Possibly it's the glorious touch of melodic grandiosity forming the heart of Don't Mess With Latexas that supplies the most climatic moment to remember amid this remarkable, kaleidoscopic offering. [Nov 2012, p.84]

In sonic terms, it's considerably more aspirational than even last year's Sun And Shade, allowing Earl's take on various ages of American song-craft to snap into sharper focus. [Nov 2012, p.84]

The increasingly frequent transitions between the finger picking subtlety of old to such newfound rockage are, however, simply too jarring for satisfactory listening. [Nov 2012, p.84]

The teen delivers poetic social realism. [Nov 2012, p.90]

Snaith's upward trajectory shows little evidence of slowing. [Nov 2012, p.87]

Department of Disappearance won't surprise or disappoint anyone who loves its 2009 predecessor Yours, Truly, The Commuter. [Nov 2012, p.86]

It's inspired genre-hopping and relentless invention resulting in a substantial and brilliantly sung career-best. [Nov 2012, p.85]

This album elicits a powerful aura, which continues to resonate potently several hours, even days, after the last note has died. [Nov 2012, p.82]

The keening askance of his voice, celestial choirs and brittle hesitation of his guitar all speak of terrible demons exorcised, and when that all comes together on Brother or opener Part One: The End, maybe only Josh T. Pearson can touch his pain. [Aug 2012, p.84]

When the title track and Handshake attempt stylistic detours they are swiftly re-routed with a familiar chorus or chord progression, symbolising the "play it safe" mentality of the whole album. [Oct 2012, p.90]

The 2CD "best of" is a strong cherry-pick of his catalogue. [Oct 2012, p.102]

This follow-up retains the enthusiasm and innocence of [its 2010 release] Dansette Dansette. [Oct 2012m p.87

It plays to all their debut's moody, elegant, widescreen strengths while illustrating the changes since. [Sep 2012, p.86]

The effect is memorable. [Oct 2012, p.91]

It is probably Dylan's most distinctive statement. [Oct 2012, p.94]

This Fascinating, individual and exhilarating fusion welds classical tropes to such diverse elements as Arcadian folk, doo wop, Steve Reich and Greek Mythology. [Oct 2012, p.95]

[An] accomplished compilation. [Oct 2012, p.100]

There's plenty of individual spin to set k&f apart and the tension never slacks. [Oct 2012, p.89]

This is beautiful music that appears to breathe independently of its creator. [Oct 2012, p.95]

Burgess always wanted to be a country soul man, on this album he has done it. [Oct 2012, p.87]

Master of genre purity in R&B, Country and folk, Knopfler shapes each style to his own purpose and personality. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Paley's voice is a little frail but it's true, and his picking skills are as finely honed as when he gave lesson to the young Ry Cooder and Jerry Garcia. [Oct 2012, p.90]

Despite the elegant grey-sky thinking, deep beneath the emotional permafrost, Piramida isn't as cold as it seems. [Oct 2012, p.86]

These veterans are already better than The Funkees. [Oct 2012, p.91]

More than just a decent nu-folk album, Babel is a great pop album. [Oct 2012, p.82]

Listeners who have enjoyed the prolific jazz pianist;s preoccupation with moody rock material will be delighted and unsurprised at his choices of vehicle here. [Oct 2012, p.82]

It's a bona fide Lee Hazlewood classic: Mournful and orchestrated, imbued with a heart-rendering yearning. [Oct 2012, p.102]

Great songs and renewed relevance aside, Woody at 100's greatest bounty may still be Guthrie's own sketches and illustrations, beautifully reproduced in the book. [Oct 2012, p.101]

Exercises is elegant, welcoming, if somewhat melancholic. [Oct 2012, p.95]

They may be musical magpies but what they build from their stash is gold. [Oct 2012, p.95]

It's a punishing listen certain to prove divisive among his fan base. [Oct 2012, p.95]

With this first album, Stealing Sheep join that weird and wonderful place inhabited by Warpaint, Bat For Lashes and The Raincoats. [Oct 2012, p.94]

There's much more depth to the sequel. [Oct 2012, p.91]

Mysterious and enfolding, Ascent seduces. [Oct 2012, p.90]

No retro trip, this, greasy grooves and hollered pulpit soundbytes remain Blue Explosion's prime business--and business is good. {Oct 2012, p.90]

William Bensussen mashes up cavernous hip hop beats, 8-bit electronica, West Coast psych and glitch. [Oct 2012, p.95]

For all its survivalist blues and everyman politicking, Mourning really connects when the Ali gets up close and personal. [Oct 2012, p.89]

Theirs remain an abstract, liminal brand of pop, with Prekop's vocals as delightfully gossamer, and his lyrics as intriguingly impressionistic as ever. [Oct 2012, p.88]

Though lacking the infernal dynamics of 2009's Farm, there remains sufficient compensation to delight Dino devotees. [Oct 2012, p.88]

In reconnecting with the guileless, tribal chaos of their roots, Animal Collective have made another delirious and ecstatic step forward. [Oct 2012, p.87]

Mirage rock's persistent melodies and infectious energy is hard to resist. [Oct 2012, p.87]

MacNeil is certainly a stronger singer--though without the coarse and charismatic Carter there's a sense that they are now one punk band among many, albeit still more sonically violent than most. {Oct 2012, p.86]

Nothing here is less than intriguing. [Oct 2012, p.86]

Believe You me is something of an art-house installation. [Oct 2012, p.86]

[Lekman] delivers a buoyant, frankly heart-wrenching, autobiographical album. [Oct 2012, p.86]

This brilliant, complex and surprising piece proves to be no exercise in getting to know them better. [Oct 2012, p.82]

For every infectious pop song, there's a lengthy, piano-and-synth-based epic, and everywhere a lust for life. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Charmer is in essence an Americana and power-pop confection with piano and tasteful guitars swaddled in the choicest vintage tones. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Easily their most accessible album, Algiers is also Calexico at their most expansive and very, very best. [Oct 2012, p.94]

This is cerebral yet genial fare. [Oct 2012, p.91]

It'll surely rank as British alt-rock's finest debut of 2012--genuinely fit for a place in Dougall Sr's pantheon. [Oct 2012, p.88]

Tempest is Dylan's best musical album of this century, a vibrant maximising of strict rules and the savaged-leather state of that voice. [Oct 2012, p.84]

It's a return to their best. [Oct 2012, p.83]

Scratchily downbeat, this is a true artist's vision in that Hood can remove himself from the pain without stinting on the honesty. [Oct 2012, p.82]

Those fans who jumped on with 1994's breakthrough album Dookie should rejoice: your favourite slacker-punks are, briefly, back. [Oct 2012, p.82]

If letting the world in has resulted in an album this beguiling, there's nothing to fear. [Oct 2012, p.80]

This band played their earthly songs with far more gentle elegance than they deploy nowadays in their sporadic revival. [Sep 2012, p.102]

The smooth edges of Mature Themes doesn't mean this music is any easier to grasp. [Sep 2012, p.86]

This fierce debut [is] an essential purchase for anyone who has fallen for the jazzier end of the Ethiopiques spectrum. [Sep 2012, p.97]

Amid the psychedelic soft rock and esoteric twiddling, three tracks stand out. [Sep 2012, p.94]

This is the album to prove that great Afrobeat doesn't have to be a Kuti family affair. [Sep 2012, p.97]

Frenetic take on Radiohead's Street Spirit aside, the tightly arranged songs here are pleasingly Queen, AC/DC, Lizzy and Leppard-aware. [Sep 2012, p.86]

The best thing he's done since [Hard Road to Travel]. [Jul 2012, p.88]

DOOM is in the form of his life here. [Jun 2012, p.85]

This sounds like a calculated genre exercise. [Sep 2012, p.90]

While Anastasis is typified by lengthy songs and sometimes rather ponderous beats, Gerald is in her element on Kiko. [Sep 2012, p.95]

Ultimately Four is an album of two 9uneven) sides). [Sep 2012, p.89]

This is Swans at their most user-unfriendly and trouser soiling. [Sep 2012, p.94.]

The orb's Dr. Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann conduct themselves as if overawed by their hero. They allow Perry to prattle away unchecked. [Sep 2012, p.88]

Rather than slicing the Fleet Foxes cucumber too thin, Poor Man adds a whole new flavour. [Sep 2012, p.86

II offers a litany of brief, mellifluous, vaguely jazzy mood sketches, fluidly mapping a terrain both playful and emotionally resonant like the missing link between Eric Satie's Gymnopedies and Everybody Digs Bill Evans. [Sep 2012, p.88]

There are moments when dear slips down pop alleys, but for those following, there's a creeping sense it could turn a bit Don't Look Now at any second. [Sep 2012, p.86]

While traces of Deacon's former giddiness punctuate America, there's an ambitiously hefty, almost John Doe Passos-like engagement with the ambiguities of the Land of the Free. [Sep 2012, p.88]

These 15 songs justify their status as outtakes. [Sep 2012, p.96]

They stick to their winning formula. [Sep 2012, p.88]

It's a scream, as we would expect from a musical humorist ranking only behind Randy Newman on the LOL-meter. And rivaled only by Tom Waits as a gloves-off DIY soundscapist in wood, steel, and string. [Sep 2012, p.87]

These radio sessions and TV appearances present an unique, accelerated Kinks history. [Sep 2012, p.103]

It's sex music for oddballs. [Sep 2012, p.89]

The more experimental efforts have a real impact. [Sep 2012, p.97]

Her tendency to over-infuse them with the weepies neuters what otherwise be gleaming moments. [Sep 2012, p.94]

It's a unified listen: it works as an album. [Sep 2012, p.102]

The sextet ply their angular chord changes and syncopated rhythms in first-rate tunes. [Sep 2012, p.97]

[A] rich and complex album. [Sep 2012, p.95]

The sense of isolation, longing and homesickness are palpable. But he's also wry and darkly funny, self-referential, and self-deprecating too. [Sep 2012, p.95]

The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends was the perfect Record Store Day artefact--dramatising the value and mystique of physical recordings. [Sep 2012, p.94]

It may prove hard for Matsson to get heard above the quiet din made by so many others who clutter his field, but he's one of the all-too-few worth listening to. [Sep 2012, p.94]

It lacks the crisp modernity of old but it's knee-deep in lush curvature and angular salvos, and new favourites keep emerging. [Sep 2012, p.94]

[The album includes] a stomping version of Elmore James's Rollin' And Tumblin' and a long and not wholly convincing reading of Stevie Wonder's Uptight. [Sep 2012, p.90]

Minimalist production values prevail and succeed in highlighting the beautiful--and often haunting melancholic--sonorities of Wilson's pipes. [Sep 2012, p.90]

I Was a Cat from a Book is as warm as an all-enveloping blanket by the hearth. [Sep 2012, p.89]

Thoughtful, tuneful, exquisitely melancholy, ever slightly off centre-- [Silencio] is, indeed, a welcome haven. [Sep 2012, p.86]

Gigantic of sound and vision, grandly poetic of pronouncement, the Millennium Stadium surely beckons. [Sep 2012, p.97]

The repetitive music loses a little power when you're sitting down listening to a hi-fi. [Aug 2012, p.87]

This epic finally reveals his personal vision in all its frenetic glory. [Aug 2012, p.94]

This debut captures their explosive energy and thunder; this is a band, that when it's found its own voice, will definitely go the distance. [Mar 2012, p.921]

An uneven yet entertaining debut. [Jun 2012, p.85]

Exquisitely sung, swept over with stormy emotions, Wild Dog's autumnal mysteries are alluring indeed. [Jul 2012, p.85]

His first LP of complete originals is a thing of profound beauty; deep, sad, wise songs, allied to perfectly crafted arrangements, from a man who's lived long enough in darkness to address the big, heavy questions with a lightness of touch. [Aug 2012, p.96]