Makaya McCraven's alchemical abilities and subliminal technical savvy offer both a sensitive update of the Blue Note label's depth-charged catalogue and a welcome pathfinder for the uninitiated. [Jan 2022, p.83]

A collaboration where each sulphurous element perfectly complements the others. [Jan 2022, p.90]

Roots-rock Zelig with a punk past, the New Yorker's double long-player has Roots Rock and Radical discs. [Nov 2021, p.94]

The remarkably unhurried, hermetic vibe of her intimate chamber-folk remains unchanged. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Out There, but inclusive too. [Jan 2022, p.89]

Garvey's lyricism is elevated by the subtle complexity of the music, clarinets, choral voices and churchy keyboards whispering through the vents of these sons, causing a quiet stir. [Dec 2021, p.86]

Things could have easily slipped into a kitsch pastiche by this stage, yet La Luz continue to find fresh avenues to explore. [Jan 2022, p.85]

While there's nothing here that immediately screams to be considered in the front rank of their input, the more you listen, the more it feels like being reunited with some long-lost, missing-presumed-dead relatives. ... Voyage is just as good as you expect. [Jan 2022, p.84]

Imposter, if not essential, always ring true. [Jan 2022, p.83]

A lyrically strong album. [Jan 2022, p.82]

The formula still works a treat. [Dec 2021, p.86]

It's the way these sessions are gracefully processed into digitalia that makes the whole thing so cohesive. [Dec 2021 p.87]

Grand, unsettling, and a fitting finale that propels The Upsetter to a higher plain. [Dec 2021, p.91]

His solos still dazzle and the riff to Notches could move mountains, but too much of Time Clocks suggests Bonamassa by numbers. [Dec 2021, p.91]

Ultimately, it's the push and pull between Duncan Bellamy's mantric hang-drums and Jack Wyllie's floating sax lines that ensure these widescreen creations feel so vividly full of life. [Dec 2021, p.89]

An auspicious new singer-songwriter, not afraid to broaden her Horizons. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Ian Devaney's tremulous tones and Michael Sue-Poi's melodic bass lines cutting deep on heartbroken ballads. [Dec 2021, p.94]

Idles are finding new directions home: the hallmark of a great band. [Dec 2021, p.85]

It's music that's soothing as transportive. [Dec 2021, p.87]

Blom's buoyant indie-rock - a perfect vehicle for the everyday anxieties that power her songs - quickly proves hard to resist. [Nov 2021, p.84]

May prove to be one of the most beautiful, tangentially produced artefacts of our strange and uncertain times. [Dec 2021, p.82]

Shadowy, masterful set. [Dec 2021, p.91]

For a record about captive states - isolation, anxiety, romantic hope - Things Take Time, Take Time knows how to move. [Dec 2021, p.85]

With its poetic allusions to loss and loneliness, will resonate with many who have felt the same. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Mann's voice remains exquisite, her lyrics cinematically vivid, often painfully so, but the album possesses a chimerical looseness, a fuzzy aimless drift that is simultaneously haunting and somniferous. [Dec 2021, p.87]

A music-box intricacy keeps these anxious, wondering songs on a room-sized scale even as they worry at the big issues over strings and keyboards. [Dec 2021, p.90]

He covers old bases with new fervour, but there's so much happening, so much detail that it feels like a giant leap forward. [Dec 2021, p.92]

Both of these albums twisted machines to Radiohead's will, to their need to hear soulful songs singing in their wires. And they're resonating still. [Dec 2021, p.102]

Strictly for fans of "difficult." [Dec 2021, p.92]

New Adventures In Hi-Fi holds up well now. ... CD2 consists of all previously released material. Fun of you've never hears R.E.M. saunter through Wichita Lineman, but completists will see this one as a massive opportunity missed. [Dec 2021, p.98]

There are shorter tracks, but the longer songs (averaging seven minutes apiece) are the real gems. [Dec 2021, p.89]

On the plus side, Ross is in good voice, but as comeback albums go, this is an underwhelming affair. [Oct 2021, p.96]

Stirring, seductive album. [Dec 2021, p.88]

Despite the turmoil these songs describe, a flash of Elliott Smith-style emotional acuity every few seconds, musically Valentine tells a different story. Building on the confidence of 2018 debut Lush. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Beautifully poised. [Dec 2021, p.92]

Music best experienced as the sun drops below the horizon. [Nov 2021, p.91]

An intimate, thematic country-blues-rock set. [Nov 2021, p.93]

Paints on a much broader canvas here than 2019's debut Fyah, roving roughshod across genres. ... In Cross's seasoned palms the tuba's possibilities feel endless. [Dec 2021, p.89]

Witty and moving, somewhere an indie movie needs this as a soundtrack. [Dec 2021, p.85]

The focused, meander-free Ocean To Ocean is big on uplift, balm and musical adventure. [Dec 2021, p.84]

There's considerable ambition at play here. [Dec 2021, p.90]

Absence finds New Orleans trumpeter Blanchard and regular band E Collective effortlessly shifting textures, with disguised flares of long notes and high blasts casting fresh melodic light on much-covered works Fall and Diana. [Nov 2021, p.89]

I Don't Live Here Anymore is the most grounded War On Drugs record and the best: a calm space amid a world in collapse. [Nov 2021, p.82]

Reinvents Burt Bacharach on the Bell Gets Out If The Way and brings an XTC-ish bloom to the downtempo powerpop of Cherub and The Great Child Actor. [Dec 2021, p.84]

Stripped back and raw, his mesmerising guitar front and centre, this is gritty old-style blues with a laser-sharp modern focus. [Dec 2021. p.86]

-io doesn't try to ingratiate or console. Instead, Fohr ambitiously attempts to strip back protective coatings and cocoons, to show what happens when distractions peel away and the inevitable pushes through. [Nov 2021, p.90]

Baffling excursions into exotica also make Fantasy Island different enough to reignite their "wow" factor. [Nov 2021, p.91]

This album feels personal, contemplative, yet thanks to Harris's blurred vocals, the meaning is never in focus, like notes sent back from the edge of a waking dream. [Oct 2021, p.96]

Deerhoof being Deerhoof, the arty, poppy, proggy noise is jagged, cathartic, and occasionally grand. [Nov 2021, p.88]

Probably his most varied album. ... The extremes work better still, be it Cyrus's eyebrow-raising raw trawl through Metallica's Nothing Else Matters or the vocal pyrotechnics which course through Young Thug & Nicki Minaj's Always Love You. [Dec 2021, p.87]

An intermittently discomfiting record, tinged with sadness and beautifully composed. [Oct 2021, p.97]

The music's suboptimal sound quality is only a minor drawback to a sonic experience whose raw intensity is both disquieting and uplifting. [Nov 2021, p.102]

Fun House moves Duffy ever closer to the revelatory heart of the matter. [Nov 2021, p.92]

Move, a blistering collision of heavy rock and Latin pop. The remainder of the album ranges from percussive jazz-rock and bouncy Latin Techno to febrile thrash metal. [Dec 2021, p.87]

Nothing remotely insipid here; rather anger as an energy and top tunes. [Dec 2021, p.84]

Skin takes in soul, jazz and trip-hop, and more than fulfils her early promise. [Dec 2021, p.90]

It's a mark of Shauf's talent that songs this deft could ever have been left to gather dust. [Dec 2021, p.92]

Let It Be might be the runt of The Beatles litter but it's half of a very good album. ... The outtakes discs are very much works in progress, as The Beatles chat and work their way through new songs: an eavesdrop into their process. ... What comes through is how true The Beatles were to the idea of going back to their youthful inspirations. [Dec 2021, p.99]

There are simple messages, delivered earnestly, but the magic of this group has always been their ability to translate the elemental into the transcendental. It is a miracle they pull off frequently on My Morning Jacket, with confidence and inspiration, every moment a fresh beginning. [Nov 2021, p.85]

In amongst the jumble of influences, trad indie-guitar Parquet remains: in, say, the early Go-Betweens-y Just Shadows, and the galvanising lyrics of collective consciousness - written pre-pandemic, but wonderfully inspiring for late 2021. [Nov 2021, p.84]

Moondust For My Diamond stays the right kind of precious. [Nov 2021, p.91

Delicate yet resolute, Geist is a beautiful spin through the windmills of Lay's mind, unreal in the best ways. [Nov 2021, p.92]

Audiobooks' adoption of absurdity continues to confound in the most delightful ways. [Nov 2021, p.91]

He finds drama in the mundane. [Nov 2021, p.94]

A classic rock record, in all senses. [Nov 2021, p.84]

Instinctual, fully lived-in record, it touches and thrills. [Nov 2021, p.93]

Their most forward-facing jazz album yet, packed with complex, multi-storied compositions you can still dance to. [Nov 2021, p.89]

The only downside seem to be an audience with a dreadful sense of rhythm clapping along. ... But an excellent selection of songs, beautifully performed. [Nov 2021, p.103]

This 5-CD sets lets us revel in his creative process. [Nov 2021, p.102]

The emotional honesty and lack of bravado suits him. [Nov 2021, p.87]

There's nothing here to stop her rise. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Bleak but often gripping stuff. [Oct 2021, p.97]

Results range from the radio-friendly but obvious to the obscure but not a word out of place. [Oct 2021, p.96]

The excellent concept sometimes outshines the music, but if everyone's a tourist, this is the trip to go on. [Nov 2022, p.88]

The sound of a man stretching out... What breadth of vision McCaughan has. [Nov 2021, p.86]

A big-sounding record, it feels like a step forward for Segall. [Nov 2021, p.91]

Gorgeous and achingly candid. [Nov 2021, p.93]

Never sounds less than game. [Nov 2021, p.87]

The gently ticking, lightly compressed acoustic instrument arpeggios will be familiar to fans of both songwriters, but it's the pair's half-whispered vocals blend that enchants. [Nov 2021, p.88]

Bonkers idea. ... Stranger still, the whole thing works a treat. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Beyond such vivid, often thrilling caricatures, however, the acrid smoulder of The Donkey, the mysterious haunt of Legal Ghost and the nuanced pop of New Romeo Agent prove that Tropical Fuck Storm have yet to succumb to glib nihilism, and that tenderness and poetry are still within their grasp. [Nov 2021, p.87]

Should rightly have fans and newcomers alike punching the air in solidarity. [Nov 2021, p.88]

A lugubrious but fresh, genre-bending take on modern club music. [Nov 2021, p.91]

A 50/50 new/old split: reworkings, questing solo turns and a rare all-out rocker. [Nov 2021, p.94]

Inspired by Elena Ferrante's dense domestic dramas, wears its complexity lightly. [Nov 2021, p.94]

Local Valley has no lows, nor any thrilling highs, but it's an even, easy pleasure from start to finish. [Oct 2021, p.91]

Throughout, the Brothers' riotous dustbowl carnival sounds and Ian's pointed deadpan make for a consistently entertaining cocktail. [Oct 2021, p.92]

By embracing the space between, Taylor has created a meditative, magical record. [Oct 2021, p.91]

It's intimate but also voyeuristic. [Oct 2021, p.86]

It's a wilful shuffle through the space-time continuum, where powerful pearls of wisdom about memory, the future and black justice pierce the sonic murk. [Oct 2021, p.90]

It's an uncannily beautiful listening experience. [Oct 2021, p.92]

Nine wordless, shape-shifting essays. [Oct 2021, p.93]

Critically, Dark Matters evokes, rather than merely simulates, the band's hallmark quirk and strangeness, lending integrity to the ongoing endeavour. [Oct 2021, p.97]

A great summer indie pop album. [Oct 2021, p.99]

Chilled, down-home charms remind of Duckworth and early dc Basehead. [Oct 2021, p.99]

I've Been Trying to Tell You works wonderfully on many levels. Those harsh first impressions give way to something altogether more beautiful. [Oct 2021, p.94]

It's almost too strenuous in its attempts to top its predecessors, 20212's Big Inner and 2015's Fresh Blood, but once inside White's all-enveloping world, there's no space to worry too much. [Oct 2021, p.98]

The other 48 selections feel forced or too like karaoke homework. [Oct 2021, p.92]