Its 10 redemptive songs oscillating between Americana, baroque chamber balladry and unabashed pop. [May 2015, p.98]

It's a record that benefits from a pervasive electro-melancholia induced by quaking analogue synths, dulcet arpeggios and fragile vocals, recalling fraternal, dark electro-pop mavens Disclosure. [May 2015, p.97]

The sound Of Your Laughter and The Guessing Game are Get It On-style glitter boogies; by contrast Stay Now and All That Glitters reveal a more fragile side. [May 2015, p.92]

His sixth solo offering is a surprisingly mainstream jolly. [May 2015, p.97]

A genteel album, more for mellow reflection than dancing on ceilings. [May 2015, p.93]

Dark, minatory rhythms underpin stark lyrics telling of hard times in the north of Mali. [May 2015, p.95]

It's a huge step forward on their earlier recordings. [May 2015, p.95]

A polished affair, it cannot but fail to eschew their naive early '80s glory. [May 2015, p.100]

Quietly thrilling pop noir. [May 2015, p.100]

Polished and platitude-laden but hugely effective. [May 2015, p.100]

Mostly it rocks. [May 2015, p.99]

There's a sense in almost all the songs of open roads, either beckoning or closed in, or both. [May 2015, p.99]

There was much brooding menace and acoustic industrial, and things have not developed significantly. [May 2015, p.99]

Even if purists find the whole baroque confection too much, they will have to admit there's never been a record quite like this. [May 2015, p.99]

If the album has a fault, it's in sequencing, with some of stronger moments low in the pecking order. [May 2015, p.99]

A record, which, though obviously heartfelt, never sounds unified. [May 2015, p.98]

Hinterland feels less like the spirit of the dance floor and much more like the crush of a weaponed march. [May 2015, p.98]

An album whose wider appeal reaches for powerpop nirvana. [May 2015, p.98]

The razor-wire riffs some of their best. [May 2015, p.98]

Hallelujah, melodies and lyrics are not just sensitive but sharp and witty, glittering with a dazzle reminiscent of Britpop at its deftest. [May 2015, p.96]

The whole thing carves out and inhabits a persuasively exotic world of echo that invites total immersion. [May 2015, p.97]

Sauna becomes a transitional journey of self-surrender, Elverum's soft-sung imagist perceptions slowly reaching toward a quiet, meditative transcendence. [May 2015, p.96]

Witty, tender pieces to charm even those for who wrestling means Shirley Crabtree. [May 2015, p.100]

Edge Of The Sun offers no real surprises, but it is perhaps their poppiest set yet. [May 2015, p.99]

Living Fields is no instant hit, but the twilight world you're eventually drawn into is difficult to leave. [May 2015, p.98]

If nothing here quite reaches the hook-laden heights of Outdoor Miner or Kidney Bingos, there are plenty of sunlit avant-pop uplands. [May 2015, p.97]

It's Bronxie's heart, soul and natural world-inspired epiphanies that charm most. [May 2015, p.96]

Tripp is a complicated, slow-burning wonder that matches Cerulean Salt for fuzzy, bed-headed zingers but adds several layers of regret and self doubt and is all the more rewarding for that. [May 2015, p.95]

They lurch between plaid-smothered unresolved chords and frontwoman Sadie Dupuis's verbose story-telling, delivered deadpan a la early Liz Phair. [May 2015, p.95]

Here technology is merely a vessel for a sound that remains pastoral and beguiling. Truly, a class act. [May 2015, p.95]

Their second outing makes no effort to remap their coordinates: they remain riffy, distorted, full of nocturnal energy, possessed of rollicking good tunes, but also open up a more expansive goth-rock strain on indie-radio cuts. [May 2015, p.94]

The fourth LP is blisteringly confident as the band evolves toward maturity. [May 2015, p.94]

Amid the jagged funk-offs, a synthesized steel band and the odd keyboard etude colour a strong debut. [May 2015, p.94]

Her second album doesn't up the merriment ante much. [May 2015, p.93]

East India Youth has barely tinkered with the formula for his second full-length--a good thing. [May 2015, p.93]

Tellingly, Al Jardine and David Marks return here, their harmonies shining in the gorgeously dreamy Whatever Happened. [May 2015, p.93]

It is no ragbag collection, even if several tunes are little more than snippets. [May 2015, p.92]

The album is a retroactive joy from start to finish. [May 2015, p.92]

White Men Are Black Men Too places Young Fathers firmly alongside Suede, Dizzee Rascal and Arctic Monkeys in the pantheon of those whose post-Mercury follow-ups confirm they know exactly where they're going and aren't going to let winning a modest prize distract them. [May 2015, p.88]

It's confirmation that the old boy's still got a few tricks in him. [May 2015, p.90]

A Fool To Care has scarcely a weak note. [May 2015, p.90]

What it lacks, however, is the quality of songwriting in his best best work from the '70s. [May 2015, p.90]

This Is The Sonics emits the same primal heat that's inspired successive generations of garage-dwellers, from the Cramps through Mudhoney to The White Stripes. [May 2015, p.90]

Policy is a dazzling execution of one man's crazed vision. [May 2015, p.91]

For a collection with an eye on the setting sun and the slow decline, it's a fine late flowering. [May 2015, p.91]

Less visceral than before, this one's a quintessential grower. [May 2015, p.91]

Ba Power is all about intensity, force and electricity. [May 2015, p.92]

This portrait of the artist might be a gloomy, oppressive one but it’s grimly fascinating nevertheless.

With O’Brien running the gamut from one-night-stand shelf lurker (No One To Blame) and post-coital dewy (Dawning On Me) to resentful (Hot Scary Summer) and widowed (Darling Arithmetic). It’s a risky exercise but O’Brien pulls it off thanks to his trademark musical economy.

We get tracks like Old De Spain and Driving After You, bare-bones blues whose satisfying menace echoes To Bring You My Love. In between, we're back to hillbilly hoots, jigs and Corrs-style ballads. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Musical Pop Art has seldom been as good. [Apr 2015, p.88]

Overall, it’s a robust, if somewhat exhausting, showing.

A powerful introduction to a compelling artistic presence. [Apr 2015, p.92]

The songs on All These Dreams luxuriate in their arrangements, swept along by gossamer strings, and silky backing vocals. [Apr 2015, p.92]

The overall vibe here us one of relaxation rather than tension. [Apr 2015, p.93]

Rich in sonic detail à la ’90s Outkast, ’00s Roots and present day Flying Lotus (whose fluid bassist Thundercat performs another star turn), Lamar undercuts his densely layered messages with acerbic ruminations on his newfound celebrity status that may prove polarising, but are never less than enthralling.

Bouquets from a Cloudy Sky is a fitting celebration of a band that, 50 years after the release of their debut, remain utterly unrepentant. [Mar 2015, p.107]

Tantalizing use of spare and mostly intelligible, always unsettling lyrics. [Apr 2015, p.98]

You can file the seven bonus alternative mixes under "interesting" rather than "essential," but the sheer magnificence of the rest remains undiminished. [Apr 2015, p.108]

There's a warmth to his rich, brown sugar baritone in stark contrast to the sharp shapes made by his keening, post-punk guitar. [Apr 2015, p.98]

McPherson puts authenticity over self-expression with style. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Even if consistency isn't their bag, Pond have genius at their fingertips. [Apr 2015, p.96]

The results are largely persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Joyland has a coherent feel of low slung rock'n'roll and Morricone twang. [Apr 2015, p.96]

His solo debut is packed with syntax-mangling wordplay. [Apr 2015, p.95]

The melding of the Bristolian mixmasters' complementary styles is a low-end treat. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Raw and skiffly as you'd expect. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Trad-indie may be flailing but Barat's belief is persuasive. [Apr 2015, p.92]

Finally, a grown-up album from the oldest kid at the party. [Apr 2015, p.92]

The material is faultless. [Apr 2015, p.92]

Adrift in a sun-warped dome of guitar wah, wobble and dub. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Badwan and Zeffira have done him [director Peter Strickland] proud. [Apr 2015, p.89]

The first half of this Bristol-based quartet's debut is too idolatrous, but the second plunges into deeper cavernous spaces. [Apr 2015, p.89]

More than the sum of its parts, the whole is wonderfully fresh and quite lovely. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Despite their meticulous craft, these songs don't feel like curated artefacts--they feel raw, unquiet, still moving. Vulnicura might tell an old story, but it still feels new. [Apr 2015, p.87]

This fourth album's a gas. [Apr 2015, p.86]

Both otherworldly and intensely human, it's hard to resist THEESatisfaction's singular charms. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Pleasing, odd. [Apr 2015, p.98]

It's quite a departure from their trademark psychedelia. [Apr 2015, p.98]

The current group are concentrated, powerful, more subtle than in recent times but can sound a bit tidy and foursquare. [Apr 2015, p.96]

The swell and squall lets up just once, on the transcendental In A Cloud, but it's in the moments of pure sonic abandon, like Wilding, that the group truly find themselves. [Apr 2015, p.95]

A gloriously nuanced embellishment of the band's timeless virtue. [Apr 2015, p.91]

This brittle, torrid world has little light and shade. [Apr 2015, p.89]

This is impressive, soul-bearing torch-pop, yet despite some bravura vocal performances, Almond's typically declamatory delivery at times, feels rather awkwardly appended to the airlessly slick soundscapes. [Apr 2015, p.91]

Rebel Heart is the first Madonna album for a while that's at least as much for listeners as it is for dancers. Sometimes this shines too hard a light on what she has to say. [Apr 2015, p.88]

Kaleidoscopic yet reassuringly familiar to '80s indie fans. [Apr 2015, p.98]

A personal statement that is simply too accomplished to fall into pastiche. [Apr 2015, p.96]

You're left with dual perspectives that aren't quite duets, anthems of vague disquiet, and an utterly satisfying sense of an artist following his own directs and nobody else's. [Apr 2015, p.95]

Its 11, quietly assured alt-rock growers let Ben Gibbard's appealingly detached vocals and quality-controlled lyrics do the heavy lifting. [Apr 2015, p.94]

Notwithstanding the occasional banjo and flute intrusion, in essence this remains flamboyant, '60s-tinged guitar pop, forever poised equidistant between accessibility and inscrutability. [Apr 2015, p.93]

The new wave veteran's magic touch has left his current charges' blend of plaintive pop and indie-punk edginess a tad shinier but otherwise safely intact. [Apr 2015, p.92]

It's an engaging, sometimes beautiful step forward. [Apr 2015, p.92]

Knopfler retains his latter-years Celty-folk musical tone, with that measured guitar flicking in a sun-through-misty-woods way. This doesn't make for memorably distinctive songs, but his storytelling sharpens almost every track. [Apr 2015, p.91]

There's beauty and imagination aplenty here--but maybe a slight whiff of Pseuds Corner, too. [Apr 2015, p.91]

The singer-songwriter's fifth is no less over-reaching and torrid in its back-story [as 2013's Once I Was An Eagle]. [Apr 2015, p.90]

Fantasy Empire buzzes, drills and throbs with a brutal power that is relentlessly, terrifyingly exciting. [Apr 2015, p.89]

This is one heck of a wild and beautiful ride. [Apr 2015, p.89]

Even six listens in, this record offers few easy hand-holds. [Apr 2015, p.88]