Tense, rewarding, avant-garde jousting abounds. [Nov 2019, p.96]

Whatever the sonic weather, Gira's spiritual austerity remains unimpaired.[Nov 2019, p.89]

Alex Menne's Dolores O'Riordan-ish yodel still dominates and can overwhelm the songs, but Big Thief fans should take note. [Dec 2019, p.96]

Alongside jay Berliner's guitar lines, meaty chunks of organ, grooves aplenty and a soulful collection of new songs, it's a convincing performance. [Dec 2019, p.86]

With swaying synths, popping drums, synth melodies and wistful lyrics, it's Depeche Mode for the juicing era. [Dec 2019, p.96]

It all thumps along agreeably with a brio seldom found in rock today by artists a quarter of his age. [Dec 2019, p.92]

The fervid prog punk of Flesh Fondue, the synth collision of 65 Million Years Ago and the trippy Nets Of Space are further high-points on this constantly regenerating trip. [Nov 2019, p.94]

They approach the tradition with an awe and wonder that especially percolates into the instrumentals. ... Their most extreme statement yet. [Dec 2019, p.89]

This sounds raw and mighty, but somewhat same-old. [Dec 2019, p.94]

A lysergic brew of dust-blown ballads, thumping punk rock and shimmery psychedelia. The jarring stylistic clash is often part of the charm. [Dec 2019, p.88]

They remain ridiculous, but thunderingly good fun. [Dec 2019, p.91]

Highly engaging. [Dec 2019, p.96]

Krlic has created a world in which the music of ancient tradition works like a sonic virus that simultaneously soothes and eats away at your very soul. [Dec 2019, p.95]

The Afro-beat timbres peeking through also reveal more about who Vagabon is, and what she is capable of. [Dec 2019, p.95]

Meredith's precision helps control the fun, but this is another buoyant invention from her musical lab. [Dec 2019, p.95]

Embellishments frame soul-searching songs about dislocation and romantic ill-fortune--think a grittier Brendan Benson--which soon demand frequent revisits. [Dec 2019, p.86]

Almost everything here sounds pre-designed for drone-shot driving sequences in a slow-burning indie film, but in a very good way. [Dec 2019, p.86]

His wunderkind status is underlined by an obvious passion for Brian Wilson: stacked harmonies, deft chordal shifts. In Butterflies From Monaco, that Wilson influence comes laced with sturdier fragments of rock and funk a la Prince. [Dec 2019, p.93]

It still vibrates with Warren Ellis's ominous, cosmic-radiation synthesizers and loops, but Ghosteen is less tightly coiled and knotted. ... Cave finds a way to reach out, and reach through. [Dec 2019, p.87]

An album that's thoughtful, emotional, expertly crafted and often sublime. [Nov 2019, p.84]

There's a surfeit of hushed intros building to emotional crescendos, but the feeling is all real. [Nov 2019, p.96]

It's an engrossing set with nine reflective soundscapes. [Nov 2019, p.89]

Colorado feels more focused than Pill, especially so the backing vocals. [Nov 2019, p.87]

One Step Behind shifts the goalposts, compromising a 32-minute title track and the eight-minute Heart And Soul, an elegant, soulful comedown in the mould of Music From Big Pink. [Nov 2019, p.94]

Joyful and, at times, unpredictably good fun. [Nov 2019, p.90]

Bid renders the album's picaresque litany of devious noblemen, murdered knights and debauched bishops with typically knowing aplomb. [Oct 2019, p.89]

Thrilling, unpredictable and often inspired stuff. [Nov 2019, p.86]

A decent album, but perhaps not the one some of us were hoping for. [Nov 2019, p.95]

Part 2's brittle, somewhat alienating production isn't exactly subtle. ... Foals sound like they are overreaching themselves a little. Two highly ambitious, thematically-linked albums in six months was always a big ask. [Nov 2019, p.86]

[Album opener Civil Servant is] sonically inventive, with vocoder interludes and a rousing final call of "Refuse! Refuse!," but its on-the-nose swipes at "Bus-fulls of meat...staring at phone-screens" can't avoid the patronising tone of 95 per cent of all songs about "the workers," written by those otherwise employed. ... Far better are songs where Dawson locates the misery and mystery of life in smaller worlds and stranger vignettes. [Nov 2019, p.90]

Elbow reflect an unruly world here, but if they sometimes lose faith, they never lose heart. [Nov 2019, p.87]

Lanegan brings dependable authenticity to these savvy pop songs; dire admonitions, but also an abundance of swagger and fun. [Nov 2019, p.94]

The group are definitely branching out, but they've not quite reached Zabriskie Point yet. [Nov 2019, p.91]

Sparer but equally powerful record [to U.F.O.F.]. [Nov 2019, p.90]

No Home record offers few tunes you could whistle, but at it's best Gordon's no-wave din and take-no-shit snarl offer unabashedly militant thrills. [Nov 2019, p.87]

OEH are a more intriguing venture when confident enough to aim for the universal. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Exudes confidence as it cleverly tweaks harmonic principles and discreetly unveils its dramatic arc. [Nov 2019, p.93]

Though brief nautical ballad Deck Chair is a skit too far here, there's a great bubblegum-pop song fighting its way through the exploded theatrics of Heavy Metal Lover, while silly song of thanks for the six-string We Are The Guitar Men is a virtuosic hoot. [Nov 2019, p.89]

A beautiful, comforting lament. [Nov 2019, p.95]

Apocalypse rears its head in bare-bones instrumentation, reverberating synths and lyrics that hunt for a meaningful future. [Nov 2019, p.89]

Carla Dal Forno's newest release sounds strangely fragile and vulnerable. ... Interspersed with exquisitely forlorn Eno-esque instrumenetals. [Nov 2019, p.95]

Soroor is the star of this set. ... Her pre-relocation stuff--even her Afghan Star audition is online--is always interesting, but this is a whole new level. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Its uvowedly less manic, but uknowhatimsayin¿ still cuts deep. [Nov 2019, p.93]

The duo shine as a beacon of warm and quirky outsiderdom in a rising tide of cookie-cutter Nashville Americana. [Nov 2019, p.90]

Worth the 10-year wait. [Nov 2019, p.91]

This is a sparse, minimalist ode to joy. [Nov 2019, p.88]

Behind the parachute silk and dry ice, the smoke and mirrors, stands a record in high emotional definition, its outline becoming sharper by the second. [Nov 2019, p.92]

Anderson's typically earnest, if uncharacteristically earnest, readings of Buddist sutras punchuate proceedings, and a pervading transcendence lingers long after the music has ceased.[Nov 2019, p.89]

It's an absorbing listen. [Nov 2019, p.108

Often described as old beyond his years, on Fires For The Cold Tolchin has truly grown up. [Nov 2019, p.88]

This second LP moves country into enterprising, occasionally spooked spaces. [Nov 2019, p.96]

Gripping and energetic record. [Nov 2019, p.91]

Isn't quite a match for last year's career-topping Broken Stay Open Sky. [Nov 2019, p.86]

The album's schizoid ruse is neatly summed-up by Make Art Not Friends, which makes its wondrous metamorphosis from lithe dance track to all-American rocker in just under six minutes. [Nov 2019, p.86]

Giles Martin hasn't dug up Abbey Road; but his subtle improvements have smoothed out the odd bump. [Nov 2019, p.103]

With its transforming moods and quiet beauty, Stars Are The Light might just be Moon Duo's finest to date. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Interesting as the Wallace mixes are, the band is most compelling thrashing through Talent Show and I Won't, live in Milwaukee. [Nov 2019, p.102]

The lack of personal revelations that brought nuance and light to 2016's Made In The Manor often makes these vivid, grim depictions of inner city strife uncomfortable listening. [Nov 2019, p.89]

Morse Code is more concerned with our collective lost soul rather than individual anxiety. [Nov 2019, p.86]

Armon-Jones's fiery soloing is intrinsic to the headnoddable whole. [Oct 2019, p.91]

An experimental and deeply idiosyncratic record. [Oct 2019, p.90]

[Alice Moki Jayne's] one-hour length is rather testing. The 29-minute 8 Spring Streeet is more structured and achieves a thrilling momentum. ... 35 minutes in [Galaxies (Sky)], the 12-strong, 12-string "guitar army," directed by Moore hit a breathtaking peak. It feels like a spectacular end, but then there are still over 20 minutes to go. [Oct 2019, p.86]

The Talkies is a scarifying, perverse noise-rock treat. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Radiating breezy melancholic warmth and lonely midnight chills. [Oct 2019, p.89]

A second set of tuneful snark. [Oct 2019, p.92]

It's tasteful and meticulous throughout, but the longer, more adventurously songs exert a greater grip on the imagination. [Oct 2019, p.91]

Everything on Sinematic is huge, layered, expertly grooved and overladen with Robertson's parched voice hamming up lyrics which offset the standard portentousness of a rock great sermonising from the Mount with underspun True Crime yarns like I Hear You Paint House, Shanghai Blues and the Orson Wells tribute, The Shadow. [Oct 2019, p.84]

These are stories about patterns of behaviour, like dreams that keep returning, or won't end. The way out, these songs counsel, lies in relinquishing. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Jamie is a giant leap forward: a testimony of liberation, creatively uncompromising but just as accessible as Howard's old music. [Oct 2019, p.80]

This sad skewed pop with shades of Momus, Sakamoto, L. pierre and Bjork weaves its magic on the fluttering yet forthright Salty, vocal tapestry of Come Behind Me, So Good! and raw emoting of Meo, but palls a little before its haunting apex on spaced-out sign-off Coyote, with spectral echoes of Kazu's complicated past. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Terms Of Surrender presents a man sinking on the edges but bullishly so, not countenancing change. The effect is disquieting, uncomfortable, especially with Aaron Dessner's sumptuous production giving these songs a contrastingly romantic sheen. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Hval deals in big cerebral questions, but these songs--intimate, intricately fleshed out--have roots in both body and mind. [Oct 2019, p.86]

The Return could do with some editing as it's unwieldy 78 minutes risk losing the audience before its finest songs: the epic, autobiographical title track, and the redemptive, gospel-soaked closer Made Us better. But Too much of a good thing is nothing to hold a grudge over. [Oct 2019, p.89]

This is Black Star Riders' best work yet. [Oct 2019, p.88]

The best new tracks' confidence boosts the band's emotional clout. [Oct 2019, p.88]

It's a familiar world they inhabit, but still a deeply odd one. [Oct 2019, p.82]

Real heart pulses behind the earwiggy riffs, the lyrics tracing ideas of love from first stage to last, more nuances being revealed on each play. [Oct 2019, p.85]

There are a few other naff moments, but Gallagher's voice carries everything, sounding fantastic, high and bright in the mix. [Oct 2019, p.82]

The result is charged and post-apocalyptic. [Oct 2019, p.90]

Pang! doesn't just look forward to a blazing global meltdown. Beneath the modernist sheen, Rhys roots these songs in something older and wiser. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Groovy and moving, in all the right directions. [Oct 2019, p.88]

A gently rambling rumination twinkling with congas, shakers and bird-like flute. [Oct 2019, p.92]

He is so clearly in his element that you can just hand over the controls. [Oct 2019, p.97]

This whole album is a desert rock classic. [Oct 2019, p.82]

If not quite a match for Gainsbourg's ticklish masterpiece, it's a partial return to the stringy artistry of 2003's Friends Of Mine. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Meditative Time (You Got Me) sets the pace: a gently rambling rumination twinkling with congas, shakers and bird-like flutes. [Oct 2019, p.92]

Free, in a good way, resembles his more esoteric work from that time, such as 1999's brooding Avenue B. [Oct 2019, p.88]

Rubberband sounds too much like jazz's great disrupter chasing black-radio approval via The Human League. ... Rubberband is not a Great Lost Miles Davis Album. But it has a lot of great Miles Davis on it. [Oct 2019, p.101]

The LP's title might suggest the randomised poetry of google translate, but Low Probability Of A Hug speaks a language everyone can understand. [Oct 2019, p.85]

It's pleasant but ultimately inessential stuff. Way better are the tunes where the tape echo effects kick in. [Oct 2019, p.82]

There is humour to the harsh, spangly electropop of tracks like Feel For You and Vampires, but in places the concept is a little too arch and pumped up, sounding like a teen Netflix drama. [Oct 2019, p.82]

Her queasy, pitch-shifting sound aligns with labelmate Flying Lotus's high-end head music. [Sep 2019, p.96]

An ass-shaking blend of disco, house, '80s pop with apparent self-awareness. [Oct 2019, p.92]

Malone draws the listener into the unique interior timbre of the pipe organ, like the idling breath of a large machine at rest; a music of worship, where the object of spiritual veneration is the inner space of the instrument itself. [Oct 2019, p.89]

There's a cosmic/romantic wisdom to highlight One Way Or Another and Two Dreamers' sunshine classicism. [Sep 2019, p.96]

Crow sounds wholly at ease, but for all the vocal variety Stevie Nicks, James Taylor and a rueful Vince Gill bring, she doesn't sound wholly inspired. [Oct 2019, p.89]

While there's a suspicion that the album format isn't their natural habitat - only the melancholic shuffle of (Vi-Vi) Vicious Games veers away from the acid template - the sinewy, skeletal intensity here has a creeping allure. [Oct 2019, p.90]

The S.L.P. might be a one-off, but right here, right now, he sounds liberated. [Oct 2019, p.85]