Judicious use of pedal-steel, fiddle, Southern horns and strings brings subtle power, with McKagan just occasionally lending shades of Mott The Hoople to proceedings, and singing with an admirable new confidence and conviction. [Jun 2019, p.90]

If you dug them back then, you'll likely dig them now. [Jun 2019, p.93]

Transience is another reminder that Eric Goulden is arguably the only one of his Stuff-era peers to remain a scarily powerful and forward-moving musical threat. [Jun 2019, p.90]

Rainford is a late-career answer to 1978 Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread, and beyond all reasonable expectation, fully its equal. [Jun 2019, p.94]

Ishmael Ensemble cleverly, psychedelically blur the lines. [Jun 2019, p.91]

Resonant and bittersweet, dreamily electronic. [Jun 2019, p.96]

Scott continues to ring changes elsewhere, hence the gung-ho title track channels Robert Parker's '60s Mod classic Let's Go Baby (Where The Action Is), and Right Side of Heartbreak (Wrong Side Of Love) brings sweet soul hooks. [Jun 2019, p.91]

It doesn't equal their Back Stabbers/Ship Ahoy period but it comes close. [May 2019, p.90]

Sule Skerry is partly programme music, partly good old-fashioned concept album. His approach feel rather literal at times. [Jun 2019, p.95]

Act Surprised's high yield of killer songs hardly suffers for its absence of oddball filler. [Jun 2019, p.90]

10 songs that are the apotheosis of their spartan sound. [Jun 2019, p.95]

The third set sounds clean and efficient at the expense of real zest. [Jun 2019, p.96]

Diviner came out of post-band convalescence and a spell of recalibration, yet for all the intense, cocooning introspection in these songs, Thorpe is obviously more than ready to face the world alone. [Jun 2019, p.93]

A fine writer who is really finding her voice. [Jun 2019, p.94]

Amid the aggro, Taylor's intense stack-heeled charisma dominates: whether raging or romancing, she's the queen of this glorious chunder from Down Under. [Jun 2019, p.88]

Destroyer shifts up a couple of gears for a less cosmic,more hard rockin' thrust, complete with headlong NWOBHM riffs and even shredding. [Jun 2019, p.90]

The album feels confessional, courageous. ... Yes it can be bleak as hell but Flamagra's artistic artistic triumphs are sublimely uplifting. [Jul 2019, p.92]

Her third album is a small masterpiece of restrained quirks; a slowburner that rearranges retro signifiers in a genuinely creative way. [Jun 2019, p.91]

Creatively, Reward is on point. [Jun 2019, p.89]

Versions of Jon i Mitchell's Don't Interrupt The Sorrow and Bob Dylan's Only A Pawn In Their Game are surprisingly persuasive. Elsewhere, it's like being imprisoned in the teenage Moz bedroom/brain. [Jun 2019, p.89]

The restraint, especially from the horn section, is astonishing; the overall effect absorbing to the point of transcendence. [Apr 2019, p.93]

Mavis's voice is still strong and convincing. [Jun 2019, p.87]

The band interpret the album title as a play on Portuguese for "Shadow Or Doubt," as in the choice between comfort zone and uncertainty. It's a line they confidently tread throughout. [Jun 2019, p.93]

Original, but with traces of early Dizzee, Rodney P and The Streets in Slowthai's savvy grime-punk. [Jun 2019, p.96]

A sumptuous, sonic world built from dense, sampled snippets, repetitive phrases and percussive sound design. [Jun 2019, p.95]

Ultimately, it's a record filled with beauty that tries to do what therapy does: sort through a mess of emotions and reorganise them into something that makes more sense. [Jun 2019, p.84]

It's Bondy's most disturbing record, but equally his most memorable. [Jun 2019, p.88]

Stirring stuff, but a little goes a long way. [Jun 2019, p.96]

This is warm, analogue-smudged R&B that blossoms with repeated plays. [Jun 2019, p.95]

Continues to hit the sonic sweet spots. [Jun 2019, p.93]

The songs on this collection are warm and human and worth the wait. [May 2019, p.94]

Williams' storytelling gift is palpable, but pleasant to alight on though it is, Front Porch perhaps lacks that one outstanding merger of lyrical acuity/melodic potency, a la Dolly Parton's Jolene. [Jun 2019, p.89]

This is very much an album to shout "Hey!" at regular rhythmic intervals. [Jun 2019, p.95]

A baffling mix of forgettable riffs and clumsy lyricism. [Jun 2019, p.96]

[Francesco Turrisi's] accompaniments, often on old/unusual instruments, add a strange, delicate beauty to Giddens' solemn, powerful soprano. [Jun 2019, p.89]

There's a punkish, uncompromising bravery to tracks like Raging Earths--piledriving beats and a gathering storm of swelling synths--that's strangely compelling. [Jun 2019, p.95]

The fourth volume continues the quality but widens the focus to include Delta State, Abuja and the border with Benin. [Jun 2019, p.106]

Fantastic mix of rare jazz and soul, cut with contemporary electronic meditations from Sarah Davachi, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and more. [Jun 2019, p.102]

Lowly strikes their balances adroitly, but Hifalutin could easily have become another album--one that was more straightforward. [Jun 2019, p.94]

Ambitious comeback. ... It works a treat. [Jun 2019, p.96]

It's all oddly refreshing, aurally exciting and a whole lotta fun. [Jun 2019, p.94]

They really do sound like a band more than a group. [Jun 2019, p.92]

This time around, the Gizz's experiments have resulted in a compelling macrame of blues, rock, electronica, country and more besides. [Jun 2019, p.90]

A career-builder, if not a game-changer. [Jun 2019, p.89]

These 10 compact songs work both as intimate affirmation of Jurado's current brilliance and a hushed elegy for his too-soon-departed friend. [Jun 2019, p.89]

Occasionally the lyrics are wincingly obvious. ... Emerald Valley is blunt truth for dire times. [Jun 2019, p.88]

Koenig is a formidable lyricist, and behind the music's occasional larkiness lies a record of high seriousness. [Jun 2019, p.88]

All credit to Knowles, though, whose vision is so cohesive that the 19 short tracks feel like one long, utterly immersive piece. [Jun 2019, p.86]

The album is, however, still ramshackle and oddball where it counts. [Jun 2019, p.86]

It's slow to coalesce, but when it does, U.F.O.F. flies. [Jun 2019, p.86]

A deeper dive into the grooves pays substantial dividends, not just with Doherty's impermeable gift for melody and neat turns of phrase but the intriguing torrent of witty self-examination. [Jun 2019, p.86]

The first half of their fifth studio album racing by, a blur of nimble fingers and frills. The second half, a 19-minute exploration of Pink Floyd's Echoes, will divide audiences along prog and classical lines. [May 2019, p.91]

A record you don't want to turn your back on in any way. [May 2019, p.93]

Sitting down with this album is like listening to a friend who assumes you know all the same people they do. [May 2019, p.90]

A fitting, touching elegy for a bewitching talent. [May 2019, p.87]

This album doesn't have the blinding clarity of proper revelation but, in its febrile examination of survival and redemption, Oh My God is on the side of the angels. [May 2019, p.86]

An immersive, deeply satisfying work that doubles down on the experimentalism he brought to The Frames. [May 2019, p.93]

Songs are wispy but melodies strong. [May 2019, p.96]

Even at moderate volume, parts of Life Metal may loosen your neighbours' guttering. [May 2019, p.95]

Melds the LA band's sonic fuzz with mellifluous recent LPs, sombre dispatches, ambient and wistful pop. [May 2019, p.96]

Jade Bird's compelling voice is the deliberately uncontested focus of her no nonsense debut. [May 2019, p. 93]

Forsyth's own voice is used sparingly ... Mostly, though, he lets the fervid lyricism of his guitar be the focus. [May 2019, p.88]

Musically, it's a radical rethink. [May 2019, p.89]

Yet more caustic politico cold-funk disco grooves. [May 2019, p.96]

A "modular synthesis" of indefinable plonking building to bursts of static joy. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Believe it or not, there's room in the desert for yet another serious contender. [May 2019, p.91]

The album is saturated with heartbreak and bad decisions, perfectly decked in country-politan arrangements. [May 2019, p.87]

As always, S&R stress character studies, from the envious and deluded guy in Mississippi Nuthin' to the broke-down elder in Hammer. [May 2019, p.94]

In essence a tonic, The Medicine Show is a little bit more of what the world need now. [May 2019, p.93]

No Geography bears testimony to superior crate-digging chops, cut-up skills and disco. [May 2019, p.86]

The end result is dark and desolate, but also profound and provocative. [May 2019, p.86]

It's all propelled by an energy exclusive to debut albums, the five-piece pulsing with post-punk fervour. [May 2019, p.89]

Good use of pot-banging percussion and swanee whistle electronics. [Mar 2019, p.99]

Hearing the acoustic demo for In The Heat Of The Morning, you have to feel for Bowie. Without the fussy grooviness of the studio version, it finds him in revelatory, limbering-up-for-Ziggy mode. ... The most significant discovery is Goodbye 3d (Threepenny) Joe ... soft-voiced and 12-stringy, it's a tail-between-the-legs yarn with choruses sung with a hard-boiled intimacy worthy of John Lennon. [May 2019, p.103]

Within the framework of 10 solid soul arrangements, the benefits of constancy in love brings a hearty restorative to the downtrodden spirit. [May 2019, p.92]

A similar debt to motorik beats turn this debut album from a potential Baggy cul-de-sac into an electro-gliding beauty. [May 2019, p.93]

It took the reformation of Three Hypnotics, his first band, to get his groove back. It's fully maintained on this second RM album, in gale force determination, resolution and incision. [Apr 2019, p.95]

She's better shifting gears beyond her stylistic bounds. [May 2019, p.89]

Most of these 11 new songs begin with Tutlle's solo finger-picking guitar, and it's lovely. So's her voice. [May 2019, p.90]

While the line-up expands for Candace Of Meroe's infectious drunk-funk and CIYA's breezy romanticism, it's the original trio that smash the joint on throttling finale LDN's Burning--a short, sharp distillation of the fierce talent lighting up the capital. [Mar 2019, p.93]

They push forward by recasting the music around them and assimilate it into who they already are. [Apr 2019, p.88]

Titanic Rising is a revelation. These opulent, sculptural songs have sacrificed none of Mering's idiosyncrasy, or ability to unnerve. [May 2019, p.87]

A profoundly sad and affecting collage of memory and longing, ghostly torch songs half-buried in the claustrophobic electronic clatter of the modern world. [May 2019, p.95]

There's a great live feel, especially on the more uptempo cuts. [Apr 2019, p.90]

What follows in this set is a chaos of experiment and assigned alliances. ... Ironically, the oldest recordings on You're The Man are--that single excepted--among the best Gaye here. [May 2019, p.100]

A very fine album. [May 2019, p.94]

What it lacks in vocal grit it makes up for in abundant hooks. [May 2019, p.96]

These are acutely playful and poignant dissections of his world. [May 2019, p.87]

Greater prominence to the duo's quavering vocals, though, isn't quite as satisfying. In the long term, more jam and less song might just be their best strategy. [May 2019, p.95]

Segall's not reinventing the wheel--he's just here to keep the amps humming, as loud and as often as humanly possible. [Apr 2019, p.90]

Gibbons rises to the occasion. [May 2019, p.89]

The State Between Us offers a subtle, multi-layered but potent riposte to latter-day jingoism, the spirit of compassionate inclusion made manifest or woven implicitly into the eclectic sonic narrative. [May 2019, p.95]

There's a cohesion and thrust to the fusion, a mathematically bracing energy that they have't quite located since 2011's D. [Apr 2019, p.86]

Part II sprawls across paranoid Massive Attack-style locked grooves (Nothing To Give), ethereal folk-prog (Sun), gushing, orchestral breakbeat (Only You) and narco rock/electronica hybrid (Crucifixion/A Prophet). [May 2019, p.87]

Through the overdriven riffage, juggernaut rhythms and starey-eyed James Cox's foghorn yowling, some proper and highly dynamic songcraft does emerge. [Apr 2019, p.93]

The most coherent album Gelb has produced in some years, up there with the best of his considerable canon. [Apr 2019, p.92]

There are some serious jazz chops visible amid the instrumental chaos; a devotional intensity that earmarks them as psychedelic idealists rather than nihilistic noise-punks. [May 2019, p.91]

What Pony can't disguise is its influences: Orbison, Presley and Morrissey at their most doleful and camp, channelled through a similarly luscious baritone. [May 2019, p.91]