It peaks with the opulent nu-disco of Tempest. [May 2014, p.93]

Perhaps Terje pushes the eclectic envelope too hard, but dance albums are rarely this fresh, distinctive and evolved. [May 2014, p.93]

Ragan's fifth album is rock as much as roots. [May 2014, p.91]

[The Nocturne Diaries] is beautiful. [May 2014, p.91]

This is unashamedly traditional: committed, personal and really quite perfect. [May 2014, p.91]

Estoile Naiant is a work of excessive indirection and wonder that becomes terrifying only if you try to define its boundaries. [May 2014, p.90]

Mohawk finds him reaching an apotheosis. [May 2014, p.90]

What's lacking is the shock factor.... At its best, amid the oceanic dream-wave of melody and surreal verbiage that these reanimated Pixies still essay with style, Indie Cindy is worthy of full participation. [May 2014, p.90]

An album that falls between traditional and progressive country stools. [May 2014, p.89]

The band's bluegrass, country-folk and doo wop-informed debut packs a front porch charm. [May 2014, p.89]

Too often his songwriting is so tasteful that it can tend toward the anonymous. [May 2014, p.88]

This is very much Goodwin's record, the work of a man revelling in his own company. [May 2014, p.88]

The Soul Of The Hour rumbles onward with fearsome nocturnal dread, if paced with sufficient patience this time to allow the odd shaft of illumination to seep in. [May 2014, p.87]

The trio's gifts mesh to deliver a truly idiosyncratic attack, as refreshing and labyrinthine a hip hop debut as New York has delivered since Company Flow's Funcrusher Plus. [May 2014, p.87]

Much of Supermodel feels alienatingly dense. [May 2014, p.86]

Waterhouse's 2012 debut, Time's All Gone, combined strong songwriting with an impressive, hard-voiced approach, and this follow-up does the same again. [May 2014, p.94]

Hendra might deal with life's compromises, but there's no disappointment here. [May 2014, p.92]

This is a more expansive, rococo production than Callahan's Dream River. [May 2014, p.91]

They still sing some parts in unison, but here their voices are arranged more imaginatively. [May 2014, p.89]

The bold Old Fears is more than a side project. [May 2014, p.89]

Only a few moments--Happy, the Daft Punk-featuring Gust Of Wind and I Know Who You Are--sound truly out of the ordinary. [May 2014, p.86]

Nutini has grown up, and his music has grown with him: in a world littered with handsome young singer-songwriters who become obsolete some time between their first hit and first album, it's an admirable achievement. [May 2014, p.88]

Wildewoman is more of a patchwork quilt. [May 2014, p.94]

The deep soulfulness that always set The Afghan Whigs apart from the pack was no mirage, and on Do To The Beast, it has matured with grace and power. [May 2014, p.86]

Much is intimate and seductive, but Undress emphasizes the feeling Hoop is in a holding pattern which is increasingly hard to escape. [May 2014, p.91]

Cameron Neal earths this plangent guitar-rock with his anxious cris de coeur and admits to a teen Smiths crush, which helps explain the metropolitan jitters and Marr-like cadences that feed into Fear In Bliss. [May 2014, p.91]

What used to work well just doesn't any more, even though Finn still conjures street stories with a rank, raw conversational truth. [May 2014, p.87]

Occasionally tracks are achingly earnest; but overall this is light in the darkness, about love and death and bravery of all kinds. [May 2014, p.94]

It's the chiming guitars of album centerpiece, A Swallow In The Sun, that really underlines a sense that The Cautionary Tales Of... operates in the same ballpark as Sea Change--Beck's 2002 work of staggering heartbreak. [May 2014, p.91]

Timely stuff. [May 2014, p.88]

The Cordon Bleu-trained chef transforming humble ingredients into Michelin-starred delicacies at once melting, tender and sweet. [May 2014, p.93]

It's less effective on the bland troubadour pop of Here Today and The Man, which samples Elton John's Your Song and is already a US Top 5 hit. [May 2014, p.92]

The album's stand-outs come when they soften their stance. [May 2014, p.93]

Subtly psychedelic, intuitively clever and constantly challenging, Everyday Robots underlines that Albarn is an artist of originality and depth, a master of the haunting, insidious melody and--perhaps this needs no reiteration--a gifted, inventive musician. [May 2014, p.84]

The elements that make up Best Of times were all there before, but even the band concedes that they have finally found their true sound. [Apr 2014, p.90]

She sounds a tad daft masquerading as a feisty Harlem mama on the Pharrell-produced I Can't rely On You, but her uber-gutsy delivery still charms. [Apr 2014, p.90]

A nice little happy-ever-after. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Now restored to their original length, the Fillmore performances--characterised by lysergic avant-funk and tripped-out soundscapes--are incredibly powerful and a permanent reminder of Miles Davis's pathfinding genius. [Apr 2014, p.107]

Hallucinatory sonic landscapes that whistle, throb, sing and buzz like the heightened inner-space rhythms of the body. [Apr 2014, p.95]

At its best during the cinematic rock of Coming Home, the epic, plangent Roses and pugilistic opener The Factory Gates. It's less successful on the woozy stomp-alongs of Misery Company and Meanwhile Up in Heaven. [Apr 2014, p.92]

Man On the Rocks is better when he dials down the mawkish choruses and over-emoting vocals. [Apr 2014, p.97]

Her confidence as a performer is clear, as is her growth as a songwriter. [Mar 2014, p.93]

Sciubba turns in surreal, lo-fi rock, delivered with the drop-dead charisma of Patti Smith and in the dark-brown tenor of Nico. [Apr 2014, p.97]

JRW's third has enough honky-tonk brio to merit comparison with Kings Of Leon. [Apr 2014, p.98]

Thoughtful, slow-burning dream pop. [Apr 2014, p.98]

Sweet, then, but you wouldn't eat a whole one. [Apr 2014, p.98]

It's breathless stuff, but can feel homogenous after a while. [Apr 2014, p.98]

With the frustrating Violent Light, Wilson has surrendered his own persona. [Apr 2014, p.97]

If anything, it's darker [than Fenster's debut album], like clotted blood. [Apr 2014, p.97]

Slo Light's sky-high production values come at the expense of soul. [Apr 2014, p.96]

Where time truly has no meaning is in the lyrics. [Apr 2014, p.96]

It sounds wonderful. [Apr 2014, p.96]

There's a weight and scale reminiscent of Ingram Marshall's epic sea-mist tone-paintings. [Apr 2014, p.95]

The skittish energy of a Lene Lovich is still there but now that quirkiness is crossed with slices of JAMC-fuzz and dream-pop trails. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Close To The Glass is full of charming, understated yearning. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Lord Steppington simultaneously engages the grey matter while snapping at the neck muscles. [Apr 2014, p.93]

Despite the record's impromptu genesis, its results sound endearing. [Apr 2014, p.93]

Those inimitable Laibach humours look set to endure. [Apr 2014, p.92]

Mostly she's clever, soulful, sexy, and only a gram of venturesomeness short of her early best. [Apr 2014, p.90]

This is not an uplifting listen. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Polar Bear remain gratifyingly dislocated from the mainstream. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Symphonica is decidedly upmarket, but more picks in keeping with its ballsy take on the Newley & Bricusse standard Feeling Good wouldn't have hurt. [Apr 2014, p.90]

Mess's crepuscular predecessor felt both more innovative, and more likely to open up Liars' demographic. [Apr 2014, p.92]

Instead of dynamism there is a defiantly "demos" feel to tracks that makes for a charming, fat-free album. [Apr 2014, p.96]

Luna's obsessive valve-amp loveliness is here supplanted by a more varied spread. [Apr 2014, p.95]

The almost tangible sonic richness, like much here, redolent less of lyrical conservatoire pianism and more of a twitching avant-chamber orchestra co-conducted by Basil Kirchin and Harry Patch. [Apr 2014, p.95]

A single-minded, yet ultimately baffling experience. [Apr 2014, p.95]

Heroic, to a degree, but they'd need to hurdle the rainbow to warrant any pot of gold. [Apr 2014, p.95]

The truth is, her lion's mane voice is best suited to expressing thick-browed emotions like paranoia or picking at the carcass of a long dead relationship. [Apr 2014, p.94]

Glow's most enduring memory might just be the grand '80s synth-pop---think Pet Shop Boys or Alphaville--of things To Say. [Apr 2014, p.93]

Charm, tunes and a certain hazy vision--Real Estate have them in abundance, and on Atlas they are more than enough to coax endless summer warmth from behind the wall of winter. [Apr 2014, p.92]

If there are times when their adherence to that sound suggest a country-rock Status Quo the fact they now fit like a pair of well-worn gloves is actually rather comforting. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Admirers of Granduciel's previous forays along E Street won't be disappointed. [Apr 2014, p.91]

While Perhacs' lyrics sometimes lapse into "I want to be free" hippy anachronism, only a churl would begrudge the still angelically-voiced 70-yeear-old her fealty to the Aquarian spirit. [Apr 2014, p.90]

It's not a giant leap but Elbow haven't been embraced to be wreckers of civilization. [Apr 2014, p.88]

Sardonic, wistful, always finely wrought songs. [Apr 2014, p.98]

In taming their wilder side, Future Islands' ecstatic melancholy has never sounded quite so free. [Apr 2014, p.96]

Some may fine the ambient, tree-hugging Willow (Interlude) hard to stomach, however, and the lyrical flair that can elevate a debut album is sometimes lacking. [Apr 2014, p.91]

Sometimes it works but often it just feels odd. [Apr 2014, p.105]

After 1991's low impact Kill Uncle, the often truculent Your Arsenal was where Morrissey discovered a newly villainous persona and a way forward. [Mar 2014, p.105]

The solid, memorable songs are at the sweet end of the bittersweet spectrum. [Mar 2014, p.91]

[A] dazzling folk-pop crush. [Mar 2014, p.94]

While it's sometimes hard to shake the feeling one is listening to the soundtrack to some twee mobile commercial, it's harder still to deny the seductive charms of tracks like the twilit Ilsa Drown, the haunting Triangulated Heart, and the album's deftly magical closing song, Loom. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Just as you're thinking "so far, so generic," they wrong-foot you, as their debut album starts to incorporate seemingly random elements of knock-kneed white reggae, snotty hardcore punk and snatched bar conversations. [Mar 2014, p.94]

From His Head To His Heart To His Hands is a generally satisfying mix of milestones and rarities. [Mar 2014, p.100]

Moodily modish but emotionally intriguing, Arthur Beatrice inhabit a stylish grey area. [Mar 2014, p.92]

This lean, hungry and impeccably intense record is everything the involvement of those collaborators [RocketNumberNine & Kieran Hebden] might lead you to hope for, and a lot more besides. [Mar 2014, p.95]

That Aurthur Jeffes--son of late Penguin Cafe orchestra founder Simon Jeffes--is a chip off the old block is becoming increasingly clear. [Mar 2014, p.91]

An album of intelligent genre hopping. [Mar 2014, p.95]

It feels like a very personal and agreeably languid autobiography. [Mar 2014, p.93]

It's Metheny, ever the mercurial magician, who's driving the band; his eloquent guitar etching a kaleidoscope f sonic hues. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Their pop-rock posturing comes studded with lyrical yearning but lacks real emotional weight. [Mar 2014, p.96]

This intimate, intelligent album boasts that rarest quality in 21st century rock music: inimitability. [Mar 2014, p.89]

Clark has whittled a motley crew of characters who sit inside taut, ever so slightly paranoid, Byrne-influenced P-funk.... Wonderful. [Mar 2014, p.88]

The opening futurefunk salvo gives way to some soulful ballads. [Mar 2014, p.96]

This superb second album does indeed make a dramatic leap forward. [Mar 2014, p.90]

It's reassuring that Beck Hansen can still pull an original record as substantive and absorbing as this one out of the hat. [Mar 2014, p.86]

The US albums is a fascinating document of American music industry practice in the mid '60s. [Mar 2014, p.103]