Brisbane trio navigates teen psychodramas with the sort of wry reportage that makes Courtney Barnett such a charming indie narrator. [May 2016, p.96]

Western and Middle Eastern influences collide in a glitchy and rhythmically experimental union. [May 2016, p.96]

Mogwai [parlays] the hoary quiet/loud arrangement dialectic into a thing of immersive, undeniably affecting potency. [May 2016, p.89]

Their first album in seven years is a guns-blazing reinforcement of classic tropes, powered by young 'un Daxx. [May 2016, p.88]

It's a mix of acoustic and occasionally stodgy soft rock with a message of peace and positivity to all men and women. [May 2016, p.88]

An enjoyably hook-filled, pulse-quickening dab of squidgy yet soulful colour. [May 2016, p.96]

Their fourth album largely abandons any subtlety in favour of a scattergun art racket. [May 2016, p.91]

[Azel] finds him maturing rapidly. [May 2016, p.93]

The interplay between Stephen McBean's laconic drawl and Amber Webber's gothic-tinged wail remains their secret weapon, lending a lean bite to this hefty psychedelic behemoth. [May 2016, p.93]

All through this listenable, though frankly inconsequential album, PSB are stuck on a sound: it's that booming release of early '90s dance, filtered through a bit of early-noughties terpsichorean quiet-loud sonic sexiness. [May 2016, p.86]

Though some things remain reassuringly the same--the glitzy, moody, twangy, cinematic '60s Euro-pop feel--as if time hasn't passed, there's also a strong sense of Turner and Kane having grown as people. [May 2016, p.86]

The album's blend of '70s Euro-flick iciness, shag-pile funk and dark lyricism make for an intriguing and sophisticated treat. [May 2016, p.86]

Played loud, and listened to intently, it's the Bonnie Prince's most vital new release in more than a decade. [May 2016, p.88]

Its loose theme is authority: on Curfew and Battery, beats hit like police baton rounds, sirens wail and every chord feels significant. [May 2016, p.91]

Sadly, there's a few too many tunes like (Girl We Got A) Good Thing--the sort of throwaway preppy drivel critics of Weezer think they sound like all the time--for this to sit alongside the band's classic work. [May 2016, p.90]

Potential is a ripe showcase of Hinton's gift for alchemising base source material from unknowns such as London's MC SdotStar and Jamaica's Naturaliss into truly transformative dance pop. [May 2016, p.90]

Blues Of Depression picks up from where that album [2014's Different Shades Of Blue] left off, allowing the fretboard wizard to demonstrate that he can write good tunes as well as produce a seemingly endless supply of molten solos. [May 2016, p.92]

Songs with fuller backing reveal much melodic moxie. [May 2016, p.96]

The live album of the film of his 2014 Scottish road trip reveals Moffat's irreverent take on his nation's folk songs. [May 2016, p.96]

Her gift for unearthing colourful material and then delivering it with both swagger and soul is compelling. [Mar 2016, p.99]

Following the creative upswing of 2012's Silver Age and 2014's Beauty & Ruin, this is definitive work. [Apr 2016, p.87]

From thrilling and ecstatic to confounding and even infuriating-- Bailing Man's A Day Such As This, and David Thomas's vocal freakery throughout, is all of these--post-punk Ubu is one of a kind. [Apr 2016, p.104]

Their musicianship--flamboyant but never self-indulgent, focused always on the groove--and their sticky-fingered songwriting charm throughout. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Self-produced and tracked with manifest passion and finesse. [Apr 2016, p.94]

Everything feels tactile rather than crowded. [Apr 2016, p.92]

Capturing the duo's perfect balance of fan with technician, it plumbs indie music's past, inhabiting the same sonic atmospheres as the JAMC, MBV and Joy Division, but is executed with expert ability. [Apr 2016, p.90]

Production is dense, grainy and atmospheric, with Corby's layered vocals to the fore. [Apr 2016, p.94]

Few albums meld frank postcards from the psyche with such poppy directness. [Apr 2016, p.93]

Post Pop Depression is every bit as startling, both in sound, and end-of-days openness. [Apr 2016, p.86]

These 10 acoustic pieces hold a certain stillness within the variety of tempos, instruments and inspirations. [Apr 2016, p.89]

A mostly instrumental set of spiralling guitars and scalp-prickling grooves. [Apr 2016, p.96]

It reaffirms Kano's position as a consummate grime all-rounder. [Apr 2016, p.86]

Treetop Flyers have not exactly reinvented the wheel but certainly given the tyres a good kicking and come up with all kinds of right. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Worth a listen, but not game-changing. [Apr 2016, p.103]

The short length and minimal production means Untitled Unmastered occasionally lacks the dynamics of Lamar’s previous work, but it remains an enthralling postscript to his masterpiece.

Encouraged by the hazy presence of co-producer Jim James, few traces remain of his previous wood-chopping ruggedness, the singer holing up with a saucerful of secrets for Homecoming, or raising inertia to an art-form on Another Day’s time-lapse blur.

The result are suitably soothing. [Mar 2016, p.95]

The spaciousness foregrounds the band's relentless pulse and frontman Timo Kaukolampi's incantations. [Apr 2016, p.93]

A gentle record that is astonishingly timely from a political perspective. [Apr 2016, p.93]

Their debut album triumphs, thanks to how well those constituent parts complement each other. [Apr 2016, p.91]

Like families, it's appealingly chaotic. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Damaged souls taking bitter stock of what they've become. It's all here in this raw, reflective clutch, with the taste of midlife crisis on its tongue. [Apr 2016, p.92]

Johnson recorded 30 songs between 1927 and 1930, and 11 are covered here by a curious, though often great, selection of artists. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Insanely ambitious, or just insane; you decide. [Apr 2016, p.90]

It's elemental Underworld, and their most generous work in years. [Apr 2016, p.86]

Its 17 yearning, numinous essays, with lyrics that are part road trip, part inward odyssey, inhabiting a liminal, sepia-tinted sound world. [Apr 2016, p.88]

Colour Theory showcases a more lavish, studio-based approach. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Girl At The End Of The World lacks the hooky brilliance to be James' best, but it's a Top 3 contender. [Apr 2016, p.90]

Heavier, weirder and bleaker than anything they've released, Distance Inbetween is weighty but never hard work. [Apr 2016, p.84]

Lynn still sounds full of the life-force; more engaged and effervescent than many stars half her age. [Apr 2016, p.88]

There's a pleasing, ad hoc nature to these loose-limbed grooves. [Mar 2016, p.97]

The overriding feeling, though, is that you want to give them a good shake, maybe get them a it drunk, try to liven them up. [Apr 2016, p.91]

Sturdy, rousing, crank-it-up Rock'n'roll that's sometimes more punk, sometimes more country. [Feb 2016, p.93]

Multi-artist tributes are typically patchy by nature, but George Fest really works. [Apr 2016, p.86]

Throughout the album's crisp 10-track sequence, this reconfigured band are clearly once again enjoying the fruits of the unfathomable confluence of life and art. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Painkillers suggests their frontman really was holding his best songs back. [Apr 2016, p.88]

By shedding some of their rock'n'roll excess, though, it feels as if Primal Scream finally have some idea of what they want to be when they grow up. [Apr 2016, p.90]

All told, less might have been more. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Closer listening finds thin-voiced New Yorker Andrew Wyatt undercutting the Swedish Britney Spears producers' sleek earworms with sing-along melancholy. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Ward opens More Rain with the sound of a deluge outside before going on to ponder the vast gulf between the American Dream and its less glamorous reality, but the final glitterbeat stomp of I'm Going Higher he finishes with the sun on his face. [Apr 2016, p.94]

He has an honesty, knows how to caress a good song, and phrases knowingly. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Bar the grating closer, it's their most beautiful yet. [Apr 2016, p.89]

Ambitious but muddled, throughout they veer from awful to the gently compelling. [Apr 2016, p.86]

There's no manifesto here, only an exploration of identity, just as Letissier searches for her place in this decade's pantheon of fabulous poly-musical femmes. [Apr 2016, p.92]

With Telegram's Krautrock, psychedelic Pink Floyd and glam rock influences, it packs a remarkable punch. [Apr 2016, p.91]

[The Ridge] finds the Montrealer's signature esoteric bow-work allied to song structures that err, at least vaguely, toward the orthodox. [Apr 2016, p.93]

It's confusing, with flaky endings and mood swings, and an utterly compelling mix of not caring at all and desperately caring. [Apr 2016, p.87]

Wintry, ethereal and strangely bewitching, it feels both ancient and modern, rooted in the raw Appalachian landscape of Leigh's childhood and the contemporary language of confessional memoir. [Apr 2016, p.91]

Imbued with harmonies, melody and some hard-edged dynamics that draw on Led Zeppelin, this is what the pastoral Pink Floyd of 1971 might have done next. [Apr 2016, p.91]

Ne So is a thing of delicacy, it's a silky, immersive grooves and intertwined guitars weaving a subtly seductive canvas against which Traore's smoky vocals, often couched in close harmonies, waft. [Apr 2016, p.92]

Anthrax's energised take, though hardly original, remains forceful and persuasive with each member still delivering with the strength of 10 men. [Apr 2016, p.94]

London's Yuck offer scrubbed-up take on the FX-drenched guitar pop of Pavement or MBV. [Apr 2016, p.96]

There's a dark, delicious humour and true heartbreak in the NY trio's frank yet delicate confessionals. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Albanese's piano plus synths and cello soundtrack near-darkness in pensive, drifting instrumentals. [Apr 2016, p.96]

Emmy's most effective tool is a sense of place, and her journey from experience to the finished work, saturated in detail, is often a lot darker than her measured delivery suggests. [Mar 2016, p.94]

A succession of sprawling mini-epics--throbbing with energy, insidious basslines and pulsing chords--prevail. [Mar 2016, p.95]

For a rapper who has excelled in redefining the artform, The Life Of Pablo is a sprawling, uneven and curiously unfinished sounding affair with a dearth of recognisable bangers. Much less than the sum of its parts when stacked against the grandiloquent orchestral sweep of 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or pared-back abrasive aural sculpture of predecessor Yeezus, it suggests West is merely human after all.

The quality dips and pitches, occasionally stuck at third on the bill at the Bill And Gate. There are tiny revelations too. [Mar 2016, p.104]

A potent debut that juxtaposes pastoral lyricism with urban angst. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Capable, often catchy, but the Shaker fail to truly stir. [Mar 2016, p.100]

Feed The Fire takes Lana Del Rey to a spacey summit meeting with Lee Hazlewood of Summer Wine after a conference call with Sweden's own Concretes. [Mar 2016, p.99]

Their emotional post-club grooves are the real star. [Mar 2016, p.95]

On his third solo album, Steve Mason veers dangerously close to that overfarmed damaged-earnest-sensitive-bloke territory, but luckily he doesn't seem capable of schmaltz or emotional cheap-shots. [Mar 2016, p.95]

Again, the result is terrific with Hunter, band and producer in perfect harmony. [Mar 2016, p.92]

A solo debut with am encyclopaedic range. [Mar 2016, p.96]

Inventive, swinging, dud-free and very musical: terrific entertainment by any standards. [Mar 2016, p.94]

Lovers of their earlier electro-cumbia won't be disappointed, but nor will reggae fans or Garifuna aficionados. [Mar 2016, p.98]

Here he mines Suicide and Depeche Mode's sleazy synth overtures. [Mar 2016, p.100]

Emotions unemoted can work, but Good Advice feels too disciplined/stylised. [Mar 2016, p.98]

She delivers twisted, nostalgic jazz, flanked by her Spanish husband's eerie Portuguese guitar.... Lovely. [Mar 2016, p.98]

Mavis tries to stamp authority on songs written by ward's musician pals.... They're not all great though--neither the Charity Rose or Nick Cave contributions hit the spot. [Mar 2016, p.99]

More euphoric indie fits and starts from Hooray For Earth's Noel Heroux. [Mar 2016, p.100]

This repeat performance from marginally less familiar names might seem like a poor substitute for a new project. Happily, it's not. [Mar 2016, p.97]

It's an artful and lyrically dense synth-pop LP. [Mar 2016, p.96]

2012;s Rhine Gold album leant more on burbling electronica, while Grasque pushes further still, into slow R&B jams, chillwave, even George Michael when Makrigiannis uses his higher register. [Mar 2016, p.95]

Their reunion album fizzes with energy--although it retains the underlying melancholia that defined their previous work. [Mar 2016, p.95]

For all their organic methods, these Animals often come across so robotic and constricted--witness natural Selection's echoes of woozy Chicago house classic Washing machine--stripping those painstaking vocal arrangements of their humanity. [Mar 2016, p.94]

Much of the airbrushed pop-metal nous that elevated 1983's Pyromania and 1987's Hysteria back in evidence. [Feb 2016, p.92]