The New York threesome have just about enough tunes to pull it off. [Jun 2009, p.93]

The patchwork of Orb-like sonic tapestries and guest vocals by some uncharacteristically gnarly rock veterans is not hugely original, but still manages to engage. [Feb 2012, p.84]

Lemmy's chief inspiration is war, and this leads to some lyrically sticky moments. Generally, though, high spirits prevail. [Nov 2008, p.109]

While it frequently feels like a particularly inspired "Mighty Boosh" number, the absurd ambition, chutzpah and execution of it all is perfectly awesome. [Nov 2008, p.89]

Less obviously 'loops and samples' oriented than their previous work, Can You See The Music? neatly navigates an electronic/organic interface. [Feb 2003, p.82]

The result is a record that contains the cryptic hooks of Pavement's later work, with a pleasingly breezy '70s AOR feel. [Nov 2009, p.104]

It feels as if this album is only half the intended project. It's a strong half, fortunately. [Aug 2015, p.81]

It's not always successful, but if the thrilling likes of "Lead Sister" and "Renegade Breakdown" constitute a fresh start, we'll take it. [Nov 2020, p.28]

Mullins is a solid, occasionally platitudinous songwriter whose rustic tales don't approach the wry, wise gifts of similar artists like Johns Prine and Hiatt. [Mar 2006, p.88]

Shuffle and skip for best results. [Jan 2016, p.71]

There's a country edge to songs like "Slick Delta Queen," "Exile Rag" and the surprisingly sweet "Bridge City Rose," the latter making a nice break from the self-centred tone of "Fake Magic Angel" and the Lou Reed-bitterness of "Gold Calf Moan." [Mar 2018, p.24]

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

Not for everyone, but quite a party. [July 2008, p.94]

Longwave is languorous and amiable. ... The largely unchanging pace prompts yearnings for more frequent shifts from second gear, however. [May 2018, p.26]

All over the shop stylistically--but a keen handle on dynamics and narrative holds it all together. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Visceral thrills for those who like thier punk served piping hot. [Jan 2008, p.104]

Good, but the exciting notion of a genuine career left turn feels increasingly unlikely.

Rated O delivers more often than falters. [Aug 2009, p.98]

Ignoring the misstep--'O Mensageiro'--this is a pleasure. [Oct 2009, p.106]

A couple of songs could do with more melody and less of Mike McCready's spidery guitar breaks. [Dec 2002, p.132]

Four vocal tracks serve to make the LP more than a masterclass in groove-ology. [Jun 2011, p.87]

It's a facinating listen, one that feels like it could collapse at any time, but just about hangs together. [Apr 2010, p.90]

They're marching to a '90s beat, like the internet never happened and fresh tools were never invented. [Jul 2011, p.77]

Body Music has the feel of an album rushed out for the summer. [Aug 2013, p.67]

Things become more perverse with the corroded exotica of "Deer Ron" and "Leyline Ogres," though her weirdness is most becoming. [Jan 2018, p.29]

What it sometimes lacks in surprise, it makes up for in consistency. [Mar 2020, p.30]

An album of skippy, infectious, electronics-soaked disco rock. [Jul 2022, p.26]

A cover of Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' proves you typecast Qui at your peril. [Oct 2007, p.102]

Even at times it's over-polished, at the very least, it's super-sized. [July 2008, p.113]

Fistful Of Mercy itself is certainly Fleet of Fox, but it's also strong of cheese. [Jan 2011, p.98]

Plaintive desert rock and gilded chamber pop with heart and poise. [Nov 2002, p.122]

Guitarist Dan Moss writes the songs, but it's Katherine Whitaker's voice that give them life, and the more space she has, the better the result. [Jun 2012, p.71]

It's an album inspired by Camus that's never less than intense. It;s also overwrought, as the taciturn voice and glum lyrics wrestle for space with manically busy strings and an unfortunate folk feel. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Songs, without exception, are well crafted but more often than not collapse into cloying jauntiness. [Dec 2004, p.153]

Behind the abundance of route one hooks and rather beige, Gary Barlow-esque vocals, however, there's evidence of emotional heft in the lyrics. [Aug 2014, p.70]

It sounds more like sketchbook of snippets rather than fully formed tracks. Even so, it still tickles the pleasure zones with its goodtime swing and verve. [Aug 2011, p98]

Too many songs sport frumpier styles. [Nov 2018, p.34]

Their thing is Troubadour-era rootsy rocking rather than harmonic rapture, but American Goldwing's free-wheeling charms are still hard to resist. [Oct 2011, p.81]

His latest is no less a mixed bag. [Oct 2013, p.75]

Not quite a match for the smoky blueprints, yet entertaining enough to inspire a trip to their source. [May 2006, p.128]

On the last Foos album, "In Your Honour" rock and acoustic music were exiled to different discs. Here, a satisfactory compromise is brokered between the two: the excellent 'Summer's End' is easy on the ear, easier still on the brain, and sets him up in the radio-friendly 'Wonderwall' district one imagines is his spiritual home.

After a promising start, the LP soon defaults to a brand of quirky, over-stimulated electropop that doesn't really do justice to Woodhead's smart, conceptual lyrics. [May 2015, p.72]

Now bolstered by Joanna Bolme of The Jicks on bass, American Gong feels like a calculated attempt to juice up thier smart, literate rock. [Apr 2010, p.97]

A succinct pastiche of junglist, breakbeat and chill-out fare. [Sep 2016, p.75]

A charming composite of Damon Gough's homespun insight and Edith Piaf's anguish. [May 2005, p.106]

Introspection clearly suits him. [Nov 2006, p.119]

It's ultimately a record that struggles to step outside the shadows of its influences. [Feb 2018, p.27]

His willingness to scribble over the pretty surfaces of his songs brings a bristling edge to his Beatlesque pop. [Feb 2008, p.79]

It's all very pleasant, but somewhat weightless. [Jul 2017, p.26]

That quest to explore her true colors is tenderly juxtaposed with some grand arrangements--woodwind, strings, marching drums--that bring to mind Minnie Riperton, Bond themes and '40s Disney movies. [Aug 2018, p.24]

Krieger's fuzzy, sustain-heavy guitar solos drift along pleasantly. [May 2020, p.28]

The idea was to expand Gogol Bordell's palate to accommodate the Ukrainian-American's recently adopted homeland of Brazil. The Good news is that it doesn't matter--if Gogol Bordello still sound like an Eastern European answer to The Pogues, it still means they're doing something nobody else is. [Jul 2010, p.108]

While no reinvention, Paper Gods is both entertaining ad typically Duran-esque. [Oct 2015, p.75]

A return that is as warmly welcome as it is wholly unexpected. [Oct 2002, p.122]

Two Vines mostly sticks with the tried-and-true. [Dec 2016, p.26]

The dozen sly and witty songs are all Setzer originals, but it takes a liitle suspension of disbelief to imagine "Calamity Jane" and "Cock-a-Doodle Don't" could've been authentically written 60 years ago. [Oct 2014, p.79]

Ultimately it's a record that happily exists in something of a fog - wilfully embracing hazy, almost groggy textures. [Jul 2023, p.30]

A fairly conservative affair. [Nov 2006, p.101]

Remarkably extending to 18 tracks, Absolute… traces the discography from the wide-screen Mary Chain of 'Only Happy When It Rains' to the Bond theme 'The World Is Not Enough' and the Spectorish strings of this year’s comeback, 'Tell Me Where it Hurts'--though 2001’s cute 'Androgyny' is an odd omission.

A partnership with Cologne's minimal techno doyens Kompakt hasn't quite posited the outfit back at the cutting edge, but The Dream steps with a new vitality. [Mar 2008, p.96]

There remains a belligerent subtext to his nostalgic fantasias. [Mar 2014, p.73]

Weird but good. [Jun 2016, p.73]

Fans of Iron & Wine and The Acorn take note. [Jun 2009, p.96]

Generally Strangeland is all too familiar fare. [Jun 2012, p.77]

"Die" is generic glam riffage, and "Magic" is a tedious Britpop stomp, but there are many successes. [Oct 2011, p.86]

A fascinating document... Only select morsels, though... will make your GBV mix tape. [Jan 2006, p.120]

A poignant folk-jazz take on Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child" is the standout and it's all impeccably tasteful - but in a threadbare kind of way. [Apr 2020, p.37]

This is a good, not great record, which you probably don't need to hear, unless you're already immersed in Fennesz's world. [Oct 2012, p.79]

Much of it is overly polite, with Ilhan taming the hurt in PJ Harvey's 'Oh My Lover,' but he also teases mourful hidden nuances from Breeders, Smashing Pumkins and Tortoise tracks. [June 2008, p.83]

The first half of Mind Trap is dedicated to a sort of naifish folk-rock, flirting with the banal but occasionally happening on moments of quiet loveliness. [Mar 2014, p.73]

You don't need a working knowledge of baseball to appreciate this second installment of true-life sporting tales from Steve Wynn, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon. [Jun 2011, p.92]

Uneven it may be, The Palace Guards s just as often sublime. [Feb 2011, p.90]

Sprout can get a little too earnest - greater distance might, perhaps counterintuitively, make these songs more globally affecting - but he's still a great pop writer. [Oct 2020, p.36]

Nikolaj Manuel Vonslid's choirboy vibrato lends a ghostly quality to these 10 pretty synth tunes, all of which fuse north European wistfulness and vaguely Oriental motifs in soothing manner. [Jul 2011, p.103]

The absence of Kim Deal--who left in 2013--continues to be felt: her natural warmth and goofy charm would add welcome nuance here. [Oct 2016, p.37]

At times thrilling and at times frustrating. [Feb 2005, p.83]

A 1980s vibe predominates, at times in a most agreeable Japan-like kind of way; at times a disagreeably Phil Collinsy one. [Oct 2011, p.90]

It understandably struggles with a weightiness, an emotional claustrophobia. [Jun 2006, p.100]

The songs are often guilty of bloated bombast, but Numan retains an impressive command of cinematic melodrama and richly layered sonic detail. [Jul 2021, p.33]

Taken together, the songs constitute a potent set of surging alt.rock euphoria and more sombre ambience. [Jun 2019, p.24]

Really rather magnificent, in its way. [Jul 2002, p.107]

"Don't Worry 'Bout What I Do" get quite heavy-metally, while James takes tracks like the wah-wah-infused "This Is Who I Is" in a distinctly Hendrix-inspired direction. [Apr 2022, p.29]

This follow-up strives to be less ethereal, and with the somewhat mannered twin vocals of Alejandra and Claudia Deheza more to the fore, it brings to mind Madonna's "Ray Of Light." [Aug 2010, p.94]

Hansard's whispery growl is something of an acquired taste, and the first half of this LP sees him aiming towards Nick Cave-style slow burning epics. ... More successful is the second half of the album. [Jun 2019, p.29]

That spirit of garageland spontaneity pervades Fuckbook. [Apr 2009, p.84]

If the audio quality is a mite cleaner this time, it seems the band have made the songs a little more prickly. [Oct 2009, p.112]

It's a subtly affecting record, hushed, austere, grasping for simple peace of mind with gorgeously rendered standards. [Feb 2011, p.93]

Much of the album lacks cohesion, and even seems lazy. [Nov 2004, p.109]

For a while, it seemed like they'd never leave the hipster ghetto, but this is a convincing exit. [Oct 2011, p.90]

He sings in a hushed, fragile whisper that is a;most unbearably personal. [Mar 2021, p.35]

Absentee's Dan Michaelson proves he could give Lee Hazlewood and Mark Lanegan a run for their money, but its not just his voice that plumbs depths. [Oct 2008, p.81]

Brakes, and this is not a criticism, are at their best when they do the opposite, pretending to be a nerdy indie-rock group while actually recording songs that are dumb as rocks. [May 2009, p.79]

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]

As a stand-alone album it's ultimately more laudable than loveable. [Oct 2009, p.92]

They strain for transcendent, neo-religious euphoria; sometimes they get there. [Feb 2011, p.99]

We're All Somebody delivers high-sheen Billboard country fare, more Keith Urban than back-porch picking. [Sep 2016, p.81]

Reuniting her ex-bandmates adds a rock impetus to Doiron's more fragile solo work. [Feb 2007, p.74]

Here Scott Weiland lets off steam in grand style. [Feb 2009, p.101]