A blissful escape from whatever ails you. [Feb 2023, p.89]

Young Fathers remain a frequently forbidding proposition, and all the better for it. Thrillingly, it's still impossible to predict what we might hear next in any of their tracks. [Mar 2023, p.88]

Fans of the early records of Margo Price and Courtney Marie Andrews will find much to love here, while the diversion into groovesome country soul on Rows Of Clover keeps the head nodding. [Feb 2023, p.84]

His own music finally snaps into focus: gone, the scrappy garage/glam, in favour of sophisticated singer-songwriterly pop constructed around acoustic guitar, strings, extravagantly multi-tracked vocal harmonies and consistent tunes. [Mar 2023, p.86]

The album's abstemious drums help the untethered material breathe, and on point contributions include Lisa Hannigan, and fellow voyager Daniel Lanois, whose sombre instrumental opener Prelude To Song primes us for gravitas-laden songs of loss, warning, transformation and stoicism. [Mar 2023, p.92]

Delicate yet powerful, and utterly compelling. [Feb 2023, p.92]

Elements of deep soul and space-age pop combine to create a retro-futurist vibe, songs sounding instantly familiar but slightly fried, as if beamed in from other worlds. [Feb 2023, p.84]

This suprise follow-up to May's A Bit Of Previous smacks of pressure-off invention, the sense that they know how to do this by now - and have fun doing it - cemented by Late Developers' title. [Mar 2023, p.84]

A meticulous and bold piece of sound art, but one which is rooted in a plaintive local, human response to global catastrophe. [Mar 2023, p.91]

This is music that needs to be heard in as long a form as possible, so nothing breaks the immersive hallucinatory effect, and you can lose all sense of time direction and place. [Mar 2023, p.93]

An electrifying exercise in first thought as best thought, ... One Day is thrillingly direct. [Feb 2023, p.83]

Furling expands the sonic palette, bringing in piano, percussion, harp, vibraphone and more. The results bring new dimensions to her psychedelic folk. [Feb 2023, p.92]

While Idles boast similar reserves of adrenalin and attitude, Italia 90 better deploy groove. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Despite the occasional maudlin drift, The Bad ends meet rapturous ends when they rally against impending darkness. [Feb 2023, p.85]

The flittering hooks of Whitty's first solo outing impact with tender grace. [Feb 2023, p.90]

It initially feels fragile, but Carvings is hard to shake off. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Are these essentially live recordings of a visceral, in the moment experience? Of course they are. You can’t fake that vital spark. ... Live And Dangerous still stands as the band’s finest hour; the crystallisation of all that made them so irresistible, so brilliantly volatile. [Feb 2023, p.94]

Not the pinnacle of his varied career, maybe, but not a low, either [Feb 2023, p.82]

Another Day To heal opens encouragingly. ... Midway through, La La Land derails, as Queen Of Spaces errs into forlorn folky picking, while Slowly On The Wheel opens with one-finger piano and voice. The Chugging Face Eraser and Baba O'Riley-ish Pockets pulls things together. [Feb 2023, p.84]

Gigi's Recovery fully achieves TMC's transformative purpose, its lyrics of unflinching self-scrutiny leading to side two's exhilarating Only Good Things and the thrillingly airborne climactic title track. [Feb 2023, p.82]

Time's Arrow is Ladytron's equivalent of Simple Minds' early-'80s heyday, where burnished synth-pop meets the hyperreality of travel. [Feb 2023, p.87]

The lack of solidity can make Mercy nebulous like any spirit photo, it sometimes takes work to find the shape, fill in detail. Yet slowly, its unfamiliarity coalesces into a cold beauty, memory acting as a spur, not a comfort blanket. [Feb 2023, p.85]

Repeat plays lay bare a record of rare ambition and thematic complexity. [Feb 2023, p.84]

The result is brooding, often humorous musing on life, joy, occasionally death. ... But it's tender love song Mary, with its meandering sax, that stops you. [Feb 2023, p.92]

While Long Live The Strange turns the outsiderism of Supergrass's Strange Ones into an anthem, with bonus chorale. The rest is more soul-searching, but with instrumental structuring and melodic grace of satisfying excellence. [Feb 2023, p.82]

The narrative lines are fractured, the satire removed; these songs play out like stress responses, fight-or-flight impulses, each one a little panic room. ... There’s not a lot of feeling OK on CACTI, but for once, it feels like exactly the right place for Billy Nomates. She’s brought herself, entirely. [Feb 2023, p.86]

The six lengthy meditations here refine the formula. [Jan 2023, p.84]

The finale to an exemplary act of curation. [Jan 2023, p.102]