It's a classic soul album, its strength lying in Fields' gift for storytelling and his extraordinary delivery. [Apr 2012, p. 86]

Consistently absorbing, as good as any of Foxx's early-'80's benchmarks. [Apr 2012, p.86]

Only a slight dearth of killer melodies ... disappoints. [Apr 2012, p.86]

It's a seductive lesson in understated beauty. [Apr 2012, p.86]

It is an easy album to like. [Apr 2012, p.85]

An ongoing reconnection with the experimental dandy in the mirror lends his latest work's stylistic pinballing a fun quotient that compensates for it's unevenness. [Apr 2012, p.84]

An album of melancholy and heartbreak that's at its best when the songs fall between all-out country rock ballads and bare bones ballads. [Apr 2012, p.84]

Hypnotic, doomy, edgy, but strangely forgettable, too. [Apr 2012, p.84]

A formidable piece of work, repositioning Mercer away from his Pacific Northwest indie rock peer group. [Apr 2012, p.82]

An album of considerable weight. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Sweet, shimmering, Swedish alt-pop. [April 2012, p.91]

COYB trade in wintery, foreboding hymnals that conjure Sigur Ros, Radiohead and an existentially challenged Aled Jones staring out across the abyss. [Apr 2012, p.94]

Ane Brun has never before sounded so alive.[March 2012, p.98]

With tensions at its core, Pre Language fuses white light with the darkness of anxiety. [Mar 2012, p.102]

In between strong original songs are arresting covers versions. [Mar 2012, p.92]

To fresh melodies of Guthrie would surely have smiled upon, the four adorn every lyric with fine guitar weaves of rollicking dance, rugged grind or Paris, Texas haunt. [Mar 2012, p.97]

This is a fine balancing of distance and engagement that put the shier back into chill out. [Mar 2012, p.103]

With the flawless Umber at its core, Bitch Magnet is final proof, if Jon Fine needs it, that his band have escaped the historical side streets of title, genre and geography, motoring out into the vast plains of Great American Albums. [Mar 2012, p.109]

If he fits a lot into a brief span, it can also seem like a selection of raw sketches for works still to be fully realized. [Mar 2012, p.103]

Have Some Faith In Magic pushes further out, into a gorgeous and strangely spacey conflagration between the pastel end of '70s prog, the Kosmiche end of funk and '90s dance. [Mar 2012, p.103]

His songs are simple and instantly seductive. [Mar 2012, p.99]

A relentless, unstoppable beast of screeching, pounding ascendancy. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Sweet and to the point. [Mar 2012, p.97]

This album is barefaced '90s revivalism. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Tune out the background media noise and immerse yourself. [Mar 2012, p.94]

You can see why they've got another Golden Globe nomination for this, although most of the music here isn't in the film and the many highlights get lost in an eternity of approximately similar sonics. [Mar 2012, p.94]

A series of grand rippling hallucinations, unfolding ever outwards on the central melancholy theme. [Mar 2012, p.97]

For all of its gentle yet intense reflection, it's never overtly maudlin. [Mar 2012, p.92]

Cleverly, it mixes them [stadium rock and Celtic roots] both. [Mar 2012, p.99]

Animal Joy surfs similar channels to their last release, The Golden Archipelago, evoking stratospheric textures anchored down by melodically well-honed tunes. [Mar 2012, p.102]

From the get-go Freedom Of Speech takes no prisoners. [Mar 2012, p.93]

An admirably impassioned return. [Mar 2012, p.92]

An effortless conflation of over-amped belligerence and feisty pop mellifluousness. [Mar 2012, p.94]

The album works because McCartney treats the material with respect, exuding charm by the bucket-load. [Mar 2012, p.94]

[A] very fine third album. [Mar 2012, p.98]

Emotional yet chilled, this is an album to see you through winter's darkest, coldest days. [Mar 2012, p.99]

Paralytic Stalks is not an easy listen, but neither is it a good one. [Mar 2012, p.98]

The songs on Mr. M might be mostly slow and beautiful but they don't have the drifting dreaminess. [Mar 2012, p.96]

She has the same jagged, enchanting sensuality as Bjork. [Mar 2012, p.103]

Plumb is a delicious tasting menu of rock history. [Mar 2012, p.103]

This brisk, well-crafted follow-up maintains the feeling if a pop band masquerading as something harder. [Mar 2012, p.102]

Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 2 is a looser affair, showcasing Carlson's improvisational chemistry with long-term percussionist Adrienne Davies, bass player Karl Blau and cellist Lori Goldston. [Mar 2012, p.102]

There's more down the line, heart-on-the-sleeve songcraft secreted, near-guiltily, in the album's latter half. [Mar 2012, p.99]

Le Voyage is best when it sets the controls for the tribal prog of Sonic Armada or the ritual beats of Astronomic Club. [Mar 2012, p.92]

Old Ideas remain a quietly surprising album, full of grace, full of sadness, but also, most importantly, full of life. [Mar 2012, p.90]

The overall mood is one of muted, minor-key sadness, Sakamoto's clear, simple piano lines eroded and blurred by the melancholy atmospherics of Fennesz. [Feb 2012, p.97

Classic weep-alongs. [Feb 2012, p.99]

It's their slickest yet. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Two dark, roiling 22-minute tracks that conjure up a world of nature in turmoil. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Barman was keep that Keep You Close had a warmer sound than the "very loud, in your face" approach of its predecessor... while we can just about give him the benefit if the doubt, it's not quite that straightforward. [Nov 2011, p.98]

Part band memoir, part call for artistic renewal, delivered via chiming rock anthemics with pop appeal. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Song for song, this is their finest to date. [Oct 2011, p.95]

The next must-have pastoral American sensation, from Oklahoma.[Sep 2011, p.97]

[Prey] and the sprawling jazz'n'world beats suite of Magpie Music prove that there's still life left in DJ Food. [Feb 2012, p.98]

The basic Prinzhorn recipe - extra thick bass-lines and super-primitive stand-up drums, woven together with a lattice of spindly guitar and set off with livid bursts of call-and-response vocal -- remains largely unchanged. [Feb 2012, p.98]

[Their] constant supersize-me approach is a bit exhausting, but few albums this year will strive this hard to entertain. [Feb 2012, p.95]

Makes for a cheeky, unerringly upbeat celebration of [London's] party scene. [Feb 2012, p. 94]

[An] outstanding piece of work. [Feb 2012, p.92]

Even though it'll never be fully completed, Smile is a welcome time capsule from an unrepeatable moment in popular culture. [Dec 2011, p.106]

Django Django confound because they sound gloriously, unpredictably new, but also recall past bands and sounds gone. [Feb 2012, p.98]

Though her fellow Willies may not possess her audience-pulling ability, they lack nothing in the way of talent. [Feb 2012, p.94]

This is top-drawer pop, ambitious and thrillingly contemporary. [Feb 2012, p.94

Not yet a strength, lyrics probe the border between naive and trite. [Feb 2012, p.94]

They're still best when the basic Paco Pena influences surface. [Feb 2012, p.94]

A few clunky lyrics take the shine off. [Feb 2012, p.95]

It's hard not to wish for more. Or maybe less. [Feb 2012, p.95]

It's good to hear him outfront, vivid, quirky, and unconfined. [Feb 2012, p.95]

Some of the best covers here are of less overtly politicized Dylan songs. [Feb 2012, p.95]

Matt Sims turns out to be the perfect complement to Leila's post-Moroder production pyrotechnics. [Feb 2012, p.97]

A cache of hissy, vivid, occasionally creepy but mostly sweetly touching brain pop that stands proudly alongside GBV's ragged former glories. [Feb 2012, p.97]

The lyrics' heavy-hearted take on relationships is more evidence of an astonishing maturity at play. [Feb 2012, p.97]

It stretches out the crashed edits of 20120's Suburban Tours, to something more diffuse and soulful. [Feb 2012, p.97]

His best yet. [Feb 2012, p.98]

This is a powerful performance of empathy and passion. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Gradually swelling guitars, keyboards and massed backing-vocal "aaaahs" homogenise the sound while mostly confining Edwards' high voice to a rather inexpressive tone when her clear-cut words suggest snarl and sorrowing. [Feb 2012, p.99]

This curiously beautiful little album has retained the surreal, daydreamy quality and rustic chill of its predecessor, while adding a lot more warmth. [Feb 2012, p.99]

It wanders and drifts moodily now and then, but there also some strong songs. [Feb 2012, p.99]

Support from Howe Gelb, Patty Griffin and more, but things never really take off. [Feb 2012, p.99]

The atmosphere is generally furtive, and yet the songs are at their best when they tap you on the shoulder with a familiar rough-neck charm. [Feb 2012, p.102]

Hymns is worthy if never quite stratospheric heir. [Feb 2012, p.102]

James' final studio album is a sturdy effort that belies the catalog of increasingly serious health issues that have dogged her. [Feb 2012, p.102]

Coherent but properly crackers, this is easily the most delicious post-Trux gumbo so far. [Feb 2012, p.98]

It's been worth the wait. [Feb 2012, p.96]

Siamese Dream is full of bombastic romanticism and undiminished power. [Feb 2012, p.108]

It fits easily alongside Daptone's funky analogue repertoire. [Feb 2012, p.110]

Ortega's voice cuts like cheesewire, every word kicking the beat and the story both. [Oct 2011, p. 100]

An intimate, home-recorded piece that feels like a private performance.[Nov 2011, p. 95]

The shimmering finger-picking and angelic backing vocals of Old Pine build a cosy fireside vibe, but elsewhere the upbeat hoedowns are less impressive. [Nov 2011, p. 92]

A warm twangy sound, evocative of Southern, sun-paralysed afternoons. [Dec 2011, p. 100]

Ersatz G.B. offers no easy explanations, but instead twists and excites the listener's brain with unexpected phantom bewilderments. [Dec 2011, p.100]

An explicitly shambling and weedy breed of music rendered with slavish precision, even muscularity... Decent tunes. [Dec 2011, p.100]

A confounding and bewitching set of songs that feels gloriously out of time. [Dec 2011, p.100]

Simultaneously beautiful and unsettling, it moves from stuttering rhythms of ghost vocals and music loops to immersive multi-layered waves of digital polyphony. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

Everywhere, tremolo guitars twang, and slow, compressed drums beat out the rhythm of disquietude. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

It's a record best consumed in a semi-recumbent position, in order to match the loping, laidback pace of the music and Cox's stoned, oak-aged vocals. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

This set stays faithful to Lennon's melodies - like meeting old friends in unexpected but comfy clothes. [Dec. 2011 p. 99]

A whirl of young Tina Turner energy and powerful, expressive vintage soul vocals. [Dec. 2011 p. 98]

Packs too many failed experiments. [Dec. 2011 p. 98]