As ever, Butler weaves these disparate ups and downs without visible joins. [Sep 2017, p.91]

A couple of cracking originals of his own and beautiful production. You have to doff your cap. [Oct 2017, p.95]

The sumptuous How Soon The Dawn and gently rcok'n'rolling I Can Burn shine. [Oct 2017, p.98]

MC Dalek's indignant imagery can be tricky to unpick, yet his barbed lines are hard to dislodge on Weapons And Battlecries. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Powerful to the point of brutality, but affecting. [Oct 2017, p.98]

Just occasionally the jangles get repetitive; sometimes, good things do go on too long. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Tragedy and regret, all captured in beautifully glowering analogue. [Oct 2017, p.93]

The best moments find Deerhoof unadulterated, like the angular tropicalia of Begin Countdown, or drummer Greg Saunier's Prefab Sprout-like Ay That's Me. [Oct 2017, p.94]

Classic OMD tropes are almost overdone on this, their 13th studio album. [Oct 2017, p.88]

Big, brave and laudably odd it is, then. [Oct 2017, p.93]

American Dream feels like a strong re-statement of what they do, and what they can mean, a record that, despite its fear of death, feels very much alive. [Oct 2017, p.86]

As striking as her career-defining 2010 album, The Brothel. [Sep 2017, p.92]

This is vaulting, widescreen soundscaping of the first water. [Oct 2017, p.92]

[His bathroom's] natural reverb add a wobbly-otherworldly feel. [Sep 2017, p.96]

This new material finds them in [a] more experimental mode. [Oct 2017, p.90]

Strong synth tunes and beats, bristling with vocal angst. [Oct 2017, p.98]

Gogol Bordello's passport-abusing, transcontinental musical journeying occasionally feels like being faced with an over-ambitious tapas plate. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Hippopotamus is never anything less than wildly entertaining. [Oct 2017, p.88]

At times, it recalls the late-'60s acid blues experiments on Leigh Stephens' Red Weather and Peter Green's The End Of The Game but with a shimmering summer optimism and textural complexity all MacKay's own. [Oct 2017, p.92]

The once-lairy Scots' high-volume potency remains beyond question. [Oct 2017, p.92]

Scum is a joyous mash-up of cheap beats, precinct-loitering aggro punk and youthful vim; it's by no means a classic, but you suspect Cardy may well have one in him soon. [Oct 2017, p.94]

Invitations rushes of feeling are rich and real. Filthy Friends are a genuine supergroup surprise. [Oct 2017, p.96]

Clever, unflinching, experimental and catchy. [Oct 2017, p.98]

Her more organic songs stand out melodically amid layers of modern production mulch. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Holiday Destination needs to be uncomfortable and it is, a beautifully realised disturbance of any remaining peace. [Sep 2017, p.92]

Dwyer's crew are oft-cited as the world's most exciting live rock band; they're also making some of its most exciting rock records. [Sep 2017, p.93]

May can be schmaltzy, yes; but also needle-sharp. [Sep 2017, p.94]

The Right To Love is a heartbreaker from the beautifully phrased, opening reading of Hoagy Carmichael's Skylark through to a final I Get Along Without You Very Well. [Sep 2017, p.91]

Knowingly nostalgic, it's an album with a very strong sense of itself. [Sep 2017, p.86]

Despite the eclectic material, the slow tempos and monochrome tone gets wearing. [Sep 2017, p.94]

A taut, fraught dalliance with '90s trip-hop melancholy vivified by spidery Sisters Of Mercy-esque guitar figures and a gruff cameo from Massive Attack's Daddy G. [Sep 2017, p.91]

It's a long time since Kelly drank at this well, and Life Is Fine is a deep, deep draft. [Sep 2017, p.90]

It's both organic and future-facing. A true metamorphosis, this album sees Queens Of The Stone Age shedding an old identity to discover new ways of playing the same song. [Sep 2017, p.84]

The results are patchy. [Sep 2017, p.92]

It might not look like it's going to leap out and grab you, but Beam here launches a soft emotional ambush. [Sep 2017, p.87]

The end result is a triumph; a late-night drive that starts somewhere in '90s Michigan but arrives home, in a gloriously disorientating future. [Aug 2017, p.90]

No 11-minute epics this time, but there are two stand-outs: Neil Young-esque Cumberland Gap, and Airplane, as hypnotic and moving as anything on The Harrow & The Harvest. [Sep 2017, p.92]

Baobab Tree's bossa nova sway, the title track's lounge vibes and Lo Mas Dulce's electro-Tropicalia weirdness impress. [Jul 2017, p.96]

While Foreign Light trades some of his past eclecticism for a super-soulful hook-up with singer-songwriter Andrea martin, his acute ear for sasquatch basslines and simpatico collaborators remains undimmed. [Sep 2017, p.91]

It's defiantly uneasy listening, becoming more uneasier still when No Help Pamphlet comes in sounding like a lost Badly Drawn Boy Song. [Sep 2017, p.88]

Bright Phoebus turns out to thoroughly deserve its reputation as a milestone in British folk rock. [Sep 2017, p.104]

Hook-packed mini-album, direct first-person narratives are sung with knowing sweetness over sunny guitar classicism. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Woodland Echoes is an unhurried album full of paeans to passion and nature. [Sep 2017, p.94]

The Road Part 1 is described by Lavelle himself as having "a foot in modern London"--a link that is at best tenuous. As a melting pot of disparate ideas, however, it's frequently gorgeous. [Sep 2017, p.87]

To The Bone keeps its pop and prog influences in a near perfect balance--flash and flamboyant at times but with some lovingly crafted big tunes. [Sep 2017, p.86]

A sleight of hand that transforms its low-key, elegiac ruminations into defiant affirmation of life. [Aug 2017, p.93]

FramesPerSecond is an atmospheric introduction. [Aug 2017, p.90]

This is potent, frequently explosive stuff. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Grizzly Bear sound enchanted with the pure pleasure of texture; hooks take their time to emerge, but Morning Sound and Sky Took Hold are the best entry points to this stately, meticulous music. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Ruiz's best mode is mocking fury, wielded against Trump, scene exclusivity and the consequences of silence. The leering tone makes an already fearless record genuinely fun. [Sep 2017, p.86]

A Deeper Understanding is exhilarating in places, but perhaps inevitably, give n it's long and convoluted gestation, it can at times feel like it's trying too hard. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Another point of reference is Gorky's Zygotic Mynic and it's Girl Ray's appropriation of their scherzo sensibility lifts the three-piece beyond pastiche, feeding songs such as Don't Go Back St Ten and Where Am I Now with a musical strangeness that's totally alluring. [Sep 2017, p.90]

It's a little fragmented, maybe two or three songs too short, but still brimming with his sweet-sour magic. [Sep 2017, p.88]

Its second pits their sharp improvisational wits against Evan Parker, Byron Wallen, Tori Handsley, Sarathy Korwar and Yussef Dayes. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Raft is a woozy drift between euphoria and unease. [Aug 2017, p.31]

Breakthroughs can never be predicted with certainty, but Kinder Versions is Mammut's convincing international calling card. [Aug 2017, p.90]

Sixty-plus years later, E lives up to his legend, rooted in African-American rhythm & Blues and bursting with explicit erotic energy, controlling his nuclear-fuelled enthusiasm with the gravitational force of his magnificent voice. [Sep 2017, p.102]

This is a completist's delight in drab artwork. [Sep 2017, p.100]

Vega's spirit still blazed with righteous passion even when his body was giving out. Now it glowers like a ghostly light sculpture from beyond the grave, predicting current atrocities and still bang on for modern times. [Sep 2017, p.89]

At times things get wincingly experimental; but mostly, it's claustrophobic and deeply magnetic. [Aug 2017, p.96]

Ron in terrific voice; Santana's Latin rock and jazz notes both beautiful and rousing. [Sep 2017, p.96]

New Facts Emerge could be said to be business as usual: ie, it cannot be quantified, and pulses with raw music, stimulating confusion and a certain monstrous glee. [Sep 2017, p.88]

An unexpected treat, as he takes great liberties with some of the material. [Sep 2017, p.93]

When he slows for a stroll through You Ain't Going Nowhere and offers up the obscure Abandoned Lover as a wonderfully interpreted finale, you're hit by the realisation that Willie has actually pulled off what is unquestionably a daunting challenge. [Sep 2017, p.94]

The album's ethos is about teamwork rather than individuals, and on that level it succeeds magnificently. [Sep 2017, p.89]

Tremendous fun throughout. [Sep 2017, p.87]

Even the Hey Jude-y crowd singalong works. ... The album as a whole also has a coldness that threatens to undermine the point that Everything Now strives to make. [Sep 2017, p.87]

The album ebbs and flows with a winning fluidity. [Sep 2017, p.86]

The effect is a bit like pleasantly nodding off to a Mazzy Star record and, like the smoke off the titular post-coital gaspers, the intoxicating atmosphere lingers long after the tracks have played out. [Sep 2017, p.88]

In general the Heaton touchstones are all present here--shortage of definite articles, politics, wrinkles, a rockabilly number--with an energy and a sly melodic wit which puts Crooked Calypso up with his best work. [Sep 2017, p.90]

Save for a couple of re-edits, this deeply satisfying blend of emotional techno, Afro rhythms and stripped back house comprises all Daphni Originals. [Sep 2017, p.93]

All told: a summer soul smash. [Sep 2017, p.93]

One seriously heavyweight record, even by Boris' far-reaching standards. [Sep 2017, p.92]

Odd tracks recall Animal Collective, but these immersive 63 minutes mostly ripple with hallucinatory effect, overdubs virtually free of beats. [Sep 2017, p.92]

Claustrophobic ambient, minimal techno and orchestral themes for waiting for the axe to fall. 100 per cent Laibach. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Sets a high bar. But she clears it, with soulful, oddball, Jersey-girl-in-Nashville aplomb. [Sep 2017, p.96]

It's unfair he no longer sounds unique. As a transmitter for cute. stylistic oddness, though, he remains staunch. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Two distinct personalities: Death LP (dark and groovy) and the titular short film soundtrack (disjointed and upsetting). [Aug 2017, p.96]

Occasionally overwrought but never dull. [Sep 2017, p.96]

Musically simpler and less baroque than The Graceless Age, the album's autobiographical arc is conversely harder to glean, its lyrics more oblique. Murry's greatest ability, however, is to make the listener wince uncomfortably while peeking through their fingers at his captivating, compulsive honesty. [Aug 2017, p.88]

Raskit junks its predecessor’s egregious schmaltz for marauding bass and spartan trap backings. They amplify a biting double-time flow his nearest rivals would readily trade jaws for, Dizzee slaying his competition on Focus and Wot U Gonna Do? and literally eating them for dinner on Space (“Can’t find enough time to dine on rappers / All these MCs are looking like tapas”). There’s depth, too.

Minor key, acoustic introspection done so beautifully it's as if they're singing to one another in the dustlight of a pub backroom. [Aug 2017, p.97]

It's a highly-strung record--tiringly so sometimes--but The Dears walk its emotional tightrope with an acrobat's grace. [Aug 2017, p.93]

Titular peaceful intent is achieved. [Aug 2017, p.97]

This debut long-player has been greatly anticipated, and does not disappoint. Skating an agreeably fine line between conscious dancehall and complex nu-roots, Chronixx delivers 15 deeply personal explorations of Jamaica and the challenges it faces.

Occasionally it feels a little too theatrical--as on Willie O' Winsbury--but its roots are in the right place. [Aug 2017, p.95]

Few of his collaborations stick or turn out to be more than the sum of their parts. [Aug 2017, p.88]

The result is a thrilling excursion, possessing an otherworldly ambience and substance you'll spend months decoding, every spin yielding something new. [Aug 2017, p.88]

The songs remain sweet and sad, delicately picked folk foregrounding a serene voice. [Aug 2017, p.97]

Years of sideman work have given Smith a certain world-weariness; that grit makes this newfound joy ring clear as a bell. [Aug 2017, p.93]

Born on a Gangster Star is the more accessible volume. ... The result is a thrilling excursion, possessing an otherworldly ambience and substance you'll spend months decoding, every spin yielding something new. [Aug 2017, p.88]

Amid all these tribulations, Toro Y Moi still quarries a few gems. [Aug 2017, p.89]

Sparkling banjos arpeggios; freak-out saxophjone; John Parish's inventive production; a wealth og strong, beautifully-enunciated vocal melodies--tons has gone into the latest work from Kate Stables, aka This Is The Kit, and all of it is good. [Aug 2017, p.91]

A record that exudes the glee and relief of emotional recovery. [Aug 2017, p.93]

Bluesman's solid soul and guitar chops fit snugly with Hi band. [Aug 2017, p.97]

Every Valley is timely and useful. [Aug 2017, p.89]

For the most part, Haim remain drive-time ear candy, undeniably slick and effervescent. [Aug 2017, p.88]

2017's TLC are clearly more comfortable reminiscing, making their good-natured fifth less futureshock, more time machine. [Aug 2017, p.89]