This is a slick, polished, self-penned set. ... Sometimes it's hard to tell the frenzied guitar stranglers apart. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Songs fall into two categories: those tracking matters of the heart--Don't You Know could be a forgotten Delfonics single with drummer Aaron Frazer's sweet falsetto taking the lead--and those scolding their home country. These are jolting, especially opener Morning In America, with its Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron touches. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Songs feel untethered, then crystallise in Sharon Von Etten-levels of devastation. [Apr 2019, p.96]

At risk of self-indulgence, but arrangements reward patient listening. [Apr 2019, p.96]

The Unthank sisters admirably translate the atmospheric melancholia of the themes, though it's Adrian McNally's piano arrangements that really carry the day. [Apr 2019, p.95]

Victoria's wracked, whispery, smoky rasp exudes her inner suffering. [Apr 2019, p.91]

A precision, Sleater-Kinney-ish rewiring of new wave guitar with cool, no wave delivery. [Apr 2019, p.96]

This successor is strings-free, but goes further still [than 2014's This Is My Hand]. [Apr 2019, p.94]

White Stuff once again feels like the work of avant-garde self-mythologisers inveigling themselves into the Stones' Nellcote basement. But the riffs, cutting a swathe through dense electronic meltdown, are the strongest they've engineered, together or apart, since 1997's Accelerator. and there's a neww, mature pathos to the likes of Suburban Junkie Lady. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Wraith finds those heterogeneous elements [post-punk, industrial Krautrock and Angelo Badalamenti-like soundtrack atmosphere] fusing even more satisfyingly than [2015's Highly Deadly Black Tarantula]. [Mar 2019, p.97]

On This Land, Clark and his guitar stay true to the mission. [Apr 2019, p.92]

Defiance, anger and desire fire his second set, a soul-dancefloor hybrid that soars past debut Brave Confusions' meld of influences. [Apr 2019, p.93]

Warmer layers are added to sparse, insistent electronics, culminating in Unificado, a nine-minute high-point of fuzz pedal density. [Apr 2019, p.96]

The sound is '80s indie, air and water. [Apr 2019, p.96]

Songs blur into each other, rendering Beat My Distance a series of variations on adopted themes rather than evidence of a singular voice. [Apr 2019, p.93]

From the jaunty beat group undertow counterpointing his melodramatic vocal style on the opening title track, through the almost self-consciously traditional slide guitar and harmonica combination of Devil Got Me, to his most adventurous use of the mouth harp as a bringer of Dionysian frenzy, to the pastoral backwater of the penultimate Sundown--is actually more in keeping with his experimental rock beginnings. [Apr 2019, p.94]

It resets her musical dial by abandoning the borderline Nick Cave-isms of Welcome... to amp up the rock dynamism which first won her attention.[Mar 2019, p.92]

Not for the uncommitted, this is a time capsule to a place where those over-burdened by taste will not want to go. but junk shop superhead/compiler/indie rock Zelig Phil King has reminded us that if we do some things differently in the past, they do other things--thrills, strangeness, escape--the same. [Apr 2019, p.103]

Fine follow-up [to 2016's Lovers & Leavers] ... has a wider range of emotions and some new classics. [Apr 2019, p.91]

Delicate, inventive and deeply, deeply touching. [Mar 2019, p.95]

It's a unique kind of unhappy listening, too toxic on the universal scale to be bled out. But it leaves you galvanised, purged and recharged for the unending war against mediocrity. [Mar 2019, p.90]

She's at peak power on Faraway Look, expressing feminine vulnerability over immaculate Dusty In Memphis arrangements. [Mar 2019, p.95]

With these elegantly devastating songs, she carves put a space, and a class, all of her own. [Mar 2019, p.91]

You certainly feel stimulated, but as with those frenzied, uber-detailed set pieces on modern-day CGI animation movies, there's almost too much to process. [Mar 2019, p.91]

These are out-of-reach glimpses of environmental paradise; hazy, transient, atomised, and, like the technological future they presaged, their expiration in-built. [Mar 2019, p.105]

Hello Happiness is indeed groove heavy, but gives too little for a singer of Chaka's ability to, well, sing - which is a shame, because on the occasions she does find space to stretch out her soaring voice seems to have retained its strength, tone and power. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Webb has an eclectic Thomas Dolby-style approach and he's not totally successful. ... But that doesn't matter because when he hits it, the song rises with glorious abandon. [Mar 2019, p.98]

Tiersen's lavish melodic gifts resonate loudest without the bangs and whistles. Glass-like repetitions of Templehof and Prad exerting a heartfelt tug.[Mar 2019, p.97]