Toweringly camp singles like the slinky Perfect World and an album to enjoy on shuffle. [Jun 2012, p.92]

There are comeback and then there's the new Cult album opener. [Jun 2012, p.88]

The evidence here is that he's maturing nicely. [Jun 2012, p.88]

It's accompanied with a swing and a fingerclick all Waterhouse's own and could turn out to be the soul album of 2012. [Jun 2012, p.88]

It is her once feral voice, now markedly more controlled, which proves most impressive here. [Jun 2012, p.88]

What could have easily sounded like an extended theme tune for Blackadder proves a classy and durable listen. [Jun 2012, p.88]

It can perfectly capture the film's conflicted moods of sadness and euphoria, but just as easily turn cloying and sickly. [Jun 2012, p.87]

The result is a low-key mist of strings, piano, percussion and electronics. [Jun 2012, p.87]

[Dave Gahan's] trademark delivery brings the gravitas to Machin's creeping strings-swaddled, Morricone-like mood. [Jun 2012, p.87]

The Ghost In Daylight is a memory-haunted journey through the dead voices and deep narratives of Englands lost; broadside ballads culled from earth and sea. [Jun 2012, p.87]

This sensitive tribute lingers. [Jun 2012, p.86]

Not exactly left field, but on the right track. [Jun 2012, p.86]

Boys Don't Cry is an unashamed stopgap. [Jun 2012, p.86]

These bedroom demo-sounding efforts are primitive. {Jun 2012, p.85]

From the second opener Get Got's frantic arpeggiations synths kick-in there's little let-up on a mind-mugging set so fresh even Delia Smith can't test its flavour. [Jun 2012, p.85]

This is SMD's deepest, moodiest record to date. [Jun 2012, p.85]

You're left with the impression that Lower Dens are both big sounding and very clever. [Jun 2012, p.85]

It's difficult to make either narrative or poetic sense of, well, what she's on about. [Jun 2012, p.85]

OFWGKTA are talented, if not as ground-breaking as they think. [Jun 2012, p.85]

His craftsman's melodiousness and honest voice add balm and balance. [Jun 2012, p.84]

Segall's charms are as abundant as his releases: may his well never run dry. [Jun 2012, p.84]

Bright, snappy and instantly infectious hooks. [Jun 2012, p.84]

Too much of this album, while pleasant enough, melts into a low-key blur of whispered, introspective nothings. [Jun 2012, p.85]

The result is adventurous and totally mesmerising. [Jun 2012, p.84]

Beal's vocals shift from Screaming Jay Hawkins wails to the lo-fi R&B melancholy of Cody ChesnuTT, while his chattering snake times rhythms summon up the ghosts of Moondog and Sun Ra, taking things to another level entirely. [Jun 2012, p.83]

They haven't really been missed, yet it's good to have them back. [Jun 2012, p.83]

It's still summer music, but The Only Place captures that moment when it's time to wrap a cardigan around your shoulders against the chill. [Jun 2012, p.83]

Spektor delivers everything with such guileless brio that you never notice the join [between troubadour style to chrome-clean hip hop].

The grain and gravitas of Jones's voice is perfectly suited to this diverse material. [Jun 2012, p.82]

Repeated plays will bear deep rewards confirming both protagonist' growing stature in modern music. [Jun 2012, p.82]

A piquant appetizer for the impending movie re-boot then, and a balm to those who still wake up screaming because of Stallone's 1995 film. [Jun 2012, p.82]

It's a labyrinthine 64-minute journey, bound together by a group identity that gains clarity with every listen. [Jun 2012, p.80]

As musical hybrids go, it's a fascinating and highly addictive one. [May 2012, p.93]

B-sides included here aren't without their charms but the album's genius clearly lay in distilling only the finest of Mould's new material into a powerful, singular statement. [Jul 2012, p.100]

It's the resulting acoustic simplicity of his songwriting that makes this collection such a treat. [Jul 2012, p.101]

The Decca set allows insight into King's working methods. [Jul 2012, p.99]

This absorbing new venture is essentially a set of unaccompanied musical dialogues between the two veterans. [Jul 2012, p.94]

It is William's ever-distinctive voice, allied to a line in unfailingly attractive material that provides this release with a patina of timelessness. [Jul 2012, p.82]

[Gentle Stream] is gorgeous sun-dappled psych, crossing the lighter side of paisley underground with Nick Drake's dreaminess. [Dec 2011, p.93]

Starts with elegant Congolese rumba then transforms into something angrier and more powerful... What lets it down, however, is an unfocused mid-section. [Jan 2012, p.101]

Satriani, a Hendrix obsessive, is brilliant throughout. But above all, it's the quality of their songs that makes Chickenfoot more than just a rich rock star's hobby. [Jan 2012, p.100]

A debut that will fry your ears and break your heart. [Jan 2012, 100]

Auguste Arthur's third, and best, set of lonesome-pine Americana. [Jun 2012, p.100]

Sepalcure finds its feet firmly in Chicago - past and present - blending early house melodies with the insistent, skittish, deep bass rhythms of the footwork genre in an emotional electronic mash. [Jan 2012, p.99]

This is haunting, atmospheric and intelligent introduction. [Jan 2012, p.99]

The warm glow that they engender is palpable, but you do wonder what may happen if The Field broke free from the constraints of the loop. [Jan 2012, p.99]

He wastes half his solo debut dishing out second rate filler. Thankfully, his true colours shine through on I Still Wanna, Raid and Trouble On My Mind ... although they're frustrating glimpses of a potent artist coasting too readily on past glories. [Jan 2012, p.99]

Good news for shoegaze-curious neophytes too afraid to dive headfirst into MBV's loveless, but very backward looking, too. [Jan 2012, p.98]

Barfly is pithy, punky pop and some of it really shifts. [Jan 2012, p.98]

It's a fine - if eccentric- album, but a bit of extra tinsel wouldn't have hurt. [Jan 2012, p.98]

Weather is so deftly under-produced that you turn it up; so hazy and intimate you're drawn in close. [Jan 2012, p.98]

Bracing, yet insidiously melodic. [Jan 2012, p.97]

Whether this is post rock, space rock or ad hoc it's hard to say, but who needs taxonomy when music feels this good? [Jan 2012, p.97]

It's properly cosmic stuff. [Jan 2012, p.97]

With the skeleton of a dance beat on Daydream, you can picture Powers doing a little skip around his bedroom, momentarily escaping the sad, hermetic beauty that characterises his record. [Jan 2012, p.96]

Like a very fine wine, after 25 years The Bats are only really just coming on song. [Jan 2012, p.96]

An album that exudes charm and promise. [Jan 2012, p.96]

Last Day Of Summer confirms that White Denim have a broad understanding of music as a whole... Their ability to synthesise this knowledge makes them one of the most thrilling forces in rock music right now. [Jan 2012, p.96]

A dauntless spirit permeates; and while there's only fleeting evidence of Berman's later literary wit, or Makmus' skewed rock swagger... [several songs] hint at the riches to come. [Jul 2012, p.101]

The Lost Tapes is such an impressive testament to Can's inspiration and questing spirit that without being greedy, one hopes that there may be more tapes sequestered away. [Jul 2012, p.96]

A sense of closure pervades here. The group's hermeticism-influenced lyrics remain cryptic as ever, it's true, but TSOOL will be missed. [Jul 2012, p.94]

[Nelson] moves effortlessly from pop country balladry to well-heated Western Swing. [Jul 2012, p.94]

The whole album is uncertain and unconvincing. [Jul 2012, p.94]

Before comedown-closer Morning Star comes the high point of a very high album: Dream Beat, woozy and sexy, with a bassline you could ride on right through the summer. [Jul 2012, p.94]

When the storm clouds on final cut Protection finally part,Okumu riffing like The Edge mainlining steroids, it completes as astonishing redemptive arc brighter than any rainbow. [Jul 2012, p.92]

The Cherry Thing is quite a brilliant combination, with its creepy, freaky sound and clever reinventions. [Jul 2012, p.92]

A one-man rap vigilante. [Jul 2012, p.92]

Don't take Tellier too seriously and you have a seductive, gently amusing pop album. [Jul 2012, p.90]

That Joe's naturally high-pitched vocals bring urgency and drama is good, but the record's two tail-enders are weak. [Jul 2012, p.90]

Ekki Mukk is a gossamer-light, if strangely riveting voice in the wilderness, while Varoelder drifts agreeably off into softly chiming waves of yearning desolation. Less stirring are the ambience-flecked, tympani-tickled meanderings that fill out much of the rest of the hour. [Jul 2012, p.90]

Certain of her likable idiosyncrasies appear to have been straightened out [since 2009's Hunting My Dress]. But while big, booming choruses bookend the album on Born To and When I'm Asleep, that's about as easy as this listen gets. [Jul 2012, p.89]

The new blood broadens the Sand's vocal palette and, along with some of Gelb's sharpest writing in some time - gives Tuscon's 19-song sprawl more energy and focus than any Gelb LP since 2000's Chore of Enchantment. [July 2012, p.89]

Smith leads one of the best and sturdiest bands in rock... and their intricately scored psychedelia is a running high in Mosaic, the title stomp, with its yowling-wolf lick and Nine, an extended beguiling jam that suggests Smith fronting her own Doors. [Jul 2012, p.89]

With no appealing tunes or choruses to hang his hat on, Caufield's limp, blank vocals founder. [Jul 2012, p.88]

While the power-soak guitar solos ard gung-ho buck of Crazy Horse are present and correct, it's curious that Americana packs songs that don't fit its brief. [Jul 2012, p.88]

The spell of this balmy Southern atmosphere is only broken when Presley drops the ball on the writing front... but otherwise this is an elegant, beautifully realised work. [Jul 2012, p.88]

A record that soothes as often as it unsettles. [Jul 2012, p.88]

Whikle the quintet can comfortably do sincere and introverted on tracks like A Thing Like This and Proud/Ashamed, their speciality indisputably lies in lo-fi revelry, as showcased in Friend Crush. [Jul 2012, p.88]

Blending gargantuan, rack-stretched riffs with corrupted kosmische synth drones, spectral vocals and unyielding, relentless drums, the alchemical result [Oro: Opus Primus] is the heaviest form of psyche-doom space rock. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Their stylish debut knows a bit about content, too, bolting together [the album's] synthetic surfaces with Vorsprung Durch Technik efficiency, yet unashamed of the messy human heart beneath the shine. [Jul 2012, p.85]

Whether it improves on 2010's First Four EPs compilation is debateable. But as Morris would doubtless observe, 'progress' is but a bourgeois vanity. [Jul 2012, p.85]

The Bravest Man impresses on a steadily rising graph as Womack's soul-soaked voice humanises the machinery in ways rarely heard these days. [Jul 2012, p.84]

No One Ever Sleeps, even with harmonies from Robin Pecknold, feels not magical, but hollow and sluggish. At the rockier end, Heartbreaker adds Arcade Fire urgency and may score alt-radio love. The rest, however, is lukewarm. [Jul 2012, p.83]

Dynamic, packed with vim and hooks. [Jul 2012, p.83]

While there are moments that grate, this is an assured first outing that suggests that Brad and his band are worth keeping a keen eye on. [Jul 2012, p.83]

A polished and enjoyable pop-soul confection that transcends its myriad influences. [Jul 2012, p.83]

Carolina's use of a talk box a la Frampton stuck in this listener's craw, but elsewhere the urgency and uncensored filth of Slash's playing is a joy. [Jul 2012, p.82]

There are just enough moments of shimmering, honeyed dexterity to keep us listening. [Jul 2012, p.82]

An album that's a steady pleasure from start to finish. [Jul 2012, p.82]

[The album has] the loose, zonked-out flangey FX/claivnet/Rhodes piano vibe of Goats Head Soup, with strong flavours of Flying Burritos country songcraft. [Jul 2012, p.82]

It's a hyper-vivid and intensely musical affair that takes us deep inside Apple's skittish, fretful mind. [Jul 2012, p.82]

Intense, painfully frank, hysterically funny,and in the end, exultant... OSIGTS isn't always an easy listen, but it does offer a fearless experience that invests pop with more theatricality than the form can usually tolerate. [Jul 2012, p.80]

Simultaneously beautiful and uncanny. [May 2012, p.89]

This collection [is] an artful, sweat-free take on eclectic rhythm that heads straight for the dance floor. [Jan 2012, p.93]

Bold, colorful creations. Surf is most definitely up. [Jan 2012, p.93]

Glitters like broken glass. [Jan 2012, p.92]

The glitchy future R&B of Playing House is evidence of Active Child's depth, but it's the emotional blood-letting of tracks like dark hymnal Way Too Fast which gives this record a gravitas most popular music never achieves. [Jan 2012, p.92]

As M. Ward's unflustered, vintage-sounding guitars gift memories of Chet Atkins and Les Paul, there's a welcome, brandies-by-the fireside serenity afoot. [Jan 2012, p.92]