It's a more than worthy companion piece, with an unfinished, scrapbook feel that's far from unbecoming. [Sep 2014, p.94]

Restrained but emotionally compelling songs. [Sep 2014, p.93]

Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen pack a pummeling version of cultural vacancy, though they're a tad predictable. [Sep 2014, p.93]

While her David Lynch qualities remain, there's also something of the masochistic Lars Von Trier heroine in the resigned drowse of these songs. [Sep 2014, p.92]

There remains a mood off unease here, as if these transportive pop chants were also magic spells designed to awaken something ancient and terrible. [Sep 2014, p.90]

They are scarcely comparable to the original band versions with electric guitar blazing and in some cases Linda Thompson singing; but there's a certain magic in hearing these classics in such intimate form. [Sep 2014, p.88]

EX is a contemporary masterpiece. [Sep 2014, p.88]

Produced with Dave Fridmann and Joe Chiccarelli, the album benefits from the former's spacey soundscapes and the latter's commercial sensibility. [Sep 2014, p.96]

I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss is simply a remarkable collection of well-made songs. [Sep 2014, p.94]

It moves musical mountains with joyous funk, ecstatic hand-clappers, and fine redemption blues. [Sep 2014, p.95]

Charming and cherishable. [Sep 2014, p.94]

Gist Is feels like an urgent conversation,a record driven by compulsion; fortunately, tuning in to its internal dialogue is a pleasure. [Sep 2014, p.93]

LP1 is a hugely self-possessed debut, the work of an artist whose vision--not only her visual sense--is strong. [Sep 2014, p.89]

Get Hurt proves the balance between The Gaslight Anthem's Springsteenesque heroism and their punk fire is key to keeping them from tumbling into the trite. [Sep 2014, p.88]

In all, a deep treat almost on a par with Common's mid-'90s prime. [Sep 2014, p.88]

At its best, a healthily camp, good-spirited fusion on Abba and Blondie. [Sep 2014, p.98]

Alias perhaps lacks a truly killer song, a lightning rod to draw newbies in. [Sep 2014, p.94]

The concept here by Mac and co-producer/trombonist Sarah Morrow is terrific. [Sep 2014, p.88]

Musik, Die Schwer Zu Twerk's 30 minutes stand on their own despite nods to Flaming Lips' darker side and Linear Downfall's fascination with early King Crimson. [Sep 2014, p.91]

Dan and his cohorts craft an especially intimate and understated kind of English-born Americana that could easily hold its own in any late night session with the likes of Bill Callahan, Will Sheff or Tim Rutili. [Sep 2014, p.90]

Booker's unique sound is a taste worth acquiring. [Sep 2014, p.91]

This record [is] near the top of the band's bejewelled catalogue. [Sep 2014, p.92]

This is the sound of a big new beginning. [Sep 2014, p.92]

J's mature-era peak continues. [Sep 2014, p.90]

The album has a clear, organic sound. [Sep 2014, p.90]

Those attuned to the harsh aspects of existence, who despair at the forces shaping the world, won't find any answers as such, but Angels & Devils' blend of fever dreams and corporeal nightmare articulates the confusion beautifully and brutally. [Sep 2014, p.86]

With musical modes brilliantly elevated by his occasional producer David Mansfield, Wainwright nails the exigencies of old age through the medium of rockabilly, the quest for parking spaces in Manhattan via cabaret klezmer, and the gloating joys of i-ding a faithless girlfriend dead in a deep freeze with cheery Vaudeville sing0along. [Aug 2014, p.90]

Brace yourself. This album is more clinging than quicksand, it is uncompromising, transcendent voodoo. [Sep 2014, p.92]

Knitting it all together, Lustman pens some melodic vignettes of considerable beauty. [Aug 2014, p.91]

Fade-outs on six of the songs suggest a studio-jam approach that works well, but some of the best tracks are the ones that shirk blues idioms. [Aug 2014, p.90]

Hypnotic Eye mostly returns to their earliest days of razor-edged guitars and garage rock.... The listless You Get Me High and Burnt Out Town's clunky blues may let the side down, but it feels good to finally have the real Heartbreakers back. [Aug 2014, p.94]

The hefty production complements a moody selection of songs about bullying, Italian Soccer and1960s London. [Jul 2014, p.93]

Deftly delivered and heartfelt, a career high. [Jul 2014, p.95]

The feel is antique and wearily repetitive. Only the sexed up Wicked Way and the deft and tender Little Pixie, about her baby daughter, offer any light and shade. [Jul 2014, p.92]

Dinosaur Jr, Screaming Trees and GBV overlap on this Venn diagram of melodic powerpop. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Blue-eyed soul with a gritty bite. [Jul 2014, p.96]

[Miles Whittaker and Andy Stott] summon Northern Industrial music's ancient frequencies to produce a dense hypogeal noise. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Intelligent, pan-generation pop you won't mind taking your teenager to the O2 to see. [Jul 2014, p.96]

The most maligned period of his career, the 80s still served up the odd Dylan gem and 17 are re-ignited here. [Jul 2014, p.96]

A little loosening up might help those serotonin levels. [Jul 2014, p.96]

The overall effect is more organic and rock. [Jul 2014, p.94]

An album of alluring dignity and depth. [Jul 2014, p.93]

Wonderful. [Jul 2014, p.93]

File next to the Super Furries' Mwng as a landmark album for Welsh-language pop. [Jul 2014, p.93]

Punchy, seductive, surreal. [Jul 2014, p.92]

Love Frequency feels overly polished and not entirely convincing. [Jul 2014, p.91]

It sags a little mid-show, during the numerous elongated versions of 45:33, but epic, celebratory readings of Losing My Edge and Yeah (Crass Version) are not to be missed. [Jul 2014, p.90]

As the plot inexorably winds on to its tense denouement, the depth of tempest's storytelling ensures the album yields more with each further play. [Jul 2014, p.88]

This is Toumani's best work since 200o8's The Mande Variations. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Inventions contains enough streamlined electronic uplift to force your emotions into an altered state of ecstatic euphoria. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Despite its experimental provenance, Wysing Forest is a cohesive, multi-layered collection. [Jul 2014, p.87]

Heartstrings is a succinct outing that charms. [Jul 2014, p.86]

The songs effortlessly stand alone. [Jul 2014, p.86]

If the band's 2012 debut for the label, 119, attracted a certain amount of criticism from early-day fans due to its diversity, then No Peace is a more cohesive record. [Jul 2014, p.86]

Sometimes, the abiding mood is one of grand interstellar drift, an ancient exhausted spaceship cruising through deep space, leaving rippling waves of a strange blank intensity in its wake. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Sound Mirror is far more than an exercise of indulgence. [Jul 2014, p.94]

What makes everything tick is Berman's plausibly gooey hooks, matched by guitars sparkling like diamante--just the ticket for shiny, happy people. [Jul 2014, p.95]

The FB's ragged, slip-sliding DNA is too irreverent to make them true inheritors of The Band's mantle, and that hasn't changed. Neither has the way they're one minute bursting with exuberance and the next resembling a burst tyre. [Jul 2014, p.93]

Luck is more satisfying than Leisure Seizure, but it's still not throwing sixes all the way. [Jul 2014, p.90]

Not quite essential, unfortunately, and you might even long for a bit more shredding. [Jul 2014, p.90]

The resulting arrangements are masterful affairs that frame LaMontagne's material with great taste and flair. [Jul 2014, p.90]

Heal's molten flow of grandiloquent '70s rock and '80s electronica is unstoppable. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Initial listens may suggest contrived incongruity. Further spins reveal the affectionate smarts behind these acts of desecration. [Jul 2014, p.87]

Familiar BJM territory perhaps, but they still inhabit a different, more enticing cosmos to their peers. [Jul 2014, p.87]

This is a resolutely up record, for the most part. [Jul 2014, p.92]

The Soderbergs seize the day. [Jul 2014, p.91]

The songs are rigorously infectious. [Jul 2014, p.96]

More non-threatening folk-pop. [Jul 2014, p.96]

An album of rich, intricate grooves that use house and techno merely as a jump-off point. [Jul 2014, p.94]

This will thrill those who believe Pavement's best album was their first. [Jul 2014, p.86]

At root, it's a heart-warming little curio. [Jul 2014, p.86]

It's an intriguing new incarnation for Bauer: Om and pop. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Celebrating both Big Bill and the Alvins' shared boyhood, this genial collaboration throws a warm light on both. [Jul 2014, p.89]

[A] slower tempii dominate the first half of Emma Jean, leaving the lapel-grabbing soul struts until the second half of the record. [Jul 2014, p.89]

Tobin's songs offer a more lucid warmth. [Jul 2014, p.96]

The soundtrack to blissful bucolic afternoons threatened by the black clouds of the coming apocalypse. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Glass Boys' legacy will likely be the Fucked Up record fans praise for its songs, rather than the risk-taking. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Throughout, a world weariness and wisdom far beyond John Fullbright's 25 years. [Jul 2014, p.93]

There's always a soulful undercurrent to James's work, exemplified by album's deliciously dream title cut. [Jul 2014, p.92]

Krell sounds like ha has taken a step back, seemingly trading his experimentalism for a more traditional blue-eyed soul route. [Jul 2014, p.91]

Here's a quiet rhapsody of twining acoustic guitars, cherry-sad reeds and songs that feel solid for a bit then slip away into dying-fall bluenotes and the kind of lines that provoke romantic poetic recollection. [Jul 2014, p.88]

The scale of the latter achievements suggest Kasabian and 48:13 will get by nicely with their existing fanbase. Whether this means many new converts is less certain. [Jul 2014, p.87]

The results are generally spectacular. [Jul 2014, p.93]

In no way startling, but elegantly put-together all the same. [Jul 2014, p.92]

The title track is a thunderous grower with a tribal, kick-ass epiphany. And then...it's one mediocre ballad after another. [Jul 2014, p.91]

Beauty & Ruin--a lean, 12 songs in 37 minutes--finds Mould still monkeying with the formula. [Jul 2014, p.90]

CLPPNG is the work of hip hop auteurs delivering the shock of the new. [Jul 2014, p.88]

Await Barbarians reminds of Alex Chilton or even Liam Hayes's earliest music as Plush. [Jul 2014, P.87]

Chock-full of elegiac, beguiling earworm melodies. [Aug 2014, p.92]

Restored to Johnson;s original running order, it closes with the dissociative dance of Giant, a final defiant gesture on a record that squares up to tomorrow and--against the odds--wins. [Aug 2014, p.102]

[Arto Lindsay's] languorous delivery and oblique lyrics feature on three songs--with balmy results on mooching, drum-machine-propelled opener Many Descriptions and languid, art-pop essay Classify, and in markedly meditate contrast to the ominous synthscape of Longest Escalator In The World. [Aug 2014, p.89]

Not so much the future of hip hop as a giant leap sideways. [Aug 2014, p.86]

The synths are always used imaginately, forming an intricately shifting mosaic structure on Sheen. [Aug 2014, p.91]

The old fight is there on the unrepentant The New You, but a sense that she's over thinking these songs lingers. [Aug 2014, p.94]

Diving into yesterday never sounded so good. [Aug 2014, p.90]

#7885 is an ideal primer for the curious previously cowed by their considerable legacy. [Aug 2014, p.102]

[The album] features twisty, full-produced beats, but sounds more like a set of disjointed songs than a cohesive album. [Aug 2014, p.96]

Textured electronica and crafted melodies make for a dense and absorbing effort. [Aug 2014, p.96]