Another songwriting masterclass. Again. [Dec 2025, p.78]

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]

A spare, transient, restrained thing. Yet it's that restraint that ultimately defines its brilliance; the sound of a more confident, assured artist realising that it might be better to travel slowly than to arrive. [Dec 2025, p.86]

A bold and beautiful record borne of quiet surety, this is their best since The Trials Of Van Occupanther. [Dec 2025, p.86]

Her reading of Anthem makes Leonard Cohen’s hymn to resilience and resistance feel like a bespoke gift from another writer who knew about life in the shadows. .... It’s as that distant flickering light, illuminating the path to better times, that Staples excels. [Dec 2025, p.76]

Lloyd is joined by pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell, who prove highly empathetic collaborators, creating delicately nuanced backdrops that are conductive to the saxophonist's poetic storytelling. [Nov 2025, p.82]

An album that's rarely short of lovely. [Dec 2025, p.78]

Iconoclasts is its own untamable beast. Adventurous sonically, dynamically rich, it feels daunting, deep as the Mariana Trench. [Dec 2025, p.81]

The Belair Lip Bombs exude the simple joy of being in a band, breezing out of your speakers without affectation. [Dec 2025, p.82]

Intermittently challenging; ultimately it offers a comforting embrace. [Dec 2025, p.85]

The parallel blossoming of a writer and performer climaxes in two discs of Dylan's October 26, 1963 show at Carnegie Hall, the apotheosis of the vibrating imagery and magnetic command of his breakthrough phase, where Ballad Of Hollis Brown is a demonic spell but in truth every damn song is a transcendence. Who needs electricity? [Dec 2025, p.92]

It works beautifully, the band gently distorting their songwriting surfaces wit sudden psychedelic sun-spots and experimental flares. [Dec 2025, p.81]

There's a fine story-telling country song (No One Knows Us); a dramatic rocker (Church & State) - and songs whose piano and multiple harmonies feel like church (You Without Me; Joni). But it never sounds less than gorgeous. [Dec 2025, p.78]

Love Chant might also be described as scrappy, vulnerable and heartfelt, but it is also loose, exuberant and animated in a manner that seems faithful to who Dando is today. [Nov 2025, p.84]

Great to hear these session giants unchained. [Oct 2025, p.83]

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]

The wait, rewarded. [Dec 2025, p.85]

Holy grail or curate’s egg, diehard fans will run to this 5-disc package and relish even its flaws. Adding the original album simply emphasises what we already knew: Nebraska represents the very best of Bruce Springsteen. [Dec 2025, p.92]

Hamdan works slowly, but this has been worth waiting for. [Oct 2025, p.87]

With production cash lavished on them, the songs lustre anew. [Dec 2025, p.84]

There's a succinctness to Some Like It Hot. .... But pleasingly, they've not junked their angsty edge amid this pop-oriented realignment. [Nov 2025, p.88]

Skinner and band navigate uncharted waters with sass and skill. [Dec 2025, p.82]

Pollock might not take up space often, but when she's finally front and centre, you don't want the lights to go down. [Nov 2025, p.83]

It struts with confidence. [Nov 2025, p.85]

While the concept means Parks' violin takes a backseat, it makes for a dizzying, future-facing hybrid of dancefloor sounds. [Dec 2025, p.85]

Completists will appreciate the three-disc focus on the One To One charity concert from August 30, 1972: one disc apiece for the afternoon and evening sets and a ‘hybrid’ selection of the best of both. But intimate ‘home’ recordings, in fact taped in hotel rooms, are more tantalising. [Dec 2025, p.67]

The new sound of young Scotland. [Dec 2025, p.82]

Her voice is as earnestly soulful as Tracy Chapman, as deep and characterful as Nina Simone - and, like Simone, when the emotion engulfs her, the results are electrifying. [Sep 2025, p.87]

The album gels and is unexpectedly airy: with its souffle-light facade and full-fat core, this is a delight. [Dec 2025, p.83]

The poetic soloing ad celestial melodies of Carried It All Around and woozy, irresistible anthem In Hollywood affirm that The Besnard Lakes are masters of their art. [Dec 2025, p.83]

Wasner downplays the rockier aspects of her previous two solo records to delve into her Joni bag, pulling out both folk and AOR models - with streaks of Americana - sourcing gorgeous melodies to match her glowing vibrato that resembles a young Lucinda Williams. [Dec 2025, p.84]

There are meanders and lulls. Yet for a record intended to reflect and connect Lateral and Luminal, Liminal stands up on its own, not so much a final destination as a buzzy, fluid crossing-place for Eno and Wolfe's ideas. [Dec 2025, p.79]

The tempo is up, the brass arrangements individual, and St. Paul's extraordinary voice is swooping effortlessly between falsetto and gravel. [Dec 2025, p.86]

As with all Necks recordings, it's essentially one long piece of music, a slowly unravelling fabric that continues to delight, surprise and beguile but never repeat. [Nov 2025, p.88]

While Corporal is recognisably Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, their seventh LP is evidence for a reinvigoration; one which may bring fresh ears their way. [Nov 2025, 85]

Gedge's throaty warble remains his band's only real constant, but this is a rollercoaster ripe for re-evaluation. [Oct 2025, p.97]

One could argue the 68 tracks of live Material and multiple versions of certain songs - five of Heathen opener Sunday, for example - might be overkill. .... The exclusive four-disc Live At Montreux Jazz Festival, recorded on July 18, 2002, has a weak sleeve, but the music is blistering. [Nov 2025, p.100]

Futire-proof and intense, this is art-jazz-rock at its most cathartic. [Nov 2025, p.86]

The swooshing, intricate Doll's House might be The Orb's purest house moment yet, preceding a closing brace, Under The bed and Kharon, that represent ambient Orb in excelsis. [Nov 2025, p.91]

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]

The songs are charged with love for both the music and Molina. [Oct 2025, p.80]

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

It's stunningly polished new take on their heavy concept album. [Nov 2025, p.98]

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]

Amanda Shires has made the year's most emotionally raw album. [Nov 2025, p.86]

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

The humour enhances the band's vigour: loud and ragged, they sound like a band much younger than their years, although the high quality of songcraft is a giveaway of their veteran status. [Nov 2025, p.93]

This stately, sometimes gospel-esque, album has the forceful intensity of a coiled spring. [Oct 2025, p.84]

The groove here is mostly grainy, organic, natural. [Nov 2025, p.83]

The folk-adjacent auteur’s ninth studio LP is alive, Natalie Merchant-style, to the marvels of creation, but also the vulnerability that comes with suddenly having a physical stake in the future of humanity. [Oct 2025, p.88]

It's Orcutt's genius to find tenderness in the most forbidding places, and this time out he does so in the best possible company. [Oct 2025, p.85]

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]

Another exquisite recording documenting the near-telepathic connection between guitarist Oren Ambarci, bassists Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin. [Oct 2025, p.86]

A third album bursting with intense energy and sparkling invention. [Nov 2025, p.85]

A lyrically rich and musically colourful set of songs which is as emotionally exhilarating as it is often rawly painful. [Nov 2025, p.88]

Yes, they're flavour of the month, but they're the real deal too. [Nov 2025, p.88]

It's a beauty. [Oct 2025, p.81]

Across 10 intimate songs deftly ornamented by guitarists Matt Worley and Tony Kelsey and cellist Barney Morse-Brown, magic happens. [Nov 2025, p.88]

As a triple record, there are tracks that are less necessary than others, but remarkably it all flows as a cohesive whole, and never loses the listener's attention. [Nov 2025, p.80]

From labyrinthine opener Men In Bed, the material is inimitably Smith-esque, and if it is tempting to dig for premonitions of mortality, the Frank Zappa-via Hanna-Barbera thrills of Busty Beez or Skating feel like the work of a very much living artist. [Nov 2025, p.89]

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]

Band kiss-and-makeups can seem contrived, unconvincing; but this one feels genuine and sparky, Biffy's urgent, passionate music oxygenated by time away. [Nov 2025, p.83]

These 14 songs mostly charm and world-build in under three minutes. [Sep 2025, p.79]

A likeable collection of songs about family and companionship. .... The happy point where Belle And Sebastian meets Stephen Sondheim. [Nov 2025, p.88]

Captures Radiohead during their majestic 2000s, delivering muscular, meticulously detailed material to an audience eager for rousing, off killer anthems (There, There) and piano-led laments (We Suck Young Blood) alike. [Nov 2025, p.101]

Wednesday sound in total control of the world they've build here. [Nov 2025, p.85]

Throughout the record, there are audible seeds of the sublime AOR sound that Nicks and Buckingham-era Fleetwood Mac would further finesse. .... It's also easy to hear why Frozen Love - the proggy, shape-shifting holy grail of Fleetwood Mac's most combustible couple - so impressed Mick Fleetwood. [Nov 2025, p.96]

Arctic Moon does not have the glowering intensity of the band's earliest work, but fans of 1986's Strange Times will appreciate its subtleties. [Oct 2025, p.90]

A low-key exploration of how delicate melodies, processed noise and the occasional beat can intertwine, When It Rains drifting artfully to uncompromised skronk. [Oct 2025, p.83]

Hannon's most personal and poignant album to date. [Oct 2025, p.86]

Honeydew is one of Ritter's best. [Oct 2025, p.84]

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]

Even with zero knowledge of what is going on lyrically, these songs are often beautifully evocative. [Oct 2025, p.85]

Scrappy, heartfelt, yet utterly beautiful, it's a fitting farewell from a unique talent. [Oct 2025, p.87]

The songs here are among his most direct and fully focused. [Oct 2025, p.81]

A deeply satisfying tribute to a great lost talent. [Oct 2025, p.90]

With this fluid, free-raging music, Raymond is in a world of her own - one with several moons and its own intoxicating atmosphere. [Oct 2025, p.85]

Same old boots, maybe, but significantly racier kecks. [Oct 2025, p.88]

The album captivates wen his bad keeps pulling Freeman and his florid drawl back down to earth, the tension creating a form of transportive rural psychedelia. [Sep 2025, p.79]

Intergalactic longing underpins Banh Me, its closing synth solo reaching blindly, hopefully into the endlessness of Space, while Out In The Black finds his Captain Curt using his isolation amid the stars doe some powerful internal reckoning. [Oct 2025, p.84]

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]

Throughout, Dalt's sensuous vocals, which flip between Spanish and English, are buttressed by inventive use of Alex Lazaro's percussion in rhythms from Dalt's home continent. [Sep 2025, p.87]

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]

Weirdness and wonder abound at every turn. [Oct 2025, p.81]

10 moving gems of adult experience. [Oct 2025, p.90]

The whole is deeply bittersweet - but also a joyous farewell from this most wonderfully acute of English pop ensembles. [Oct 2025, p.80]

These songs convey a sense of the work put into them, a sense of the world outside, but that doesn't undermine Big Thief's ability to lock in on something profound. [Oct 2025, p.78]

This defiant, death-defying record - as much joyride as memento mori - is the glorious reward. [Oct 2025, p.80]

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

What's compelling is the precision and control of her voice, moving from a whisper to a scream on tracks like Broken Rib, or the industrial glam stomp rocker No Good For People. Lyrically, too, she has honed her songwriting skill. [Oct 2025, p.93]

Hard Headed Woman sees her big personality fire straight-talking, sometimes blackly comic lyrics "All the cocaine in existence/Can't keep your nose out of my business" - while taking her music to new places. [Oct 2025, p.82]

An electric chemistry courses through the line-blurring electro-acoustic hybrids of Hyperglyph. [Oct 2025, p.89]

As much as his guests shine amid his contemplative synth odysseys, it's the solo Njoku, stripped and vulnerable on Weapon that cut closest to the bone. [Aug 2025, p.84]

Richman sings with jaunty assurance in I Was Just A Piece Of Frozen Sky Anyway, the near-title entrance to his eighteenth solo album. [Oct 2025, p.86]