Some are great. Some are thinner--but James's new groove has big promise. [Feb 2013, p.97]

This baker's dozen mostly adheres to the Hardin principal: shorn arrangements, nuanced vocals, emotions on a short leash. [Feb 2013, p.96]

What you may lose in rock'n'roll kicks you gain in poignancy and poetry. [Mar 2013, p.86]

Metheny conjures up a dense sonic tapestry comprising kaleidoscopic tone colours. [Mar 2013, p.94]

The Messenger duly wipes the slate clean and bursts with the same efflorescent skills that made Johnny Marr a guitar hero for the generation which had supposedly repudiated such a concept. [Mar 2013, p.90]

Amok Achieves a seductive unity of purpose which is all the more impressive for stemming from the advent of additional personnel. [Mar 2013, p.84]

Its 10 fuzzy, through-the-bottom-of-a-whiskey-glass intimacy, with Anthony's acoustic guitar and rich baritone voice conveying songs of existential wonder and lament. [Feb 2013, p.93]

File under deserving of proper attention. [Feb 2013, p.92]

Although California-based, her echoey swamp sound encompassing bottleneck guitars and cellos recalls the friendly/eerie seductions of Bobbie Gentry or Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball. [Mar 2013, p.90]

Sounds like one long mobile phone ad. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Playfully eccentric, it pushes the boundaries of the psych-pop revival in a way that's thankfully more redolent of MGMT's Congratulations than Ariel Pink's more self-conscious "mature" themes. [Mar 2013, p.88]

Centralia's seven lengthy essays proffer the duo's boldest, most immersive statements to date. [Mar 2013, p.88]

The crystalline vocals hint at either uplifting profundity or overblown pomposity--it's hard to say which. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Polished arrangements in a mix of menacing, reverb-drenched grooves and languid shimmer. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Skittery clicks and manipulated samples add heat and light to plucked guitar and breathy voice on songs that evolve in space-time. [Mar 2013, p.98]

A bit shambolic, then, but Thao has enough charisma to sustain hearing it all in one sitting. [Mar 2013, p.98]

[The album] is suitably haunted and becalmed. [Mar 2013, p.98]

It sounds like the soundtrack to an odd dream about a Western film. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Miller and Lauderdale's duets has both the easy familiarity of old friends and the musicianship of old pros. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Think more of pastoral My Morning Jacket or Irish superstar-in-waiting James Vincent McMorrow and their keening, introspective-yet-expansive songs. [Mar 2013, p.96]

A debut album of psychedelic gospel-tinged gems. [Mar 2013, p.94]

It's just a shame his parochial worldview is often at odds with his music's overreaching grandstanding. [Mar 2013, p.94]

In all, a tad more mannered and staid than you'd expect from these former experimentalists. [Mar 2013, p.94]

Plenty of young pups are revising the pop-smart bludgeon of, say, pre-goldrush Nirvana, but only Pissed Jeans deliver with such panache. [Mar 2013, p.91]

Considered restraint is a virtue, but Somewhere Else is hazardously polite. [Mar 2013, p.91]

Crisp drum figures add punctuation, and a noodling sax help evoke a mood of traveling the city at night. [Mar 2013, p.91]

News From Nowhere boosts the levels of electronic warmth, Buttery's unassuming presence adding an extra level of lushness rather than dominating events. [Mar 2013, p.90]

It's as commercial as it gets but works purely because the Quin girls have fashioned with good tunes that come replete with more than enough hooks to keep everyone happy. [Mar 2013, p.88]

Producers Mike Elizondo and Rob Cavallo smooth away many of the rough edges, and it's the tracks that escape the industry sander that are great. [Mar 2013, p.87]

This is mature, tuneful and utterly approachable album. [Mar 2013, p.87]

He's got the lovesick blues, but his offering are not of the Hank Williams kind rather they are pages ripped from a personal diary. This could all add up to something of a drag were it not for Stamey's ability to tug at the heart-strings. [Mar 2013, p.87]

Even for Ron it makes for downbeat listening, but when it really comes together, such as Lost In Thought, his rock-bottom emotions truly reach for the stars. [Mar 2013, p.87]

A sounding board for confessionals too heroically wonky to be dull. [Mar 2013, p.86]

Listener as shrink? A bit, but you'll be happy to attend E's chaise longue. [Mar 2013, p.86]

Though succinct segues Housing (In) and Housing (Out) have something of the filler about them, State Hospital and December's Traditions are bleakly beautiful portraits of Broken Britain, Hutchinson's fervent vocal letting it all hang out. [Mar 2013, p.86]

He's written better collections of songs, but for fun, warmth, vigour and power, it' sup there with his best. [Mar 2013, p.86]

A 2am album of sheer, devastating beauty. [Jun 2012, p.86]

Challenging it may be at points, but absorbing and complex too. [Dec 2013, p.94]

It benefits substantially from the synergy that the potent presence of Charlie Musselwhite helps to create. [Feb 2013, p.90]

Extra bass and echo enhance it reality-subverting agenda. [Feb 2013, p.98]

A little of these Lee & Nancy-style duets foes a long way. [Feb 2013, p.98]

Heartfelt and brilliantly executed, it's a creative peak. [Feb 2013, p.89]

[An] engaging, likable, thoroughly listenable, and indeed, sing-along album. [Feb 2013, p.96]

Dreamy and cacophonous. [Feb 2013, p.98]

[James Jackson Toth] fleshes out more whiskey-warmed, heart-sore folk with flashes of humour. [Feb 2013, p.98]

Atmospheric, reverbed beats that suggest indie boys who dance. [Feb 2013, p.98]

It's Bramwell's knack for a kind of "surely this one must be a cover-version" classicism that impresses most. [Feb 2013, p.96]

A convincing and often quite brilliant restatement of Ubu's early noir-meets-B-movie-sci-fi inclinations. [Feb 2013, p.93]

Hands Of Glory is a flamboyant country cousin [to 2012's Break it Yourself]. [Feb 2013, p.92]

Fractured but never broken, Arc takes chaos and crunches it into a satisfying and surprising whole. [Feb 2013, p.92]

[Bundick] constructs a wold of dancey digital pop out of low-slung Cali R&B rhythms, blunted hip-hop, Gallic dance pop and quirky house. [Feb 2013, p.91]

Fusing techno with campanology is a bold aim on paper; in practice it's a revelation. [Feb 2013, p.91]

This is beautiful music. [Feb 2013, p.91]

Taken as a whole, it's an arresting step towards the light. [Feb 2013, p.90]

[Hank Cochran's] proven an inspirational figure for honky tonk star Johnson, who's managed to rope in half of Nashville for this revamp of Cochran's songbook. [Feb 2013, p.90]

Kudos goes to the French Afrobeaters Fanga and Moroccan trance master Abdallah Guinea for finding a new spin on Fela Kuti's funk. [Feb 2013, p.89]

Even after three intervening decades of teknoid endeavour, these pioneers remained uniquely disturbing. [Feb 2013, p.88]

Fade feels like a definitive and hugely uplifting summary of a cult institution. [Feb 2013, p.88]

On Lysandre, his vision feels more expansive. [Feb 2013, p.88]

Motorik-like melodies now overwhelm the miasmic shoegazey tropes. [Feb 2013, p.91]

It's funny, touching, thoughtful, more than a little weird....and rather wonderful. [Feb 2013, p.89]

Teeming with deftly plucked and delicately pitched melody trails, Whispering Trees stands worthy of its forbears. [Feb 2013, p.88]

A picaresque journey through the cosmos. [Feb 2013, p.86]

Bad Religion see no reason to mess with the formula. [Feb 2013, p.98]

Each of the eight tracks fade into the distance, making for a hypnotic, haunting record, yet a highly individual and accomplished one too. [Oct 2012, p.95]

Arbouretum have reined in the Crazy Horse-gallop-on-for-hours excesses of earlier outings, for sharper impact. [Jan 2013, p.91]

On stand-out New Tracks, singer Joseph Arthur locates a pleasing interface that shades powerpop and balladry. [Jan 2013, p.102]

The opening tracks' motorik rhythms--all Juno-G keyboards and Roland bass--suggest an M1 retread of Autobahn undone by the spectre of sleep, but later tracks like the howling Pennine drones of A Non-Place imply a final destination far from the shoulder; somewhere overgrown, primitive and ancient. [Jan 2013, p.100]

The Weeknd starts here. Jan 2013, p.108]

A set of sad, beautiful, guileless, country-folk songs [Jan 2013, p.102]

The odd saccharine lyrics loses them a fourth star. [Jan 2013, p.102]

Ambitious, hypnotic but a little relentless. [Jan 2013, p.102]

This reissued debut reminds, they were a band better informed--and more thrilling--than most. [Jan 2013, p.106]

It makes for a spiritual and mind-stretching experience one minute, woozy and disorienting the next. [Jan 2013, p.100]

Moving from deliciously tense cop-show rhythms to echoing guitar feedback and pure-signal electronic buzz. [Jan 2013, p.98]

The Night Has a Thousand Screams dresses the oily synth ripples and murky bass lines of Hill's previous Umberto releases From The Grave... and Prophecy Of The Black Widow with glistening descant textures and rich analogue pulses, bringing a new shimmering elegance and profound foreboding to both his sound and, in the great tradition, the base source material. [Jan 2013, p.98]

This very playable record has a broad appeal at the same time as it reasserts modern electronica's vitality. [Jan 2013, p.98]

Each time they break free of their own locked groove, achieving mood-elevating uplift via genius structural shifts, or wig-flippin' solos spiritually comparable with Hendrix or Neil young. [Jan 2013, p.98]

The North feels like a shuffle back into soft focus. [Jan 2013, p.98]

[A] selection of sparingly produced wistfulness. [Jan 2013, p.95]

These love songs all sound pretty good. But the feeling remains that she has more, which the respectful hands around her haven't liberated. [Jan 2013, p.95]

From the Top is a mix of folk and rock and Americana, but James bends them all into new and daring shapes. [Jan 2013, p.95]

This is real person-to-person music. [Jan 2013, p.95]

A girl on fire? Now and then--and inbetween times, she smoulders as well as ever. [Jan 2013, p.95]

It's great to hear them back on home turf, stripped of their last two records' strained conceptualism, instead just spitting out random, bratty nuggets about uncomplicated things like feeling horny and outrageous women. [Jan 2013, p.94]

Although Overgrown Path is only 30 Minutes long, it nonetheless reveals Chris Cohen as a Man with an individual voice, and its brevity makes it particularly more-ish. [Jan 2013, p.94]

His music finally a match to his unswerving anti-capitalist manifesto. [Jan 2013, p.93]

The law school drop-pout is at his analytical best here. [Jan 2013, p.93]

Profound? Hardly. Fun? Indubitably. [Jan 2013, p.93]

Plenty of nightmare visions of Skid Row LA, but really no fun at all. [Jan 2013, p.93]

Surprises at every turn. [Jan 2013, p.93]

The naff raps and Auto-Tuned gloop can't spoil the addictive rush of the air-punching, get-pissed-destroy-a-bus-shelter anthems that abound here. [Jan 2012, p.93]

This succeeds chiefly because its remixers take such drastic liberties with the source material. [Jan 2013, p.92]

A major work. [Jan 2013, p.92]

This just might be their best work in 25 years. [Jan 2013, p.92]

If the initial listening experience challenges, long-term exposure unfurls Instrumental Tourist's full beauty. [Jan 2013, p.91]

The result is intelligent pop infested with tense, subterranean melodies. [Jan 2012, p.91]

Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! feels simultaneously enormous and tragic; the sound of victory, firmly set in the jaws of defeat. [Jan 2013, p.91]