One of the most characterful voices of recent times--one minute suggesting folk rock paradise, the next Macbeth. [Dec 2013, p.90]

These Wooden Shjips, however unchanging, even conservative, are becoming increasingly irresistible. [Nov 2013, p.86]

The latest set of back-porch ballads, junkshop country hymns and chiming indie rock--all born of his beloved Arizona desert. [Nov 2013, p.94]

With Kilo, Vainio returns to sub-bass layers and industrial scree to create a dark minimal techno with strange internal narrative. [May 2013, p.95]

This 20-song set delivers high octane versions of their greatest hits. [Nov 2013, p.85]

[The 50 outtakes] are not fore the casual listener.... The big find is the rambunctious Mardi Gras party-style I Shall Sing, a small 1974 hit for Art Garfunkel but never released by Morrison until now; Van unsurprisingly give the tune a more soulful treatment. [Nov 2013, p.98]

The Beta Band made some dazzling music throughout their seven-year lifespan. [Nov 2013, p.101]

The 28 masters perfectly preserve the fight-or-flight cortisone power and tired, forlorn grandeur of late period Elvis. But it's the 27 outtakes that truly startle. [Nov 2013, p.98]

Most of us missed the party 42 years ago, but now it's boxed for our infinite pleasure. [Nov 2013, p.99]

Albini's hardline technical/philosophical missive is the tastiest 'discovery' in this inevitable 20th anniversary box set--tastier, indeed than any of the unheard music. [Nov 2013, p.101]

Her rich, soulful vocal sounds wonderful on the darker material. [Oct 2013, p.98]

The Fratellis' third album is simple and uncomplicated. [Nov 2013, p.94]

As soulful and vital a British jazz record as there's been in a while. [Nov 2013, p.89]

Songs that initially resemble formless dirges, gradually reveal hidden depths, thanks to Desertshore's engaging backing and Kozelek's ever intriguing lyrics. [Nov 2013, p.84]

In surpassing her debut, Agnes Obel has confirmed hat she is in it for the long haul. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Currie ceding power to him [producer Mike McCarthy] has worked a treat. [Nov 2013, p.90]

Warble Womb offers those addled young whipper-snappers a timely masterclass in how to keep the right balance between relentlessness and variation. [Nov 2013, p.86]

A wonderfully mellifluous, atmospheric affair. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Spare bayou mirage score for Green's newie. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Stunning in parts. [Nov 2013, p.94]

There's a Prince influence, but little real passion. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Enjoyable, though less revelatory, Arcade Fire's Games Without Frontiers, Joseph Arthur's agonised Shock The Monkey and Lou Reed's Jokily grindscaping Solsbury Hill contrast with Paul Simon's restrained Biko. [Nov 2013, p.91]

A ferocious blast of distorted guitar riffs, skronking sax and explosive testifying. [Nov 2013, p.91]

Every one of its 15 tracks brings something new to the table. [Nov 2013, p.90]

What makes the album itself addictive is Isbell's fusing of gothic Memphis blues and Nashville tenderness. [Nov 2013, p.90]

Pop, but still an album for reflection. [Nov 2013, p.89]

For all their assiduous construction and heartfelt subject matter, Sheff's songs struggle to match the abundant hook-line quotient of his youthful influences and inspiration. [Nov 2013, p.88]

What it all means--if anything--is hard to take in, but the journey to finding out is utterly epic. [Nov 2013, p.85]

Here he marmelises the American songbook, 99c cut-out standards mutilated and reanimated by Delta blues magick. [Nov 2013, p.89]

A country album of slide guitar, sweet harmonies and heartworn ballads from a landscape on the edge of the unsayable, the kind of high lonesome petitions to the gods Syd Barrett might have made in his flat on the night pink Floyd never turned up.

This is the desert-blues album for fans of Can and Pink Floyd to sink their teeth into. [Nov 2013, p.91]

These are ingenious, affecting songs on a DIY recording budget. [Nov 2013, p.88]

Indubitably, worth the oxide it's been taped on. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Unreservedly recommended, but for the uninitiated and obsessives only. [Nov 2013, p.86]

If you can bear the canonical duplicates, the seldom played discs, and, above all, the cost, this is a box no John Martyn fan can do without. [Nov 2013, p.96]

sometimes the going gets a mite too easy, too laid back. But there are several memorable teamings. [Nov 2013, p.91]

There are perhaps too many guests, but this unassuming talisman clearly prefers sharing his space. [Nov 2013, p.84]

What, on the face of it, is an understated and straightforward folk fringe album, is actually, thanks to the guile of Flynn and long-time collaborator Adam Beach, an extremely clever and nuanced record. [Nov 2013, p.84]

At it's best Interiors is alien and magical.... thought, it can also slip into a rather inaccessible coolness too. [Nov 2013, p.107]

A masterful song cycle of raw confessionals, ghostly R&B and gritty stompers, all channelled via intense vocals that razor and soothe. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Like most of ET's work, it's worth the wait. [Nov 2013, p.90]

Double Exposure feels like his best yet. [Nov 2013, p.85]

A bold and encouraging modern pop debut. [Nov 2013, p.90]

You'll need to attune yourself to the unique musical argot that Lopatin has created on R Plus Seven, but once achieved an album of intrigue and beauty is revealed. [Nov 2013, p.89]

A deceptively simple soundworld of banal electronic tropes that gradually pulls you into blissful wormhole depths. [Nov 2013, p.94]

The trademark use of acoustic as a lead guitar still sounds refreshing, and Knights' sweet and salty vocal style is still full of vulnerable charisma. [Nov 2013, p.88]

If it is meant to be a Pink Floyd homage, then it's an entertaining and highly distinctive one. [Nov 2013, p.84]

Minor caveats notwithstanding, at its best One Breath is, indeed, breathtaking, and an undeniable upgrade on its much-vaunted predecessor. [Nov 2013, p.87]

It's the very essence of being "unplugged" as Chilton--laughing, joking, fluffing lines, forgetting verses and whistling choruses--breaks down all barriers between musician and fan. [Nov 2013, p.102]

An engaging, rewarding whole [that] speaks volumes about the breadth of both of his imagination and compositional agility. [Nov 2013, p.86]

In total, the rejuvenated, rockier Numan's finest hour. [Nov 2013, p.86]

With echoes of caribou, Chemical Brothers and Underworld also fluttering in the mix, Avery's is a compelling, club-friendly debut with crossover appeal to the headphone set. [Nov 2013, p.89]

Moderate in everything but length, Big Wheel And Others seems to go on forever. Again not in a good way. [Nov 2013, p.84]

Despite the lulls, the resistance to ending songs, Reflektor lets Arcade Fire shed expectations along with a skin, an act of rejuvenation few at their level manage with conviction. [Nov 2013, p.82]

The softer tracks find the group negotiating their path to maturity with confidence.

At 70, he's still as intense and dangerous as all hell. [Oct 2013, p.95]

Over 24 songs they constantly tremble on the brink of collapse yet they also manage to turn in such laser-guided songs as You Can Stay But You Gotta Go and Double Deuce. [Oct 2013, p.96]

Mills' slightest work by some distance, The Fifth is evolution in reverse. [Oct 2013, p.88]

After eight years, EWF are right back in the groove. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Vivid flamenco guitar burnishes a confessional Scots brogue. A beauty. [Oct 2013, p.98]

This trance-inducing seven-piece evoke arcane loci, spirits and serpents. [Oct 2013, p.98]

It's chugging, stoner rock riff solace to those bored by the cod therapy of Some Kind Of Monster. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Polished mid-paced throbbers, alive with feedback, thumping drums and troubled lyrics. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Bare acoustic tracks with fuller band on upbeat tunes all sung in pleasing, husky tones. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Album number 11 twitches with the same darkly neurotic pop as 2009's Destroyed. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Much of Days Are Gone packs bubblegum snare, toe-stubbing synth bass, and contemporised '80s pop trappings that evoke everything from Scritti Politti's Cupid & Psyche 85 to Laura Brannigan's Self Control. [Oct 2013, p.95]

Not a bad song on the album. [Oct 2013, p.96]

Troubadour delivers deeply rewarding pop from its stylistic risks eerily familiar at moments, but ever its own marvellous thing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

For the time being Palms are holding fast to a distinctly high-flying trajectory. [Oct 2013, p.90]

The continuing resemblance of their lyrics to motivational speeches may still grate on non-fans. [Oct 2013, p.88]

When ghost-dub closer bathed In Grey plumbs its valedictory depths and suggests a young Matt Johnson, the loose-but-precise whole seems starkly impressive. [Oct 2013, p.87]

Sometimes great, often enchanting, and always disarmingly self-aware portrait of a doomed and wounded hero. [Oct 2013, p.87]

It's in a familiar lineage [of meditative alt-rock]--shoegaze, Sigur Ros--but very much at the quality end of the spectrum. [Oct 2013, p.87]

Land Is Hell is alive with 21st century energy. [Oct 2013, p.96]

A poetic, typically untethered set within bouzouki pecks and mellotron complement Roy's latest voyage into open-tuned land. [Oct 2013, p.90]

Confronted by performances like this, you just have to lay down your critical apparatus and surrender to the spell. [Oct 2013, p.100]

It'll be a bit much for the casual fan with no need for all those stereo/mono variations, but they do have at least a couple dozen other best-ofs to choose from. [Oct 2013, p.102]

This box brims with supportive evidence [that they were "the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world."] [Oct 2013, p.103]

There are many extras here to pique the completist's interest.... But the real punch rests in the unprecedented clarity of the remastered original tracks, and the audacious creativity and humour of the packaging. [Oct 2013, p.104]

There's all kinds of going back on Robbie Fulks' eleventh and maybe finest collection. [Oct 2013, p.95]

So out gores the vintage, spiritual sound of 1995's nourishing debut Soul Food and in comes a job lot of dizzying electronica, schizoid stylistic shifts, screeching strings, sonorous sub-bass and beats verging on hi-NRG. [Oct 2013, p.90]

They're doing nothing radical, but the band, now in their 35th year of playing together, are tight and the results pleasing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

All intriguing and unique, but as the concluding third settles into shapeless moodiness, Hesitation Marks could've done with some pruning. [Oct 2013, p.87]

For all its cryptic lyrics and melodic complexities, the revelation it constantly seems to promise never quite arrives, but repave remains a grand gesture. [Oct 2013, p.95]

A new depth to her prickly but previously sometimes brattish lyrics, a grown-up album by a real grown-up who knows how to sugar-coat a pill for mass consumption. [Oct 2013, p.95]

Many of the songs segue into one another, a percussive keyboard outro blending into a slow keyboard intro, with Moses sounding like the soundtrack to sunrise--gorgeous. [Oct 2013, p.95]

[Obits] sound ever more like a desiccated AC/DC. [Oct 2013, p.98]

Listeners long-attuned to Gordon's avant excursions will find much here that satisfies. [Oct 2013, p.94]

It's nigh impossible not to succumb to their hurtling energy and panache. [Oct 2013, p.94]

The 23-year-old Ethiopian-Canadian's sonic evolution continues on Kiss Land. [Oct 2013, p.88]

This trio's brand of piano-fed luminescence is more traditionally coffee-table. That's no criticism, more acknowledgement of their smooth melodic nous. [Oct 2013, p.87]

There's an often harrowing conviction to Rewind The Film's primarily acoustic arrangements and elegant melodies, heralding a new level of artistry for this unique band. [Oct 2013, p.87]

Just in time for autumn, more summery surf rock by Hawaii's second favorite son. [Oct 2013, p.98]

If the album's (mostly) feral guitars and off-mike whoops conjure a band keen to re-harness the pluck of 2003's Youth & young Manhood, in places, the enormodome-courting trappings of recent years linger on. [Oct 2013, p.94]

At its best, Factory Floor powerfully blurs the lines between human and machine and back again, and is very hard to argue with. [Oct 2013, p.91]

While there's nothing here to touch 1999's moving, Cinemascopic downtempo classic Les Nuits, it's an eclectic offering, deliberately in keeping with the Balearic paradigm Evelyn once helped shape. [Oct 2013, p.91]

It eschews the compartmentalised, glossy, compressed production sound du jour for a red-blooded, powerful live feel full of adrenalin and excitement. [Oct 2013, p.90]

Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser's third album again fails to provide a soft pop landing. [Oct 2013, p.96]