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]

Piroshka's debut album is propelled by forceful, driving garage songs that see off Brexit, the Daily Mail, and school shooters. [Mar 2019, p.91]

Upbeat, sometimes painful, all sold with witty pop chutzpah. [May 2019, p.94]

Rufus Wainwright-goes-to-grad-school lushness dominates, though, and despite Bird's Death Of Marat pose on the cover, My Finest Work is not quite revolutionary. [May 2019, p.93]

Ultimately setting up camp in the middle ground between King Of Limbs-era Radiohead and mid-80s Tears For fears. [May 2019, p.86]

Building on the fresh inventiveness of 2017's Uyai, this new album cheerfully chops up and reassembles genres in a way that is seriously funky. [May 2019, p.89]

The results have a classical loveliness--track II, particularly--while retaining an air of experimental unpredictability; both players are unafraid of disrupting the reverie with free playing and fractious tones. [Apr 2019, p.94]

Yanya's music calls to mind gritty jazz/rock griot King Krule, Sampha's contemplative street soul and her key teenage influences: Pixies, Winehouse and The Libertines. Her spiky guitar playing is confidently pushed to the front of the mix here. [Apr 2019, p.86]

If 2017's Hard Love overreached, Eraserland is a successful recalibration. [Apr 2019, p.91]

Peaks: Tough Enough's flouncing post-punk; radiate's bright, Buzzcocks-meet-The Knack groove. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Only the title track's gently jazzy diversion (Pt 1) and surprise operatics (Pt 2) shatter the wellness-retreat politeness. [Apr 2019, p.96]

10-decent-but-not-exceptional songs, Sleeper ultimately sound a little anachronistic; just not made for these times. [Apr 2019, p.89]

On their best pastiches, the jokes land often enough, but you can't help yearning for something as perfectly-turned as Benny Hill's Ernie, or as ardently silly as John Shuttleworth's I Can't Go Back to Savoury Now. [Apr 2019, p.88]

A good 'un, finely balancing his roots with his modernism. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Immersive and thought-provoking record. [Apr 2019, p.87]

The constantly shape-shifting and explosive dynamics of this brutal yet accessible blaze of glory are borne from a collaboration that's instinctive, primal and alchemical, effortlessly outclassing the competition. [Apr 2019, p.88]

Chance-taking, richly rewarding. [Apr 2019, p.89]

These songs have a sharp, glittery edge, like a neat tequila slammer. [Apr 2019, p.92]

It hard not to be engaged by the restless, cerebral daftness--footnotes notwithstanding. [Apr 2019, p.95]

To Believe doesn't rush along the cutting edge, but after 12 years absent, it hits this particular spot in time and space: sombre, tense, watchful, looking for calm, but gathering storms. [Apr 2019, p.92]

The mangled, jangled garage-pop of Rushing The Acid Frat or Ocean Of revenge's dexterous fable-spinning remain at one with his cosmic professor MO, though, proof that Malkmus can vibrate beyond his usual frequency without losing himself or his listeners. [Apr 2019, p.89]

A bold redrawing of creative frontiers, Lux Prima is a gamble that pays off, handsomely. [Apr 2019, p.88]

This is one of Bowness's most vivid collections. The sound is rich and full of depth. [Apr 2019, p.86]

Predictably, there's a big hello-hurray for bold re-imaginings of The Jam's Private Hell and Boy About Town, but it's the big-orch performance of his solo jazz-psych-folk highlights that transport and intrigue. [Apr 2019, p.86]

As expected, it's perfectly executed. [Apr 2019, p.89]

There's no leap forwards here but Still On My mind is the sound of a woman playing to her strengths and the good ship Dido remains reassuringly unsinkable. [Apr 2019, p.92]

Basic themes remain unchanged. [Apr 2019, p.89]

An endearingly dog-eared weirdness to their idiosyncratic country rock, a charm to their off-kilter harmonies and a mystery within Curt's songwriting that ensures Dusty Notes is craftmanlike, rather than workmanlike. [Apr 2019, p.91]

If Palmer sometimes gets it wrong, when she gets its it right, nearly all is forgiven. [Apr 2019, p.89]

Though McLennan's poetry, hurt and melodic gift is lost, his partner's crafted vignettes are the closest we have to the timeless albums they make together. Inferno stands among them, a few stops down the line, and for Forster, like the rest of us, life turns another page. [Apr 2019, p.84]

Part 1 veers from the abrasive, Stooges-style rock that characterised much of 2015's What Went Down. [Apr 2019, p.86]

Far from punching predictable button, these reconstructed mischief-makers excel when locking electro horns with primal motorik grooves. [Apr 2019, p.94]

A thought-provoking, welcome addition to the cosmic jazz uprising. [Apr 2019, p.94]

This is a slick, polished, self-penned set. ... Sometimes it's hard to tell the frenzied guitar stranglers apart. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Songs fall into two categories: those tracking matters of the heart--Don't You Know could be a forgotten Delfonics single with drummer Aaron Frazer's sweet falsetto taking the lead--and those scolding their home country. These are jolting, especially opener Morning In America, with its Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron touches. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Songs feel untethered, then crystallise in Sharon Von Etten-levels of devastation. [Apr 2019, p.96]

At risk of self-indulgence, but arrangements reward patient listening. [Apr 2019, p.96]

The Unthank sisters admirably translate the atmospheric melancholia of the themes, though it's Adrian McNally's piano arrangements that really carry the day. [Apr 2019, p.95]

Victoria's wracked, whispery, smoky rasp exudes her inner suffering. [Apr 2019, p.91]

A precision, Sleater-Kinney-ish rewiring of new wave guitar with cool, no wave delivery. [Apr 2019, p.96]

This successor is strings-free, but goes further still [than 2014's This Is My Hand]. [Apr 2019, p.94]

White Stuff once again feels like the work of avant-garde self-mythologisers inveigling themselves into the Stones' Nellcote basement. But the riffs, cutting a swathe through dense electronic meltdown, are the strongest they've engineered, together or apart, since 1997's Accelerator. and there's a neww, mature pathos to the likes of Suburban Junkie Lady. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Wraith finds those heterogeneous elements [post-punk, industrial Krautrock and Angelo Badalamenti-like soundtrack atmosphere] fusing even more satisfyingly than [2015's Highly Deadly Black Tarantula]. [Mar 2019, p.97]

On This Land, Clark and his guitar stay true to the mission. [Apr 2019, p.92]

Defiance, anger and desire fire his second set, a soul-dancefloor hybrid that soars past debut Brave Confusions' meld of influences. [Apr 2019, p.93]

Warmer layers are added to sparse, insistent electronics, culminating in Unificado, a nine-minute high-point of fuzz pedal density. [Apr 2019, p.96]

The sound is '80s indie, air and water. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Songs blur into each other, rendering Beat My Distance a series of variations on adopted themes rather than evidence of a singular voice. [Apr 2019, p.93]

From the jaunty beat group undertow counterpointing his melodramatic vocal style on the opening title track, through the almost self-consciously traditional slide guitar and harmonica combination of Devil Got Me, to his most adventurous use of the mouth harp as a bringer of Dionysian frenzy, to the pastoral backwater of the penultimate Sundown--is actually more in keeping with his experimental rock beginnings. [Apr 2019, p.94]

It resets her musical dial by abandoning the borderline Nick Cave-isms of Welcome... to amp up the rock dynamism which first won her attention.[Mar 2019, p.92]

Not for the uncommitted, this is a time capsule to a place where those over-burdened by taste will not want to go. but junk shop superhead/compiler/indie rock Zelig Phil King has reminded us that if we do some things differently in the past, they do other things--thrills, strangeness, escape--the same. [Apr 2019, p.103]

Fine follow-up [to 2016's Lovers & Leavers] ... has a wider range of emotions and some new classics. [Apr 2019, p.91]

Delicate, inventive and deeply, deeply touching. [Mar 2019, p.95]

It's a unique kind of unhappy listening, too toxic on the universal scale to be bled out. But it leaves you galvanised, purged and recharged for the unending war against mediocrity. [Mar 2019, p.90]

She's at peak power on Faraway Look, expressing feminine vulnerability over immaculate Dusty In Memphis arrangements. [Mar 2019, p.95]

With these elegantly devastating songs, she carves put a space, and a class, all of her own. [Mar 2019, p.91]

You certainly feel stimulated, but as with those frenzied, uber-detailed set pieces on modern-day CGI animation movies, there's almost too much to process. [Mar 2019, p.91]

These are out-of-reach glimpses of environmental paradise; hazy, transient, atomised, and, like the technological future they presaged, their expiration in-built. [Mar 2019, p.105]

Hello Happiness is indeed groove heavy, but gives too little for a singer of Chaka's ability to, well, sing - which is a shame, because on the occasions she does find space to stretch out her soaring voice seems to have retained its strength, tone and power. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Webb has an eclectic Thomas Dolby-style approach and he's not totally successful. ... But that doesn't matter because when he hits it, the song rises with glorious abandon. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Tiersen's lavish melodic gifts resonate loudest without the bangs and whistles. Glass-like repetitions of Templehof and Prad exerting a heartfelt tug.[Mar 2019, p.97]

More tension in the style of Fumbling Prayer's churchy organ and escalating coda might have widened Unfurl's visceral impact, but as music-for-bedroom goes, Ry X is king. [Mar 2018, p.91]

Each song seems like an effort to atomise their grief and frustration, with frequently clarity amid icy electronic noir. [Mar 2019, p.99]

Their sixth album shows them shaping the grim thoughts of The Animals and The Island into poised, potent songs. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Lyrics are lovably askew and songs rarely breach three-minutes. In conclusion: more is still more. [Mar 2019, p.99]

Psychedelic Country Soul puts them right back at the top of a world they helped create. [Mar 2019, p.91]

Throughout, this is a masterclass in pop fun. [Mar 2019, p.98]

An evocative, synesthesic aura halos the second LP from the transatlantic trio. [Jan 2019, p.93]

The pieces here are teeming with small melodic and rhythmic details across a range of textures. [Mar 2019, p.87]

There is room in the world for such quaint records as these, but the world doesn't need another version of the Eagles' Take It Easy. [Mar 2019, p.91]

When the title track and poignant closer This House Has No Living Room, open out into bare-wire nocturnal balladry of limitless emotional beauty, Burslem's single-minded mania is vindicated, and the listener's happiness guaranteed. [Mar 2019, p.98]

A set weighted towards her 2007-to-present day material, mainly modern freedom songs performed with energy and joy. At 79, Mavis's vocal retains its gutsy passion and vitality. [Mar 2019, p.95]

Typically eclectic, off-kilter and irreverent. [Feb 2019, p.90]

Tip of the Sphere's greatest riches, though, lie in McCombs' mystical, questing songcraft. [Mar 2019, p.88]

Rebooted with tender opulence, affectionate awe, and full commitment o a widescreen, almost transcendental experience. [Mar 2019, p.94]

Over and over again, Pratt hovers on the brink of revelation, yet Quiet Signs puts down a code, that, brilliantly, it's not quite possible to break. [Mar 2019, p.89]

True North feels both stoic and positive in outlook. [Mar 2019, p.91]

Rousing sedated melodies under a blanket of distortion. [Mar 2019, p.99]