May's 10 songs are barely there yet carry genuine emotional heft thanks to Voss Romme's tremulous, close-up-and-personal vocal delivery. [Jun 2014, p.94]

Winsome, pastoral electronic vignettes that loop and swoop. [Jul 2015, p.91]

Sunnier than before, Malamore is a swirl of pounding drums, spoken French, baroque melodies. [May 2016, p.96]

This vital, vintage-sounding hook-up with dusty jazz fiend Ben Lamdin and reggae producer Prince fatty--packed with wilding horns and lurching bass--bridles with unwearied defiance on How Many Bullets, The Music and She Is. [Jul 2018, p.90]

It could all be too cute for its own good but some inspired darker moments elevate the whole to the level of a Raymond Carver short story collection set to music by Joan Of Arc-era OMD. [Nov 2018, p.90]

Gallo's eccentricity is bound to irritate at least as many as it charms. [Jan 2019, p.91]

The piano's push into poignancy is occasionally too much, but Yawny Yawn largely feels like new information, a clear-sighted re-vision of a tremendous set of songs. [Sep 2019, p.86]

Her first album since 1968's Kufunta on Immediate. The former Ikette's voice is little changed since those days and still rooted in powerful gospel. [Aug 2019, p.88]

OEH are a more intriguing venture when confident enough to aim for the universal. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Joan Wasser's second covers set finds romance in Prince's lust-blind Kiss and innocence in the Strokes' Under Control. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Crain has always been good, but on A Small Death she's genuinely great. [Aug 2020, p.92]

In all, far more touching than we've been allowed. [Oct 2020, p.92]

Idles and Tom Morello score highly by taking an edgy staccato approach, faithful to the original songs, but La Roux's synthy take on Damaged Goods teases out an unexpected amount of melody. [Jul 2021, p.83]

There is plenty going on: doomy folk blues; sparse Woody Guthrie-esque folk; slow, sad Sweet Refrain and The Levee On Down. There's also passionate, pissed-off, rousing country rock. [Sep 2021, p.85]

Apart from the upbeat soul of Never Want To Be Kissed, featuring Stax veteran William bell on vocals, Set Sail stumbles and squints through its nine other tracks, although on Bumpin' they at least rouse themselves long enough to sound like Tony Joe White imitating Sly Stone. [Mar 2022, p.86]

[Luke Haines] has never been backed like this before. ... It's as if The WreckingCrew wound up on a Skip Spence album. [Nov 2022, p.91]

Bob Mould's been hereabouts before, of course, but The Tubs' tightly-wound songs are good enough to transcend the concept. [May 2023, p.95]

She might feel her work-life balance is out of whack, but Power's creative scales are perfectly aligned. [Aug 2023, p.80]

Darkly versatile second LP. [Nov 2024, p.95]

They still sound remarkably fresh, and here their short (only three of the 14 songs last longer than three minutes), sharp shock still kicks hard. [Jan 2024, p.86]

Absorbing follow-up. [Feb 2026, p.90]

Fans of Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver and Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs take note. [Nov 2008, p.19]

Away is a looser and more poignant than the band's previous releases ever hinted. [Oct 2016, p.95]

A lush and trippy affair with shades of Edward Lear-like surrealism and John Winston Lennon amid strawberry Fields. [Mar 2008, p.103]

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]

Broken repeats the team-up, but in wider-screen yet, fully evocative of its genesis in the sprawl of Los Angeles. [Sep 2009, p.95]

If not quite an Ironman or Supreme Clientele, this is Ghostface's most unified, coherent work in years. [Jun 2013, p.94]

Not even the most Boss-eyed would claim the world needs another Springsteen Best-of, mostly comprising songs available elsewhere and built around a clutch of repeat offenders. Yet Freehold, NJ's famous son is barely recognisible on Chapter And Verse's first five track. [Nov 2016, p.104]