With some lyrics on the utilitarian side of blunt, it lack the younger Jobson's poetic delusions, but and elegiac title track, shimmering Refugee and Kings Of The New World Order's halcyon riffola are all powerful statements worthy of the Skids legend. [Feb 2018, p.96]

The Cumbrian art-rockers go out on this crisp, thoroughly engaging high: a live in the studio, Boy King-heavy stroll through some of their big-hitters recorded at RAK in London over two days last summer. [Mar 2018, p.96]

Like the original, Twin Fantasy 2017 transports us to a unique and fully formed world, where this time the physical geography is still more affecting. [Mar 2018, p.96]

Protest and dissent rarely sounds less strident than on Widdershins, but any resistance to the dark tide is an inherently good thing. [Mar 2018, p.96]

Forget Me Not may echo Dancing In The Dark's intro, but it's bouncy energy is pure Ready Steady Go!, while the crisp, finger-poppin' stomp of If Your Prayers Don't Get To Heaven evokes gospel-tinged Motown. ... However, an ensuing sequence of stodgy ballads and grunty blue-collar rockers kill that aspiration, underscored by dreary production from Ted Hutt. [Mar 2018, p.92]

The alert and taut Always Ascending restores theband's original pop kinesis and then some. It is by far and away their most interesting offering since that debut album. [Mar 2018, p.92]

RRD's tempo is beatific, fingerpicked guitar and violin cresting sweetly, though some fervent moments provide real highlights. [Mar 2018, p.90]

An album of quite magnificent mardiness. [Mar 2018, p.94]

Throughout, Joan still sounds as bewitched, bothered and bewildered by love, a timeless sensation that transcends digital intervention. [Mar 2018, p.94]

His seventh album vibrates with fear, rage and fierce defiance. [Mar 2018, p.92]

Resolve puts her comfortably on par with neo-classical giant Nils Frahm, Max Richter and Hauschka. [Mar 2018, p.93]

Sonically never less than knowingly enormous, but concise at eight tracks, Walk Between Worlds is sure and strong. [Mar 2018, p.91]

There are moments when Craft's melodies don't punch quite so hard as his striking, road-less0trodden imagery. [Mar 2018, p.90]

Oh My smacks less of a one-off project, more of the opening chapter in a narrative which could dominate its participant's future. [Mar 2018, p.94]

An unusual yet utterly coherent balance of tenderness and euphoria, vulnerability and invention. [Mar 2018, p.96]

The lows arrive all too often. [Mar 2018, p.97]

Field Music's most ambitious album yet. ... A consummate success. [Feb 2018, p.88]

An impressive album, fulled with songs that often hark back to familiar strains but offer compensation in their lyric content. [Mar 2018, p.97]

Restraint is key here, and ichaelson's very English version of Americana is a career pinnacle. [Feb 2018, p.96]

This terrific follow-up [to 2016's Hold On] captures the sparks again, and there are plenty of them. [Mar 2018, p.97]

Their second album is a delicate collection that welcomes you back into their magical world. [Mar 2018, p.95]

If he wasn't there already, Freedom's Goblin puts Segall in the very top flight of late-'teens rock contenders. [Mar 2018, p.90]

While the incredibly kinetic South Central LA rapper's second album wins no prizes for originality, it's a relentlessly fun listen. [Mar 2018, p.93]

Vessel Of Love is her most vital work to date. [Mar 2018, p.91]

Piercing, heated, Fever Ray is taking no prisoners. [Mar 2018, p.97]

An ambitious and unclassifiable album. [Feb 2018, p.88]

An enjoyable if just occasionally patchy miscellany. [Feb 2018, p.90]

Cool, humorous, tender, this is a delicious thing. [Feb 2018, p.96]

Nervy, fragile set. [Feb 2018, p.99]

It's a beautifully recorded and unmistakably classy outing that resonates deeply. [Feb 2018, p.95]

The set includes some tender spots, but dire wins the day. Thankfully, it's on occasion leavened. [Feb 2018, p.94]

A promising diversity of ideas, tempo and riffs. [Feb 2018, p.97]

If the band have upped the musical chaos, there's still an unashamedly romantic feel. [Feb 2018, p.98]

Catchy, undemanding, irksome. [Feb 2018, p.99]

Jaguwar don't reinvent the wheel, but their propulsive guitar rock intricacies bring all the right deep-sonic thrills. [Feb 2018, p.99]

Before long, these initially detached settings establish a magnetic, narcotic allure, filled with elliptical hooks and images. [Feb 2018, p.97]

Snares feels more like No Age's greatest hits than their fifth album. [Feb 2018, p.95]

They've grown and blossomed without sacrificing an ounce of what made them exciting in the first place. [Feb 2018, p.93]

As a heady whole, Mother is a cousin of '60s American boundary pushers Kaleidoscope and, especially George Romanos, whose 1970s album Two Small Blue Horses defined a new Greek psychedelia. Mother is that good. [Feb 2018, p.95]

Leeds quintet serve up sonic catnip for post-punk nerks. [Dec 2017, p.96]

A noteworthy comeback. [Feb 2018, p.94]

Languid, warm, West Coast psych set. [Oct 2017, p.98]

There is pain here. The results, though, are delicious. [Feb 2018, p.97]

An album that welds together sedate ambient techno and grand Radiophonic Workshop-style analogue experimentation. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Warm and full of feeling, an LP as instinctively cosmic as it is epic. [Feb 2018, p.99]

The instrumental smorgasbord can feel a little claustrophobic, as on the clattering All The Way Live, but overall The Go! Team's relentless party vibe emerges undiminished. [Feb 2018, p.96]

It's as much fun as it needs to be--as it should be. Reflective, restless, fiercely engaged, it feels like it's in constant process of rethinking and remodeling, slicing off bits of musical flesh and slapping them back on elsewhere as it dips and bounces along the street. [Feb 2018, p.94]

There's no escaping Steen's brutal vision, guitarists Eddie Green and Sean Coyle-Smith and Edge-like chimes to Concrete's verses, before the terrace chorus tilts the mood back to belligerent. No Brit band is better equipped to set 2018 alight. [Feb 2018, p.91]

Simultaneously soaring and depthless, soothing and unnerving, solemn and joyful, McPhee's excursions feel weird, unknowable, as if the path we're on is both bright and labyrinthine, a certain route to the unknown. [Feb 2018, p.94]

Closure, and then some. [Jan 2017, p.101]

Mind-expanding stuff. [May 2017, p.106]

An intriguing, undeniable gem. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Here, his eloquent trumpet is framed by musical backdrops that range from noir-esque alt-rock to ambient soundscapes and jittery hip-hop beats. [Feb 2018, p.93]

The 35-track odyssey serpentines on an exotic carpet of plangent electric and acoustic guitar sounds through whimsical, sub-Basement Tapes Americana, languorous, Grateful Dead-like psych-folk and hallucinogenic, Lennon-esque-pop. [Jan 2018, p.92]

This feels like Hermansen's most charming and wide-ranging collection yet. [Jan 2018, p.96]

A journey, then, one exploring the psyche of a man and his relationship with the world. [Jan 2018, p.90]

Soulful, questioning, and the perfect introduction to Smith's unique, illuminative jazz. [Feb 2018, p.99]

Their narrative of cosmic self-realisation may be a touch familiar, but overall Electric Eye are mightily far-sighted. [Jan 2018, p.92]

Studded with sardonic, Pavement-y wit. [Dec 2017, p.96]

For the most part, this is soothing, circular psychedelia with added depth, warmth and texture. [Feb 2018, p.93]

These six albums attest to the depth of Fela discography, and to the diversity of his message. [Feb 2018, p.104]

Cloying, ultimately fascinating. [Feb 2018, p.99]

Thile's creations rarely boast a singalong factor, but deliver on terms of sheer musicality. [Feb 2018, p.98]

[A] collection of pithy two-minute lo-fi soundtracks. [Feb 2018, p.97]

All told: a mighty uplifting wheeze. [Feb 2018, p.97]

Van sounds relaxed and perfectly at ease. [Feb 2018, p.93]

Despite the recruitment drive, it's another curious case of history repeating itself: N.E.R.D setting their phasers to stun, but only intermittently finding the target. [Feb 2018, p.91]

This is groundling rock at its finest. [Dec 2017, p.103]

This handsome 3-CD box contains both concerts in their entirety for the first time. [Jan 2017, p.104]

The kind of space-occupying Krautrock klang that suddenly fills you with the urge to set up an underground magazine and get the brown rice ready for dinner. [Jan 2018, p.88]

Promise Of The Real--ie, Willie Nelson’s son Lukas et al--prove superb foils for this sludge guitar god/master melody maker, hence the harmony-rich chorus of Already Great sounds exactly that immediately, and the horn-bolstered power-chords of resistance anthem Children Of Destiny are just breathtaking.

Anthropocene is rich with stark beauty and wry smiles hidden among Oren's observations of "billboard signs touring God's designs," and "the Bible belt taking to itself all night on the FM waves." [Jan 2018, p.90]

Tunes abound, performances are slick, and all 13 songs boast a hook or two. [Jan 2018, p.88]

Dan Auerbach takes Finley further away from his church-and-porch roots with a brief to present the artist as a classic all-rounder and on 10 songs written by Auerbach, John Prince and Nick Lowe, he proves himself just that. [Jan 2018, p.89]

Although the quality dips dramatically on Samir & Abboud's bland, overworked Games and Gharbi Sadock & George Garzia's sickly slap-bass odyssey Lala Tibiki, both prove rare exceptions. [Jan 2018, p.102]

It's more of what we know, which should suit Metallica heads just fine. [Dec 2017, p.105]

A sprinkling of more angular, dissonant tracks, like the clanging Eastern Stack, may sail a little too close to his soi-disant "jazz that nobody asked for" for some tastes. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Glowing collection of covers. [Jan 2018, p.88]

Hammill's best solo album in a long time. [Dec 2017, p.91]

It's got real presence. [Jan 2018, p.88]

On subsequent listens how little else there is going on becomes perversely thrilling, especially in the car. [Jan 2018, p.91]

This is a hugely enjoyable landmark release. [Jan 2018, p.103]

Heartrendingly eerie. [Jan 2018, p.91]

Swarming with rich atmospherics, it's a wee-small-hours treasure trove for fans of Blue Nile, Scott Walker or Bill Callahan. [Jan 2018, p.90]

It's exquisite ghostly piano and hypnotic loops transport you to a gauzy, fantastical netherworld. [Jan 2018, p.96]

Reflection Of Youth swoops through grandiose, visceral and skeletal arrangements (producer-engineer Nick Rayner is a revelation): Full-tilt rock on I Wanna Dance; warped folk bleeding into orchestrated glitch on Christine; steely, shivery ballad Survived. [Jan 2018, p.96]

These are gallingly sad, often crudely simple folk songs, interlaced with menace, though her assertions of agency are just as bracing as the dark parts. [Jan 2018, p.105]

His stark solo work--with an amplified wood board for footstompin'--remains the stuff that'll Hook ya. [Jan 2018, p.102]

A debut solo album of such synth-streaked electronic sleaze and shimmer that it kicks Goldfrapp and Gary Numan into the bleachers. [Jan 2018, p.90]

Tempting to ask for more of this dark night of the soul. [Jan 2018, p.94]

A feast of sonic juxtapositions, whimsical beats and massed vocal harmonies. [Jan 2018, p.94]

While his alienated, laissez-faire flow disguises sly pop sensibilities on the smoked-out, funereal-paced Red Bottom Sky and Silver Arrows, it's bare-bones lament Agony that sums up his charm. [Jan 2018, p.94]

At just 23 minutes long this stop-gap album, but it's great to hear the fire in his belly once more. [Jan 2018, p.94]

Polwart conveys contrasting themes of tragedy, redemption, hope and homecoming with immensely affecting guile. [Jan 2018, p.93]

Blau exercises an instrumental vision to rival his studio and vocal nous. [Jan 2018, p.90]

Utopia feels like a diversion, not a destination. A nice place to visit--beautiful, even--but you wouldn't want to live there. [Jan 2018, p.89]

U2's strongest album this century. [Jan 2018, p.86]

Though some things never change, the Serge Gainsbourg-like instrumental Interlude (Wednesday Part 1) and electro-pop winners It's A Beautiful World and She Taught Me How To Fly are invigorating departures. [Dec 2017, p.90]