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]

[Amy Winehouse had] something compelling, human and wonderful, and it surfaces just enough on this compilation to make it worthy of her name. [Jan 2012, p.91]

There is a certain sameness in evidence that makes the album more meditaional aid than rip-snorting prescription for maximum engagement. [Jan 2012, p.90]

Isaak, whose singing voice is naturally full and resonant, is most at home with the Presley tunes... but the Lewis and Perkins homages don't quite add up. [Jan 2012, p.91]

The identity-crisis themed Camp trumps through whip-smart intelligence, comic brio and bristling malign intent. [Jan 2012, p.90]

As seasonal cheer goes it slaps seven sleigh bells out of dreary old Stille Nacht. [Jan 2012, p.90]

It's never just meat and potatoes. It's more like eating bone marrow in a fashionable restaurant - earthy, carnivorous but still beautifully designed and knowingly conceptualized. [Jan 2012, p.88]

A richer feast, from more humble ingredients, could scarcely be imagined. [May 2012, p.82]

The overall vibe is: It's a time for extremes, for ear damage, and KJ--ever exemplary in reactivation--deliver 'em in spades. [May 2012, p.83]

What they [Sun Araw & M Geddes Gengras with the Congos] produced is startling and unique. [May 2012, p.89]

While Harvieu's voice shows she's got potential, the material tends towards the bland and boring. [May 2012, p.84]

Much of Better Living recalls that time when the ugly end of post-Crass anarcho punk segued into the metallic sounds of grindcore... when melody seemed bourgeois and energy was the most valued commodity. [May 2012, p.92]

God times are promised--and delivered. [Feb 2012, p.99]

A poisoned chalice, indeed. [Apr 2012, p.89]

Heavyweight and sodden like the starry mills of Satan. [May 2012, p. 103]

Essential listening for serious-low-life connoisseurs. [May 2012, p.101]

There is much here to enjoy. [May 2012, p.93]

10 of the funkiest tracks Dr. John's been involved in since the '70s. [May 2012, p.93]

Assured and challenging. Unlikely to convert the uninitiated, it will thrill the Volta Nation. [May 2012, p.92]

Draws out the same intense emotional responses as that first album [Lazer Guided Melodies] but in a post 1997 Ladies and Gentleman... way. [May 2012, p.92]

HDBA embrace cyclic faux-Krautrock, robust electronic rhythms, looped vocal phrases and miscellaneous soundtrack atmospheres. [May 2012, p.92]

Two gorgeously restless, swarthy voices destined to be together. [May 2012, p.92]

Coldplay-style ascendance is entirely within reach. [May 2012, p.92]

This is terrific. [May 2012, p.89]

A skittering show-reel of outer-space advert indents that flit from dying hard-drive porn disco to sweetly-warped On-U dub lullabies. [May 2012, p.89]

[Evokes] sun-baked panoramas. [May 2012, p.89]

A striking stop-gap for Krug and Siinai. [May 2012, p.87]

Urstan find Roberts'signature whistling-kettle delivery ... framed with guitars, fiddles, drums and brass. A peaty, heathery authenticity pervades - to compelling effect. [May 2012, p.88]

Unstoppably ace. [May 2012, p.88]

Amid the thoughts of ultimate demise, the creative juices never cease to flow.[May 2012, p.88]

More thoughtful and restrained than the heavily tattooed band's raucous live (and already very well-attended) shows may have promised, Shallow Bed is full of passion, nonetheless. [May 2012, p.88]

It's a downbeat party, but one with real atmosphere. [May 2012, p.88]

Evoking the ramshackle psychedelia of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Cryk nonetheless shows Le Bon following her own path. [May 2012, p.88]

Even those wearied by Oldham's avalanche of releases should investigate. [May 2012, p.87]

Above all it rocks. A hooky, memorable album. [May 2012, p.87]

Raitt remains a master interpreter of song. [May 2012, p.87]

The best Orbital album since 1994's Snivilisation? Certainly. [May 2012, p.87]

A Wasteland Companion revels in the layers of experience overlaid on life, building up texture, building up meaning, building up songs. [May 2012, p.87]

His gospel-tinged solo debut withstands most Levon Helm comparisons you may care to throw its way. [May 2012, p.87]

This time out, the melodic knack is as assured and the tumbling songs recognisably hers, but she's found her own path. [May 2012, p.87]

An intriguing partnership that fails to entirely live up to expectations. [May 2012, p.86]

[Boy & Girls] casts Brittany as a soulful singer, but the album is more Xerox copy than feel and spirit based. [May 2012, p.86]

The highlights are among the closing duets, however, with both men warming to their task on a sinuous Um Canto de Afoxe Para O Bloco Do Ile and a delightfully rickety Heaven, Byrne screws up the chords, but they bring the house down nonetheless. [May 2012, p.87]

Ronson and Wainwright have dressed these songs to kill, not just to impress. [May 2012, p.84]

It's lots of fun, a whirlwind romp through grubby rock landmarks. [May 2012, p.84]

Pleasant and forgettable. [May 2012, p.84]

Listen, Whitey! is quite simply ace. [Feb 2012]

For diehards, these takes [on the second disc] have an attractive live-in-the-studio-run-through feel, complete with informal chat and occasional sloppy edges. [Feb 2012, p.108]

Disturbing. [Feb 2012, p.102]