No scrabbling for a shot at Wichita Lineman or Galveston this time out. [Dec 2013, p.88]

The brooding Last Night On Earth places Ranaldo in a seductively meditative setting. [Dec 2013, p.88]

Hersh still transmits a visionary quality through her songs, her writing only adding to the sense of compulsion. [Dec 2013, p.88]

For anybody already smitten by Bombino or Group Doueh, this is a drop of the hard stuff. [Dec 2013, p.87]

This sensational follow-up finds Glasper adhering to the same basic blueprint [as the first Black Radio], though this time he's tweaked it to perfection. [Dec 2013, p.86]

Shulamith proves that intelligent pop music still has the ability to seduce and enthrall. [Dec 2013, p.86]

A muted trumpet melody and wordless chorale drift through Siren Spectre's gorgeous intergalactic ambiance before space-disco juggernaut Responder tunes into the transcendental infinite--a glitter ball in one eye, the other on the cosmos. [Dec 2013, p.86]

What could have been a confused, trying-to-be-hip mish-mash is instead a re-playable collection of extremely strong songs, Paul's most interesting, varied and soul-baring in years. [Dec 2013, p.84]

Open's success lies in its final effect on the listener, an enveloping state of reassuring calm. [Dec 2013, p.84]

This time around, the radio programmers will be listening harder, but taken as a 68-minute whole, The Electric Lady is quite a trip. [Dec 2013, p.84]

The hammer-down moments are the most satisfying, with End Of Time, Death Machine and the frenetic Queen Of The Damned confirming you will not hear a louder, more defiant rock'n'roll album this year. [Dec 2013, p.84]

A stylistic serpentine of an album, it wiggles insouciantly from sugar-rush synthetic pop to harp-caressed ballad. [Dec 2013, p.88]

Guaranteed to make fans of the underground feel queasy. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Not exactly a collection of lullabies, this is still some of the most achingly beautiful music released yet under the Jesu name. [Dec 2013, p.89]

It's time for Cut Copy to free its own mind too. [Dec 2013, p.89]

It's another absorbing, sonically rich record, albeit one lacking a chunk of the charm that marked out its predecessor. [Dec 2013, p.89]

Even a rasping guest vocal by White Denim's James Petralli is unlikely to upset the clientele. [Dec 2013, p.92]

A close encounter with mortality via the deaths and serious illness of a number of friends and relative infuses the drunken beats, fractured samples and sweet-smelling melodies with a mood of melancholia. [Dec 2013, p.89]

Harsh but striking. [Dec 2013, p.92]

A set of seamless, lyrically concise songs that are as sweet and harmonic as their pairing suggests but also strangely stilted. [Dec 2013, p.92]

Overall, this is pretty near perfect. [Dec 2013, p.90]

Their third tribute set is exactingly detail-correct. [Dec 2013, p.90]

Juana Molina once again proves her ability to gently beguile with a warmth and ingenuity that reaches way past language and genre boundaries. [Dec 2013, p.87]

More mopey ballads and ad-ready pop songs. [Dec 2013, p.92]

There's a sense that such modishly retro melancholia might have had its moment, but given that a yearning for what's been lost shades Static so starkly, that notion can only enhance the mood. [Dec 2013, p.85]

A glossy finish leaves little to hang on to. [Dec 2013, p.92]

His arch whimsy is solidly underpinned by simpatico, full-band arrangements and his keen nose for an idiosyncratic tune. [Dec 2013, p.86]

It results in an intimate album shuddering in the blast of an icy onslaught of crisp, wintery piano. [Dec 2013, p.87]