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]

[Devoldere's] disaffected drawl and seedier impulses are curbed by co-singer/melodic foil Sylvie Kreusch. [Dec 2017, p.96]

A thorough pre-history, ending just before the release of first studio album, Everything Falls Apart. [Dec 2017, p.104]

The live disc's souped-up version of Drive notwithstanding, what comes across is that AFTP is at heart a sublime collection of folks songs. ... A winning package. [Dec 2017, p.103]

If you like Serge's music, or Jane Birkin's, their daughter's latest is a laudable addition to the canon. [Dec 2017, p.89]

Affecting and shot-through with tension. [Dec 2017, p.92]

Fringe entertainment, for sure, but top fun. [Dec 2017, p.87]

Te brushed drums, vintage electronics and hushed vocals on Memory Of a Cut Off Head play like they were recorded in a bunker under siege. [Dec 2017, p.94]

The ballads confirm that she was singing better than ever. [Dec 2017, p.88]

An album that opens full of tension, riot and discord--before the acoustic gospel of Peaceful Dream leads into strong pleas for universal love and understand and quests for personal redemption. [Dec 2017, p.94]

Their eighth long-player feels leaner, nastier, equally impressive [as 2014's Time to Die]. [Dec 2017, p.91]

There are diversions into pop and hardcore dancehall but overall it's a strongly enticing release. [Dec 2017, p.91]

Charmingly wobbly Edwyn Collins-produced debut. [Dec 2017, p.96]

The results are hardly raw skiffle, more sophisto-shimmery roots. Best on Fleetwood Mac-ish Butter Flutter but over-long and mawkish (SOS, for Syria). [Dec 2017, p.96]

This album is partisan, powerful and controversial. [Dec 2017, p.87]

Although the album's emphasis is on electronica--some of which is distinctly Balearic--these characteristically hymnal songs suggest fluid boundaries between each entity. [Dec 2017, p.90]

It hold together, though--a quiet coalition, but one that is wholly satisfying. [Dec 2017, p.89]

Stereophonics jab at the same buttons that previously scored them six number 1s without breaking the mould. [Dec 2017, p.86]

A bewitching brew of experimental jazz, droning electronics and raw, progressive rock. [Dec 2017, p.87]

It's easy to see why those indie luminaries were so deeply seduced by Acetone's languid and ever-so lovely drawing together of Doug Yule-era Velvets, Spiritualized and Low. [Oct 2017, p.106]

Side by side in this unfamiliar setting, well-known songs become unsettling. [Oct 2017, p.104]

Richly soulful, heartsore second LP. [Dec 2017, p.96]

This excellent new record encapsulates Pine's eclecticism with its amalgam of cool jazz and sultry R&B flavours. [Nov 2017, p.101]

Vince Mendoza's symphonic orchestral arrangements ooze romantic grandeur, combined with Porter's magnificently soulful vocals, resulting in a thrillingly transcendent experience. [Dec 2017, p.93]

Its raw, emotional heartbeat is laid bare at the onset. [Dec 2017, p.94]

For the most part, this is another absorbing chapter in Schott's one-woman sonic odyssey, and where her protean creative compass will take her next is intriguing. [Nov 2017, p.99]

[The Long-Awaited Album exudes] humour on such tracks as Caroline and Strangest Christmas Yet. Martin also offers a touch of romance with All Night Long and delivers a chunk of heads-down speedgrass with instrumental Office supplies. [Dec 2017, p.87]

One senses New Shapes Of Life will probably mean less to the world at large than it clearly does to its author, but it has moments of intense beauty. [Dec 2017, p.86]

Legendary US photographer employs Korg synths, piano on Home-recorded improvs and covers. [Dec 2017, p.96]

It's no instant hit, but some cracking songs like Moths In The Gas Light and Dancing In The Ruin rise to the top and a brilliantly vivid production keeps you riveted. [Dec 2017, p.90]

From the title track onwards, he slaps down 25 minutes of spring-heeled and rump-shakin' bumpin' Bootsy funk, which will pick up again after ballad Heaven Yes, gentler Ladies Nite, and the poppy Candy Coated Lover and Snow Bunny. [Dec 2017, p.93]

Equally comparable to Sleaford Mods' savage lo-fi and Leonard Cohen's fatalist poetry, Prince Of Tears is an outright triumph. [Nov 2017, p.94]

A singular voice, in more ways than one. [Dev 2017, p.90]

Occasionally, the strings seem like an afterthought to a seemingly traditional Malian griot set-up, but the majestic title track demonstrates the power of the pairing. [Dec 2017, p.89]

Souleyman's high velocity dabke-techno hybrid keeps the BPM and bleep count high on his third LP. [Dec 2017, p.96]

A best possible blend of odd and good. [Dec 2017, p.96]

While their writhing, panic-driven noise never fails to excite, sustained across an entire album it makes for an enervating, overwhelming listen, and its hard to discern what substance might lie beneath their bristling, steely carapace. [Dec 2017, p.94]

Wolfe is the epicentre of the maelstrom, a banshee wailing through songs called things like Welt and Scrape. [Dec 2017, p.94]

Like Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man's Out Of Season, say I'm A Harmony operates on a different plane. [Dec 2017, p.93]

The unfamiliar are advised to check out his first three solo albums. [Dec 2017, p.92]

There are some sumptuous moments, but it's also arch and mannered, and rather awkward to embrace. [Dec 2017, p.93]

The Beloved Scouse songsmith's virtues are writ large: heart swelling hymns to the common man, irrepressible shanties, imaginatively deployed strings and brass, affectionate songs of booze-love, as unhinged a school-days memoir as you'll ever hear, and, at the closing Adios Amigo, the fondest of farewells. [Dec 2017, p.92]

The album's eight, unusually varied essays largely eschew sonic wallpaper stereotype, invested as they are with playfulness and a genuine sense of Eastern-flavoured spiritual uplift. [Dec 2017, p.92]

The delivery is folk emo. [Dec 2017, p.92]

It's no double-set, however, its sprawl contained within 10 tracks and 42 minutes. [Dec 2017, p.91]

The sprawling Montreal ensemble [is] nback at their most spirited, their Weltschmerz poured into wordless music of soaring transcendence and, on occasion, fierce beauty. [Dec 2017, p.91]

Strip away the wearying kung-fu skits and there'a s hard-boiled 12-tracker at The Saga Continues' core. [Dec 2017, p.90]

A densely orchestrated album that, even by his standards, is full of reflective melancholy. [Dec 2017, p.90]

End Of The World could be Don't Fear The Reaper Mk II while a fad cover of NRBQ's I Want You Bad delivers Heart-racing teenage kicks. [Dec 2017, p.89]

Allen is inspirational throughout, creating a range of personalised drum patterns, and hey! You can dance to every darn thing. [Dec 2017, p.88]

The Curious Hand is that rare thing in folk: original, self-contained and unencumbered by the genre. [Dec 2017, p.88]

It doesn't quite blow the emotional lid off, but Open is rich in subtle variations. [Dec 2017, p.88]

Never one to be soul-bearing or crass, Corgan pulls off his "Songer" task with enigmatic, starlit aplomb. [Dec 2017, p.86]

Lotta Sea Lice feels like a happy and deliberate mind-meld, rather than the work of two competing songwriters duking it out knee-to-knee over their guitars. [Dec 2017, p.84]

SpiderBeetleBee is part history lesson, park New World exploration; the familiar made strange by glistening harmonics. [Nov 2017, p.102]

An exquisite, meditative experience. [Nov 2017, p.108]

The whole thing only underline what a ferocious rock band they had become. [Nov 2017, p.106]

Pulsing, hazy, addictive. [Nov 2017, p.100]

All American Made maintains Price's status as honky-tonk's most compelling new flame. [Nov 2017, p.97]

Musical touches such as Stephen Large's baroque harpsichord solo on Patchouli and the little three0note 'now boarding' motif that opens Departure lounge cement the sens e of an act that know exactly how to proceed. [Nov 2017, p.94]

Lillies is an album which the solo Siouxsie Sioux would have been proud to record. [Nov 2017, p.96]

[The Selecter] haven't sounded so energised since their 1979 debut, Too Much Pressure. [Nov 2017, p.100]

[A] powerful debut. [Nov 2017, p.103]

For Carry Fire, Plant has written Lion In Winter love songs. [Nov 2017, p.96]

The resulting sound is suitably celestial, mysterious and awe-inspiring. [Sep 2017, p.93]

Their third album keeps an open mind. [Nov 2017, p.97]

Marshall's irregular flashes of idiosyncratic brilliance impress, though The OOZ's 19 tracks contain many longueurs that merely baffle or bore, so tread carefully. [Nov 2017, p.100]

The cast of Beautiful fits with unforeseen subtlety. [Nov 2017, p.103]

For Sale ratchets up the band's ever-present anxiety with a dose of on-stage adrenaline to make this the Holy Grail 'Mats fans have hankered after for decades. [Nov 2017, p.109]

Dark, intense and utterly compelling record. [Nov 2017, p.98]

It's a messy, vibrant record, and if his palette occasionally blurs into muddiness, at least he's still trying for a rainbow. [Nov 2017, p.102]

[It's Alright Between Us as It Is] finds the Stavanger native matching more vocals to his grandiose productions. [Nov 2017, p.99]

French Touch unfolds as a warm, stylish tribute to great songs from one of continental Europe's most affecting voices. [Nov 2017, p.98]

The Darkness have regained much of the joy, silliness and virtuostic songcraft that made their 2003 debut Permission To Land such fun. [Nov 2017, p.96]

Although still rooted in rockabilly terra firma, with cameos from the likes of Nashville groovester Aaron Lee Tasjan, McPherson's horizon has never sounded so open. [Nov 2017, p.102]

Part 2 wins with the garage-guitar-pop of Hollywood and the hard edged though sugary Teflon. In keeping with Brix's own memoir, Part 2 suggests that pasts remain unpurged. [Nov 2017, p.100]

Her pearlescent, Joni Mitchell-style voice and feel are the clearest yet. [Nov 2017, p.101]

The upbeat rockers certainly pull no punches. ... Better still, some gentler tunes reveal his more vulnerable side. [Nov 2017, p.95]