The pace rarely rising above languorous, the lyrics resolutely wistful, with the now 50-year-old Sandoval's vocals the compelling focus across 11 drowsy, folk-rock noir essays. [Dec 2016, p.88]

Freed from that angst, the group sound more savage, more inspired and, crucially, more fun than they have for a quarter of a century. [Dec 2016, p.88]

Primitives finds him channeling the celestial overlaid vocals of AnCo, Toro Y Moi's soaring gauzy electronic pop, the live, looping sample techniques of tUnE-yArDs and D.D. Dumbo, and even Steve Reich's shuddering, percussive experiments in repetition--with charming results. [Dec 2016, p.93]

His singing has improved beyond recognition and, while rooted very much in the vintage storytelling values of the folk tradition, Upcetera is very much a landmark album for our times. [Dec 2016, p.95]

The set pivots around its experimental jazz title track, where warming Rhodes are counterpointed by fractured beats, fidgety bleeps and trills. [Dec 2016, p.93]

This is a remarkably strong set. [Dec 2016, p.88]

Moddi's own arrangements, translations and distinctive Donovan-esque tones ensures Unsongs coheres as a n album as well as an eye-opening lesson in the importance of music. [Nov 2016, p.88]

This eighth album is very much business as usual. [Dec 2016, p.92]

Lustman's been musing on the conflict between the intimate, solo nature of his music making and the shared listening experience of his audience on dancefloors. Lustman's solution is the intimate, expansive Heaven Is for Quitters. [Dec 2016, p.93]

The music draws on '70s fusion, post-rock and free jazz, and throughout McCaslin's sax expresses boldness, anger, beauty, joy. [Nov 2016, p.92]

Soft Hair's hypnagogic funk and soft-pop mystery is perverse and baffling. [Dec 2016, p.94]

NxWorries spread their undoubted talents thinly across an offering several chillies shy of the full enchilada. [Dec 2016, p.93]

Their music palette may be limited but their style knows no bound. [Dec 2016, p.92]

Played with a straight face rather than a raised eyebrow, the whole thing is a gas. [Dec 2016, p.92]

With shade and contrast added to the anthems, the songs emerge from a brooding, often restrained darkness so when Fray and co click into euphoric chorus gear they genuinely soar. [Dec 2016, p.92]

It's all as subtle as a flurry of punches in the face, but utterly uplifting. [Dec 2016, p.92]

It is striking how old school and immediate it sounds. [Dec 2016, p.90]

It's a giddy, breathless swirl of different sounds and styles. [Dec 2016, p.91]

It's clear that The Pop Group are back in full swing. [Dec 2016, p.90]

With barbed lyrics and messy, thrumming guitars a Honeyblood speciality, things never get overly pretty on thes 11 tales of "horror, lust and laughs," while new Honeyblood drummer Cat Myers, successor to Shona McVicar, has bedded-in nicely. [Dec 2016, p.90]

One of this unlikely old master's most hauntingly satisfying works. [Dec 2016, p.90]

Walls is not a lovable album but if Kings Of Leon would rather be taken seriously these days, instead of simply being adored, they have put down a solid foundation. [Dec 2016, p.89]

In their hands, [a cover of Nina Simone's Assignment Song is] a hypnotic wonderwall of sound. [Dec 2016, p.89]

While they haven't suddenly become a different proposition, they are exploring structure and metre. [Dec 2016, p.88]

FLOTUS is highly processed, highly textured--and yet for the most part, it sounds surprisingly natural and unforced. [Dec 2016, p.86]

A Henry Rollins cameo in the title track is tantalising: were he a constant presence, this set would really spark. [Nov 2016, p.96]

On the minus side, The False Foundation lacks an overarching character, so plays out like a soundtrack or compilation. [Nov 2016, p.89]

The Shaggs couldn't play, they could barely sing and their songs are rudimentary, but you won't hear many records with such heartfelt authenticity of feeling. [Oct 2016, p.107]

Ramones is pretty much perfect. [Sep 2016, p.102]

The shared predilection for sub-Saharan styles is implicit, if not obscure, across Let It Be You's 10, expansively produced essays. [Nov 2016, p.89]

There's no difficult second album syndrome for laconi-pop crew Hooton Tennis Club. [Nov 2016, p.78]

Syd Arthur still dabble in jazz, folk, Krautrock and saucer-eyed psychedelia, but Apricity is a notable leap forward, even from 2014’s excellent Sound Mirror.

An impressive emotional ebb and flow on this heart-swelling debut solo effort. [Nov 2016, p.96]

There are mimics here but actually surprising few for a tribute. The best salutes to the famously fragile songwriter reincarnate his work in new guises. [Nov 2016, p.87]

This is an opaque and quietly intense missive. [Nov 2016, p.86]

Even if it's not quite the Pretenders, it's good to have Chrissy Hynde back. [Nov 2016, p.86]

Introspective, often forlorn and frequently mysterious, it's not an easy listen, but the delicate potency of Clarke's exceptional voice is a formidable saving grace. [Nov 2016, p.91]

It bursts with love--for family, for the power of musicianship, but most of all, like Lidell's hero Stevie Wonder, for the art of storytelling. [Nov 2016, p.88]

This is one of his most intense albums. It feels personal too. [Nov 2016, p.90]

The bonus material features a first release for the fabled "Mustique Demos": just Noel, a drum machine and Owen Morris's portastudio in the Caribbean, suggesting a humbler alternative might have been possible, had reality not intruded. [Nov 2016, p.102]

Imaginative, derivative and warped. [Nov 2016, p.93]

WMPPRR is one of the most powerful psychedelic releases to have come out this year. [Nov 2016, p.86]

A creepy yet danceable debut. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Rarely can the lute have sounded quite as threatening as it does here. [Nov 2016, p.93]

Rooted in dubby pop and embellished with punchy horns, it captures the Birmingham group's maiden rebel sound. [Oct 2016, p.98]

An album that stalks the perpetual gloaming so wholeheartedly, you do rather wish for a ray of sunlight here and there. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Some of the purest, restorative, most unburdened music imaginable. [Oct 2016, p.98]

Gibb's voice might be audibly timeworn in parts and the production is a bit vanilla, but there's no denying the poignancy here. [Nov 2016, p.86]

The Last Hero captures them approaching the peak of their powers. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Highlights: I Know's breathless vocals and pummeled drums; Invisible Man's irradiated energy, railing against Alzheimer's. [Nov 2016, p.96]

The result is a most ambitious, rewarding and soulful debut. [Nov 2016, p.86]

[Day Breaks] is arguably her masterpiece to date. [Nov 2016, p.90]

It features the Bright Eyes/Desaparecidos frontman alone with piano, harmonica and guitar, putting down songs never quite intended as an album. This sparseness means that the focus on Oberst is tight--maybe too tight. [Nov 2016, p.90]

A worthy addition to the genre. [Nov 2016, p.92]

Her characters will wander through your imagination for days after the record's stopped spinning. [Nov 2016, p.86]

Sirens proffers another string to his bow, its nine skittering essays overlaying richly textured, genre-melding electronic sound worlds with liminal song "structures." [Nov 2016, p.81]

It's one of the most thrilling rocksteady albums to have been made since the genre emerged in the late '60s. [Nov 2016, p.89]

[For Bteer, Or Worse] maintains the same innate love of his subject and feeling of bonhomie. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Peaks early with the opening title track. [Nov 2016, p.96]

This feels like Hiss Golden Messenger's overdue breakthrough album. [Nov 2016, p.89]

Gong carry on with positive absurdist elevation via psychedelic jazz rock. [Oct 2016, p.100]

For every shallow, Banks stirs up a hidden depth. [Nov 2016, p.90]

It benefits from producer Jim Sclavunos's emphasis on a place-you-in-the-room live approach, bringing the dark to labelmates Temples' light, as Heavenly's neo-psych vanguard marches onwards. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Reflective but brimming with aching melody. [Nov 2016, p.88]

Cohen joined by bass, pedal steel, brushed drums, recorder, flute and violin. This, if anything, has made her songs stranger still, breathing life into the ghostly riddles of cold watchmen and voices from the forest and releasing them out into the corporal world. [Nov 2016, p.91]

It's easily their best work. [Nov 2016, p.94]

Hard blues, soul and R&B take a back seat to pop tunes with a elegant turn. [Oct 2016, p.92]

Armstrong continues to lean on lyrical phases that sound clever but don't say much. Still, the album includes several strong character sketches. [Nov 2016, p.88]

On Requiem, they invert proportions, taking a variety of folk and world sounds as base ingredients and embellishing those with rock noise. Whether that's a more intriguing approach depends on if you prefer relentless musical phrases delivered on pan flute or distorted guitar. [Nov 2016, p.91]

If not every experiment works, Brown's twinkling hook-up with Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt on Really Doe totally surpasses its billing. [Nov 2016, p.89]

Skeleton Tree is an extraordinary piece of work, one that might impact upon you profoundly if you choose to bed-down in its dark corridors of hurt. [Nov 2016, p.84]

Courageous, wilful, fractured and something of a triumph, 22, A Million will move you, though you may struggle to explain how, or why. [Nov 2016, p.87]

She still meanders between electronic-infused pop, Eastern-tinged R&B and AOR balladry, but crisp production and Spektor's pliant, atypically measured vocals keep things focused. [Nov 2016, p.89]

The understated widescreen desolation of their eponymous second album marked a breakthrough for Warpaint, their artfully washed-out funk-punk making more sense than ever. The follow-up, Heads Up balances that downbeat vibe with more upbeat, poppy elements, creating a tension that's electric. [Nov 2016, p.91]

[A] blissful orchestral new age soundscapes, to suggest lapping waves on late summer beaches with just the occasional cloud of gloomy dissonance to add to that authentic 2016 holiday experience. [Nov 2016, p.91]

This is a protest album and a damn good one. [Nov 2016, p.93]

The pleasantly chaotic backdrop is heavy on analogue synths and vintage space echo, and though far from the reggae idiom, Perry is at home warbling his curses and magic spells in multi-tracked triplicate. [Nov 2016, p.93]

The album features psychedelic guitar, heavy percussion, priests, deep gumbo and the main man's peerless drumming. [Nov 2016, p.93]

Intriguing melodies, immersive arrangements and a haunting choral climax. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Warm, understated third LP. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Nuanced lyrics and striking melodies. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Not even the most Boss-eyed would claim the world needs another Springsteen Best-of, mostly comprising songs available elsewhere and built around a clutch of repeat offenders. Yet Freehold, NJ's famous son is barely recognisible on Chapter And Verse's first five track. [Nov 2016, p.104]

All its [The Gouster] tracks have been released before, though it's interesting to hear them in their original sequence. And the most obscure songs certainly merit more exposure. [Nov 2016, p.104]

There are points of similarity here with Kraftwerk, particularly on Clockwork, the electro and house styles of '8-s Cabaret Voltaire, the pumping bears if Front 242, and also the percolating sequencers of Favtory Floor. [Oct 2016, p.99]

Brought To Book starts off as a classic Hammill Piano ballad, but like many songs here it goes through metric convolutions while still keeping its melodic coherence, crashing through the hedges of its own maze to get from A and B. [Oct 2016, p.97]

Rosenberg's gently-rendered songs too often rely on stock images. [Oct 2016, p.96]

The French singer renders smoky blues. [Oct 2016, p.100]

It's testament to his long-time dedication to the drone dirge and dark pop sweetness of the VU, JAMC ect. that it all fits seamlessly. [Oct 2016, p.100]

What makes The Complete BBC Sessions so compelling is that it's mostly work-in-process, and Zeppelin veer played a song the same way twice. [Oct 2016, p.107]

A palpably open and free atmosphere underscores these songs, on which the same exotic and dexterous musical arrangements Rostam honed with his old band allow Leithauser's sandpaper Sinatra to truly swing. true dream team. [Oct 2016, p.96]

Nothing nosebleedy in its warm, evocative patchwork. [Oct 2016, p.100]

He likes to throw an occasional hot coal into your lap, such as The Pugilist’s angry strings, and Comfortable Love’s rock torrent, somewhat Jeff Buckley-esque. Yet the naked, tearful Alright and Good Lust cut the deepest, when time seems to stand still in the face of Keaton’s suffering.

[Michael Christmas's] relentlessly goofy and incredulous tales about everyday absurdities crown an unconventional marriage made in alt-rap heaven. [Oct 2016, p.97]

A colourful, catchy and quietly impassioned record. [Oct 2016, p.90]

The presence of four hired songwriters dilutes the duo's offbeat DNA. [Oct 2016, p.96]

Ultimately, Future Echoes is a dark pop album, as joyful as it is unexpected. [Oct 2016, p.95]

Dense and dark as always, but with new light seeping through the undergrowth, Unseen is The Handsome Family's masterpiece. [Sep 2016, p.95]

While focus isn't really his thing, when Presley and his minimal combo cohere, they're scratchily persuasive. [Oct 2016, p.97]