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]

The debut set from New Albany's Houndmouth suggests there's more to them than nice skinny jeans. [Aug 2013, p.88]

The future and past collide throughout. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Neil Hagerty in the producer's chair is a good fit for an album that deliberately blurs the pre- and post-Nirvana boundaries. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Apocalypse is a multi-storied cosmic rollercoaster that asks the big questions while relocating hip hop on the astral plane. No mean feat. [Aug 2013, p.88]

With Love's blackout material is thinly stretched, allowing light to shine in on a skeletal basement stock of dubstep sketches and flat house beats that repeatedly loop out to abrupt endings, halting Zomby's greater narrative ambitions. [Aug 2013, p.92]

An affecting release, it demands repeated plays, emerging as canorous, sly and bewitching. [Aug 2013, p.90]

Like a fine wine continuing to mature, Mavis's One True Vine should be allowed to breathe. [Aug 2013, p.87]

An hour of absorbing rhythmic transport, The Visitor fully satisfies the brief. [Aug 2013, p.84]

Three years ago, Africa For Africa felt like a career highlight: this isn't far behind. [Aug 2013, p.96]

A record of quality, but not of distinction. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Editors' fourth retains their customary grandeur and gloom, but with a new immediacy and surety, as Tom Smith matures into a truly commanding frontman. [Aug 2013, p.86]

With her soaring, passionate voice the wail of a spectre, she's the incubus Kate Bush. [Aug 2013, p.88]

It gets on the dancefloor to create some bona fide hits of its own. [Aug 2013, p.89]

Their refusal to accept stylistic boundaries when playing songs works well here. But balancing structure and freedom can be like trying to square the circle, and when you record quickly to preserve spontaneity, not everything will be successful. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Mollestad confirms her love of The Melvins, Sonny Sharrock and six-string gymnastics. [Jun 2013, p.95]

A wry, gently nostalgic affair recalling lives lived. [Jun 2013, p.95]

It may not eclipse past achievements but does point to a genuine way forward in a dignified and spiritual manner. [Jul 2013, p.84]

Fun and fully immersive, rewinds are rewarded with a plethora of intricate detail. [Jul 2013, p.85]

Bosnian Rainbows is no less powerful for its focus, segueing from fractured futuristic funk rock, to thorny melodic pop, to resonant power balladry with a fire and confidence confirming the Bosnian Rainbows as no mere "project," but indeed a whole new direction. [Jul 2013, p.86]

Treetop Flyers have perhaps wisely chosen to avoid Mumfords' bombastic path for an altogether sunnier route. [Jun 2013, p.88]

Their ability to create spellbinding instrumentals that blend high-calibre jazz improvisation with accessible melodies is evidenced by the wonderfully serene Reunion and the more febrile Finding Neamo. [Jul 2013, p.94]

With his chosen genre being synonymous with timeless, classic pop, these songs need to be unforgettable to really stand out. Instead they're merely good. [Jul 2013, p.88]

A two-hour 2-CD trip, hanging free in reflective well being. [Jul 2013, p.96]

Pleasant enough, but you may feel you've heard this conversation before. [Jun 2013, p.88]

It's not morose--his voice is too engaging, his songs (and band) too good. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Every one [of the songs are] a solid treasure. [Jul 2013, p.92]

It's gritty urban dramas never become too heavy-hearted, the breezy tunes blowing through like prime Jonathan Richman. [Jul 2013, p.84]

It still feels a bit hammy. [Jul 2013, p.96]

Marc Rigelsford's second LP basks in at-home production warmth. [Jul 2013, p.96]

What could have been overly esoteric instead recalls Vampire Weekend playfulness, albeit with 4/4 beats. [Jul 2013, p.96]

It's all too handsomely sterile to truly love. [Jul 2013, p.96]

The odd uptempo beat rather jars. [Jul 2013, p.96]

Although there are many acts occupying similar territory, the quality of Grey's songwriting and delivery elevates much of the material here. [Jul 2013, p.94]

For all the grey matter on display, this is a Technicolor record. [Jul 2013, p.94]

She sings calmly from the heart, flowing beautifully, her simplicity enhanced by his [producer Howe Gelb] delicate downmix touches. [Jul 2013, p.94]

[The album is] spare, poignant, dark and dry. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Its 11 new originals that wouldn't sound out of place on country radio or in a roadhouse in the '50s and '60s. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Immensely satisfying. [Jul 2013, p.92]

The words "necessity", "mother" and "invention" spring happily to mind. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Great late-night music. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Some tracks occasionally feel more like fillers--but at its best, Legacy feels like tuning into a magical mid-dial shortwave station, where all the neighbouring broadcasts gave fallen into an exhilarating synchronisation. [Jul 2013, p.88]

While quite meaty in itself, this is odd and not necessarily called for. [Jul 2013, p.88]

Kite breezes of melodic distortion blur into fog banks of silver noise before everything goes Dream-psych with Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan on hazy closer Happiness. [Jul 2013, p.87]

Floating Coffin is manna for the faithful, but also an excellent point for newbies to get onboard. [Jul 2013, p.87]

Buzzing with delicate analogue warmth, the gamelan rhythms, toy-piano chimes and warped guitar loops or Walking Field are lullingly hypnotic and eerily deja entendu. [Jul 2013, p.87]

It's hard to imagine droves of converts flocking to so abstruse a musical cocktail, but it's a welcome addition to the Grubbs canon, nonetheless. [Jul 2013, p.87]

His spark remains undimmed. [Jul 2013, p.87]

In a life of perpetual motion, Perils From The Sea provides a vital forward thrust. [Jul 2013, p.86]