Young's soundtrack to his partner's film is similarly random, but when it hits the right mark, it too dazzles. [Jun 2018, p.88]

No. 4 is a warmer, more cohesive work than 2015's No. 3. [Jun 2018, p.93]

Reassuringly autumnal, it drifts by with the grace of a soaring kite. [Jun 2018, p.88]

It's pleasant enough, but suffers for not taking songs places they've never been. [May 2018, p.98]

Feels like a belated sequel to Laraaji/Eno's 1980 Day If Radiance. [Jun 2018, p.97]

There's little dry about old guy jokes. [Jun 2018, p.97]b

At once brooding and beautiful. [Jun 2018, p.97]

It doesn't all work; but when it does, it's wonderfully widescreen. [Jun 2018, p.96]

Most of the songs are observations from an emotional distance. [Jun 2018, p.96]

Kindness sees Andrews play the traditional diva, brilliantly so on the swelling, epic title track. Elsewhere, shadowed by atmospheric tremolo guitar and elements of Memphian soul, Andrews injects Americana archetypes with tenderness and empathy. [Jun 2018, p.96]

Keith's surreal wordplay has one leg planted firmly in the future, ensuring Dr. Octagon is still one of a kind. [Jun 2018, p.96]

The Messthetics is a short set, long on detail. [Jun 2018, p.94]

Loner is the sound of her undoubted talent turned feral. It's a wonderful, rollicking beast. [Jun 2018, p.94]

Slowly Paradise are slow love songs, but slow love songs that, thanks to Chenaux's playing, suggest an impermanence at the heart of all romance, a chaos at life's core. [Jun 2018, p.93]

Admirably obtuse, Slug put the odd into prog odyssey with style. [Jun 2018, p.93]

Young weaves 11 modern blues of frail longing around backwards guitar, mumbling bass and homemade percussion, his chanted lyrics like pale fragile spells for escaping the 21st century. [Jun 2018, p.93]

How she continues to turn apparent whimsy into profundity borders on the miraculous. [Jun 2018, p.92]

It's never morbid, but mortality is a running theme. [Jun 2018, p.91]

Highlights include Richard Youngs' wistful Summer's Edge, with Sugden deadpan amid a splashing keyboard fountain. [May 2018, p.97]

This is continuing proof that the 42-year-old Gaz Coombes's best work is happening in the here and now. [May 2018, p.90]

The 11-song tracklist forgoes perennials such as Touch Me I'm Sick for lesser-spotted nuggets like Fuzzgun '91, a splenetic thrash through Roxy Music's Editions Of You and the Heart-sore epic Broken Hands. [Feb 2018, p.90]

A stylish, stoned variant of leftfield R&B in quick-fire bursts, exhibiting pop smarts, sojourns into shimmering, skewed house. [Apr 2018, p.91]

There's no high concept, just 12 pop songs that sound as if the pair decided to down tools the moment working ion them felt like work. [May 2018, p.90]

His latest sounds like the product of a much-needed rethink, bracketed by two cosmically speculating slowies: the opening, sparkling title track documents its author's self-fulfilling quest to mine a deeper instinctual creativity, while closer No Man's Land has a wide-eyed romanticism, evoking Mercury Rev. [May 2018, p.93]

While these tales may have been found in far-flung places, they all ultimately belong to the same deep tradition--and one where unvarnished simplicity enhances the material's uncanny potential. [May 2018, p.94]

Find A Light breaks down the distance between dexterous Southern rock and country brilliantly on songs like Best Seat In The House and Run Away From It All. If they have a weakness this time around, it's occasional lapses in quality control. [May 2018, p.91]

The Straight Hits! is front-loaded with positivist rockers, but these are ramshackle. ... The second half mercifully reverts to Pearson's true calling as a funereal balladeer; even then, the transition's too jarring to cohere to the conceptual/titular framework. [May 2018, p.90]

Rather than a showcase for their collaborators, however, MOM take the greatest of liberties with these sound sources, fragmenting and processing them into unrecognizable forms, and even occasionally playing them straight. [May 2018, p.