As ever, Lanegan's voice is solemn and affecting, emphasising the melancholic sentiments of the material. [Oct 2013, p.91]

Thanks to The Roots, Costello has new access--and Wise Up Ghost should bring new listeners to mess with. [Oct 2013, p.94]

Dream River may be Callahan's most beguiling album yet. [Oct 2013, p.89]

There is much melancholy here, but he sounds comfortable singing songs that carry the weight of experience. [Oct 2013, p.87]

This is exciting, audacious work from a band yet again on the edge of a new future. [Oct 2013, p.84]

The recovering dope fiend's songs cut even closer to the heart. [Aug 2013, p.104]

Against the odds Placebo are growing old gracefully. [Sep 2013, p.89]

The mood is all of a piece, the songs are stronger, and nobody suggests lightening the atmosphere with a high-energy single. [Sep 2013, p.84]

Blanket Of Leaves oozes rueful, autumnal soulfulness; you can almost feel the sea fret during the minimally arranged Ships In The Rain; only A Kingdom, with busy snare drums, hoedown fiddles and raindrop guitars, approaches anything like vigour, offering a welcome change to the mood of wistful languor. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Apart from misplacing the detonator for Iggy's Search & Destroy and a version of Neil Young's Rockin' In The Free World that lacks the original's purple-faced fury, Can't Get Enough is the sound of men enjoying the music. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Think Metronomy, Junior Boys and a (much) chirpier John Grant. [Sep 2013, p.95]

Given such a line-up and a high degree of cohesion not always apparent in similarly stellar offerings, good things should happen. And they do. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Razor-sharp production, lazy lolloping dance grooves and a polished, poppy glow lends the debut from Essex producer Tythe more than a hint of anything goes, '80s Balearic sheen. [Sep 2013, p.95]

An unpretentious euphoric debut. [Sep 2013, p.95]

Lightbody's perennnially love-lorn, tear-in-eye songwriting benefits from a more exotic sonic wardrobe than Snow Patrol would feel comfortable in. [Sep 2013, p.94]

With contributions from one third of Grizzly Bear, lilting vocals and arpeggiated guitar chords are gracefully manifest. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Permanent Signal drinks from a similar, if sonically expanded pool [as 2012 debut Strange Weekend]. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Ultimately, this album stands in euphoric, unrepentant denial of its own title. [Sep 2013, p.91]

The album's dozen essays zigzag with the same unpredictability as Veirs's vertiginous melody lines, everything united by her compellingly aerated vocal tone and Tucker Martine's deep focus production. [Sep 2013, p.88]

Not everything is quite so Travis by-the-numbers--and with mixed results. [Sep 2013, p.88]

They've created a splendidly polite fusion of Fleetwood Mac and the Cocteau Twins. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Played with authority and aplomb. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Lucid lyrical imagery punctuates the muzzy near-consciousness. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Plays like an xx-lite confined to analogue. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Pretty but lightweight. [Sep 2013, p.96]

A record which is less abrasive and more measured, if slightly wishy-washy from time to time. [Sep 2013, p.96]

A sound that lies somewhere in between early Beach House and breezy, ambient techno. [Sep 2013, p.96]

An impressive follow-up album. [Sep 2013, p.96]

Some wildly uneven wordplay, on a needlessly bloated set, suggests the Brooklyn king's crown is slipping. [Sep 2013, p.94]

The brittle world he creates is a seductive one. [Sep 2013, p.95]

[A] hazy smoked-out amalgam of shoegaze, analogue synths and surf-pop harmonies. [Sep 2013, p.95]

This improbably excellent debut album eschews the studied blankness of many of that race's [psych revivals] current front-runners in favour of a playful yet intense engagement with psychedelic rock traditions. [Sep 2013, p.95]

Still ethereal and episodic, it's less sequestered, more outgoing [than Ekstasis], with an influx of strings and brass bringing warmth to concoctions of stunning invention and variety. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Her candy floss-flavoured cough syrup vocals will be a little sweet for some tastes on first hearing, but when backed up with an acid lyrical kick, the overall effect is devastatingly insidious. [Sep 2013, p.95]

It's a more downbeat affair than their 2009 debut and best envinced by the stuttering tech soul of Gita. [Sep 2013, p.95]

In spite of its two-headed musical harmony, the personal disharmony in The Civil Wars is all too evident. [Sep 2013, p.94]

The animals are well cast as they orbit Magic Town. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Not quite enough to give Win Butler the vapours, but not far off it. [Sep 2013, p.90]

As ever with Borrell, it's never less than weirdly, grippingly fascinating. [Sep 2013, p.90]

A move to their own label sees them lose the plot entirely, sliding into the stodgy AOR navel gazing of From A Window Seat and listless choogling. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Nepenthe finds Julianna Barwick's already established wash of angel tones and free-floating radiance newly influenced by the breathtaking, often alien wonders of her host country. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Nasty, brutish, short, and wholly compelling, Yeezus begs only one question: where next? [Sep 2013, p.89]

This is (finally) an album that is enjoyable solely as a listening experience. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Production detail aside, their is little tinkering with their formula. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Lee's declared love of hymns, evident in his falsetto flutter and overarching cavernous mood, should ensure former Oasis fans won't clamor for Bluebell Field or Hold Me Forever, the key tracks to Money's particular, profound brand of Mancunian sound. [Sep 2013, p.91]

It's a compact yet satisfying set of 10 surging semi-acoustic almost-ballads with occasional electric interludes. [Sep 2013, p.91]

foon's USP here is her voice, an instrument of somnolent, gossamer allure which floats gracefully, if opaquely, amid the eddying, amniotic music. [Jul 2013, p.92]

There's no great leap forward here but the spring in their step is unmistakeable. [Sep 2013, p.87]

Even on a transitional work, No Age's spirit of adventure is its own reward. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Valerie call this "organic moonshine roots music"--it's the perfect phrase to sum up her glorious sound. [Jul 2013, p.88]

Occasionally, the buoyancy veers into pop, the clever lyrics verge on trite. [Sep 2013, p.88]

the Krautrock gene that moulded 2012's brilliant debut Free Time! still dominates the album's early passages. [Sep 2013, p.88]

O'Donovan has a fragile, heart-melting voice and is a fine songwriter. [Sep 2013, p.88]

Reduced to a duo for Southern Records' live-in-the-studio Latitudes series in 2012, Tucker and O'Sullivan seasoning their cosmic mantras with such sweet tinctures as early Eno, This Heat and the acoustic mirror harmonies of early OMD. With Glynnaestra the potion is perfected. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Jones's playing is inventive throughout, comparing favourably to his work with the M.G.'s. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Disappointment and cautious optimism for the future, rather than recrimination, is About Farewell's weapon of choice, a welcome female counterpoint to, say, the bitterness of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks or Josh Ritter's The Beast In Its Tracks. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Except for hitting the odd unfamiliar note, as on an exquisitely lap-steel and fingerpicked Galveston, the singer's vocals sound unchanged, still keening and honey-pure. [Aug 2013, p.89]

[An] impressive return from the veteran doyens of acid jazz. [Jun 2013, p.95]

It's tempting to surmise that the songwriting has improved since the Smash Hits years, but an extra CD of acoustically played hits--shorn of period production--reminds you that they were always this good. [Jun 2013, p.86]

This is an album of easeful warmth, the sound of an ever restless, exploratory musician coming home. [Jul 2013, p.94]

He achieves a delectable balance between affecting and creepy. [Nov 2012, p.85]

When it works, it's genuinely exciting, but too often the brave retro-futuristic collision is neither fish nor fowl. [Jul 2013, p.82]

If Not Now... goes a long way to pinpointing just why Marling, Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne, among others, keep calling on his services as both musician and producer. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Teardo's pizzicato arrangements lend Bargeld's melodic sprechgesang monologues a profoundly sinister undertow. [Aug 2013, p.90]

Here he achieves immediate take-off with a version of Nilsson's The Flying Saucer Song that could fit neatly on The Dark Side Of The Moon without too many people noticing. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Steer is an astringent, droll, sometimes touching narrator; it's easy to hear why Cocker was so bewitched. [Feb 2013, p.91]

All six track here confidently align The Cairo Gang alongside kindred neo-psychedelicists like The Lilys, it's brevity never wearing out their charms. [Aug 2013, p.90]

Toure sounds at his best, then, with distorted guitars behind him, brooding on an album of menacing, slow-burn songs reflecting on a rough year in Mali. [Aug 2013, p.96]

[A] stunning musical response to Lord of the Flies author William Golding's daring novelistic excursion into prehistoric anthropology. [Jul 2013, p.85]

As things are, it's an above-par, straight-ahead roots-revival collection, its full-blown "outernational" arrangements lit up by world-class brass and occasional splashes ofsynth. [Aug 2013, p.86]

This is effectively one long, fuzzily fragile, ever-orbiting tone poem. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Clark is over 70 these days but he's never over the hill--not as long as he and his co-writing buddies keep on providing visions of Texas few can emulate. [Aug 2013, p.93]

JBM has concocted a glorious half-dream of a third album. [Aug 2013, p.93]

With his bijou gift for melody, over 75 minutes Hart delivers abundantly. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Bugbears is a rich and warming curio, and there's something quietly noble about Hayman dragging the thoughts of these long-dead writers back into the light. [Aug 2013, p.93]

Heroic riffing and Joe Cardamone's raw yodel ensure they never disappoint. [Aug 2013, p.98]

Slow Focus isn't without merit but you yearn for more. [Aug 2013, p.91]

In places, it's intense, heavy and oppressive, but Uondapaturu and Skeleton Island pull off the trick of satisfying both party hedonists and those simply seeking gratification within the confines of their headphones. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Whether it's the horrors of recognising yourself in an obnoxious younger person, his downbeat but defiant re-working of Jerusalem or the uncharacteristically optimistic The Wolfless Years, it's still the words that really stay with you. [Aug 2013, p.93]

Lazy vocals, euphoric hooks and volleys of digital drums. [Aug 2013, p.98]

A deft pop nous and palpable devotion to his influences ensures each experiment really works. [Aug 2013, p.96]

Superior crumbs from the captain's table, they will make completists weep. [Aug 2013, p.104]

Freeforms about football, his old tunes and beyond, to variably potent digi-dub backings. [Aug 2013, p.98]

An unapologetic blast of tough breakbeats, deep bass, roots consciousness and with guest appearances from veteran MCs like Tenor Fly, General Levey and Tippa Irie, history lessons of how jungle grew from reggae and raving and influenced later forms including garage and grime. [Aug 2913, p.96]

Love Your Dum And Mad [is] a piercingly direct seduction of the senses. [Aug 2013, p.88]

Recorded, mixed and mastered in just two weeks, Chop Chop oozes zest and focus. [Aug 2013, p. 89]

[The album] effortlessly skips across sounds and styles like a human Wurlitzer. [Aug 2013, p.98]

Folk roots meet soundtrack clips and contemporary perspective. [Aug 2013, p.98]

[An] expansive advance on their Indian classical-inspired sound. [Aug 2013, p.98]

Cerulean Salt's added electricity, rhythm section, variety and production clarity still retains the intimacy, the skeletal arrangements and the plaintive urgency in here delivery, from a yelp to a croon. [Aug 2013, p.93]

Walsh's facility for approximating his soft-rock heroes is impressive; likewise DLM's sensitivity to the sport's uniquely philosophical undertow. [Aug 2013, p.89]

Anarchic Breezes is a fully-fledged new direction, and as coherent and powerful a record as McBean has made in his 10-year career. [Aug 2013, p.88]

Perfect-pitch harmonies and chiming guitars glide through 10 tracks of heartbreaks, make-ups and drunken misadventures disguised as glorious summertime breezes. [Aug 2013, p.91]

In short, it's the kind of pop music that works in any era. [Aug 2013, p.89]

Any threesome with such a full house of boss songwriters shouldn't go splitting up again. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Field of Reeds is a startlingly listenable proposition. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Desire Lines is the immaculately conceived album they've always threatened to make. [Aug 2013, p.92]

CSS's party-forever commitment is faltering. [Aug 2013, p.91]