An unusual 35 minutes, then, but Confection makes the perfect background for an evening of sophisticated seduction. [Feb 2014, p.95]

Rather than being derivative, this album is a perfect pop balance of cliche and rawness, with mythic ambition and songs that make you a three-minute hero. [Feb 2014, p.95]

The twilit fug of Warpaint is hypnotic, exotic, and rewards the close listening its hushed grooves and harmonies invite. [Feb 2014, p.94]

None The Wiser is as poppy a set as they have made to date. [Feb 2014, p.94]

The other peak performance is Longest Day Of The Year Blues, a deceptively languid doo wop ballad where the delicate tools that are Slade, Young and drummer Olly Joyce continue to punch well above their weight. [Feb 2014, p.94]

Remarkably, the performances by current artists from Ralph Stanley down the generations to Angel Snow are all superb. [Feb 2014, p.91]

Comparatively standard tunes such as To And Fro prevent Strong Feelings from being an unconditional classic, but that's tantamount to dismissing Toronto's CN Tower as a bit pointy. [Feb 2014, p.91]

Asgeir's voice is the first thing that grabs you. [Feb 2014, p.91]

This pan-generational Jones/Dap-Kings team have been injecting new vitality into a classic form since 2002, and the people will certainly want their strong new soul album. [Feb 2014, p.90]

Love's Crushing Diamond is restful, woven, baroque. [Feb 2014, p.89]

Filled with the restless tension of forever moving on from relationships, situations or cities, her rarefied empathy hits a haunting peak on For The Miner. [Feb 2014, p.89]

Those bummed that the proggy leanings of his Jicks have encouraged former Pavement stepper Malkmus to indulge his inner Saxondale will find much to love on their sixth album. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Rave Tapes does not find Mogwai colonising new territory, but that seems fair when their own stretch of land is still giving up such gold. [Feb 2014, p.89]

On this form, long may Damian Jurado stay lost. [Feb 2014, p.88]

This is a powerful collection of contemporary battle hymns that rings out lie a well-needed musical call to arms for the 99 per cent. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Wanderlust sees the singer execute an elegant slide into a more stately kind of pop. [Feb 2014, p.88]

The disillusionment makes for downbeat and decidedly adult pop. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Snoop is in surprisingly tender form. [Feb 2014, p.88]

Cymbals do serious but successfully swerve the perils of the po-faced by being fun. [Feb 2014, p.96]

Perhaps inevitably, given the material's scattered provenance High Hopes lacks the cohesion, both thematic and sonic that characterised Magic and Wrecking Ball. [Feb 2014, p.86]

He sounds shyer and less relaxed at the onset than on the 1968 archive At Canterbury House. [Jan 2014, p.112]

Highlights include the Earth, Wind & Fire-esque horns and harmonies of The Lewis Connection's Got To Be Something Here and tracks by Flyte Tyme, whose singer Cynthia Johnson left for Lipps Inc and Funkytown one-hit-wonderdom, but who on this evidence clearly deserved much better, [Jan 2014. p.108]

Fuses Velvetsy heartbeat minimalism with pastoral strings and acoustic guitar. [Jan 2014, p.104]

Their relentless attack is deadly serious. [Jan 2014, p.104]

16 lightly fried examples of his gift for surrealist pop/classic rock synthesis. [Jan 2014, p.104]

BSP's sifts from poignant viola and tranquil vocals to foaming turbulence are perfect. [Jan 2014, p.104]

Tricolore feels like an imaginary soundtrack. [Jan 2014, p.103]

While Desert Skies' fusion of '60s country-rock with '90s underground dynamics doesn't move ass deeply as 2001's sublime Once We Were Trees, its peaks prove Beachwood Sparks' early days are worth investigating. [Jan 2014, p.103]

A lesser work compared to, say, 2008's Nude With Boots, Tres Cabrones nevertheless stomps with enough sulphurous, slothful might to satisfy the faithful. [Jan 2014, p.102]

It's possible that it all makes rather more sense to the creators than it does to the listeners. [Jan 2014, p.102]

Fetch finds the band a newly slimline two-piece in pursuit of fresh territory. [Jan 2014, p.102]

One Day Away, with Urban, is country-lite, but everything else is heavy with the weight of Guy's skill and experience. [Jan 2014, p.101]

It feels like a big step forward. [Jan 2014, p.101]

Both slow-burning, early Zeppelin-style blues, its understandable they would front-load the album with its trump card, but both seem slightly at odds with the Dickinsons' mission statement. [Jan 2014, p.101]

Defiant, confused, heartbreaking: Hank3 is country music in a nutshell. [Jan 2014, p.101]

A remarkable, wonderful calling card. [Jan 2014, p.100]

A winner from top to bottom. [Jan 2014, p.100]

At once as snug as a velvet quilt in a log cabin, yet as challenging and testing as modern architecture, VII is a signpost to a whole new direction for Americana. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Its music delivered with an understated, glacial splendour. [Jan 2014, p.97]

Tomita-worthy retro electronica that justifies another stab at White Christmas, and rehabilitates lesser-known carols such as Midnight Clear and Sleep Quietly. [Jan 2014, p.97]

While reining in the triumphalism, Demonstration suffers from an overbearing sense of its own importance. [Jan 2014, p.97]

Cupid Deluxe is wildly eclectic and nostalgic. [Jan 2014, p.97]

By turns squally and bleepy, poppy and droney, the music here is too unfocused to really hit home. Again, just like old times. [Jan 2014, p.97]

The snotty attitude of MIA's incendiary globalist skipping rhymes has never been better balanced with first-rate pop hooks. [Jan 2014, p.96]

The stage is small, the set short, but as ever, The Bad Seeds contain multitudes. [Jan 2014, p.96]

Filled with tearful ballads and ragged-trousered country, the Avetts' playing may not be the most technically accomplished but the feel they bring to Never Been Alive and Another Is Waiting is alone worth wading through their previously misfiring albums. [Jan 2014, p.96]

In classic Brit-rock style it is this intrepid combo's assembly of these disparate echoes into something of their own that takes them ever closer to the pantheon of greats. Join the Dots is another exhilarating leap in that direction. [Jan 2014, p95]

The album roams Laurel Canyon roots and Byrdsian bliss to Fleetwood Mac and Mink DeVille/Lou Reed affection. [Jan 2014, p.94]

The music is almost secondary, his production' often leaden beats a mere sideshow to mind-bending internal rhyme pyrotechnics that jab hard at the surreal dial. [Jan 2014, p.92]

It's a meandering but heartfelt collection. [Jan 2014, p.97]

[Painting] loses momentum. [Mar 2013, p.98]

A compelling, if sometimes unsettling, time capsule. [Apr 2013, p.106]

This, their literally titled second, is equally arresting [as their debut]. [Apr 2013, p.94]

The hydra-like mix of music genres which FaltyDL has previously taken direction from has been refined into deep burnt, highly charged, twisted electronic soul. [Feb 2013, p.91]

Of seven swing covers and duets, only the high camp title track with Rufus Wainwright sparkles. [Dec 2013, p.92]

A triptych of glitchy, dissonant beats, shards of white light and fractured, ambient interference. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Guitar thrashes, mystic excursions, slabs of heavy blues and silvers of electronica. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr displays the kind of tidy time and delirious brushwork you might have thought went out with Ed Thigpen, while McBride drives the whole with a mighty, old-school righteousness. [Dec 2013, p.87]

His offbeat personality and refusal to pound the toad most traveled mark out this wildly talented bearded savant as a potential game-changer. [Dec 2013, p.89]

His most impressive album yet. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Literate, thoughtful and rhythmic, and with Sullivan unveiling a rich baritone croon, Between Dog And Wolf marks something of a late-in-the-day career high. [Sep 2013, p.88]

It's an uneven but at times wonderfully eccentric mix of early-'80s synth-pop mores and a kind of post-industrial electro that wants to sound like Depeche Mode but then wants to get all nasty on you. [Dec 2013, p.98]

Within its luxuriance of old, within its dreamscapes Fitzgerald's often Kitchens-sink observations and harsh, bloke-from-Editors singing voice remain naggingly terrestrial, dragging the listener down to earth, when everything else is straining heavenwards. [Dec 2013, p.90]

The songs inside are equally well groomed, yet it is a shame that the singer--not generally a man to take the easiest path--hasn't frayed their edges a little more. [Dec 2013, p.85]

Their obsession remains with sounds rather than songs, with every digitised boom, click, and ping picked out in arresting detail. [Dec 2013, p.103]

At 16 tracks Bowler Hat Soup is possibly a little overlong but what is youth for if not indulging a wealth of ideas? [Dec 2013, p.87]

If Guthrie sometimes plods wearily, betweenwhiles you get a hot stew of the laconic anger and irony that inspired the Seeger-Dylan-Springsteen-Bragg-and-beyond heritage. [Dec 2013, p.101]

While not as revelatory as 1995's Live At The BBC, On Air is a very enjoyable collection. [Dec 2013, p.98]

No scrabbling for a shot at Wichita Lineman or Galveston this time out. [Dec 2013, p.88]

The brooding Last Night On Earth places Ranaldo in a seductively meditative setting. [Dec 2013, p.88]

Hersh still transmits a visionary quality through her songs, her writing only adding to the sense of compulsion. [Dec 2013, p.88]

For anybody already smitten by Bombino or Group Doueh, this is a drop of the hard stuff. [Dec 2013, p.87]

This sensational follow-up finds Glasper adhering to the same basic blueprint [as the first Black Radio], though this time he's tweaked it to perfection. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Shulamith proves that intelligent pop music still has the ability to seduce and enthrall. [Dec 2013, p.86]

A muted trumpet melody and wordless chorale drift through Siren Spectre's gorgeous intergalactic ambiance before space-disco juggernaut Responder tunes into the transcendental infinite--a glitter ball in one eye, the other on the cosmos. [Dec 2013, p.86]

What could have been a confused, trying-to-be-hip mish-mash is instead a re-playable collection of extremely strong songs, Paul's most interesting, varied and soul-baring in years. [Dec 2013, p.84]

Open's success lies in its final effect on the listener, an enveloping state of reassuring calm. [Dec 2013, p.84]

This time around, the radio programmers will be listening harder, but taken as a 68-minute whole, The Electric Lady is quite a trip. [Dec 2013, p.84]

The hammer-down moments are the most satisfying, with End Of Time, Death Machine and the frenetic Queen Of The Damned confirming you will not hear a louder, more defiant rock'n'roll album this year. [Dec 2013, p.84]

A stylistic serpentine of an album, it wiggles insouciantly from sugar-rush synthetic pop to harp-caressed ballad. [Dec 2013, p.88]

Guaranteed to make fans of the underground feel queasy. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Not exactly a collection of lullabies, this is still some of the most achingly beautiful music released yet under the Jesu name. [Dec 2013, p.89]

It's time for Cut Copy to free its own mind too. [Dec 2013, p.89]

It's another absorbing, sonically rich record, albeit one lacking a chunk of the charm that marked out its predecessor. [Dec 2013, p.89]

Even a rasping guest vocal by White Denim's James Petralli is unlikely to upset the clientele. [Dec 2013, p.92]

A close encounter with mortality via the deaths and serious illness of a number of friends and relative infuses the drunken beats, fractured samples and sweet-smelling melodies with a mood of melancholia. [Dec 2013, p.89]

Harsh but striking. [Dec 2013, p.92]

A set of seamless, lyrically concise songs that are as sweet and harmonic as their pairing suggests but also strangely stilted. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Overall, this is pretty near perfect. [Dec 2013, p.90]

Their third tribute set is exactingly detail-correct. [Dec 2013, p.90]

Juana Molina once again proves her ability to gently beguile with a warmth and ingenuity that reaches way past language and genre boundaries. [Dec 2013, p.87]

More mopey ballads and ad-ready pop songs. [Dec 2013, p.92]

There's a sense that such modishly retro melancholia might have had its moment, but given that a yearning for what's been lost shades Static so starkly, that notion can only enhance the mood. [Dec 2013, p.85]

A glossy finish leaves little to hang on to. [Dec 2013, p.92]

His arch whimsy is solidly underpinned by simpatico, full-band arrangements and his keen nose for an idiosyncratic tune. [Dec 2013, p.86]

It results in an intimate album shuddering in the blast of an icy onslaught of crisp, wintery piano. [Dec 2013, p.87]

A doldorous racket. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Caramel consists of weightless, non-danceable funk, drifting in from the edge of consciousness like a vaporised, enervated Scritti Politti. [Dec 2013, p.89]