It’s a non-stop cavalcade of chá-chá-chá (including flute worthy of Orquesta Aragón) and mambo that should bring any dancer out of their shell. [Sep 2024, p.92]

It’s this ease and connection that gives When I’m Called its cumulative power. [Aug 2024, p.86]

Fielding love songs, existential ruminations and anthems of solidarity and resistance, The Auditorium Vol. 1 finds rap’s self-proclaimed James Baldwin sermonising in the key of life on its every glory and struggle, offering hope amid the darkness and remaining a voice of mature wisdom in a rudderless world. It’s one of his very best. [Sep 2024, p.90]

On record it’s more the spoken-word sections that grab the listener. [Jul 2024, p.93]

A quietly entrancing atmosphere is sustained throughout. [Jul 2024, p.84]

When Goddard himself provides vocals – notably on Follow You and On My Mind – it adds necessary cohesion. [Aug 2024, p.83]

Warning: the only rarity of note in this reissue, outside the remix narrative, is Lennon running down I’m The Greatest in a near-Beatles reunion with George Harrison and Ringo Starr – and that’s tucked away as a hidden bonus track. The Mind Games you get instead, in this lavish, rejuvenating treatment, is the several brighter, bolder albums it might have been, on the way to the one that fell flat in 1973. [Aug 2024, p.92]

Escape and new beginnings are constant themes in these eight mostly superb songs, but his old preoccupations keep yanking him back onto familiar turf. [Sep 2024, p.85]

It’s unlikely to set anything alight, but LA Times still leaves a warm glow. [Aug 2024, p.81]

There are gothy antecedents here – Baby Blue Movie sounds like the ’80s Cure over-medicated in the Hollywood Hills – and if it sustains a certain moodiness, X’s adheres to a tonally one-note atmosphere. [Aug 2024, p.82]

Kokoko! again deliver a banging, agitational rave-up that’s impossible to stay a wallflower to. [Aug 2024, p.87]

Jewel-sparkly and gently devastating. .... Devotees of Judee Sill, loved-up Bill Callahan and When Harry Met Sally will find it bright-eyed, glossy of coat and gentle of snout. Take it home. Feel less alone. [Aug 2024, p.85]

Unearthly. [Jul 2024, p.91]

Short it may be, but Happenings is full of ideas. [Aug 2024, p.83]

Ishibashi’s latest score is again subtle, delicate, but robust enough to blossom away from the film itself. It’s her balancing of disparate elements that’s so impressive. [Aug 2024, p.87]

Ultimately, by stylistically venturing back and forth in time, Aaron Frazer has struck gold with Into The Blue, a multifaceted soul album that blurs the past, the present and the possibilities of the future. [Aug 2024, p.82]

A haunting meditation on the state of America in the age of Trumpery (How I Wish) is the highlight, preceding the title track’s rousing gospel call to civil rights action. In contrast, she also documents the intimate and personal (Nothing Personal). [Aug 2024, p.89]

Pollard sounds more curious and engaged here than on some recent releases, and the result is the most compelling GBV of their third act. [Aug 2024, p.82]

Short but definitely sweet. [Aug 2024, p.94]

Their talent for maximalism is evident on the jagged, urgent Cinnamon Temple and a wonderfully trippy inversion of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. [Aug 2024, p.90]

Songwriter is indeed a by-product of music rendered on a digital frontier; it is a worthy effort because it reinforces the humanity of a star who, in his last days, could seem like some untouchable god. [Aug 2024, p.78]

Walk Thru Me Andrew Perry feels less vibey and cutting-edge, with occasional polemical tunes reedily voiced by Davis, and Barlow brooding on grown-up issues like parenthood (My Little Lamb) and battling depression (Crepuscular) – not different enough from latterday Sebadoh, or indeed solo Barlow, surely, to reprise 1995’s commercial uplift. [Aug 2024, p.84]

Both energy and melodies hold strong throughout, and, suitably topped off with Ballad Of Mott-style self-chronicling finale Born Innocent, Redd Kross is these Angelenos’ defining epic. [Aug 2024, p.86]

How Will I Live… feels like a portal to some esoteric beyond, where minimal jazz, obtuse indie and folk-horror collide. Ominous, calmly-executed highlights I Swallowed A Stone, Unbraiding and How It Starts are marvels of world-building. [Aug 2024, p.84]

Deep, rewarding songs, rich in authorly detail, which, not for the first time, position Rateliff, still only 45, as a new Springsteen. [Aug 2024, p.81]

Ultimately, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that they’ve scaled greater heights with more time and pre-writing. [Aug 2024, p.91]

Further enriched by the palate of Fratti’s cello and Tosta’s brass, Sentir… is an extraordinarily possessed, uncanny world of its own. [Aug 2024, p.83]

Kamaru's softly spoken words amid Arkives' discomfiting drones drags listeners to unexpected depths, his voice a ghost in a machine of otherworldly chorale, siren-like synths and heaps of static. [Aug 2024, p.87]

In this filmic offering, all commentators observe our crumbling landscape. .... On the dark, drum-lead chant Baby Roe, DiFranco sounds like Billie Holiday as she upbraids the overturners of Roe v Wade (“We’re so wigged out/Yeah, we’re so devout”), before pleading for “the path of least suffering”. [Aug 2024, p.89]

McFarlane inhabits her songbook, eking out fresh meanings and truths. Unashamedly old-school backing from a core quartet of Giacomo Smith (sax), Joe Webb (piano), Ferg Ireland (bass) and Jas Kayser (drums) plays to her storytelling gifts. [Aug 2024, p.84]

Hex isn’t really about individual tracks, though: it’s about mood and feel. Overwhelmingly, the feel is good. [Aug 2024, p.86]

That on-the-road-again feeling is all over the album, with a well-honed band that plays like they still get a kick from it. [Jul 2024, p.91]

A rare (and improved) document of a more muscular Wings. [Aug 2024, p.99]

An urgent debut perfect for anyone grieving The Comet Is Coming's demise. [Aug 2024, p.90]

The intimate strings that lace the title track's elegiac sequence of pedal-effect guitar movements is a fresh high, the shadow-playing six-string storytellers surpassing the limitations of their intimate format. [Aug 2024, p.89]

A beautifully poised collection of deep, off-kilter, quasi techno and smudged ambient. [Aug 2024, p.87]

Placed in the modern setting and told in the universal language of folk music, her tales all ring true. [Aug 2024, p.83]

It is sentimental and raw, demented and ultimately reaffirming. [Aug 2024, p.81]

It's a fabulous record. A unique kind of Various Artists tribute album where its 11 songs - not a bad one among them. .... In All, delightful. [Aug 2024, p.80]

A 14-song whirlwind of dazzling approaches. [Aug 2024, p.88]

Stewart's mental health struggles delayed work, but the finished product distils personal pain into a powerful mix of Scott 3 and the Care Bears. [May 2024, p.84]

Easy to be cynical about Miracle Focus's natural-high alternative to Showalter's lysergic past, perhaps, but spacey, transcendent opener More You finds him in a wonderous, enviably alive place. [Jul 2024, p.91]

Not ideal for newcomers, perhaps, but a recumbent feast for fans. [Jul 2024, p.101]

Discs 2 and 3 are essential if familiar, given they document sessions taped for the BBC, from an unreleased January 1972 Peel session to the version of Starman taped for Top Of The Pops in July. .... By contrast, everything on Disc 5 is fresh to this box. [Jul 2024, p.96]

Morton & Russell rarely overplay their emotional hand, the music colour-changing to match the narrative of damage and resilience. .... Once it locks in, Daffodils & Dirt is hard to shake off. [Jul 2024, p.88]

Ultimately, the only benchmark springing to mind is the similarly-styledearly-'80sFranco-Belgians Antena. Feu De Garde is that good. [Jun 2024, p.88]

It's the confessional aspect that makes this compelling stuff, whether relating mid-life disappointment in Living The Dream or detailing a life reset in the delicately chiming Clean. [Jul 2024, p.84]

The wild times end on a poignant, giddy high with Parful - a house-y banger raving about everyday hedonism transcending sectarian violence - an irresistible distillation of Kneecap's peacetime party music. [Jul 2024, p.94]

Maisha builds on the old man's legacy by digging deeper into their background while allowing British producers Oli Barton-Wood and Tom Excell to add further layers in the mix. [Jul 2024, p.86]

While the nebulous quality of Mercy was very much feature-not-bug, a cloudiness indicating the limits of memory, here Cale seems to have sharpened the edges of his songs, any mist or drift purely down to old fashioned meandering. [Jul 2024, p.86]

With aid of latter-day Grace Jones producer Ivor Guest, his upbeat tendencies manifest in talk box-voiced electronic funk (think Roger Troutman/Zapp) that is more flattering, particularly when matched to the singer's biting wit on All That School and the MAGA-bashing Meek AF. [Jul 2024, p.86]

Their ninth record proves their distinctive spirit is still unbroken. The mood is knowingly mordant. [Jul 2024, p.84]

With childhood friend Sean Coleman aboard to coax Brian Wilson-ness from the 1980s'-penned And You Run, and tunes as charming as Breezy Sweet Smile, let's be grateful that Eels Time! rolls on. [Jul 2024, p.89]

Bonny Light Horseman probably could've said just as much over half the tracks, but the fact they had the courage to keep digging ever deeper into their emotional turbulence has bourne spectacular results. [Jul 2024, p.87]

This is Williams winningly flexing his more substantial songwriterly muscles. [Jul 2024, p.92]

It's a rare delight to hear a band so accomplished take what it does so seriously without taking itself that way. [Jul 2024, p.87]

Goat Girl grapple with strings, makeshift choirs, electronics and mellotron in a quietly exploratory set of off-centre tunes and potent lyrical questioning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

With percussionist Sam Clayton growling the vocals here,they bathe in the blues, immersed in classics by masters Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Little Walter. [Jul 2024, p.89]

In the best sense, she ticks boxes. With a slightly kooky voice, the bravery to unconventionally strip things down (the acoustic Dark is propelled by drums), a winning way with a hook (Missing Out swings) and a turn of phrase which veers from acerbic ("She says 'I might be a genius'/Well, she could be a model...") to lovelorn ("I want you to come over/So I can lay in your lap"). [Jul 2024, p.86]

Lyrically, it's Merrick's diary of their delirious reaction to that vast continent, such as the sublime desolation of Somewhere near El Paso, bathed in "a half-lit Denny's sign", or Lily Pad, where Merrick, sounding almost horizontal. [Jul 2024, p.88]

[Nelson] sounds in great shape. There are some upbeat moments (good ol' boy Made In Texas) but mostly it's on the slow side, a tempo in which Willie excels. [Jul 2024, p.84]

In truth there's little here that wouldn't belong on the 1992 breakthrough, Let Me Come Over, their enduring warm embrace marking Buffalo Tom as a band you can grow old with. [Jul 2024, p.84]

Dizzied, delirious, conflicted, Night Reign draws in tight around you. [Jul 2024, p.91]

Hawley continues to enchant. [Jul 2024, p.85]

Thompson’s extraordinary, lyrical guitar playing squirts out in occasional Day-Glo flashes, but the magic remains in his ability to keep his little microcosmos tightly marshalled. Bleak midwinter 4 EVA; spring forever unsprung. [Jul 2024, p.82]

Gravity Stairs is the most Crowded House thing that Crowded House have made in 30 years. [Jul 2024, p.90]

Contrasting bleak truths with giddy popsike, bubbling defiance and a rebuff to arts-funding BS. [Jul 2024, p.95]

This album is bravely beautiful, and one of her best. [Jul 2024, p.84]

With its captivating melodies and sci-fi charm, News Of The Universe is as poignant as it is hopeful. [Jul 2024, p.88]

Bird escorts well-worn standards down unexpected alleyways. [Jul 2024, p.89]

On Blue Electric Light, he hasn't lost his touch. [Jul 2024, p.92]

There's a sense throughout of Weller, the inveterate seeker, grasping for something tantalisingly out of reach - and, n doing so, creating a record of recurrent intrigue and frequently sublimity. [Jul 2024, p.93]

While it's true you can often hear what upset the highlife connoisseurs, the bulk of this collection of outsider art holds up 30-plus years on. [Jun 2024, p.98]

An intriguing return. [Jul 2024, p.86]

While the rip-roaring Love Of A Girl owes much to Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl, the straight-down-the-line 2020 Regret is ripe to be covered by a country megastar, and standout Same broken Bones builds from an a cappella opening into keyboards-led gorgeousness. [Jul 2024, p.94]

There's much to applaud about Bow To Love as Campbell targets toxic masculinity (Everything Falls Apart) and the distancing, dehumanising aspects of social media (4316), but you sometimes feel only the shallows od her rhyming dictionary are being plumbed. [Jun 2024, p.82]

Gendron places her gorgeous songs on a far more uneasy footing, seeking out new, strange routes for these ancient folk roots, resulting in an album that us both comforting and confounding, and depthless in its strange beauty. [Jul 2024, p.92]

Chewy but excellent. [Jul 2024, p.95]

As on her debut, beats are minimal, bordering on lo-fi, allowing Bey space to voice in meditative jazzy runs whose no- messing eccentricity strongly recalls primetime Erykah Badu. [Jul 2024, p.94]

The imaginative fire still burns. [Jul 2024, p.93]

All quite stunning. [Jul 2024, p.92]

It's an entirely cohesive record, brimming with energy, invention, humour, lived experience, nifty playing and earwormy melodies: all things that make up a great debut album. [Jul 2024, p.88]

If that all sounds bleak, it is. Yet Lives Outgrown is also very beautiful. [Jun 2024, p.80]

This is his finest collection of melodies yet, reflecting candour, tenderness and pthos with no bare polemic to disrupt the intimate tone. [Jun 2024, p.89]

This is to Ghosted what Layla Part 2 is to Layla, the transcendent, ambient coda to the hit record and, to those in the know, the place where you go for calm, peace and release. [Jun 2024, p.91]

Occasionally slight and throwaway, everything here is nevertheless fun. [Jun 2024, p.87]

They do sound less corporate, more like their original idiosyncratic selves. [Jun 2024, p.90]

These non-linear creations are vehicles for an incredible contralto that echoes Anohni, Diamanda Galas, Jarboe, even late-era Scott Walker. [Jun 2024, p.84]

Thrillingly raw, it captures the pair at their most streamlined, visceral and direct, disproving F Scott Fitzgerald's theory about second acts. [Jun 2024, p.86]

Oui LSF remains firmly in the group's idiosyncratic wheelhouse, equally foregrounding their bristling dissonance and acerbic pop flourishes. [Jun 2024, p.90]

So many ideas, so much beauty and a fitting memento of Trish Keenan's poetic songwriting and inimitable, unimpeachable voice. [May 2024, p.100]

Don't worry so much about what it all means, lie back and let the tape hiss. [Jun 2024, p.89]

Impeccably sequenced, with fulsome liner notes, global groovers will find this seamless mix of the known and obscure frequently revelatory. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Only relenting for the odd Tinariwen-esque chill moment (Takoba; Imajughen), this one's an amps-on-11 polemical masterpiece that warrants worldwide respect. [Jun 2024, p.90]

As with 2023's downbeat Everything Harmony, what might be a Beatles-beach-Boys-Big-Star data-scrape is elevated through high-calibre songwriting. [Jun 2024, p.82]

On these dozen tracks, Washington creates a playground and invites friends in to be themselves, shaping a dizzying crosshatch of ideas where George Clinton’s lounge croon sets up a trumpet-chased pep talk from rapper D Smoke, or André 3000 slips – with flutes in hand – into a nocturnal haze that feels like some futuristic Debussy state of bliss. [Jun 2024, p.85]

Uplifting, rueful and expertly crafted. [Jun 2024, p.89]

With its meticulous ebb and flow, Time Is Glass is best approached in a single sitting. [May 2024, p.86]