Even on a transitional work, No Age's spirit of adventure is its own reward. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Valerie call this "organic moonshine roots music"--it's the perfect phrase to sum up her glorious sound. [Jul 2013, p.88]

Occasionally, the buoyancy veers into pop, the clever lyrics verge on trite. [Sep 2013, p.88]

the Krautrock gene that moulded 2012's brilliant debut Free Time! still dominates the album's early passages. [Sep 2013, p.88]

O'Donovan has a fragile, heart-melting voice and is a fine songwriter. [Sep 2013, p.88]

Reduced to a duo for Southern Records' live-in-the-studio Latitudes series in 2012, Tucker and O'Sullivan seasoning their cosmic mantras with such sweet tinctures as early Eno, This Heat and the acoustic mirror harmonies of early OMD. With Glynnaestra the potion is perfected. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Jones's playing is inventive throughout, comparing favourably to his work with the M.G.'s. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Disappointment and cautious optimism for the future, rather than recrimination, is About Farewell's weapon of choice, a welcome female counterpoint to, say, the bitterness of Bob Dylan's Blood On The Tracks or Josh Ritter's The Beast In Its Tracks. [Sep 2013, p.86]

Except for hitting the odd unfamiliar note, as on an exquisitely lap-steel and fingerpicked Galveston, the singer's vocals sound unchanged, still keening and honey-pure. [Aug 2013, p.89]

[An] impressive return from the veteran doyens of acid jazz. [Jun 2013, p.95]

It's tempting to surmise that the songwriting has improved since the Smash Hits years, but an extra CD of acoustically played hits--shorn of period production--reminds you that they were always this good. [Jun 2013, p.86]

This is an album of easeful warmth, the sound of an ever restless, exploratory musician coming home. [Jul 2013, p.94]

He achieves a delectable balance between affecting and creepy. [Nov 2012, p.85]

When it works, it's genuinely exciting, but too often the brave retro-futuristic collision is neither fish nor fowl. [Jul 2013, p.82]

If Not Now... goes a long way to pinpointing just why Marling, Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne, among others, keep calling on his services as both musician and producer. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Teardo's pizzicato arrangements lend Bargeld's melodic sprechgesang monologues a profoundly sinister undertow. [Aug 2013, p.90]

Here he achieves immediate take-off with a version of Nilsson's The Flying Saucer Song that could fit neatly on The Dark Side Of The Moon without too many people noticing. [Aug 2013, p.92]

Steer is an astringent, droll, sometimes touching narrator; it's easy to hear why Cocker was so bewitched. [Feb 2013, p.91]

All six track here confidently align The Cairo Gang alongside kindred neo-psychedelicists like The Lilys, it's brevity never wearing out their charms. [Aug 2013, p.90]

Toure sounds at his best, then, with distorted guitars behind him, brooding on an album of menacing, slow-burn songs reflecting on a rough year in Mali. [Aug 2013, p.96]

[A] stunning musical response to Lord of the Flies author William Golding's daring novelistic excursion into prehistoric anthropology. [Jul 2013, p.85]

As things are, it's an above-par, straight-ahead roots-revival collection, its full-blown "outernational" arrangements lit up by world-class brass and occasional splashes ofsynth. [Aug 2013, p.86]

This is effectively one long, fuzzily fragile, ever-orbiting tone poem. [Aug 2013, p.91]

Clark is over 70 these days but he's never over the hill--not as long as he and his co-writing buddies keep on providing visions of Texas few can emulate. [Aug 2013, p.93]

JBM has concocted a glorious half-dream of a third album. [Aug 2013, p.93]

With his bijou gift for melody, over 75 minutes Hart delivers abundantly. [Aug 2013, p.86]

Bugbears is a rich and warming curio, and there's something quietly noble about Hayman dragging the thoughts of these long-dead writers back into the light. [Aug 2013, p.93]

Heroic riffing and Joe Cardamone's raw yodel ensure they never disappoint. [Aug 2013, p.98]