The inevitable irony is that the first-class packaging and mono fidelity makes this serial potpourri feel new and thrilling again - while none of it accurately reflects the Beatles' creative intent and daily momentum. [Dec 2024, p.100]

They still sound remarkably fresh, and here their short (only three of the 14 songs last longer than three minutes), sharp shock still kicks hard. [Jan 2024, p.86]

It’s not all dreamy-headed stuff – Relief, for one, achieves rocky lift-off – but for the most part The Good Kind Tom Doyle sustains a compellingly airy atmosphere throughout. [Jan 2024, p.83]

Recorded in a single night, this light-touch meld of jazz, ambient, post-rock and hip-hop sensibilities find its players intertwined like tangled wires. [Jan 2025, p.82]

There are tender moments, too, such as Lianne La Havas’s guest-spot on sodium-lit ballad Body Shock, but this is largely a record of brash textures from a band relishing the margins. [Jan 2025, p.83]

Vital and vibrant. [Jan 2025, p.88]

Mostly Highway Prayers is a thrillingly modern bluegrass album for people who don’t even like bluegrass. [Jan 2025, p.88]

Another great, mind-bending, soul-baring, melodically rich album to his name: a singer tap dancing on the very edge. [Jan 2025, p.80]

’60s Mod club faves including thrilling takes on The First Cut Is The Deepest and Angel Of The Morning. [Dec 2024, p.94]

Live, the band’s urgency and spaciousness transform their fondness for cavernous arena rhythms and antiquated synths from clever re-appropriations into something that teases transcendence. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Nobody Loves You More is a singularly uplifting, life-affirming listen, where joy and despair, love and loss, are irrevocably entwined, and kept afloat by Deal’s unfailing lightness of touch. [Dec 2024, p.82]

But as personal as all of these songs sound, there’s a universality to Small Changes that, as with all Kiwanuka’s records, will emotionally connect with others. Everybody hurts, it seems to say, but this might help. [Dec 2024, p.86]

The easygoing Natural Information may be Callahan’s latter-day signature tune, and here daubed in Clarence Clemons-flavoured sax and quicksilver guitar, it sounds like the Eagles at a shamanic retreat. CPR for the soul. [Nov 2024, p.92]

Shaping billowing waves of electrostatic to articulate the sound of his hometown, Nairobi, at night. Worth resurrecting an old ’90s genre tag from The Bug’s past for Natur: illbience. [Nov 2024, p.87]

Expertly miked to capture Cannell’s own sharp recorder breaths and the church’s own otherworldly reverberations, the result is both a hallucinatory venture into sonic time travel, and a consciousness-expanding act of medieval meditation. [Nov 2024, p.88]

Mortality looms large as he recounts a car accident on The Last Ten Seconds Of Life, the bluegrass-flavoured Not A Lot Of Sand Left In The Glass and again for prairie trail eulogy I Want To Be The Man (My Dog Thinks I Am). [Nov 2024, p.84]

It’s their most expansive LP so far. [Nov 2024, p.92]

A triumph in thematic/aural juxtaposition, Come Ahead is up there with Primal Scream’s best. [Dec 2024, p.92]

With lyrics informed by loss and his current post-divorce relationship with a man, at the age of 64, Friday has clearly found himself and made a deeply heartfelt record, most of which is perhaps best heard at club-level volume. [Dec 2024, p.90]

His voice is a bit more raw in his 91st year, but that just adds yet more resonance. [Dec 2024, p.85]

It is gorgeous in the way a hotel painting is – very pleasant to look at once or twice but not to ponder for too long, an autumnal soundtrack whose glow fades like leaves. [Dec 2024, p.93]

There’s some very fine rock songs (Sally Was A Cop revisits the “Oh-oh-oh” singalong on Willie Mays Is Up At Bat from Temple Beautiful) and excellent ballads, from Americana closer It’s A Good Day To Be Alive to truly beautiful Red Sky Night. [Nov 2024, p.89]

Perrett might not have been having fun before, but even factoring in a song called Do Not Resuscitate, this finally sounds like the real thing. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Viva Lone Justice reminds us of all that made the original line-up special. [Dec 2024, p.92]

[These 14 jazz-pop miniatures offset whimsical structures and playful flaws with sharp hooks. [Dec 2024, p.94]

Thirty years on from Dubnobasswithmyheadman, the masters of post-rave audio narrative still know how to blow your tiny mind. [Dec 2024, p.90]

There’s a new level of sophistication here, befitting the fact that the one-time teenage home-recorder is now 27 and this is her fourth album. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Whatever ‘flow’ is, she has it, Koalas and Charlie Potato shimmering like hot tarmac mirages, and trippy closer Surround coming on like Parks and key collaborator Ruari Meehan’s nod to The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. Repeat listens focus the kaleidoscope. [Dec 2024, p.87]

Magnificently paced and candid, these 11 songs surface self-doubt and self-assurance as Marling learns to let parts of herself go. [Dec 2024, p.85]

REVELATOR is confrontational and sometimes uncomfortable (see CCTV’s shrill metallic screech), but always enthralling. [Dec 2024, p.91]

Here, he notes the dying of the light show with autumnal retreads of key songs from his annus mirabilis, including A Whiter Shade Of Pale, See Emily Play, A Day In The Life and – maybe toughest of all – Traffic’s No Face, No Name, No Number. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Their template of new music plus archival spoken word is revitalised here, with Earhart’s writing voiced anew by actor Kate Graham. Towards The Dream is guitar-twanging exhilaration. [Nov 2024, p.84]

Behind the moments that sound like megachurch guided meditation, however, are flashes of brilliant disturbance. .... Sophie stands as a monument to what might have been. [Dec 2024, p.92]

It’s late summer sunshine in music form. [Dec 2024, p.93]

No consolation, no platitudes: just stark commitment to picking up human signals through the storm. [Dec 2024, p.93]

Though the album opens with an isolated funky bass line, Butterss proves a democratic bandleader, often ceding the spotlight to saxophonist Josh Johnson and guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, Butterss’ companions in another fine group, SML. [Dec 2024, p.87]

Peaceful Place slips in a bit of Afrobeat and That’s What I Love echoes Channel Orange-era Frank Ocean, and throughout Bridges’ vocal talents continue to shine. [Dec 2024 p.84]

Too much of this sounds like recycled plastic pop. [Dec 2024 p.84]

Smart, funny, characterful, there’s virtually nothing not to like about this record. [Dec 2024, p.88]

Martin’s sounds are of a grain so abrasive as to draw blood, but while much of Machine’s considerable power to thrill derives from Martin’s sonic extremism, there’s an impish creativity also at play. [Dec 2024, p.85]

This is straight-ahead folk-Americana, often gentle and slow (Lorelei; The Season) sometimes spirited (Ram-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong), with Lenker duetting or backing up his dusty cobweb voice. [Nov 2024, p.85]

This most thrillingly deathly of bands remains alive. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Karate consummately glide through those crisp changes, unleashing wafts of Thin Lizzy swing (Defendants), Hendrix-y picking (Liminal) and stuttering Costello new wave (Rattle The Pipes). Farina’s honey-voiced complaints (see Cannibals’ swingeing cancel-culture takedown) clinch a spicy comeback. [Nov 2024, p.86]

Opener Anybody’s declaration of fresh love duly builds with electrifying presence. There follow bare-wire examinations of audience dependency (Lavender, Raspberries) and resurgent desire (In A Dream I’m A Painting), before Sick Of The Blues provides a heartburstingly triumphant ‘choose life’ finale. [Nov 2024, p.84]

One to file alongside fan favourites Aether (2001) and Open (2013): records that initially appear starkly minimalist, but gradually reveal boundless, beautiful depths. [Dec 2024, p.85]

Anyone craving Smith/Kramer’s piledriving interlocked guitars, or Tyner’s ramalama stoner poetry, will not find them on Heavy Lifting. Get past the branding issue, however, and there’s a great deal to love about this full-blooded, riotous and often deliciously funky record. [Nov 2024, p.82]

There’s nothing here to startle, just further confirmation that Cantrell remains a force to be reckoned with. [Dec 2024, p.84]

With Songs Of A Lost World, The Cure, often seen as the soundtrack to an eternally doomy adolescence, might just be coming of age.

There’s a song (Love & Revolution) about how much he fancies his wife! Fear not, however – Seun hasn’t gone soft in the six years since his previous album, and it doesn’t take long before the heavy artillery steps in. [Nov 2024, p.93]

The brothers’ art for art’s sake sensibilities drive pleasingly obtuse yacht-rocker Sounds About Right and fractured prog-funk oddity Curfew In The Square, while I Might Have Been Wrong’s ace chorus feels like an ambush after its clammy, insomniac verse. [Nov 2024, p.91]

Five solo LPs in, The Mighty Several vouches for his continued worth, fostering unity and empathy in divided times. [Nov 2024, p.88]

25 tracks of faux-Brill Building candy, corn and echo-laden chaos with linernotes by Richie Unterberger worthy of a PhD thesis. It is also an essential, at times wickedly delightful‚ corrective to the habitual dismissals of this era, Reed’s included. [Nov 2024, p.96]

In line with the album title, Richard reins it in, as if she’s singing torch songs, but the emotion is palpable, her lyrics freighted with trauma. [Nov 2024, p.87]

Goat shapes up as one of 2024's most enjoyable albums so far. [Nov 2024, p.89]

Darkly versatile second LP. [Nov 2024, p.95]

Forgoing cynicism, she looks out on the world with unbound curiosity and zeal, every coruscant melody and glowing harmony another discovery. [Nov 2024, p.93]

No-one’s going to show you everything, as she sings on Hejira, but this collection shows a woman out to see as much as she can.

A delectable-sounding record slathered in guitar magic: what’s not to like?

An unexpected beauty. [Nov 2024, p.84]

Setting Macfarlane’s words to music, the 13 tracks of Ness offer calm with a suitably disquieting undertow, rather like the place itself, with Thorpe’s countertenor adding to the melodrama. [Nov 2024, p.86]

It's a mess of ambition and avant overload, and often too much, but you can't help but admire The New Sound's Stevie Chick wild abandon. And while the whirlwind of concepts and sonic right-turns ultimately fails to cohere, its thrills are many. [Nov 2024, p.84]

There’s a vulnerability and a very English kind of saudade to Below A Massive Dark Land, but also a sense of individual purpose [Nov 2024, p.94]

For the closing three tracks, the revolving door’s finally still and Marshall himself (AKA Madman Butterfly) keens proceedings to a satisfying, if still unsettling calm. [Sep 2024, p.88]

A difficult record for many reasons, but an ineffably beautiful one, too. [Nov 20224, p.89]

Shows he hasn’t lost the knack for marrying accessible melodies with vivid storytelling, wry humour and subversive lyrics. [Nov 2024, p.85]

Flow Critical Lucidity – the best record Moore has been involved in since Sonic Youth’s The Eternal, 15 years ago now – feels as close as he’s come to something new. [Nov 2024, p.86]

Inspired by dives into recessed memories for a concurrent memoir, these songs are testaments to his experiences – and his expertise as a steadfast syndicate of the great rock song. [Oct 2024, p.88]

She turns doubt and anxiety into subtly burnished, soulful nocturnes, more sensual than any existential crisis should be. [Oct 2024, p.82]

The rough-milled follow-up to 2020’s Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was doesn’t suggest time is mellowing him. [Oct 2024, p.86]

Packed with songs that tug imperceptibly at the heartstrings, Odyssey runs the gamut from introspection and melancholy to hope and deep joy. It will take some beating. [Nov 2024, p.90]

This record shows an artist stretching out to fill space, refusing to settle for anything small. [Oct 2024, p.85]

All the ducking and feinting is entertaining enough, but it begins to feel more like a box of disguises than a coherent album. [Nov 2024, p.91]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Manuel Menuck and Mat Ball of Big Brave joined guitar forces to make music that stood up to the Montreal cold. The heat generated by the band (completed by Jonathan Downs and Patch One of Maine post-rockers Ada) isn’t entirely the kind you huddle around for comfort, though. [Nov 2024, p.87]

A yin-yang parity asserts itself with the wistful, jazzy, Rose-sung Simple Days, electro-pop You Saw and epic, wicca-ish Druantia. Elsewhere, there’s arty chamber pop, demented swing-jazz and the epic Surf’s Up-echoing closer Sunrise: middle-aged bliss has rarely sounded so weirdly magical. [Nov 2024, p.91]

In Waves partly mimics the jostle and heave of a crowded dancefloor. All You Children presses The Avalanches into euphoric service, matched for dynamism by Baddy On The Floor, a bend-and-snap collaboration with DJ Honey Dijon. [Nov 2024, p.85]

There are inevitable quibbles. The omission of The Band’s own songs here is a missed opportunity to tie together these two institutions, both then wrestling with unknown futures. In the sleevenote, critic Elizabeth Nelson forgoes research into a historical moment where the primary witnesses are rapidly disappearing for a spree of purple prose. Some tapes are, of course, better than others. But, by and large, pick a track at random and you’ll find yourself stunned by how hard these six were pushing. [Nov 2024, p.98]

For the most part Migratory is music for reflection and meditation, held together by Fujita’s unique lightness of touch. [Oct 2024, p.84]

Sometimes, as on Hold Me In The Fire, they unashamedly chase Chasing Cars’ modern-day-standard template. At others, like restive prisoners looking to try new ideas on the outside, they break out, hence the electro-percussive, choral title track. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Plunges him back to the old soundworld of heavily Auto-Tuned ballads (of the 12 tracks here, only Bread Believer is pacey) and a voice that sounds like it’s on the verge of tears, even if the lyrics sound more disorientated than tragic. .... But Maine’s nagging melodies hold up, and Shirt still feels convincingly real. [Oct 2024, p.84]

From Terry Edwards’ dysregulated trumpet on Always A Stranger to the wheezy strings of The Secret Of Breathing, Soft Tissue is a magnificent reminder that few people know better how to arrange life’s broken pieces, how to orchestrate the chaos. [Oct 2024, p.84]

A gorgeously warm, light-footed pop that roams freely. [Aug 2024, p.88]

BASIC speak their own language, but it’s not long before their signs and signals unfold into a fascinating new conversation. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Davachi’s work can be gently provocative but it’s never anything less than stimulating. [Oct 2024, p.91]

The delicious, Moroder breakbeat thump of Birth4000 and squealing garagey rave of Vocoder (Club Mix) have the swagger and heft to leave club soundsystems wobbling, but also need good headphones for home enjoyment. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Newbies Jet Pac Boomerang and Went To A Party zing with his best, quality control being the soul of wit. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Following 2009’s ‘re-enactment’ shows, here, finally, is this fabulous, full-blooded seventh LP. Aficionados will be punching the air within the first minute of opener Hide & Seek: it’s all there. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Nada Surf have always been close to greatness, and Moon Mirror won’t win new fans, but it is wonderful. [Oct 2024, p.82]

Beyond box-ticking cameos from Snoop, Nas, Eminem and Busta Rhymes, horror film-stringed posse cut The Vow (with relative unknowns Mad Squablz, J-S.A.N.D. and Don Pablito) shows LL at his sharpest, “movin’ chess pieces like telekinesis” and stretching his elasticity to ridiculous extremes. Call it a comeback. [Oct 2024, p.88]

As with FWF, it’s hard to discern any redemptive purpose other than the release of darker energies, but on that score Wither’s Suicide-esque pulse, All The Same’s filthy, Decius-style hi-NRG and Running’s synth-bashing rush best hit FD’s target. [Oct 2024, p.86]

Writing about it is like trying to catalogue and analyse a newly opened Egyptian tomb. Archives III is more legacy than most artists muster in a lifetime. [Oct 2024, p.92]

When Fuller and Turner sing together (try Happiness or Cherry) it’s truly spectacular, two of a kind becoming one. [Oct 2024, p.90]

Regardless of language, it’s substantive synth-pop with broad appeal. [Oct 2024, p.91]

Sometimes futuristic, at others surprisingly formulaic, it’s another stepping stone on Sinephro’s path to greatness but one where the parts are worth more than the whole. [Oct 2024, p.87]

Bands, as Donahue famously sang on Holes, “never work quite right”, but with this late-period beauty, Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly. [Oct 2024, p.83]

These songs are consistently fantastic: from Brand New’s harmony-laden prayer for rebirth, to The Letters, Etc’s wry, country-steeped moment of clarity, whispering “how strange to be strangers after what we was”. [Sep 2024, p.89]

There’s an irresistibly slinky Stones groove to Boom Boom Back (Beck Hansen yelps mid-chorus), while Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten guests on the smouldering Stranger. Throughout, Cosials and Perrote joyfully excel. [Oct 2024, p.88]

Sometimes co-written with The The’s guitarist Barrie Cadogan or keyboardist DC Collard, these 12 songs cement Johnson’s ‘cherishable agitator’ status. And – whisper it – there’s hope here, too. [Oct 2024, p.86]

Booze and heartache are constants, but the mood is never morose, borne aloft by Lenderman’s guitar playing, which is primal but emotionally lucid. His tender lyricism is another big plus, locating laudable empathy for his cast of lovable losers. [Oct 2024, p.90]