Despite the Vegas veneer, there's an underlying punk energy, like a cocktail dress with a tattoo at the neckline, a combined act of tribute and subversion. [Feb 2019, p.84]

Heavy at heart, but eminently hummable, Sunshine Rock is an affecting, uplifting set. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Their traditional strengths remain, chiefly McVeigh's rich vocals and their knack of emphasising a simple hook with a cacophonous, multilayered production. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Anyone turned off by conspiracy theories may shudder, but allow Brown his free-your-mind gnostic-in-designer-streetwear stance and entertainment wins out. [Mar 2019, p.88]

In 2019 terms, then, it's a Village Green Preservation Society for people whose village is on the banks of the (alarmingly diminished) Niger River. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Less minimal folk this time, the title track and Holograms are particularly fulsome. [Mar 2019, p.99]

For all its skill you do miss Neville Staple's aggro, Roddy Radiation's punk-Chuck Berry guitars, and inevitably, Jerry Dammers' singular, maddening vision. [Mar 2019, p.88]

What some might reckon to be Drift Code's one significant weakness--that Webb is not a conventionally beauteous singer--is once more a strength. [Mar 2019, p.86]

Gallipoli, recorded in Berlin and Puglia, is oddly unmoving, lacking range for all its seductive picturesque roaming. [Mar 2019, p.96]

There's a real bleakness here, so 7's motif is the confession that "I will always be alone," while the haunting Lisa Hannigan collaboration, Thousand, confronts Carney's grandmother's dementia. But there's optimism and strength too. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Mollestad Thomassen's adoption of free-flowing soloing brings a sound less claustrophobic than before. Extraordinarily, in doing so, no power is lost. [Feb 2019, p.87]

The results sound authentic, melodic '60s girl-pop, if a bit thin. [Feb 2019, p.93]

Nighttime Birds And Morning Stars doubles back on that trajectory [on 2018's Deeper Woods] and heads left, its eight enveloping essays featuring live 1-and 6-string guitars manipulated and looped into capacious soundscapes, only occasionally topped off by vocal salutes to nature and the mysterious heavens. [Feb 2019, p.87]

Swindle wears his perfectionism lightly: satisfying tastebuds while leaving listeners hungry for more. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Its wintery charms and enervated intrigue are hard to deny. [Feb 2019, p.90]

The band's sixth album, while still oddly uneven, features some of their finest work to date. [Mar 2019, p.92]

Less electronic in feel than its predecessor, this is music on a truly human scale in terms of its inspiration, delivery and undeniable emotional punch. [Mar 2019, p.97]

Much like Dirty Projectors, it takes an adventurous soul to absorb much of this. [Mar 2019, p.93]

By combining the searing intimacy of a boombox-constructed mixtape with progressive and delirious bars, Earl's third album offers a rare kind of insight, sagacious from a 24-year-old. [Mar 2019, p.80]

A progression in Blake's music, his melodies less elusive, his productions less ethereal. [Mar 2019, p.88]

Mostly, it feels like a marriage of Weezer and Superchunk, amid all-pervasive fuzz-pedal abuse. [Feb 2019, p.88]

An electro-edged nerviness also surfaces but, overall, the fresh stylistic excursions result in an album which, fittingly considering its backstory, does not quite hang together. [Feb 2019, p.91]

Ducking and diving between ivories and six-string, his reedy-voice makes for a Syd Barrett attempting Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? record, full of compulsive tunes, but ever off-centre. [Feb 2019, p.91]

While a smidgen of originality wouldn't go amiss, there's plenty to compensate for it in the way of exuberance and humour. [Feb 2019, p.88]

Goes West feels invigoratingly sunny. [Feb 2019, p.84]

Future Ruins achieves everything an admirer could ask of the reunited band's new album. [Feb 2019, p.84]

This album has everything and it works. [Feb 2019, p.89]

An album rich in melancholia, softened with orchestral arrangements and enriched by female voices, at turns wistful, as others paranoid. [Feb 2019, p.89]