Guest backing vocalists galore this time, too - the Osees' Brigid Dawson among them - hence the hooks really pop. [Jul 2026, p.88]

Castle Park strikes a perfect note of callow romance, all Merseybeat lunchbreak gossip on the spiky Alright and Billy Says, tipping into Zombies intrigue on When You Find Out. Yet there’s a depth of melancholy to the vibraphone haunting of Isn’t It Funny or Dripping Soul’s flamboyant Love flamenco that sees Coxon straying from the main paths and into the dark corners. [Aug 2026, p.84]

Great moments like a 13-minute Cortez The Killer, the harmonica break on Harvest Moon, and the energetic Trump-baiting make it a fine addition. [Aug 2026, p.90]

Three previously unreleased Ifans tracks feature on this pre-Creation collection, with Chocking On Your Lust suggesting a far more orthodox proposition had he stayed. [Aug 2026, p.99]

The Bobby Lees' Kemdall Wind (bass) and Spider Bowman (drums) help Spencer steer his garage punk life raft through the direst of straits. The mood is defiant, even cathartically daft in places (see Mr Lion). [Aug 2026, p.88]

Shapes and Thinking are just two highlights on a collection of delicate, crystalline moodscapes. [Jun 2026, p.93]

These songs resonate as loudly as when they were first created. [Jun 2026, p.93]

A set of austerely lovely improvisations. [Aug 2026, p.91]

The Oceans Are Crying is the track to hit for Sonic Youth-adjacent sprawl; duo vocals appear at the death, on a sacred glide through Joy Division's Insight. [Aug 2026, p.91]

An assured and articulate local history. [Aug 2026, p.90]

Setting is totally compelling throughout. [Aug 2026, p.91]

Amba's tales of working-class lives are full of wit, pain and joy. [Aug 2026, p.91]

The Landfill might just be the most archetypically Fruit Bats album he's made. [Aug 2026, p.89]

While Aurora lacks some of the momentum, power and sheer pizzazz of their '70s material, the title track exemplifies their mix of pop melody and prog exploration. [Aug 2026, p.88]

Modest Mouse's first LP in five years is confident and restlessly inspired, juggling prickly melodicism and hard-earned optimism with left-hand turns that make clear Brock is as creatively plugged-in as ever. [Aug 2026, p.85]

If this is the last broadcast from BOC it is one that finally feels fully attuned to the queasy nightmare of the present as opposed to the cloudland sanctuary of the past. [Aug 2026, p.85]

The album picks up on and gleefully runs with a vibe which hasn't been so nimbly utilised since Kathlen Hanna's Le Tigre tinkered with similar building blocks. [Jul 2026, p.87]

A stoned summer picnic. [Jun 2026, p.85]

Shows their gift for romanticising the darkest corners of daily life. [Jul 2026, p.93]

The result is a sense of dreamlike disorientation, terrible events unfolding in a state of divine, fragile calm. [Jul 2026, p.91]

Mouse On Mars complete another mean feat - bottling The Upsetter's slippery shamanistic spirit. [Jul 2026, p.89]

These are bright, elastic songs. [Jul 2026, p.83]

Way beyond pastiche, this is soul music filled with passion and attention to period detail. [Jul 2026, p.86]

The New Order effervescence of The Flavor of Metal and keening anthemics of Riptides ensure these bruised wisdoms resonate as deeply as they do. [Jul 2026, p.87]

This piece tests the bounds of memory, with slow-motion repetition leading you to wonder if you've heard this before, what has changed, wat is changing. [Jun 2026, p.85]

Grey marks a further fine-tuning of Sutherland's trad country sensibilities, even if Simpler Time's nostalgia feels a little too cutesy. [Jul 2026, p.83]

10 hot, groovy tunes. [Jul 2026, p.88]

Wolter's songwriting unfolds in elegantly nuanced shades of grey, its bedroom-pop melancholia low-key but lush, judiciously coloured with synthesizers and saxophone. [Jul 2026, p.87

The frequent gear shifts prevent the record from gaining momentum, yet it's also the reason why Crawlspace... is so compelling. [Jul 2026, p.86]

Just 31 minutes short, but 17 songs long, Mendez's new album sets him up as a true inheritor of Eliott Smith's broken resilience, tragic and sad, but determined to conquer whatever demons cross his path. [Jul 2026, p.84]

Crashes about with a wonderfully unpredictable joie de vivre. [Jul 2026, p.82]

They deliver this double album with such commitment, such intense attention to psychedelic detail, that you are carried away on the swell of their ludicrous mission, manatees and all. [Jun 2026, p,85]

Grohl's feathery voice adapts to its surroundings, sounding fragile in the record's quietest moments and gaining a biting edge when the amplifiers are cranked, yet her sharp melodic instincts remain prominent throughout. [Jul 2026, p.89]

This album is steeped in Vile's love for his city. And it travels with class. [Jul 2026, p.85]

Deliver some great moments, such as More Bad Miles Of Road, a bare boned blues lit with flickery psych guitar. [Jun 2026, p.92]

Her deft, dexterous guitar creates a bewitching tapestry that ushers old traditions into the present. [Jul 2026, p.84]

Almost Waking wors as beautifully and sharply as flint on stone. [Jul 2026, p.86]

If this broadened palette [New Age/neo-soul hybrids, spiritual jazz and esoteric rap beats] helps her weighty texts go down easier, her edge and intensity remain intact. [Jul 2026, p.82]

The melodic gift and residual optimism ultimately carry the day aided by the canny ear for a guitar riff that characterised Wings. [Jul 2026, p.82]

By reconnecting with their past, The Coral have found the essence of who they are now - and it's pretty magical. [Jul 2026, p.84]

It's the oddly formless Thin Places, a floating reverie where the solidness of life has apparently been rubbed away, that best captures the mood of this deeply meditative record, intermittent electric-blue flashes of revelation glinting through the darkness. [Jul 2026, p.82]

A Great Day In Newcastle is a big compositional leap, boldly examining poverty, prison and crime via action-packed sonic fizz-bombs. [Apr 2026, p.91]

Some records are slow to endear themselves, and the there are records like Fenceline, the debut from Oakland housemates mildred, that have you moving in with them before the first songs ends. [Jun 2026, p.84]

Dreamily inventive. [Jul 2026, p.91]

Happy Today is jazz at its most exploratory, unbounded form. [Jul 2026, p.89]

Falling Both Ways blends echo-laden percussion and threatening vocals like OutKast, while Pirate Radio owes more than titular similarity to This Is Radio Clash. .... Where does he go next? Wherever he wants. [Jul 2026, p.89]

Meticulous, inventive record. [Jul 2026, p.86]

Altogether, Little Wide Open is a creative high water mark. [Jul 2026, p.86]

The high point is a take on Diane Warren's Sunlight To My soul featuring The Soweto Gospel Choir. [Jul 2026, p.91]

A Dirty Three, free-folk weirdness takes Sophie Harris's vocal theatrics somewhere darker. [Jul 2026, p.93]

The title track and Singularity speak of a trajectory where AI gives a final push to an already cannibalistic pop culture. But this thesis is spiced with joyous synthesis. [Jul 2026, p.91]

A ragged triumph. [Jul 2026, p.88]

The horny Dry Spell is typically smart storytelling, cheekily contemporary and as wittily candid as her hero John Prine, while Back On The Wagon is a credulous assertion of faith in an erring lover from an unreliable narrator. [Jul 2026, p.87]

She's still the bedsit heartbreak queen for pop fans of a certain age. [Jul 2026, p.83]

The brothers have recorded an album that goes to the heart of who they are. [Jul 2026, p.80]

Shrugging off the stones, flower girl persona of 2024's AM pop-heavy Chaos Angel, Miatreya Corso is a more modern proposal. [Jul 2026, p.83]

It doesn't always land, but the DJ Shadow-esque glitch-hop of Peak Again- with Low's Alan Sparhawk on vocals - reflect James's desire to conquer new territories. [Jun 2026, p.93]

More than half of these 10 crisp, vital songs derive from guitarists Pete Astor and Andy Strickland co-writing for the first time, applying decades of hard-earned wisdom and fresh vitality to quintessential designs. [Jun 2026, p.84]

The touchstones - Julee Cruise, Kate Bush, The Blue Nile - are more classic than experimental but the heartbreaking emotions remain utterly real. [Jun 2026, p.88]

What matters is that Harding remains a fascinating songwriting provocateur, preternaturally discipline, but able to trip emotional wires you might not even know you had. [Jun 2026, p.82]

It's a moody, unpredictable thing, from the Call's Balearic moment of ecstasy, to the deconstructed country-folk of Feist's What Happens Now, to the indie-noir of This Briefest kiss, all sulphurous bass and saxophone, but these many facets cohere brilliantly. [Jun 2026, p.88]

Sol. Hz radiates a luxuriant warmth that's hinted in its title. [Jun 2026, p.93]

Expressing both righteous anger and relaxation of spirit, this is her most assured record yet. [Jun 2026, p.85]

This album feels like a reliable harbour. [Jun 2026, p.87]

Dreamy, psych-folk beauty. [Jun 2026, p.91]

Another album of homages, jammed fast and loose in early 2025 at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in the wake of a cancer diagnosis for the singer’s father Chuck – who died soon after on March 29. The urgency and catharsis in these tracks makes sense in that context, but there’s something else here: a deep connection with music, felt in every groove and texture. [Jun 2026, p.89]

Their latest band, captured on Live Forever in full electric flow. [Jun 2026, p.84]

These are certainly boss songs – Easter Lily feels like the strongest collection of material U2 have mustered in at least 20 years.

Their third LP proper was still their best, most filler-free creation. .... Reminds us how much The Lovin' Spoonful mattered, and why Neil Young fantasied about joining them. [Jun 2026, p.94]

The best Paisley Underground-adjacent, Byrds-infatuated new LP you've heard in a while. [Jun 2026, p.68]

Like its closest Amos siblings, Scarlet Walk (2002) and American Doll Posse (2007, it's far from immediate, but the delayed gratification reaps rewards aplenty. [Jun 2026, p.86]

As trad indie goes, The World Is Not Good Enough is concise, fluid beauty, just 229 minutes of plangent songwriting that explores Solomon's alarming lack of cope mechanisms. [Jun 2026, p.86]

It is simultaneously comforting and haunting, an emotional closeness that is both playful an unsettling. [Jun 2026, p.93]

The epic A Friend Like You, the tenderest song about being unable to walk away from a relationship, rueing "why the hell do you have to be so sweet", or the self-explanatory Sad Song, ironically the jauntiest track here. [Jun 2026, p.87]

The best pieces here really are as good as their previous iterations; very occasionally, perhaps even better. [Jun 2026, p.96]

Throughout, Starr’s drumming is reliably great, and while he may indeed have travelled a long long road, here he sounds 85 years young. [Jun 2026, p.86]

While the song selections are unimpeachable, the execution varies massively. [May 2026, p.101]

It's a new remix of the original album that dazzles. [May 2026, p.101]

On Fenian they back that shrewdness with songs of depth and substance. [Jun 2026, p.90]

13 is a shape-shifting delight sans longueurs. [Jun 2026, p.88]

Reverberant secular folk, with spectral guitar and magic-realist vocals. [May 2026, p.93]

Grohl can still subvert his own formula: opener Caught In The Echo brilliantly synthesises Ian MacKaye with Paul McCartney, and the needling pulse of Window is superior Josh Homme-age. The wired Child Actor, meanwhile, reveals a conflicted man behind the persona. [Jun 2026, p.86]

There is nothing brash or student bout these subtle, layered songs: her vocals remain hushed, confiding, blurry, a distant cousin of Justin Vernon's abstract exhalations. [Jun 2026, p.84]

If Come Closer occasionally strays into the arena of techno-hippy (admittedly a compliment on the siren-squall of Ring The Alarm), the duo provide enough incentives to keep you there quite happily for a while. [Jun 2026, p.90]

It is a little heavier on the electric-piano than the louche post-punkers' previous outings, with Diaphanous, Map Of The Night Sky and Out Sweet Sould reaching out toward the baroque, Coral-style musical theatre that defined Bid's records as Scarlet's Well. [May 2026, p.89]

If dark forces are gathering, her songs do not lack an icy beauty. [Jun 2026, p.90]

The music is as sharply observed as the writing. [May 2026, p.84]

Fidelity is beautiful, diaristic and a very real portrait of modern black womanhood. [May 2026, p.86]

They're also practitioners of the ancient art form of popcraft, constructing tight, clever confections then working with longtime co-producer Pat Dillett to ensure the hooks are delivered cleanly and efficiently. They remain funny, too. [Jun 2026, p.88]

Muscular, melodic... this is the best outing yet from the Etheridge-Travis Soft Machine. [May 2026, p.90]

Kammerkonzert's immediacy and dynamism feel more like a concert recording than studio album, powered by the incandescent energy of its creator. [Jun 2026, p.93]

The impression left by Total Dive is that Brown Horse still have many miles in them yet. [Jun 2026, p.91]

Questionable sequencing and some strange production choices (layers of synths and suffocating syntheric strings) sometimes make Jordan sound like a guest artist o her own album. [Jun 2026, p.86]

The urgency is tangible, as is the sense that while Simpson is smashing up genres as a rapid response to extreme times, he’s also landed on one of the best ideas of his increasingly remarkable career. Mutiny After Midnight doesn’t propose an escape from the now, it demands we confront it head-on, by being our most righteous and uninhibited selves. [Jun 2026, p.84]

Seductive and meditative. [Jun 2026, p.93]

Those smitten with Myriam Gendron and Josephine foster's more direct missives will be instantly seduced. [May 2026, p.89]

It's frequently beautiful psych-pop songs throb with a gentle electronic pulse. [May 2026, p.93]

Like Bridgers, Nagler is clearly fond of Elliott Smith's slow-release devastation - see Hammer And Nail or Another Mona Lisa - but even her most downbeat songs come with an easy, melodic shrug that keeps her on the sunnier side of the street. [Apr 2026, p.92]