Solo he's more ruminative. [Apr 2020, p.91]

Surrender Your Poppy Field's focus delivers GBV's strongest set in years. [Apr 2020, p.88]

Always Tomorrow sounds like a last laugh - elegantly modulated, slightly hollow. [Apr 2020, p.88]

[Singer Hazel Wilde's] words are clear, emphatic and beautifully sung, like a post-rock seer gazing over the landscape. Her bandmates also play their socks off. [Mar 2020, p.91]

While the key of Random Desire is mostly subterranean, when the serpentine build of The Tide breaks, the impact is undeniably soulful and powerful. [Mar 2020, p.88]

Inevitably there's a compilation feel, but Marshall's music brings coherence as it eases goth into the 21st century. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Lakeman is in his element. ... McGann's narration is disappointingly flat and some of the musical settings - like the shanty Sailing Time - are underplayed; but the songs are emotive. [Mar 2020, p.88]

They're five albums in and they keep getting better and better. [Mar 2020, p.91]

She's a great storyteller and her guitar has plenty of country twang. But the sound is of her own making - defined by her huge one-of-a-kind voice. [Mar 2020, p.94]

Hulking beats and a cloudy, black electronic roar set the tone, but powerful sound design is the key. [Feb 2020, p.91]

Ash's cover of Teenage Kicks itself is on the limited-edition 3-CD version, alongside the likes of a cover of Buzzcocks' Everybody's Happy Nowadays, making this the best buy. [Mar 2020, p.101]

The strangely beautiful bounty of Mogadisco reveals more telling detail with each listen. [Feb 2020, p.103]

Masterful vocal mash-ups with London songstress Poppy Ajudha, South African electronic upsetter Nonku Phiri and a wonderfully gravelly Obongjayar help propel this testament to Boyd's illimitable outlook far into the stratosphere. [Mar 2020, p.91]

Its emotional impact is sublime. [Apr 2020, p.96]

The Slow Rush proves the rewards of taking time; Kevin Parker is an artist worthy of yours. [Mar 2020, p.90]

The music nods obviously in the direction of Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, and Bruce Lee. [Mar 2020, p.93]

It's where Elbow and Springsteen intersect. [Mar 2020, p.96]

Hushed, understated psychedelia and Laurel Canyon-influenced LP. [Mar 2020, p.95]

Familiar bittersweet flavours are sensitively tweaked - Looking For You's orchestral surges; Live Learn And Forget's flickering piano - Nada Surf's cathartic heartbursts remain in perfect harmony. [Mar 2020, p.96]

There are sublime moments - International Women Of Leisure, for instance, and Do You Feel, a homage to first ladies of disco songwriting such as Evelyn King and Gwen Guthrie - but other tracks, though taut and tight, become repetitive. [Mar 2020, p.92]

Ford still has a country rasp to her voice, but doesn't over-sing, and her method of expressing emotion is deft rather than melodramatic. she can build up power, too. [Mar 2020, p.87]

Packs intelligence, colour and melody. [Mar 2020, p.93]

It has a home-made, handcrafted feel and an almost impossible intimacy. [Feb 2020, p.91]

The resulting fusion suggests nothing less than an Eastern Astral Weeks. [Feb 2020, p.94]

Her debut LP eschews 4/4 rhythms to create a loose-limbed, free-ranging treat. [Feb 2020, p.91]

His macabre tendency has evolved further into a kind of disaster romanticism on his 21st album. [Mar 2020, p.89]

A quintessential "pocket trip" record, then, sculpted and sequenced to perfection. [Jan 2020, p.87]

As sad ballad follows sad ballads towards the close, Old Wow is not as well-paces. Nonetheless it's full of resonant music. [Feb 2020, p.94]