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]

This album was Williams' breakthrough, with excellent songs.... A 20-track bonus CD offers a 14-song live set from that time and some very nice radio performances. [Mar 2014, p.105]

Blue Eyed Hexe makes occultish overtures; Magdalena is a great, aberrant love song. [Mar 2014, p.96]

McGuire's guitar and tape loop examination of his own psycho-dynamics. [Mar 2014, p.96]

An intriguing LP that balances inner existential turmoil with external grace. [Mar 2014, p.96]

An uber-melodious debut.[Mar 2014, p.96]

These evocative originals, inspired by road trips, inevitably reconnect ti her Memphis roots. [Mar 2014, p.96]

[The album boasts] more accomplished songwriting than some bands manage in a career. [Mar 2014, p.96]

Musically, Stewart's ambition to marry first-album Suicide with Einsturzende Neubauten and latter-day Scott Walker has been realised with aplomb. [Mar 2014, p.95]

An ADHD, electro-fuelled crazy quilt. [Mar 2014, p.95]

Evoking cinematic cliches is almost unavoidable on a mutant, spirited debut whose diversity is its greatest asset. [Mar 2014, p.95]

There's nothing indistinct about the more congenial, festival-friendly direction of War Room Stories. [Mar 2014, p.95]

At every turn there are moves unarguably adjacent to Revolver, The Zombies, early Byrds, and, in the title track strident harmonies, The Mamas & The Papas.... The tunes throughout, though, are original, and infectious. [Mar 2014, p.94]

An unadorned diamond in the rough, and his best record. [Mar 2014, p.94]

It's this continued need to feed her multi-platinum beast that stops the album from being the post-modern wheeze it could have been. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Haze's impetuosity may've harmed Dirty Gold's commercial prospects, but the purity of her intent speaks volumes. [Mar 2014, p.94]

This is a very organic, modern album. And it's brilliant. [Mar 2014, p.93]

An array of session superheroes fill the album with crackling electricity. [Mar 2014, p.93]

Kidjo is in scintillating form. [Mar 2014, p.93]

This is the sound of a band making a bold, if not entirely original, creative leap. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Tinariwen still speak to the world as outsiders, but now they are telling us more about ourselves than we knew before. [Mar 2014, p.92]

Blood and religion, sin and redemption are as key to Biram's music as country, punk, blues, spirituals and good-ol'-boy rock.... There's great examples here. [Mar 2014, p.91]

Swaying choruses and gutsy musicianship.... there's life after the circus has left town. [Mar 2014, p.93]

A melancholic late-night album, then, but one that really sounds beautiful. [Mar 2014, p.91]

The result is a dazzlingly crafted bunch of hazy, West Coast pop gems stuffed with Santanaesque six-string wizardry. [Mar 2014, p.91]

The quartet's attempt ti create something like The Chemical Brothers' patchwork futurism, it is influenced by frontman Jack Steadman's global travels, but ends up sounding like a bunch of Gap Yah students discovering foreign climes fir the first time and leaning too hard on the console's Arcade Fire 2007 button. [Mar 2014, p.90]

This potent return affirms Finn heeds his own advice. [Mar 2014, p.90]

Dead is visceral, propulsive and bursting with life. [Mar 2014, p.88]

The overhaul, surely, needed to be much more far-reaching. [Mar 2014, p.88]

The wait has been worth it. [Mar 2014, p.88]

Pleasant but risk adverse. [Mar 2014, p.88]

The debut's sinister clouds are replaced by spry digital funk and studio sheen. [Mar 2014, p.96]

Fantastic stuff. [Feb 2014, p.102]

Edmunds has always delivered, whatever the age and circumstances. And this batch of originals and covers, recorded in full do-it-himself mode, doesn't change that. [Feb 2014, p.91]

Africa Express score by proffering a raw immediacy and innovative spirit that instantly expels any whiff of imperialist musical tourism. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Hard, hearty and at home amid the grooves set out by the venerable likes of the Hodges brothers. [Feb 2014, p.96]

It's darker and starker, more 4am despair than midnight rendezvous. [Feb 2014, p.97]

It turns to a clutch of its founding fathers and allies for its 14th outing. [Feb 2014, p.97]

10 wistful, tender songs. [Feb 2014, p.98]

[The album,] at first, seems suffused in the same late-summer glow as The Beach Boys' low-key '68 LP Friends. But this brightness soon fades, the album becoming a beautifully solitary journey into night. [Feb 2014, p.95]

It's all expertly crafted stuff. [Feb 2014, p.94]

Overall Ghettoville feels unsettlingly cold; a stubborn statement of retirement in the form of a half-finished work. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Lanegan's own journey may be ongoing, but this is a vivid snapshot of where he's been. [Feb 2014, p.102]

The Worlocks remain a superior alloy of Velvets cool and narcotic Spaceman 3/MBV tropes. [Feb 2014, p.98]

The trio blow out the cobwebs with their relentless blasts of heavy metal sax/bass/drums power. [Feb 2014, p.98]

Well worth a late discovery. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Alternate/Endings is sprawling, cinematic and agenda setting. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Locating a broken, but still-beating heart within metallic machine music, East India Youth's debut is a triumph. [Feb 2014, p.97]

He's made a dramatic leap between first and second album as profound and unexpected as that of John Grant. [Feb 2014, p.96]

[Harcourt whets] our curiosity with this six-tracker which goes to the brink but never quite falls over the edge. [Feb 2014, p.96]

Realm's refusal to shut up after a radio-friendly 180 seconds, surely, make them all the more cherishable. [Feb 2014, p.96]

Like Sleater Kinney reimagined for synth-pop teens. [Feb 2014, p.98]

A record that twinkles with a smart electronic pop sheen. [Feb 2014, p.97]