A singer-songwriter back at the peak of her powers. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Bathed in hope and spiritual substance. [Mar 2020, p.93]

Tightly wound but eminently danceable songs with an earnestness that can seem a bit po-faced. [Apr 2020, p.96]

Migraines possible; good chance of transcendence, too. [Apr 2020, p.96]

At turns comforting and disturbing. [Apr 2020, p.95]

Confusing mix of glam-influenced punk and would-be party bangers a tad disappointing. [Apr 2020, p.93]

This is Wilson's most potent release to date, its title referencing a subtle fudging of classic country tropes with more modern textures. [Apr 2020, p.93]

It's Wobble's unmistakable geometric bass patterns which anchor these 11 collaborative tracks. [Apr 2020, p.89]

Hutchings has suggested his Ancestors work is an update of the griot tradition - weaving social commentary into seemingly harmless party pieces. We Are Sent Here By History achieves more: transforming impending doom into an affirmation of life. [Apr 2020, p.92]

It doesn't all work. ... But the doo wop-in-space Hope Hell High, the football chant-as-polemic punk rock of Motherfuckers Got To Go and the widescreen desert balladry of Love Is A Mind Control prove the Deap Vally girls should experiment like this more often. [Apr 2020, p.91]

As ever, Heaton's whipsmart lyrics lurch between grumbling and lovesick, but he and Abbott bounce off each other like a couple who still relish being married. [Apr 2020, p.93]

A well-constructed, unselfconsciously retro set. [Apr 2020, p.96]

A delight. [Apr 2020, p.95]

A transcendent album, From This Place is possibly the Missouri fretboard maestro's most impressive opus yet. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Buck's guitars are supportive throughout, inspired by Haines's alternative universes. [Apr 2020, p.94]

A fine album is in here, but on this evidence, embracing the instinctive over the reflective might have been a better strategy. [Apr 2020, p.89]

Arranged with exquisite care, not a swooning backing vocal, Gram Parsons echo or Brian Eeno-influenced synthesizer out of place. [Apr 2020, p.89]

An album of unashamed emotional purgation. ... Swamp's late renascence is wonderful. [Apr 2020, p86]

James Hunter may have a new band from New York but they swing like his old one, and it's mostly business as usual here, with Hunter's new batch of songs sounding just like the old songs he's influenced by. [Apr 2020, p.94]

It's a giant leap forward for one of the most original voices around. [Mar 2020, p.84]

The best protest albums generally come bathed in their own brand of musical sunshine and Cornershop's joyous post-Brexit call to arms is no exception to the rule. [Apr 2020, p.86]

These loose, predominantly acoustic arrangements area fine fit for Malkmus's usual shtick; shaggy, ambulatory songs full of odd twists and rococo angles that seem designed to undermine pretension rather than amplify it. [Apr 2020, p.90]

Strong new jams. [Feb 2020, p.96]

A tightly zipped, anxious, often menacing trawl through personal challenges, offset by Caribbean vocals and rhythms and collaborations. [Mar 2020, p.96]

You need to pick through the later albums to find some occasional moments of brilliance. although if you unconditionally love well-executed '70s funky-soul, it's all good! [Mar 2020, p.105]

There's much to enjoy in his artistic arc. [Mar 2020, p.107]

A gimlet glare cast not downwards but right between your eyes. [Mar 2020, p.107]

[Teenage Kicks is] arguablt not even the best song on this compilation. Wednesday Week's gorgeous melody, You've Got My Number's killer riff and the haunting, fragile Julie Ocean are superb, while we can even forgive them for their Human League-baiting My Perfect Cousin. [Mar 2020, p.101]

The three October US shows, top-drawer soundboard recordings that have been around for years, are full of those supersonic instrumental flights that are so dependent on mood. [Mar 2020, p.1032]

Songs to keep returning to with no hope of ever exhausting their meaning. [Apr 2020, p.84]

Thanks to its exquisite craft, and Remy's feel for her characters, that project finds its finest expression yet in Heavy Light. [Apr 2020, p.86]

Gigi Masin bathes us in pure sunlight for 90 minutes. Emotional, but never over-wrought. [Feb 2020, p.91]

it's unashamedly full-on, Cro-Magnon stuff, but this chaos is often glorious. [Apr 2020, p.87]

He keeps the core of material such as The Nearness Of You and My Blue Heaven spare and the tone intimate. [Mar 2020, p.94]

Tastefully gauzy production elevates Indian-based KK's indie-psych pop second. [Mar 2020, p.96]

Brutally honest lyrically and deliciously more-ish in its rhythmic, electronic intensity. [Apr 2020, p.94]

In all, a cherishable tribute to the vitality of the right-on gospel group whose strides into soul still echo today. [Mar 2020, p.103]

Some of his best songs yet. [Mar 2020, p.88]

A transporting, densely layered record which retains a certain lyrical opacity. [Mar 2020, p.89]

The absence of between-song chat makes the experience unnecessarily remote. [Mar 2020, p.106]

A moonstruck Frankenstein builds percussive layers, then juxtaposes classical, opera and jazz samples in shadowy odes to the night. [Mar 2020, p.96]

The energetic groove-riding results prove utterly compelling throughout. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Highlights: Tropicalia-Afro-funk fusion Bobbie's Second World; 7th Dynamic Goo's silvery disco. [Apr 2020, p.96]

The sum total of this umpteenth solo long-player in 40 years is that the prodigious and progressive Landreth is his own man - a futuristic traditionalist. It's time that wider audiences took notice. [Apr 2020, p.88]

Indie-folk lifers tackle the Prairie Home Companion canon, also bringing their ethereal close harmonies to Kanye West. [Apr 2020, p.96]

The results are often magical, the tracks' man-versus-machine provenance never jarring, the music often utterly liquid in feel. [Apr 2020, p.95]

Snaith is increasingly confident in his own voice. [Mar 2020, p.86]

It is the older material that comes out on top. A Euphoric, feel-good collection, nonetheless. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Lyrics tend toward the brutal, but there's tenderness too. [Mar 2020, p.92]

This one is a real keeper. [Mar 2020, p.86]

Hey Rose is a bright, infectious opener, but elsewhere Little offers darker and more reflective material. [Mar 2020, p.92]

The LP does feel monotonous after a while, the tunnel vision metaphor ultimately extending to the listener's experience. Keep the great frames, Agnes, but next time, try the varifocals. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Spinning Coin have spun new dreams from old. [Mar 2020, p.94]

This is Smoke Fairies' strongest, most urgent album to date. [Apr 2020, p.93]

If Man Alive! treads a post-Ooz water, it's deep enough not to matter. [Apr 2020, p.95]

A raw, often unnerving experience, but it delivers compelling and uplifting catharsis. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Ranaldo and Refree are content to leave holes throughout, letting sounds do the most interesting work, nestling or scraping together. [Apr 2020, p.94]

Fans of self-possessed art-pop are directed here. [Apr 2020, p.91]

Solo he's more ruminative. [Apr 2020, p.91]

Surrender Your Poppy Field's focus delivers GBV's strongest set in years. [Apr 2020, p.88]

Always Tomorrow sounds like a last laugh - elegantly modulated, slightly hollow. [Apr 2020, p.88]

[Singer Hazel Wilde's] words are clear, emphatic and beautifully sung, like a post-rock seer gazing over the landscape. Her bandmates also play their socks off. [Mar 2020, p.91]

While the key of Random Desire is mostly subterranean, when the serpentine build of The Tide breaks, the impact is undeniably soulful and powerful. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Inevitably there's a compilation feel, but Marshall's music brings coherence as it eases goth into the 21st century. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Lakeman is in his element. ... McGann's narration is disappointingly flat and some of the musical settings - like the shanty Sailing Time - are underplayed; but the songs are emotive. [Mar 2020, p.88]

They're five albums in and they keep getting better and better. [Mar 2020, p.91]

She's a great storyteller and her guitar has plenty of country twang. But the sound is of her own making - defined by her huge one-of-a-kind voice. [Mar 2020, p.94]

Hulking beats and a cloudy, black electronic roar set the tone, but powerful sound design is the key. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Ash's cover of Teenage Kicks itself is on the limited-edition 3-CD version, alongside the likes of a cover of Buzzcocks' Everybody's Happy Nowadays, making this the best buy. [Mar 2020, p.101]

The strangely beautiful bounty of Mogadisco reveals more telling detail with each listen. [Feb 2020, p.103]

Masterful vocal mash-ups with London songstress Poppy Ajudha, South African electronic upsetter Nonku Phiri and a wonderfully gravelly Obongjayar help propel this testament to Boyd's illimitable outlook far into the stratosphere. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Its emotional impact is sublime. [Apr 2020, p.96]

The Slow Rush proves the rewards of taking time; Kevin Parker is an artist worthy of yours. [Mar 2020, p.90]

The music nods obviously in the direction of Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, and Bruce Lee. [Mar 2020, p.93]

It's where Elbow and Springsteen intersect. [Mar 2020, p.96]

Hushed, understated psychedelia and Laurel Canyon-influenced LP. [Mar 2020, p.95]

Familiar bittersweet flavours are sensitively tweaked - Looking For You's orchestral surges; Live Learn And Forget's flickering piano - Nada Surf's cathartic heartbursts remain in perfect harmony. [Mar 2020, p.96]

There are sublime moments - International Women Of Leisure, for instance, and Do You Feel, a homage to first ladies of disco songwriting such as Evelyn King and Gwen Guthrie - but other tracks, though taut and tight, become repetitive. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Ford still has a country rasp to her voice, but doesn't over-sing, and her method of expressing emotion is deft rather than melodramatic. she can build up power, too. [Mar 2020, p.87]

Packs intelligence, colour and melody. [Mar 2020, p.93]

It has a home-made, handcrafted feel and an almost impossible intimacy. [Feb 2020, p.91]

The resulting fusion suggests nothing less than an Eastern Astral Weeks. [Feb 2020, p.94]

Her debut LP eschews 4/4 rhythms to create a loose-limbed, free-ranging treat. [Feb 2020, p.91]

His macabre tendency has evolved further into a kind of disaster romanticism on his 21st album. [Mar 2020, p.89]

A quintessential "pocket trip" record, then, sculpted and sequenced to perfection. [Jan 2020, p.87]

As sad ballad follows sad ballads towards the close, Old Wow is not as well-paces. Nonetheless it's full of resonant music. [Feb 2020, p.94]

Storm Damage's jazz-trio-do-singer-songwriter-ish arrangements are meticulous in their musicality, but the "personal anguish and political anger" which fired this album make for an intense, if rewarding listen. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Likewise explores empathy's limits and dialogue's importance, Quinlan's densely-packed lyric sheet give anything hackneyed a wide berth. [Feb 2020, p.92]

Her expressive lyrics exude equal-parts watchful intelligence and first-person vulnerability. [Mar 2020, p.96]

A deluxe synth odyssey. [Feb 2020, p.96]

Although his philosophical ponderings may not be that profound, his seize-the-day positivism and innate command of orchestral tension more than compensate. [Feb 2020, p.89]

The album is diverse: lovers rock meets gospel hymnals and Parisian waltz-dirges. [Feb 2020, p.94]

Moby Dick's cast-of-thousands approach actually makes it feel more like a smart, funny musical without a stage. [Mar 2020, p.95]

Studs Nuggets ruckus with broody grooves. [Mar 2020, p.96]

A US singer-songwriter-guitarist who values both tranquil folk purity, rooted in her crystal-clear voice, and '70s classic-rock range, in the same smouldering fashion as Red House Painters and Jeff Buckley. [Mar 2020, p.95]

Doesn't quite hit home. ... Letting loose more might have benefited the flow. [Mar 2020, p.95]

As restless and fidgety as ever. [Feb 2020, p.91]