Another game-changer; via a 13-piece ensemble. [Jul 2023, p.82]

The tension between philosophical lyrics and the invitingly cosmic fractals generated by the band can hit awkwardly, but this is a striking new shoot. [Jun 2023, p.95]

There are 10 songs here, most of them slow; with a smoky nightclub intimacy that makes it a great late-night album. [Jun 2023, p.88]

Apart from the more lightweight yarning of In Electric Blue, each track on this album takes you further into her brave new world. [Jun 2023, p.94]

Garden Party is a golden-hour dream of a record, balmy keyboards and cicada-like percussion setting a perfect scene for the easy, receptive conversations between the guitars of Johnson and Barry Walker. [Jun 2023, p.87]

A delightful album. [Apr 2023, p.82]

Beneath Tweedy's twinkling lights, Crowell wears each look like a favourite old coat - familiar, easy, and pocked by stains and rips that remind him of all he's seen. [Jun 2023, p.91]

Everything Harmony us certainly a darker chapter in the Twigs' story, but their songwriting has become more nuanced. [Jun 2023, p.90]

Multifaceted and consistently brilliant. [Jun 2023, p.84]

Lemmy-recalling rocker The End finds chief pilot Dave Brock poignantly recalling years of adventure as past Hawkwind sonic signatures collide, while the mordantly comic The Beginning looks in electronic/acoustic fashion to a post-human existence of uploaded consciousness. [Jun 2023, p.85]

Lashes panoramic drum'n'bass rollers (Living In Recycled Times) to pulsing deep house (The Beginning Of The End) and amniotic ambient (Prism). [Jun 2023, p.95]

[Evil Spirits] was a curiously muted affair. ... Darkadelic does much to address that imbalance with the Cap back to showboating magnificently on Bad Weather Girl and Girl I'll Stop At Nothing and adding vibrant, shimmering psych textures throughout. [Jun 2023, p.84]

It's a thematically and musically complex record that encourages wonderment. [Jun 2023, p.92]

The beauty of Jump On It also lies in how it evolves Orcutt's music rather than compromises it. Start here and work backwards. [Jun 2023, p.89]

This is an absolute joy. [Jun 2023, p.92]

Relationships with uncomfortable endings, uneasy attractions, and deep personal loss pepper Fullbrook's songs, but her Tiny Ruins bandmates consistently lift her into the light, creating warmth and depth rather than leaving the listener in endless gloom. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Spectral Lines tries to come at hurt, loss and destiny afresh, with Ritter's dexterity with universal themes often paying dividends. [Jun 2023, p.86]

It's Stigmergy, named after a concept of collective action, that best encapsulates the ecstatic NIS groupthink: one hypnotic soloist after another - Ben Lamar Gay, brilliant on coronet - drifting elegantly in and out of systems repetition. [Jun 2023, p.92]

A sometimes-striking record that suggests new ground without actually reaching it. [Jun 2023, p.84]

de Graaf is repositioning herself in a mightily crowded market, but the sometime human rights lawyer triumphs via intense lyrics about coming-of-age awareness, loneliness in the big city, life's unpredictability and, on Water Stains, the old chestnut of time's passing. [Mar 2023, p.87]

Most of its layered, ornate creations and moody conjurings emerge from a deep shoegaze rabbit hole redolent of Slowdive and Lush. [Jun 2023, p.90]

It's polished, professional, but one for the faithful. [May 2023, p.89]

The Window Is The Dream initially seems opaque, but keep looking through and all becomes beautifully clear. [May 2023, p.92]

The cumulative effect is lulling and hypnotic. [Jun 2023, p.89]

Pedal steel still colours Safe To Run but so do fuzzier guitars; synthesizers are involved, and tributaries are equally pop, folk and rock. [Jun 2023, p.86]

Neale is imaginative, but she's steeped in songwriting craft and she knows her way aound a whopping chorus. That's more than enough. [Jun 2023, p.90]

“People say people my age shouldn’t be making records,” Hunter has said. With his mind still agile, his piano playing still on top form and his voice still strong, Defiance Part 1 makes a nonsense of that. At 83, Hunter also sounds much more starry-eyed about rock’n’roll than he did in Diary Of A Rock’N’Roll Star. [May 2023, p.90

The emphasis more on fractured, abstract improv rater than frenetic carousing. Interesting stuff, for sure. [May 2023, p.89]