The definitive elements of this bijou gem are the author's own. [Dec 2015, p.86]

Another weighty addition to this first-choice list. [Dec 2015, p.91]

Cheatah's emotional core is easily decipherable. [Dec 2015, p.94]

Gibbons's wily blend of open-mindedness and roots-loyalty remains intact. [Nov 2015, p.86]

Mashup of overused modern dancefloor styles and rote bragging, with odd moment of classic purple peculiarity. [Dec 2015, p.94]

[Illuminates] Nash's own cosmic poetry, crunching guitars and swooning pedal steel. [Dec 2015, p.94]

They draw from a practiced old hand's bag of tricks yet feel delightfully fresh. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Suffice to say, they've kept their edge. [Dec 2015, p.93]

The overriding tone recalls Lana Del Rey's gothic torch song elegies, albeit with far more economy and less overacting. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Henley's discourses on ageing and feeling adrift in the modern world are poignant, and, on A Younger Man, painfully well observed. [Dec 2015, p.93]

It's great credit to both Lund and his versatile backing bad, The Hurtin' Albertans, that such see-sawing through genres can sound so much like a singular piece of work. [Dec 2015, p.93]

This latest doesn't noticeably monkey with their formula, and with good reason. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Louis Carnell crafts grime's own I Hear A New World. [Dec 2015, p.91]

A tad more conventional than Liz Harris's ongoing work as Grouper, despite roots in C86 shambling and early-90s shoegaze, Helen's hazy, half-grasped songs are still several left turns from any standard indie fare. [Dec 2015, p.86]

For Gahan, Angels & Ghosts is another opportunity to repeat his therapeutic cycle of guilt-shedding and redemption. [Dec 2015, p.88]

Return To The Noon can seem too dense a construct to penetrate. [Dec 2015, p.88]

Stewart still has the voice and, on the gravelly rocker Please and the Steve Harley/Jim Cregan co-write A Friend For Life, the songs. But the rest is best avoided. [Dec 2015, p.86]

With his amiable croak and humour warming his observations, Manhattan is no bitter mope. [Dec 2015, p.90]

Simplicity rules throughout and the material doesn't stray far from folk roots, yet always sounds contemporary. [Dec 2015, p.92]

Although the second half of the album doesn't quite match up to the front, there's no sense it's dragging, either. [Dec 2015, p.88]

Garvey's poetics have acquired more acuity. [Dec 2015, p.86]

The awkward early passages of Pyramid/When The Poor Can reach The Moon would surely struggle to gain airplay in any decade, including this one, yet it ultimately rises to the kind of triumphant chorus at which Phillipps excels. [Nov 2015, p.87]

Martin Courtney's music is unsurprisingly like Real Estate's in that it comes at an unhurried tempo and sounds deceptively simple. [Nov 2015, p.94]

A mightily approachable and sometimes even fun album. [Nov 2015, p.88]

[A] soaring yet engagingly earthly first album. [Nov 2015, p.96]

Half Moon Run may still be exploring a road that travels between Django Django's left-field indie pop and the wintry harmonies of Fleet Foxes, but the scenery is damned fine. [Nov 2015, p.89]

A fittingly weighty document of their emotional heft. [Nov 2015, p.105]

All in all, this is an unqualified triumph. [Nov 2015, p.86]