Heavy at heart, but eminently hummable, Sunshine Rock is an affecting, uplifting set. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Their traditional strengths remain, chiefly McVeigh's rich vocals and their knack of emphasising a simple hook with a cacophonous, multilayered production. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Anyone turned off by conspiracy theories may shudder, but allow Brown his free-your-mind gnostic-in-designer-streetwear stance and entertainment wins out. [Mar 2019, p.88]

In 2019 terms, then, it's a Village Green Preservation Society for people whose village is on the banks of the (alarmingly diminished) Niger River. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Less minimal folk this time, the title track and Holograms are particularly fulsome. [Mar 2019, p.99]

For all its skill you do miss Neville Staple's aggro, Roddy Radiation's punk-Chuck Berry guitars, and inevitably, Jerry Dammers' singular, maddening vision. [Mar 2019, p.88]

What some might reckon to be Drift Code's one significant weakness--that Webb is not a conventionally beauteous singer--is once more a strength. [Mar 2019, p.86]

Gallipoli, recorded in Berlin and Puglia, is oddly unmoving, lacking range for all its seductive picturesque roaming. [Mar 2019, p.96]

There's a real bleakness here, so 7's motif is the confession that "I will always be alone," while the haunting Lisa Hannigan collaboration, Thousand, confronts Carney's grandmother's dementia. But there's optimism and strength too. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Mollestad Thomassen's adoption of free-flowing soloing brings a sound less claustrophobic than before. Extraordinarily, in doing so, no power is lost. [Feb 2019, p.87]

The results sound authentic, melodic '60s girl-pop, if a bit thin. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Nighttime Birds And Morning Stars doubles back on that trajectory [on 2018's Deeper Woods] and heads left, its eight enveloping essays featuring live 1-and 6-string guitars manipulated and looped into capacious soundscapes, only occasionally topped off by vocal salutes to nature and the mysterious heavens. [Feb 2019, p.87]

Swindle wears his perfectionism lightly: satisfying tastebuds while leaving listeners hungry for more. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Its wintery charms and enervated intrigue are hard to deny. [Feb 2019, p.90]

The band's sixth album, while still oddly uneven, features some of their finest work to date. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Less electronic in feel than its predecessor, this is music on a truly human scale in terms of its inspiration, delivery and undeniable emotional punch. [Mar 2019, p.97]

Much like Dirty Projectors, it takes an adventurous soul to absorb much of this. [Mar 2019, p.93]

By combining the searing intimacy of a boombox-constructed mixtape with progressive and delirious bars, Earl's third album offers a rare kind of insight, sagacious from a 24-year-old. [Mar 2019, p.80]

A progression in Blake's music, his melodies less elusive, his productions less ethereal. [Mar 2019, p.88]

Mostly, it feels like a marriage of Weezer and Superchunk, amid all-pervasive fuzz-pedal abuse. [Feb 2019, p.88]

An electro-edged nerviness also surfaces but, overall, the fresh stylistic excursions result in an album which, fittingly considering its backstory, does not quite hang together. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Ducking and diving between ivories and six-string, his reedy-voice makes for a Syd Barrett attempting Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? record, full of compulsive tunes, but ever off-centre. [Feb 2019, p.91]

While a smidgen of originality wouldn't go amiss, there's plenty to compensate for it in the way of exuberance and humour. [Feb 2019, p.88]

Goes West feels invigoratingly sunny. [Feb 2019, p.84]

Future Ruins achieves everything an admirer could ask of the reunited band's new album. [Feb 2019, p.84]

This album has everything and it works. [Feb 2019, p.89]

An album rich in melancholia, softened with orchestral arrangements and enriched by female voices, at turns wistful, as others paranoid. [Feb 2019, p.89]

He and his band sound focused and spry over eight beautifully arranged songs produced by Jackson and Pat Dillett. [Feb 2019, p.90]

While there are hints at the bleak vibrations that defined his previous solo work, the John Squire-ish groove of The End and beatific title track stand out as stunning comebacks from this folk euphoria original. [Feb 2019, p.90]

Myth Of A Man doesn't feel like the whole story yet, but it's getting there. [Feb 2019, p.92]

There's still a lot of soul-searching at mournful tempos, but reconnecting to his roots has made for a fine set of songs. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Straightforward but elliptical; direct but enduringly rich; the unseen, in between. [Feb 2019, p.86]

Their initial torrid confluence of My Bloody Valentine and Joy Division here shapeshifts more towards "synth-assisted stadium nu-gaze," with odd Kraut-y hints of early Simple Minds, and frequent echoes of their new found patron: fune-real The Arbor is pure Disintegration, while shimmering Keep It All To Yourself has Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!'s hi-tech dazzle. [Feb 2019, p.88]

She's an adept songwriter and lyricist, but the album's immutable modern poo production can start to pale. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Remind Me Tomorrow feels full to the brim, flooded to the top with experimental colour and texture, drones and drums and synthesizers. [Feb 2019, p.85]

The whole thing is deeply marketable--but there's an authenticity in Rogers that needs more space to breathe. [Feb 2019, p.92]

More blood on the tracks might have upped the ante, but as it stands Tomb is still a gorgeous wallow, with producer Doveman's minimalist touches left to indicate cracks in the facade. [Feb 2019, p.84]

Their voices have contrasting timbres and they produce some gorgeous harmonies throughout. [Feb 2019, p.87]

[Tallies] inject sufficient Sunday/Cocteaus-ish vocal and melodic bounce to soften even the most calcified indie heart. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Boone's rich, Rickie Lee Jones-meets-Chrissie Hynde voice is the careworn bedrock upon which these bruised, dynamics-rich songs depend. [Feb 2019, p.92]

An equally intriguing mix of airy, modern indie pop, gauzy, gothic epic and plaintive folk-picking. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? is more exploratory than Fading Frontier, but there's a minimalism that helps its stark ideas and sad-eyes melodies shine through. [Feb 2019, p.88]

Hubbert's ornate acoustic fingerpicking and flamenco flourishes are an ideal foil for Moffat's un-showy storytelling skills. [Jan 2019, p.92]

A potent psychedelic wash blurs the edges of these 10 tracks from trippy chimes to crackling static experimentation. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Focused, melancholy, modern ghost blues, these 10 rough-hued duets move from jeremiad to elegy, from love ballad to lament to scream. [Jan 2019, p.91]

Blend anarcho-punk speed rush with the paranoid crash of industrial rock--ticking programmed drums, frantic guitars, creepy crawl vocals. [Feb 2019, p.93]

She stands sonically naked, palettes limited and claustrophobic in their unrelenting mono-focus, in this fascinating but demanding debut. [Feb 2019, p.91]

The longueurs of the album's latter half rob the long-player of true classic potential, but the rehearsal room banter and stripped-back demos will pique fans' interest. [Jan 2019, p.105]

Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi call spirits from the soil with enough power to trouble the Richter scale. [Feb 2019, p.91]

We get to bask in the calm in the eye of Young's wilful hurricane without suffering the trail of destruction that followed it. An intensely enjoyable experience it is, too. [Feb 2019, p.99]

This likable debut peaks on Everything Apart's breezy kosmische shuffle, and Lennon-ish I'll Be Alright, but its airiness doesn't always work. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Throughout, a twinkly otherworldliness is counterbalanced by rhythmic excursions evoking the passage between one liminal world and another. [Feb 2019, p.92]

Tropical Fuck Storm's wonky rock discordance is not quite as provocative as they perhaps think. Nevertheless, there's still plenty to be enjoyed here. [Feb 2019, p.90]

Certainly, the music here is very often brilliant. ... .Paak's tendency for juvenile and preening bad-boy bluster is a recurring weakness. [Feb 2019, p.84]

FM! initially feels slighter, not least because of a brisk 22-minute duration. The breeziness is deceptive, though, as Staples and producer Kenny Beats construct a minimalist update of G-funk where the jams are always freighted with an awareness of potential violence. [Feb 2019, p;.84]

With an airy yet intimate mix from longtime engineer Bob Clearmountain, this 2-CD/4-LP package carries the requisite audio heft to compensate those who couldn't see Springsteen On Broadway in its natural habitat. [Feb 2019, p.82]

His best yet, a mix of reimagined trad pieces, diverse covers and elegantly rowdy new jams. [Nov 2018, p.89]

A near two-hour spiritual masterclass, recorded live at London's Church of Sound, that simultaneously enhances, enriches and expands. [Dec 2018, p.89]

The result is an album of eminently listenable sonic frontierism, and Butler's most accessible work in years. [Dec 2018, p.89]

It's an irresistibly modern mix. [Dec 2018, p.89]

A strong melodic streak can reach those Husker Du pleasure-pain receptors, but equally often they're quirky to the point of throwaway. [Jan 2019, p.93]

Trouble Anyway is a much more fleshed-out, even lush proposition [than her 2016 debut, Out Of Love]. [Jan 2019, p.90]

The result is another madcap sonic escapade. [Dec 2018, p.87]

Strong, tub-thumping songwriters fall prey to Nashville cliche. [Dec 2018, p.94]

Across the ensuing 85 minutes there are sufficient six-string pyrotechnics, pop hooks and lyrical urgencies to shame an artist a third his age. [Jan 2019, p.88]

Amor's main reference point is arguably Arthur Russell, though there's little of his joie de vivre--unless you count the cowbell on Heaven Among The Days--and more the cold fire of Martin Hannett-era A Certain Ratio. [Jan 2019, p.89]

It's easy groove doesn't suggest exhaustion, just peace of mind. [Jan 2019, p.84]

The deadpan vocals of Camila De Laborde means that The Knife comparisons are difficult to shake, but they mirror the bold, ethereal quality of the music. [Jan 2019, p.89]

Spare, simple, languid, often Ens lacks, ironically, is a wildness. In the end, it's just a little too tame. [Jan 2019, p.85]

The results are as wildly evocative as anything by Steve Reich or Terry Riley, but thunderously affecting on their own terms. [Jan 2019, p.85]

Stylistically, the album juxtaposes grungy art rock with punk-jazz, electronica, and hip-hop, though it's McCaslin's tenor sax and aesthetic vision that imbues Blow. with a sense of unity and coherence. [Nov 2018, p.95]

The result is 12 exquisitely dreamlike, personal songs that also work as Krgovich's coming out album. [Nov 2018, p.89]

A lively set that's way above par. [Jan 2019, p.92]

The songs are gorgeous, lyrical, chimerical, the arrangements weighty, complex and cool. [Jan 2019, p.89]

Clapton's guitar still sings, howls and weeps, but this is for the staunchest God-heads only. [Jan 2019, p.90]

Chilled psych-folk from a surreal world. [Jan 2019, p.92]

Note Eaglehurst/The Palace, an ecstatic workout that mythologises a shared house of Brit jazz tyros as an inspiringly sacred space. [Dec 2018, p.92]

Joplin's long, devastating plea for salvation once mirrored the big story--that the surprise star of '68 had outgrown her rough diamonds. The 30 tracks here, several in multiple versions, don't necessarily change that. But wart'n'all, Big Brother were the best foil Janus had. [Jan 2018, p.101]

On Reflection swirls, flutters and swoops like leaves on the breeze. [Jan 2018, p.89]

Think Jolie Holland, or P.J. Harvey's To Bring You My Love, and prepare to be entranced. [Jan 2019, p.90]

The 2018 Beggars Banquet is classy slim-line history: clean, heavy vinyl with restored artwork (but no linernotes); a 12-inch platter with a mono mix of Sympathy; and a flexi-disc, originally included in the 1968 Japanese pressing of the LP. ... Sometimes, even in rock archaeology, the final result is all that matters. [Jan 2019, p.96]

This lavish 36-track celebration doesn't settle for just reheating the best bits, cheerily omitting anything from Kamasi Washington's jazz clarion call The Epic, while proffering 22 new tracks that flaunt its roster's strength in depth. [Jan 2019, p.105]

The single-disc edition offers a streamlined look at Cornell's career, cherry-picking some of his finest moments and complementing them with rarities. ... For a totalising retrospective, the 7-LP, 4-CD, 1-DVD box set is essential. [Jan 2019, p.104]

It's not tidy, but fittingly for such unabashed pop maximalists, there's a lot to love here. [Jan 2019, p.84]

It's a journey beyond self-consciousness and towards mature vulnerability, to an evolved idea of what is musically pure. [Jan 2019, p.82]

It reframes familiar, comforting songs of joy, innocence and goatherds within pitiless orch-industrial rock and suspicious pop softness, rediscovering the original's Nazi-assailed gravity and reflecting on a divided Korean peninsula and the international power relations beyond. [Jan 2019, p.84]

Gently atmospheric rather than a disrupter of mood. [Jan 2019, p.86]

Gallo's eccentricity is bound to irritate at least as many as it charms. [Jan 2019, p.91]

He sublimates his playing to the whole throughout, his swerving tones and arching lines ducking and diving through cracks in the strings. [Jan 2019, p.88]

Their improvisational roots are still evident, but the bursts of outsider pop shining through proves they have plenty more to dig up. [Jan 2019, p.89]

The best record of her life. [Jan 2019, p.85]

Tremulous covers from the '60s, '70s, US Westerns and beyond. [Jan 2018, p.93]

Some of the catchiest Deadbeats tunes to date. [Jan 2019, p.92]

Foster's is an oddly moving, crepuscular and dream-like world to get happily lost in. [Jan 2018, p.91

Vessel creates a sense of immersion and collapsing boundaries. [Jan 2018, p.89]

Thresholder is the sound of celestial awe striking, albeit sometimes opaquely. [Jan 2019, p.89]

The 13 songs, mostly slow to midtempo with some very fine lyrics, sound pensive and personal. [Jan 2018, p.86]

This is a band who need to shrink back a little, switch off the emotional wind-machine, and work out how to make the personal less impersonal. [Jan 2019, p.86]