiet, somewhere between J Tillman and a more whiskery Neal Casal. [Dec 2009, p. 106]

It's exuberant dorkiness, as well as fluidity of playing, that makes !!! stand out. [Jul 2004, p.106]

The mourning is palpable, but only on a few tracks is it tuned into art. [Jun 2016, p.71]

Dedekind Cut is playful and emotionally varied, allowing for moments of rapture and joyful release amid the brooding, quasi-industrial hum. This tips over into sentimentality on the rippling strings and splashing water FX of Tahoe's tittle track, but the album remains an intriguing hybrid of Arca's fleshy rumble and the KLF's Chill Out. [Mar 2018, p.25]

It's still excruciatingly fey in places, but then you know what to expect by now. [Nov 2010, p.81]

For the most part, there's nothing wrong with the lyrics. "Do Unto Others" is a fine secular hymn, while "January Song" has some smart digs at the Tea Party, but, in both cases, the voice never convinces. [Apr 2013, p.80]

Acid Tongue is imperfect, but nevertheless slightly more than halfway to astounding.

These tracks feel less like performances than private reveries on which the listener eavesdrops. [Aug 2006, p.108]

It's a shouty, attitudinal set that connects Ke$ha to Britney Spears and Cyndi Lauper. [Feb 2015, p.75]

Levi's eclectic debut strikes a winning balance between electro-glitch cacophony and shouty grrrl-pop. [Mar 2009, p.92]

You wish Neil and Chris had hooked up with a younger, switched-on, even more sympathetic producer. [Jun 2006, p.110]

Possibly a grower, this album is certainly better than anything Macca's done for some while. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Singer Orlando Weeks' new themes of intimacy and dependence, add emotional scope to a band blossoming from their spindly beginnings into a meaty prospect capable of doing goth XTC, jolly Joy Divisiion, and sword-dancing Strokes. [Jun 2009, p.92]

For the Black Crowes, this is an inspired move, maximising their virtues (virtuosity, passion, guilelessness) and minimising their principal flaw (the fact that it all starts to feel a bit silly if you stop to think about it).

Howard Devoto's arch art-rockers deliver a fresh set of oddball studies. [Dec 2011, p.90]

Elsewhere, Garner sounds like he's been spending time with Revolver, while songs like "The Ballad Of Little Jane" and the genial swirling "Lullaby" further the rich tradition of Dutch psychedelic pop. [May 2013, p.71]

Though his jazz instincts can still send him into incantatory live orbit, all he wants here are the boyhood comforts of his early record collection. His voice remains admirably supple, though. [Jun 2018, p.33]

This post-genre approach allows them to take cumbia, mambo, porro, carnival music and ceremonial song, and mash it together in unpredictable and deeply psychedelic ways. [May 2018, p.35]

A certain oppressiveness is part of the design, but there are glimpses of beauty here, too. [Apr 2019, p.39