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]