While the song selections are unimpeachable, the execution varies massively. [May 2026, p.101]

Questionable sequencing and some strange production choices (layers of synths and suffocating syntheric strings) sometimes make Jordan sound like a guest artist o her own album. [Jun 2026, p.86]

Like Bridgers, Nagler is clearly fond of Elliott Smith's slow-release devastation - see Hammer And Nail or Another Mona Lisa - but even her most downbeat songs come with an easy, melodic shrug that keeps her on the sunnier side of the street. [Apr 2026, p.92]

Motorpsycho's commitment to their heavy cause is admirable, but even part-timers will benefit from a day trip through their universe. [May 2026, p.88]

Indigo Park finds Hornsby in a curiously reflective mood, singing about his past while touching upon many of his signature jazz-inflected idiosyncrasies. [May 2026, p.84]

Bear witness to the city's enduringly restless guitar-led, predominantly white male aesthetic - obnoxious, inventive, middle finger raised. [Mar 2026, p.95]

The track I See Red radiates synth euphoria but the Pet Shop Boys-ish Death In London and single Kingdom Undersea are more about introspection than rapture. [May 2026, p.88]

Some of the 22 tracks teeter on the edge of pure corn. [May 2026, p.86]

West's intimations of mainstream modern pop sit alongside the less direct and impressionistic. [Mar 2026, p.89]

Frisell is travelling a unique, but to old admirers, rather familiar path here. [Apr 2026, p.91]

Largely an album of blues covers that isn't terrible just, well, perfunctory. [Apr 2026, p.84]

Though overly familiar for boomers, perhaps, Wasted On Youth's sibling rivalry-fuelled irreverence will likely chime with Gen Z kids seeking their own Oasis, not mum and dad's. [Apr 2026, p.86]

Despite the numerous positions, No Lube So Rude becomes a little no-note. [Mar 2026, p.80]

The covers format doesn't facilitate too much untamed Scabies (sadly), but Brian himself poignantly appears on The Last Time. [Mar 2026, p.81]

The cumulative result begs a position beyond the band's canon, in an intriguing mini universe of its own. [Mar 2026, p.80]

The album is a great showcase for the Fontaines D.C. guitarist's production skills, which makes even occasionally inert material punchy and dynamic. [Mar 2026, p.81]

Keeps a glossy electropop trajectory, but there's a precarious tilt to the shoegazing rush of Do You Still Believe In Me? or the startling heartbroken lyrics of Dolphins. [Feb 2026, p.87]

If this is a less turbulent FWF manifestation, they're still powerful, churning perilously. [Feb 2026, p.80]

Inner Day's voyage around the edges of the avant universe might be challenging, but it can also be mesmerising. [Dec 2025, p.83]

A lovely album, but not one which lingers. [Jan 2026, p.87]

Holy Island nods to mid-period Flying Saucer Attack, Souvlaki-era Slowdive, maximum-shimmer Ride and motorik. Such influences are offset by an innate drama which inexorably draws inwards. There is, though, a potentially overwhelming backstory. [Jan 2026, p.91]

The shock of the new has evaporated, but she's subtly evolving and broadening her palette. [Dec 2025, p.78]

Describe takes time to coalesce, but even through the mists, Jadagu makes her presence felt. [Jan 2026, p.86]

Mostly it's sparse, as a lonesome album should be. [Jan 2026, p.86]

Everybody scream is both a re-statement of what made her so beguiling and a gentle step forwards. [Jan 2026, p.85]

Hooks and choruses still pour out of White Lies, but there's a lack of cohesion that stops Night Light blazing quite as it should. [Dec 2025, p.81]

It's not always easy to get emotional purchase on these songs, but the hint of something moving beneath the immaculate surfaces makes the challenge worthwhile. [Dec 2025, p.86]

The results are sometimes sublime, like the numinous drones and electronic eddies of Do, at other times unsettling and vaguely dystopian. [Nov 2025, p.89]

A lean collection of blues and ballads accentuated by discreet overdubs by the surviving members of Waylon's backing band The Waylors, along with some occasional new blood. [Nov 2025, p.101]

Blight is powerful, but hermetically airless. [Nov 2025, p.91]

The LA portion of the album is a noticeably better recording - the drum sound has improved for a start - and it's a high energy show featuring William Bell and Carla Thomas. [Oct 2025, p.94]

Freak Out City owes little to Flight Of The Conchords, but much to '70s US songwriters with a kitchen-sink production. [Oct 2025, p.89]

Don't head here for untrammelled novelty, but Idlewild is a record worthy of the name. [Nov 2025, p.89]

Frustratingly for JM solo-heads, as well as Neil Tennant hanging around for a superfluous Rebel Rebel, instead of The Messenger we get The Passenger. Top notch performances, though. [Nov 2025, p.87]

He reinterprets key moments from his back catalogue. [Oct 2025, p.87]

There's some really good songs here - Creature From The Wild is classic Fruit Bats, Moon's Too Bright is a beauty, and so is his moving cover of the Incredibke String Band song First Girl I loved - but the overall feeling is of an abandoned demo album [Nov 2025, p.93]

Lots here is clever and fun, and maybe Oh Snap is an album she needed to make, but heard end to end it's a bumpy ride. [Nov 2025, p.86]

It doesn't always hit the bullseye - Te Tragaste El Chicle's intense shredding veers towards '80s hair metal, or the soundtrack to a Jerry Bruckheimer movie - but the dizzying ideas on display amply compensate. [Oct 2025, p.81]

Unlike the four prior archival editions, Joni’s Jazz gives listeners very little that’s new. .... It is tempting to see it, then, as a chaotic but mostly coherent and sometimes very compelling streaming playlist, given deluxe physical form. [Oct 2025, p.46]

Walker's narratives land like a looser Lucy Dacus or a more skittish Craig Finn (especially on the regret-buckled Bitter Root Lake), her voice shat=ring the fur-rubbed-the-wrong-way scratchiness of Jeffrey Lewis or Kimya Dawson. [Sep 2025, p.85]

Not a thrill a minute, but a steady antidote to chaos. [Sep 2025, p.83]

New radiations is not without moments of ponderous stasis. Nadler still shines as a spell-weaver and mistress of moods, though. [Sep 2025, p.79]

The results are less out-there, but mostly play to Allison's strengths. [Oct 2025, p.91]

Flux lacks a little of the old uncanny razzle dazzle, but there's no doubting the elegance of its execution or the expertise of its creator. [Sep 2025, p.79]

She takes memories and splashes them around in them, a style she's made her own. Hokey, lo-fi acoustics and a fluid off-key croon add a surreal edge. [Sep 2025, p.86]

The opening Witness introduces philosophical detachment which anchors Oliver's sceptical worldview throughout as he hovers between the sanguine and the sly on rousing yet playful anthems like the title track or the funky The Trick.[Sep 2025, p.84]

Cobb as a blockbuster album in him, but not quite yet. [Aug 2025, p.79]

Buxton's posthumous appearance on the raw, Eddie Cochran-esque What Happened To You also shines, but elsewhere things sometimes get formulaic, the horror cod and the guillotine a little blunt. [Aug 2025, p.77]

That confiding voice retains its hushed intimacy throughout but there's a lack of the soaring melodies that distinguish her recent collaborations with Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. [Aug 2025, p.76]

While the humour in Always Some MF is more bracing tan previously, it's only on the stark minimalism of Cure For Emptiness where Maltese appears truly vulnerable. [Aug 2025, p.104]

It's a steady, comforting blast of warmth, from the Jon Hopkins-Style soft techno pulse of Soft Gradient beckons to Nocturne's ambient swell. [Aug 2025, p.79]

Walk This Road glides between cheerful boogies and sunny R&N vamps, luxuriating in the relaxed chemistry of the four surviving members. [Jul 2025, p.86]

Asher steers The Secret Of Life toward familiar traditional-pop territory. The Placid setting brings out the politeness in Streisand's guests. [Aug 2025, p.76]

Yildirim's group put the focus on melody, instrumental prowess and the melancholy in her voice. [Aug 2025, p.83]

A challenging yet rewarding listen. [Aug 2025, p.85]

The songs often begin like standards then vanish beneath noise creeping in from the sides. .... Before the music returns to the foreground, triumphant. [Aug 2025, p.83]

As always, with such projects, Goddess flies or falls on what these collaborators bring to the table, but the material here is as strong as it is varied. [Jul 2025, p.84]

Like all tribute albums it's a mixed bag. [Jul 2025, p.92]

An album that, in the best sense of the term, is all over the place. [Jul 2025, p.84]

Death Mask makes for a visceral, at time abrasive listen. [Jul 2025, p.85]

It's all high drama, dark figures and wild impulses - hugely entertaining, but when Muphy sings "this is the meaning of my life", you don't doubt it for a second. [Jun 2025, p.86]

These 11 songs brim with images of armed men, noxious air and entitled egotists, intermingled with notions of self-liberation and community solidarity. But the sonics too often seem stuck in Garbus's past. [Jul 2025, p.83]

Luster is less dreamy than blurry, as if her subconscious is piloting this deep-trawling ambient indie with breathy vocals submerged in waves of drone and fuzz. [Jul 2025, p.86]

At times the central theme, exploring our relationship to Earth and ancestral wisdom, veers into portentousness- but this is undercut by the rich musical mix. [Jul 2025, p.83]

If You Asked For A Picture is a zig-zagging combination of gentle (the opening Thumbtack is acoustic guitar plus reverb-y, quivering vocals before muffled drums kick in halfway through) and tempestuous. [Jul 2025, p.79]

It's largely stripped of their loftier excesses. Instead, the tone - meditative, inward-looking - coalesces around Circle Of Trust's tender electro, Ride Or Die's minimal escapist lullaby or the tech-U2 of She Cries Diamond Rain. [Jun 2025, p.80]

Idol's rebel yell still has snarl and charisma, but some of these songs (Wildside; Too Much Fun) feel like pop-punk makeweights included to get Dream Into It up to 35 minutes. [Jun 2025, p.82]

There's something of the counsellor's couch about these songs, a record that trembles between acute self-awareness, self-laceration and self-preservation in its quest for "the deep blue OK". [Jun 2025, p.82]

Unpredictable and stylistically chameleonic, Deerhoof's clamorous noise and freak-out rifferama seems perfectly attuned to current world flux. Still there is joy here too. [Jun 2025, p.80]

They range from the short and comic (Sweep Piece is the sound of producer Robin McGinley brushing a room for two minutes) to longer, studio-based ensemble performances that are often surprisingly beautiful. [May 2025, p.92]

Stygian Waves has a pleasing surety of direction. [Jun 2025, p.84]

An album for banjo/fiddle fans and music history buffs. [May 2025, p.84]

A gentle, spartan album overflowing with straight-forward songs and harmony vocals, which evoke Emmylou Harris as much as Margo Price. [May 2025, p.87]

Tribal, jazzy, at times doom-laden, After The Flood is undoubtedly the darkest moment in Kuepper's long and storied career. [May 2025, p.89]

Whether it's the Damon Albarn-embellished Afro-pop of Pure Love or Buschtaxi's wonky take on reggaeton, delightful weirdness seeps from every pore. [May 2025, p.91]

His retro-pop stylings are just as keenly observed and affable. [May 2025, p.93]

Her alternately husky and tremulous Dolly Parton timbre weaves through a yacht rock/mid-'80s Fleetwood Mac hybrid (Spirit), a Eurovision-worthy almost power-ballad (Right Now) and the quasi-disco, gospel-edged shuffler Baby. [Apr 2025, p.80]

Barratt’s plummy texts present fragmentary narratives aquiver with unresolved tension and hyperreal detail. Her compadre is talking them up as In Every Dream Home A Heartache rebooted, but Loose Talk is surely but an intriguing distraction compared to that pop-cultural landmark. [Apr 2025, p.79]

It's a record where everything escalates quickly - proof Snapped Ankles know exactly how to read the room. [May 2025, p.91]

As intriguing as it is, it's of course lacking the focus of Neilson's brilliant songwriting and characterful voice, while likely offering him vital creative inspiration for his next record proper. [May 2025, p.91]

Without Marshall, they're less overtly folk-based and on the stand-out Caroline, they're as rewarding as David Gray at his most up-tempo, while Madison Cunningham brings a feminine touch to Blood On The Page. [May 2025, p.87]

Dreams On Toast's music is much less nuanced and thought-provoking - but that's no slur. [May 2025, p.86]

Although there are lengthy passes of mellifluous flute playing, the largely instrumental composition is lacking in focus. But there is much to enjoy ere in the more concise songs. [May 2025, p.92]

Central to Whatever The Westher II is an underlying hum and crackle that offsets its engrossing sound design. [Apr 2024, p.84]

A lovely, evocative album on which Stratton's measured approach barely masks underlying tensions. [Apr 2025, p.80]

An elegantly collaged exploration of death and its consequences. [Mar 2025, p.86]

There's a formlessness to the greater endeavour that ensures it's somehow less than its constituent parts. Still, the likes of subterranean Latin shuffle American Reference possess an invention and mystery that makes this an endlessly fascinating place to get lost. [Apr 2025, p.84]

Through dry humour, love songs as tender as Tim Hardin's, tremolo guitars and intensely moving samples Powers reveals a psyche reborn. [Mar 2025, p.93]

Broadly, his remains the church of raucous or jangling indie-guitar with quirks (unexpected strings at the end of I Couldn't See The Light; clunking smartphone recording The Well Known Soldier), but Universe Room rewards the patient. [Mar 2025, p.92]

Downstate's a more focused listen. [Mar 2025, p.93]

A breathless, party-starting exploration of the connection between the Congo and cumbia. [Mar 2025, p.91]

Full Moon thunders on near-relentless sub-bass (Mntanami, about her absentee father) and post-dancehall Amapiano beats, with interludes of wishy-washy synthy vulnerability - a serviceable backdrop upon which this irresistibly raunchy personality reliably shines. [Feb 2025, p.88]

The overall feeling of lab-hygienic utility is clearly intended, but a pretty wistfulness also whistles down these wires. [Feb 2025, p.87]

Matt Berninger walks a distinguished line between control and catharsis, with only occasional collapses (Graceless, for example), but when the music falls away during Bloodbuzz Ohio, you hear a band carried on by both the roar of the crowd and the structural might of their songwriting. [Jan 2025, p.83]

Straddles the line between the jackhammer clattering pop of Girls Aloud (Sorry, Etc is almost a facsimile), the elusiveness of Fiona Apple and Chvrches’ own electro backdrop. [Feb 2025, p.88]

Though it’s not the recluse’s reverie that was 2020’s fine single-hander Monovision, Long Way Home also feels somewhat introverted. [Sep 2024, p.86]

Dad is no longer the singer he was, which of course makes Cat Stevens’ title track all the more poignant. .... Junior does most of the heavy vocal lifting and it is he, you suspect, who suggested Ph.D.’s I Won’t Let You Down and Eurythmics’ Here Comes The Rain Again, both of which turn out to be highlights. [Jan 2025, p.82]

Those who like their Dave in lane will prefer the recently released, quintessentially post-rocking Aerial M Peel Session Andrew Perry from 1998. Fans of unpredictable Pajo should feast here. [Jan 2025, p.89]