Riveting. .... The lucidity behind every message on My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross is arresting, as it is drawing from a well of pure emotion that can be comprehended in full. [Jul 2023, p.48]

Possibly their best.... Brave, bleak yet compassionate. [#225, p.77]

EBM equals R Plus Seven. [Sep 2013, p.49]

It feels distasteful to rate so powerful, so raw an album in any aesthetic terms and yet it brilliantly, blackly, radiates life. Skeleton Tree is a work of mourning, yes; a work of reverie, yes; and also an immensely moving attempt to reach out of blackness towards life. [Nov 2016, p.65]

At this moment, Bad As Me might be his best ever. [Nov 2011, p.68]

Throw in an evocative, anthemically chanted lyrical snapshot, some cryptic tales and a blues rock cover and almost every successful Fall trick familiar from the last two decades is also deployed. All of which amounts to a vital late period masterpice. [June 2008, p.47]

After four decades, the album's concentrated blend of brutalism and intricacy, fluidity and fracture, sound as uncompromising as ever. [Nov 2011, p.69]

Stands as a monument to punk rock action at its most intelligent. [#236, p.60]

This is his second essential album of 2012. [Sep 2012, p.70]

A less deranged response to celebrity than Kanye West’s Yeezus, more imaginative than Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP or Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, it shares with the former an economy of form, and with the latter two the giddy energy of an artist coming into perfect sync with their audience. It’s also a sumptuous sounding pop record, polite streamlined mass market psychedelia. [Jun 2017, p.64]

This is an archive of surprises. And one of the surprises of the year. [#220, p.50]

There may only be nine tracks here, but it’s like there are worlds upon worlds to explore; Strom had a knack for making every note feel special. [Feb 2021, p.55]

Given her capacity to align reinvention with a developing maturity, the 13 lucky songs of Stories deliver a complex text. It is certainly less frenetic, as if Harvey is finding new ways to exert her presence. In addition, its thoughtful spaces and pauses suggest room for doubt and manoeuvre. [#202, p.49]

The trio crowbar open new fissures in metal’s ever-shifting tectonic plates with five astonishingly powerful songs, each imbued with its own magic and mystery. [Jun 2021, p.54]

async is an exceptionally beautiful record, in the way that maths is beautiful, quite free of rhetoric or ‘effects’. Its coherence of tonality and timbre gives it the feel of an imaginary soundtrack and yet each track has its own internal logic and direction which means that it never sounds like a grab-bag of musical supervisor’s cues but like a proper album of songs. [Jun 2017, p.70]

The songwriting and lyricism are strong, but her storied voice elevates the album and invests it with a depth and serenity that few can match. [Jan 2019, p.64]

While Steinski's work with DeFranco aka Double Dee, is the most dazzling--precisely because it avoids the pitfalls of run of the mill culture jamming and guerrilla media tactics--Steinski's solo tracks certainly have their own pleasures, even if they are more straightforwardly textural than his collabotation with Double Dee. [June 2008, p.57]

It's exhilarating and rare to hear such bruised raw performances as these. [#242, p.71]

This is a rare gem of an album that projects Kacy and Clayton into the category of all time great folk duos. [Jun 2016, p.50]

Despite the obvious post-production touches and curation, the outtakes from 20 minute studio improv sessions featured across the four pieces feel authentically extemporaneous and evolve organically, akin to a late night jam between friends. ... “Bloodstream” provides the stunning album with a fittingly grandiose ending by digging into a psalm-like recital full of solemn organ, voluminous textures, invigorating fanfares and rumbling spectral melodies. [Feb 2023, p.52]

The first three Meters albums are their best by far, but every disc in this box is overflowing with addictive, brilliant funk. [Feb 2020, p.64]

UK rap’s first masterpiece of 2021. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Contrasting epic, experimental freakouts with concise chamber music, 5 is a diverse album, full of gems bleeding with icy brilliance. [#235, p.69]

A record that awakens mysteries and meaning from sparse elements; a masterful ritual. [Jan 2019, p.67]

Anjou’s transition from post-rock to power ambient now complete, Epithymía sees these musicians extrapolate into new directions masterfully, squeezing out a mesmeric minor masterpiece in the process. [Mar 2017, p.45]

Frankly, the guy defies you not to be impressed by what he's got. [#234, p.53]

The 20 minute centrepiece “Water Meditation” is a startlingly realised suite of wonder that flows from fragmentary shards of sax, voice and synths to stealthy dubby menace through to a collage of impacted noise and shattered beats that’s one of the most emotionally affecting delineations and reimaginings of resistant Black art you’re likely to hear in 2021. Essential listening, and the same can be said for Open The Gates as a whole. [Nov 2021, p.53]

A complex and challenging listen. [#257, p.61]