As ever, the sonic palette is richly clean, the harmonies stacked, and Jerry Douglas’s dobro an empathetic, keening presence in constant dialogue with the singers, now the dominant solo instrument in the ensemble. [May 2025, p.87]

Dreams On Toast's music is much less nuanced and thought-provoking - but that's no slur. [May 2025, p.86]

A gloriously measured and understated take on blues standards. [Mar 2025, p.84]

Forever Is A Feeling is layered, lush and contemplative. [May 2025, p.86]

It's a winning formula that will maintain Lakeman as one of the country's biggest folk draws. [Mar 2025, p.89]

It's when he boosts the Zulu content on Emmanuele - his sweet tenor blending with clicks and close-harmony singing - or breaks everything down in a contemporary style on Kea Morata, that you'll feel like you have been transported to a new world, where everything is possible. [Apr 2025, p.85]

Dan's Boogie remains fascinatingly obscure in places, but these songs are full of buried gold. [May 2025, p.84]

Over its 11 tracks, it draws the listener fully into its dreamworld. [May 2025, p.86]

This one's a real keeper. [Apr 2025, p.87]

[The tracks] are stripped back, letting the raw essence rise to the surface and evoking the strength of feeling that comes through their live performances. There’s the swing of Sam Cooke at the Harlem Square Club, the search for ecstasy of the Family Stone at Woodstock, the power of Aretha Franklin at LA’s New Temple Missionary Baptist Church and the fervour of Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples at 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival. [May 2025, p.82]

The result successfully veers from radio-friendly gems Everyday Magic and Time Waited (built around a tumbling piano sample from pedal steel player Buddy Emmons’ 1969 LP Emmons Guitar Inc) to Free-styled riffer Squid Ink and bluesy closer River Road. [Apr 2025, p.78]

This is very much alright. [Apr 2025, p.82]

This time, this sound pitches harder and faster between the troubled and te transcendent, the mystical and the physical, but Greentea Peng is still dispensing powerful medicine. [May 2025, p.85]

It's like Lonnie: The Movie in sound - an absolute blockbuster. [May 2025, p.92]

Though some Lemon Twigs fans might miss Michael's edgier, thornier songwriting, big bro's serial melodicism and multi-instrumentalist nous across everything from penny whistle to cello slays. [Apr 2025, p.80]

Within ominously booming coordinates often evoking Hans Zimmer-style soundtracking, dark-pop miracles reliably happen. [May 2025, p.84]

This is a new band, but it already sounds primed for the long haul. [May 2025, p.90]

Although there are lengthy passes of mellifluous flute playing, the largely instrumental composition is lacking in focus. But there is much to enjoy ere in the more concise songs. [May 2025, p.92]

You don’t need to know how many times and ways Wilco addressed these songs over two years to be dazzled and moved by the madrigal-guitar and astral-piano dance in Muzzle Of Bees, or the jaunty pop-psych bait of Handshake Drugs with its undercurrent of helplessness and allusion to Tweedy’s own battle with prescription medication (soon won through rehab). But it’s an instructive windfall in dedicated experiment and resolve. [Mar 2025, p.94]

Central to Whatever The Westher II is an underlying hum and crackle that offsets its engrossing sound design. [Apr 2024, p.84]

Storytime and Greensward Days showcase Andy Strickland's thoughtful guitar work, Dr Clarke essays a home counties kind of Pebbles psychedelia while Ten Years celebrates the quiet joys of 60-something man chat. [Apr 2025, p.78]

While some of its more indulgent elements may not be to all tastes, his scale of ambition and dazzling audacity should be applauded. [Apr 2025, p.76]

Reflective, yet joyful, it's an absolute triumph. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Allison is as vocally ethereal as [Kendra] Smith and Newcombe as filmic and adventurous as [David] Roback. [Mar 2025, p.92]

A lovely, evocative album on which Stratton's measured approach barely masks underlying tensions. [Apr 2025, p.80]

It's Williams's confessions, delivered with an intensity worthy of Richard Thompson, that make their second album so compelling. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Though the lyrics sometimes explore the US's increasingly polarised political allegiances, Leithauser's passionate optimism and the record's grooving drums keeps our spirits up until mesmeric guitar arpeggios usher in the beautifully pensive title track/closer. [Apr 2025, p.79]

Merges jazz and Arabian classical music with invention and panache. [Apr 2025, p.87]