There are a lot of moments when - sleeves rolled up, top button undone - it sounds as if they're pouring out their hearts to the same bartender as The National. When they get the detailing right, though, it flies. [Jul 2020, p.78]

If Sideways To New Italy is a reckoning, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's balance sheet is entirely in the black. [Jul 2020, p.79]

The sound has been filled out. ... The burnished folk rock accentuates the intimacy of Power's voice and her writing. [Jul 2020, p.80]

Beginners is less rip-it-up statement than subtle realignment; less countrified and polished, more folky and sparse. [Jul 2020, p.80]

Heartbreaker Please expresses its title in the most literal terms; it's broken and pleading. At the same time, the music provides a through-line to the 43-year-old's singer's past, striking his usual balance between Buddy Holly simplicity and Roy Orbison sweep, with a dash of Memphis horns tossed in. [Jun 2020, p.89]

It lacks the gargantuan personality and all-encompassing throaty bark of FU's leader Damian Abraham to give it a USP, but Falco, as frontman, does a decent job of stamping his own marker. [Jul 2020, p.84]

It starts in fine fashion. ... Tellier's Auto-Tuned croon is unrelenting, and by the album's mid-point we're approaching the realms of self-parody. [May 2020, p.89]

There are transcendent moments. ... But Atkins tries on so many hackneyed faces during these 11 tracks that the overall effort feels faceless. [Jul 2020, p.82]

Highlight of an unfathomable whole: Hell. [Jul 2020, p.88]

There's more hope to be found in the sound Deerhoof assemble into single songs that play like a hallucinating DJ's set. Any element sounds perfectly straight by itself, but layered together, they feel imported from the multiverse. [Jul 2020, p.87]

Too opaque to fully connect, Consummation keeps its mystery high. [Jul 2020, p.85]

The boogie imperative on Knuckleball Express is less deconstructed than usual. [Jul 2020, p.84]

Twisting the familiar sounds into altogether more challenging forms. [Jul 2020, p.84]

There's so much going on that each sitting reveals new nuances and added twists of slender wonder. [Jul 2020, p.82]

A future late-night classic. [Jul 2020, p.80]

Though there isn't a dud in Apple's back-catalogue, she has never sounded quite so liberated and artistically sure-footed as this. [Jul 2020, p.86]

These 10 duets/duels can be pretty gnarly, but there are beautiful epiphanies, too. [Jul 2020, p.82]

Her fourth album has a gently-assured, incantatory feel. [Jul 2020, p.78]

This second RVG record finesses a precision indie-pop sound hinged up on Reuben Bloxham's chiming guitar, equal parts Johnny Marr and Darklands-era William Reid - a classy backdrop for one of 2020's most arresting batch of lyrics so far. [Jul 2020, p.78]

The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sonics are matched by an unrelenting emotional honesty. [Jul 2020, p.85]

Powerful stuff. [Jun 2020, p.93]

This retreat to classical roots is soothing, if a little one-note. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Joan Wasser's second covers set finds romance in Prince's lust-blind Kiss and innocence in the Strokes' Under Control. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Serene, mostly, where free improv is usually abrasive. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Earnestness often rules. ... They're better at slushy, Radio 1 epics and louder, brasher tracks. [Jul 2020, p.78]

Despite playing with pop forms, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately holds Hadreas's experimental shape, his artistic line. ... A slow burner, in every way. [Jun 2020, p.94]

With its acute portraits of a troubled and tangled life, Reunions is ultimately a story of redemption through fatherhood and self knowledge, epic country-soul opener What've I Done To Help setting the mood perfectly. [Jun 2020, p.95]

It's all carried off with the panache and confidence of a group making their first, not 24th, album. [Jun 2020, p.89]