Baxter's third cracking album in a row. [Jul 2023, p.88]

If it has little earth under its nails, with any background maid or shepherd perfectly cast and choreographed, there are still plenty of lovely, curious tableaux - among them David Byrne's dreamy appearance on Moondog's High On A Rocky Ledge, or Nina Simone-inspired Cotten Eyed Joe, featuring Chaka Khan. [Jul 2023, p.89]

Margo's deep, stentorian tones have remained almost unchanged since 1986's Whites Off Earth Now!! and Hell Is Real could have graced that LP. Even so, there's real evolution. [Jul 2023, p.84]

What Matters Most is near faultless; a whole semester of song-craft in 40 minutes. [Jul 2023, p.90]

Council Skies is very much a creative success. It's the sound of Noel Gallagher pushing onwards, while once again playing to his strengths. [Jul 2023, p.85]

This is searching, quietly profound stuff. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Live At Berkeley 1971 powers through it all – relentless, often overwrought, often brilliant, too. [Jun 2023, p.99]

Trouble... is thrillingly fresh. [Jun 2023, p.86]

With its own low-key sparkle Archangel Hill stands testament to a musical third act every bit as engaging as anything that went before. [Jun 2023, p.91]

Sus Dog is the sound of Clark finding his voice in more ways than one. [Jun 2023, p.95]

Her lovers rock take of Patsy Cline's Walking After Midnight further strengthens reggae and country's fine romance, and who could have predicted that Morrissey's Everyday Is Like Sunday would sound like an out-take from the Special AKA's IN the Studio when reworked as rocksteady with woozy horns? [Jul 2023, p.82]

Something notable about Albarn's tracks is how hard they are to pick out from the others. [Jul 2023, p.83]

Their anarchic cut'n'paste confections can baffle on first exposure, but with repeat listens the inventiveness of their compositions come to the fore, savvy hooks materialising from the seeming chaos of loops and samples. [Jul 2023, p.84]

The result is a bold, career highlight that's dizzyingly inventive on the surface, with a powerful emotional undertow. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Too much of My Soft Machine is too smooth by half. [Jun 2023, p.95]

Ron Mael's lyrics are elegiac, witty and forensically detailed; Russel Mael delivers them exquisitely and they specialise in ear worms. [Jul 2023, p.82]

It's really hard not to feel the absence of David Crosby's harmonies. [Jun 2023, p.92]

Villagers lives in its own hermetic and compelling space; it's not too late to pay a visit. [Jul 2023, p.84]

By this double alum's end, it feels like a breakthrough in every way, the sound of an artist who has not only forged on, but also hit a glorious peak. [Jun 2023, p.84]

It's the small, tragic details you notice on TLROE. [Jun 2023, p.84]

There’s only one moment when the production distracts from the players, a brief yet clunky guitar overdub on Arajghiyine. Listeners who love a wide soundstage, however, with well-separated guitars coming at you from all angles, will be in heaven. Thankfully, the guests shun the spotlight, leaving Ibrahim, Alhassane Ag Touhami and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni to concentrate on that elusive sound, the guitars cleaner and crisper than those that introduced Tinariwen to the world 20 years ago. [Jun 2023, p.82]

One of the most compelling and stone-cold beautiful albums Simon has ever made. [Jul 2023, p.80]

End Of Everything surface gloss barely conceals a raw intensity. [Jun 2023, p.90]

The interplay between their vocals is tense and compelling, suggesting early Blonde Redhead. Their lyrics, meanwhile, are mysterious knots of angst. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Never tumbles into dissonance. Rather, tracks like the Reichian round of Rytmy shimmer like heat haze on the horizon. [Jun 2023, p.95]

Lux Æterna [is] a prime example of 72 Seasons' astonishing vigour. ... Metallica are worthy again. [Jul 2023, p.82]

A tightly coiled album, covering 17 tracks in 45 minutes, Maps leaves much to unpick. [Jul 2023, p.87]

Tyler and band lean deeper into kosmische country rock. [Jul 2023, p.92]

Another game-changer; via a 13-piece ensemble. [Jul 2023, p.82]

The tension between philosophical lyrics and the invitingly cosmic fractals generated by the band can hit awkwardly, but this is a striking new shoot. [Jun 2023, p.95]

There are 10 songs here, most of them slow; with a smoky nightclub intimacy that makes it a great late-night album. [Jun 2023, p.88]

Apart from the more lightweight yarning of In Electric Blue, each track on this album takes you further into her brave new world. [Jun 2023, p.94]

Garden Party is a golden-hour dream of a record, balmy keyboards and cicada-like percussion setting a perfect scene for the easy, receptive conversations between the guitars of Johnson and Barry Walker. [Jun 2023, p.87]

A delightful album. [Apr 2023, p.82]

Beneath Tweedy's twinkling lights, Crowell wears each look like a favourite old coat - familiar, easy, and pocked by stains and rips that remind him of all he's seen. [Jun 2023, p.91]

Everything Harmony us certainly a darker chapter in the Twigs' story, but their songwriting has become more nuanced. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Multifaceted and consistently brilliant. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Lemmy-recalling rocker The End finds chief pilot Dave Brock poignantly recalling years of adventure as past Hawkwind sonic signatures collide, while the mordantly comic The Beginning looks in electronic/acoustic fashion to a post-human existence of uploaded consciousness. [Jun 2023, p.85]

Lashes panoramic drum'n'bass rollers (Living In Recycled Times) to pulsing deep house (The Beginning Of The End) and amniotic ambient (Prism). [Jun 2023, p.95]

[Evil Spirits] was a curiously muted affair. ... Darkadelic does much to address that imbalance with the Cap back to showboating magnificently on Bad Weather Girl and Girl I'll Stop At Nothing and adding vibrant, shimmering psych textures throughout. [Jun 2023, p.84]

It's a thematically and musically complex record that encourages wonderment. [Jun 2023, p.92]

The beauty of Jump On It also lies in how it evolves Orcutt's music rather than compromises it. Start here and work backwards. [Jun 2023, p.89]

This is an absolute joy. [Jun 2023, p.92]

Relationships with uncomfortable endings, uneasy attractions, and deep personal loss pepper Fullbrook's songs, but her Tiny Ruins bandmates consistently lift her into the light, creating warmth and depth rather than leaving the listener in endless gloom. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Spectral Lines tries to come at hurt, loss and destiny afresh, with Ritter's dexterity with universal themes often paying dividends. [Jun 2023, p.86]

It's Stigmergy, named after a concept of collective action, that best encapsulates the ecstatic NIS groupthink: one hypnotic soloist after another - Ben Lamar Gay, brilliant on coronet - drifting elegantly in and out of systems repetition. [Jun 2023, p.92]

A sometimes-striking record that suggests new ground without actually reaching it. [Jun 2023, p.84]

de Graaf is repositioning herself in a mightily crowded market, but the sometime human rights lawyer triumphs via intense lyrics about coming-of-age awareness, loneliness in the big city, life's unpredictability and, on Water Stains, the old chestnut of time's passing. [Mar 2023, p.87]

Most of its layered, ornate creations and moody conjurings emerge from a deep shoegaze rabbit hole redolent of Slowdive and Lush. [Jun 2023, p.90]

It's polished, professional, but one for the faithful. [May 2023, p.89]

The Window Is The Dream initially seems opaque, but keep looking through and all becomes beautifully clear. [May 2023, p.92]

The cumulative effect is lulling and hypnotic. [Jun 2023, p.89]

Pedal steel still colours Safe To Run but so do fuzzier guitars; synthesizers are involved, and tributaries are equally pop, folk and rock. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Neale is imaginative, but she's steeped in songwriting craft and she knows her way aound a whopping chorus. That's more than enough. [Jun 2023, p.90]

“People say people my age shouldn’t be making records,” Hunter has said. With his mind still agile, his piano playing still on top form and his voice still strong, Defiance Part 1 makes a nonsense of that. At 83, Hunter also sounds much more starry-eyed about rock’n’roll than he did in Diary Of A Rock’N’Roll Star. [May 2023, p.90

The emphasis more on fractured, abstract improv rater than frenetic carousing. Interesting stuff, for sure. [May 2023, p.89]

Rainbow is bleak. [Jun 2023, p.105]

High Flyin' is a highlight of the bootleg series so far. [Jun 2023, p.105]

No more the quieter introspection and reflection of solo tracks like Hormones or Fever Dream – here Thorn and Watt are a combined force, capturing the giddy euphoria and release of the club experience.

The album's second half-hour wilts, but the first is Temples Excelling as never before. [Jun 2023, p.92]

10 elegantly rendered tracks, uncovering an intersection of The Clientele and Waxahatchee. [Jun 2023, p.91]

The music makes fearsome sense on its own, but a viewing of The Cry Of Jazz is recommended before listening. [Jun 2023, p.87]

Stereo Mind Game certainly sustains an atmosphere, but it's a brooding and bleak one, and at times the darkness of Daughter's dream-pop can feel a bit suffocating. [Jun 2023, p.85]

[Ben Gregory's] emergence from psychiatric treatment to go solo has restored ambition, engineering a starling psychodrama, both spiritual and musical. [Jun 2023, p.87]

Beguiling from the outset. [Jun 2023, p.90]

All Roads Lead Home holds together surprisingly well. [May 2023, p.86]

Devoid of da funk it may be, but the scale and scope here are impressive. [May 2023, p.86]

Her most beautiful [music] in decades. [May 2023, p.87]

An often challenging, always thrilling triumph that rewards deep listening and re-listening. [May 2023, p.92]

Roberts' dying-Jacobite vocals remain thrillingly feeble, and Nic Jones-ly fingerpicking on Wonderful Grey Horse and Young Airly may draw in waverers. [May 2023, p.89]

Much warmer and more inviting [than 2017's Pleasure]. [May 2023, p.88]

John's piano at the Festival Hall brought a stentorian new dimension to a sped-up Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time) and the demos offer the sense of a band working out how to get the best from John's freewheeling melodies. In the end, they turned out to be just what was required. [May 2023, p.101]

Allowing Talk Talk, The Chameleons and David Sylvian to swell the ranks of recognisable names and the odd mystifying entry too - on what planet is The Wake's English rain ethereal, dream pop or showgaze? [May 2023, p.98]

Strong Stones in the '80s vibes set the tone. [May 2023, p.95]

Now 25 and treading Nirvana/Hole-influenced terrain better suited to the bleed and luster of these uncensored songs of self-empowerment, she has found her perfect skin. [May 2023, p.94]

Has much nuance to gild its inimitable energy. [May 2023, p.88]

An ecstatic update on classic techno. [Apr 2023, p.86]

His most satisfying outing in decades. [Apr 2023, p.85]

While it lacks the hostility of its role model or its strident central voice, there's intrigue aplenty. [May 2023, p.84]

This is a still-hungry group flexing their creative muscles. [May 2023, p.86]

Sundown is both a bigger sounding LP than Pleasure, Joy And Happiness but also a deeper one. [May 2023, p.91]

Melusine retains the intellectual curiosity of Salvant's jittery, questing catalogue. [May 2023, p.86]

The Record is beautifully integrated, each song feeling like an ongoing conversation, a harmonious thread they can pick up any time. It’s very much worth getting to know it. [Jun 2023, p.85]

An excursion into invention, forsaking preparation for nuggets of inspiration and a degree of rootless wander. [May 2023, p.89]

There are ravishing moments and startling lines, but these 10 tracks collectively plod, the band's early sugar-rush sophistication never returning to grace this deliberate growth. [May 2023, p.88]

An exquisite collection of R&B message songs that have subtly been reframed with a jazz twist to reflect dystopian developments in contemporary American life. [May 2023, p.84]

The Art Of Forgetting swings between joy and darkness with a boldness and coherence that is a marvel. [May 2023, p.84]

A strangely bloodless album heavy on technical perfection rather than the visceral emotion at the core of the best roots music. [May 2023, p.91]

Polizze's bubblegum melodies cut through the fuzz (Out The Door is a cracker), while Baby ups those '80s bona fides by echoing Pixies' Wave Of Mutilation. [Apr 2023, p.89]

If modern folk music needs its own OK Computer, its own The Dark Side Of The Moon, or indeed its own F#A#∞, this may well be it. [Apr 2023, p.80]

Bob Mould's been hereabouts before, of course, but The Tubs' tightly-wound songs are good enough to transcend the concept. [May 2023, p.95]

It's a seduction in halves. [May 2023, p.93]

The tracklisting may be a bit route one, but the music is far from it. [May 2023, p.86]

A terrific set that explores the themes of loss, friendship, aging and legacy, in 12 songs that are both familiar sounding and something new. [May 2023, p.84]

While keyboardist Vijay Iyer and bassist/Moog player Shahzad Ismaily summon a succession of iridescent, jazz-ambient drones and stimulating pianistic inventions, the compelling centre here is always Aftab's extraordinary voice, a thing of languorously modulating beauty. [May 2023, p.84]

These songs have an impressive vehemency, whether showcasing uncanny AI balladry on Soul With Me, industrial wall-of-sound on Speak To Me and People Are Good, electro-pop dissociation on My Favourite Stranger, or hydraulically pumped Brel-drama on Don't Say You Love Me. [May 2023, p.85]

If it wasn’t for a couple of unfortunate lulls and longueurs, the odd dubious creative choice, it could easily look Norman Fucking Rockwell in the eye. [May 2023, p.85}

With many of Paisley's songs dealing with people struggling between places, timeframes or lovers, such unforced, reflective songwriting deftly grounds these unsteady experiences, an arrangement that simply works. [Apr 2023, p.85]