[A] terrific LP, which depicts a sickness at the heart of America with a confident swagger and righteous anger.

Plangent retro charm. [Jul 2015, p.89]

[An] unexpected and trenchantly singular statement. [Jul 2015, p.86]

The lovely Jaakko Eino Kalevi, the most coherent album so far from the former Helsinki tram driver, is a gem.

Winsome, pastoral electronic vignettes that loop and swoop. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Things can get twee--but this feels like a tiny church in that forest, sacred and touching. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Coming Home has a timeless quality. [Jul 2015, p.87]

There's enough bittersweet emotion to ensure his own personality seeps through. [Jul 2015, p.96]

This highly accomplished album also finds her writing and singing in other registers. [Jul 2015, p.90]

An over proliferation of fluffy beats and soaring strings may have you hankering for something tougher. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Pleasing, but lacking his early melodic strength. [Jul 2015, p.96]

Get To Heaven feels both like a band at the peak of their powers and self-consciously dialing everything up to 11 before things go up in flames. [Jul 2015, p.90]

Ultimately proves hard to get a handle on. [Jul 2015, p.96]

Its icky love songs sadly have no beating heart, and very little soul. [Jul 2015, p.93]

Fans of pre-grunge American alt-rock come on in. [Jul 2015, p.96]

This guileless, wistfully romantic harmony pop suits them much better. [Jul 2015, p.96]

Pretty road ruminations. [Jul 2015, p.96]

Her songs are full of girl group feistiness. But not all of them. [Jul 2015, p.94]

The vibe is six herberts sinking the sherbets inviting you over for banter, yarns, setting the world to rights and all of the fun of rhyme, rhythm, blues and country-rock back in the day. [Jul 2015, p.94]

Tracks that will keep you waiting forever for the drop still have a corporeal appeal. [Jul 2015, p.94]

Rhythmically dense is the result. [Jul 2015, p.93]

This is killer stuff, with Randolph providing a supply of unbelievable sacred steel licks. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Canny, foundation-shaking urban pop. [Jun 2015, p.91]

You can't accuse Powers of resting on his laurels--although it's at the expense of some of that first record's unique character. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Loyalty retains the humble immediacy of its predecessors. [Jul 2015, p.90]

Listen too close to the lyrics and you'll often detect a dispiritingly autopilot misanthropy.... Lose yourself in the music, though, and Cherry Bomb reveals a fevered charm. [Jul 2015, p.89]

The results here are extraordinary. [Jul 2015, p.88]

It's the sound of a band at the absolute peak if its powers. [Jul 2015, p.100]

This mini-LP ladles grooves on PDS's stripped post-punk. [Jul 2015, p.96]

The dreamy riffs swirl amid powerful songwriting smarts, and melodic hooks abound. [Jul 2015, p.96]

This is less organic, more brittle, and electronic than before and begs to be opened out in a live setting. [Jul 2015, p.93]

This is a radical musical departure, certainly, but one that affirms the assured versatility of a singer/songwriter whose talent knows no boundaries. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Sumptuous, but still challenging. [Jul 2015, p.92]

There's nothing here to match their gonzo 2003 hit I Believe In A Thing Called Love.... But there's still laugh-out silliness. [Jul 2015, p.92]

Some of Herbert's most engaging work since 2001's Bodily Functions. [Jul 2015, p.91]

More confident that last year's transitional Drop, this new line-up's second album together finds Nick Murray's drumming busy and complex, but thrillingly so, lending sophistication to the band;s trademark trash-psych. [Jul 2015, p.91]

The 6ft 5in, broad-shouldered Gibson finally sounds the part. [Jul 2015, p.90]

Beneath The Skin becomes a cautionary take if how going for "affecting" can end up just terribly overwrought. [Jul 2015, p.90]

There's enhanced pop acumen and elemental shivers too, so maybe make that the new Lykke Li. [Jul 2015, p.89]

Get past the geriatric sniggering of It's All Going To Pot, here's a beautiful album of covers and new material. [Jul 2015, p.89]

Black Age Blues is satisfyingly solid and reassuringly familiar a comeback as you'd expect. [Jul 2015, p.89]

On over half of the songs, the marriage works.... But the titles and the lyrical obsessions are generally those of the Sparks oeuvre. [Jul 2015, p.89]

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is more lyrically direct and honest, even if the lure of The Big Music remains strong for Welch. [Jul 2015, p.87]

The grown-up Ash remain every bit as irresistible as the pop-punk pups. [Jul 2015, p.87]

A forward-looking treat. [Jul 2015, p.87]

There's a playful quality to the chunky adrenalin-soaked fuzz the duo create. [Jul 2015, p.86]

In Colour really comes into its own when Jamie xx gets abstract and confounding; where his ability to conjure something wonderful from mosaic, non-linear paths is most evident. [Jul 2015, p.84]

An album that plays too safe in its thirst for hits. [Jul 2015, p.110]

Duffy's devotional regard toward his own aesthetic rapture is sometimes cloying, but these are also beautifully mellifluous and impressively composed recordings. [Jun 2015, p.91]

Motorcade Amnesiacs feels stifling, overbearing, all too wrapped up in its own perceived cleverness for the listener to really warm to. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Although there is much that's familiar to Jem, Carroll and Delap bring it all together with a self-confidence that swiftly envelopes. [Jun 2015, p.91]

Fatima's Hand is like the titular middle eastern amulet, a thing of intricate protective beauty. [May 2015, p.97]

Despite the extended sabbatical, Leftfield’s muscular, invigorating presence remains undimmed.

If there are few lyrical miracles in these scattershot songs obsessed with sex, drugs and shopping, in this intuitive stylist’s mouth the words themselves are often beside the point.

Once more, Daptone has come up trumps; this is solid gold soul. [Jun 2015, p.90]

Much of the material is standard heavy fare, based around familiar riffs and embellished with solos that blaze momentarily. [Jun 2015, p.89]

Lulu sounds as vital and feisty as ever. [May 2015, p.93]

The most rounded and effervescent of the three [albums]. [May 2015, p.97]

At 12 years' distance, these Papists sound anything but straightforward, ably navigating a compositional logic every bit as nutty as Debaser or Cactus, just with the sonic derangement notched down, and the odd deft pedal-steel lick chipped in. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Golds is rich with wry psych-pop nuggetry of a kindred humour to Robyn Hitchcock. [Jun 2015, p.92]

This is music of compelling intensity. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Who Is The Sender? is effectively a set of moving, funeral-paced closing tracks addressing familiar themes--political disillusionment, morality and spiritual wonder. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Overall the feel is sparse and desolate. [Jun 2015, p.89]

On In Circles, with its plangent, Yan Tiersen-style piano, something wonderful happens--a feeling of limitlessness opening up. [Jun 2015, p.89]

Among many highlights, the best and brightest is the Guided By Voices-do-Status Quo elation of Box Batteries, an elegy for youth designed to live forever. [Jun 2015, p.88]

It's the brooding dancefloor ordnance which marks Hairless Toys as a career highlight. [Jun 2015, p.88]

The Birthday Party-esque clamour of Spit You Out further shows what Metz are capable of when they ease off the accelerator. [Jun 2015, p.87]

Constant Bop is even more eclectic [than White Denim's music]. [Jun 2015, p.87]

There isn't quite as much gleeful taboo-baiting on this second set, as they dig further and harder into the absurdity of being a young woman in America, and still make it catchy and fun as well as angry and melancholy. [Jun 2015, p.93]

The only drawback is that 16 tracks and 55 minutes feel too long for a set of minimalist adventures. [Jun 2015, p.91]

Even while eschewing the much-loved spacey dub demo interludes of earlier releases for a kind of metaphysical hard rock, all but one of these tracks are worthy additions to a now capacious legacy. [Jun 2015, p.90]

While containing only new songs, feels like a greatest hits and as such is a perfect entry point for Giant Sand neophytes. [Jun 2015, p.90]

There's little obvious mind expansion in these long-haired ruminations on modern living, but Rose Windows still have the power to lift listeners far out of the everyday. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Death And Vanilla lack only a little warmth to make submersion in their pre-digital pool irresistible. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Wildly uneven, sporadically awesome. [Jun 2015, p.92]

It's mighty good. [Jun 2015, p.93]

Kala is where the album explodes into life. [Jun 2015, p.93]

This album is brazenly in hock to the shoulder pad decade. Its telegraphed choruses will not be denied. [Jun 2015, p.88]

Welcome Back To Milk is a powerful outpouring, but what lingers are the pauses for reflection. [Jun 2015, p.87]

The logical progression for a band who know exactly what they are doing. [Jun 2015, p.87]

Though mostly a one-man affair, he covers a lot of ground across the album's 11 tracks. [Jun 2015, p.86]

Much of the rest is background music of a high standard and, although shorn of imagery and narrative, has an existential heaviness Camus would appreciate. [Jun 2015, p.86]

California Nights comes over like a dreamier take on Hole's Celebrity Skin or a souped-up. digitally-produced Go-Go's. [Jun 2015, p.86]

Far from electrifying. [Jun 2015, p.86]

Even amid its fluffy ornamentation, producer Tucker Martine spikes the players' innately epic capabilities with a puritan elixir. The rewards are considerable. [Jun 2015, p.84]

[A] dazzling modern dance album. [Jun 2015, p.94]

Sol Invictus scratches a creative itch created by the band's Second Coming Tour, and reasserts that they will not be second-guessed or pigeonholed. [Jun 2015, p.94]

This is his first tentative experimentation with some big band backing. [Jun 2015, p.96]

This successor has some Morricone moments, but is comparatively wan and blandly moderne. [Jun 2015, p.96]

Pulsing with youthful rebellion, PV sound wildly bacchanalian. [Jun 2015, p.96]

An engaging, yet still hip-swinging trip. [Jun 2015, p.96]

Their second album is a bittersweet indie-punk chaser. [Jun 2015, p.96]

A dense dream dialogue. [Jun 2015, p.96]

The Cree folkie in fine bellicose form at 74. [Jun 2015, p.96]

Super-barbed, electro-pub rock. [Jun 2015, p.96]

A modestly sized, nine-track snapshot of the singer in a more appealingly inward phase.

Cohen’s sound checks, as lengthy as the shows, where he’d experiment with old songs and try out new ones, were celebrated by insiders, and the three examples here are among the highlights: a remarkable Field Commander Cohen, like a four-and-a-half-minute operetta; a cover of George Jones’ Choices (gorgeous fiddle); and a new Cohen original, up-tempo blues Got A Little Secret.

There’s joyous invention at work here, along with nagging hooks which bury themselves deeper with every play.