[Highly Suspect] may alarm those who recall grunge and nu metal. [Jan 2017, p.104]

[Vanishing Life] exceed the sum of their hardcore parts by adding loose, QOTSA-style hips to their riffs and even the odd synth. [Jan 2017, p.104]

After 20 years, Fuzzy Logic still hasn't stopped making sense. [Jan 2017, p.110]

Demos have emerged from 1965-66, 1968 and 1973, but these 13 are the best yet. [Jan 2017, p.110]

Gelb may be onto something and his chutzpah i laudable but, ultimately, only time decides which songs become standards. [Dec 2017, p.94]

While hats should be tipped for the sentiments expressed, with less urgency to make his point and more time spent on making it listenable the message might have stood a chance of reaching a few more ears. [Jan 2017, p.96]

Highlights are many. [Jan 2017, p.100]

The London trio founded by drummer Yussef Dayes and Keyboardist Kamaal Williams give it an urban twist , factoring grime and broken beat influences into their unpredictable improvised jams. [Jan 2017, p.99]

Live albums often disappoint but this one doesn't. [Jan 2017, p.101]

Awash in trademark snaky overdrive, heavy sustain and controlled feedback, this is a big, rich work of buzzy acid-blues melodicism, the unique sound of a guitar virtuoso sketching wild patterns for late-night journeying. [Dec 2016, p.94]

Oren Ambarchi and several of his distinguished collaborators move from cold pulsing grooves to free electronic jazz freakout in a manner most conductive to euphoria. [Jan 2017, p.97]

Technically striking, yet for all its precision sounds oddly sanitised. [Jan 2017, p.104]

He [Scott Mogan] references Phillip Glass, anti-humanist literature and aerial photos of industrial pollution. [Jan 2017, p.104]

A debut both thrillingly volatile and touchingly melancholic. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Now he only resembles himself--a distinctive and exhilarating vituperative voice celebrating anything from glam rock to beans on toast. [Jan 2017, p.102]

Dawn's Auto-Tuned vocals push it into Major Lazer territory. Yet the best moments are where restraint wins out. [Jan 2017, p.102]

The package as a whole doesn't invite repeated listens. [Jan 2017, p.102]

A mixed bag, then, but rarely short of mood-elevating. [Jan 2017, p.100]

Ultimately guided by voices, it peaks on cypher session S Bento MC5, an affectionate homage to A Tribe Called Quest's Scenario. [Jan 2017, p.99]

A sensitive, sure-footed triumph. [Jan 2017, p.99]

It's both far-out and potentially pack-leading. [Jan 2017, p.99]

An urgent if mostly meditative-sounding call-to-arms, that he brings poetic shape and power to his politics. [Jan 2017, p.98]

Gately's soft vocal melodies audible through the layers of madness, leading you to points of strange beauty and lyrical wonder. [Jan 2017, p.97]

Wainwright nevertheless manages to make the songs her own. [Jan 2017, p.96]

No Further Ahead Than Today's 10 chromium-smooth synth-pop essays are so meticulously, lavishly and mellifluously constructed that listening to them is like being dosed up with dopamine. [Jan 2017, p.96]

There's a palpable connection to their country's dread history that allows Wolf People to transcend their music's fantasy elements, whiles still being properly fantastic. [Jan 2017, p.96]

Before The Dawn is glorious and confounding--in other words, pure Kate. [Jan 2017, p.96]

Any fears that Deaner may have matured during his absence are summarily nipped in the bud by the most puerile collection of ditties since, well, Ween. [Jan 2017, p.94]

Tasseomancy's third album moves with a deceptively breezy sway. [Jan 2017, p.94]

If Perpetual Surrender had elements of woozy, chillwave, Familiar Touch is full-scale yacht-rock sophistication, with honed chorus hooks and silken arrangements rippling with precision curves. [Jan 2017, p.94]

You come away from Hamburg Demonstrations only further assured of the breadth and indestructibility of Doherty's talent. [Jan 2017, p.95]

It's disappointing that there aren't one or two more inspiring moments, especially when there's a roughly equivalent number of duds. [Jan 2017, p.92]

This album opts throughout for classy tristesse, perfect for Close To You and A House Is Not A Home, too steadily composed for Walk On By and Another Girl, both heartbroken songs behind the on-point style. [Nov 2016, p.87]

It’s not all perfect. You could rightly question whether the Q-Tip/André 3000 duet Kids… has any place on a ATCQ album. Or whether a glut of guest spots including Elton John, Jack White and Kendrick Lamar are strictly necessary. Yet ultimately it’s the original, immersive Tribe vibes that conquer all.

Woman looks set to keep the leather-clad pair trucking for the foreseeable by bridging the propulsive beats of 2007's sweeping debut with the more baroque, borderline-cheesy prog aesthetic of 2011's Audio, Video, Disco. [Dec 2016, p.89]

Though still no barrel of laughs--far from it--there is evidence of green shoots of hope here. [Dec 2016, p.91]

These are superior soundtracks for sure, but just a little low on levity. [Dec 2016, p.93]

This ace duets set builds around extant Miller vocals from vintage demos. [Nov 2016, p.96]

Intoxicated Women makes you fall in love with Gainsbourg and his women all over again. [Dec 2016, p.95]

As with its predecessors, Compulsion Songs is jammed with feedback-laden throwback journeys that still worship respectfully at the altar of Spacemen 3, The Jesus And Mary Chain and Sonic Youth. [Nov 2016, p.93]

More a set of unconnected pieces than a single, cohesive whole, while not short on individual charm it's hard not to see this as anything other than a warm-up for the main event to come. [Dec 2016, p.91]

Fans of Porcelain Raft will go nuts for the aural sigh that is Pavo Pavo. [Dec 2016, p.94]

James ford and Jas Shaw's command of synth hardware lends itself to organic songwriting. [Dec 2016, p.93]

Pyramids’ borrowing of Chuck D’s mantra “I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’” is emblematic of his still-abrasive mood, whether dissecting the prison system’s failures on A Bigger Picture Called Free or unleashing his most heartfelt rallying cry on the thrilling Robert Glasper-produced, Stevie Wonder-starring title track.

This stripped-back retro-retread is in danger of playing to the opposite of their strengths. [Dec 2016, p.88]

A strange, haunted phantasmagoria that explores atmospheres and moods more suited to the score of an art film than to a rock album--despite the gratuitous use of grungey guitar noises and distortion. [Dec 2016, p.94]

Onstage his confidence was sky-high, his command total, much as it was in the studio. [Dec 2016, p.105]

Heading South On The Great North Road drags, and Pretty Young Soldier, a tale of gender confusion in the military, is slightly laboured. However, most of 57th and 9th has a youthful energy suggesting that Sting hasn't faded yet. [Dec 2016, p.90]

There's a distinctly Mitteleuropa aura to her enigmatic Nico-like vocals. [Nov 2016, p.96]

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]