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

Aside from the occasional rote workout (Sweeden, enlivened only by Denys Baptiste’s squalling sax), Renascence finds Cymande firmly in the pocket. [Mar 2025, p.93]

The superior ones are palate cleansers or re-fertilisations of barren songwriting soil. But the best are things in and of themselves – artworks the performer has shaped just as surely and idiosyncratically as the writers. Find El Dorado is one of those. [Sep 2025, p.76]

Hannon's most personal and poignant album to date. [Oct 2025, p.86]

Yielded their finest collection to date. [May 2026, p.87]

This eponymous offering once again demonstrates his effortless, and seemingly innate, ability to make the familiar feel fresh and enticing. [Feb 2017, p.90]

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

A record that's serene on the surface but with a dark undertow. [May 2016, p.91]

It's a little fragmented, maybe two or three songs too short, but still brimming with his sweet-sour magic. [Sep 2017, p.88]

A remarkable accomplishment, confirming that Williams has already built a world all of her own. [Aug 2020, p.84]

Jana Horn is a singing magic eye picture somewhere between the scratchy emotional static of early Cat Power and itchy Talk Talk Spirit Of Eden jazz. Unfocus and see. [Feb 2026, p.84]

An effervescent rush of melody, invention and magic. [Jan 2006, p.119]

The music is too futuristic--and, more bizarrely, too rooted in Indian Ocean folk roots--ever to get weighed down in heaviosity. [Mar 2015, p.96]

A first strike of the match before they burn their own path forward. [Sep 2019, p.94]

Original, but with traces of early Dizzee, Rodney P and The Streets in Slowthai's savvy grime-punk. [Jun 2019, p.96]

As ever it's the small details they alight upon which resonate. [Jul 2025, p.79]

Hard Headed Woman sees her big personality fire straight-talking, sometimes blackly comic lyrics "All the cocaine in existence/Can't keep your nose out of my business" - while taking her music to new places. [Oct 2025, p.82]

An exhilarating brand of digital soul. [Nov 2001, p.103]

It's not all strum und drang though. The beatless despair of Källans Återuppståndelse shows the harmonic subtleties at play within Von Hausswolff's bewitching repertoire of dissonance and drama. [Feb 2022, p.87]

Protector feels rooted in the psychedelic quicksand that surrounded 2020 debut, and Of No Junction. It's no less enchanting though. [Dec 2022, p.92]

Versions Of Us is full of such emotional blue plaque moments, small humans marking their time on a grandly heartfelt scale. [Jun 2023, p.85]

Caribou meets late-period Madonna, perhaps, but given DIA's depth of melody and nuance, Minus might be the Phoebe Bridgers of Techno-pop. [Feb 2025, p.82]

Makes for some striking textures. [Apr 2005, p.97]

At Weddings quickly coalesces into an utterly compelling presence. [Sep 2018, p.88]

As with earlier records, Build A Rocket Boys! is touched by ambitious, intuitive invention. [Apr. 2011, p. 92]

Never just black and white, nor blatantly "cinematic," it operates in subtle shades of grey and sepia, flushing with urgent instrumental colour when the internal simmering becomes too much. [Feb 2016, p.94]

Barbed but beautiful. [Nov 2017, p.103]

Aoba's hushed voice makes for an immersive meld of indie-folk, classical and jazz. [Jan 2022, p.91]