Smith's usual meditative, ambient-leaning approach is dialled back in favour of soaring wonky pop, ornate neoclasical and even quasi dancefloor movements. It gives rise to her most joyous music yet. [Oct 2022, p.87]

Though musically more fulsome, lyrics are still key. [Sep 2022, p.96]

If All Of Us Flames feels more hopeful, rest assured there is o downscaling of tension or combat. [Sep 2022, p.89]

With every album, Jacklin is finding more of herself, strengthening her voice. It's complicated, but Pre Pleasure is a joy to hear. [Sep 2022, p.88]

Though the ingenuity of the project occasionally outguns the quality of the songwriting, Darnielle's spadework has resulted in a zesty, spontaneous-sounding record. [Sep 2022, p.95]

A trip that feel like it's over way too soon. [Sep 2022, p.89]

His voice remains strident as the album veers from pared-down solo to spritely contributions from the likes of Chaim Tannenbaum and David Mansfield, plus a less successful string arrangement. [Sep 2022, p.90]

A concept album set in the 1890s, revelling in simplicity. [Oct 2022, p.92]

What makes it great is something else - an energy and a vibe that give the strange sensation you're there with them. [Oct 2022, p.84]

It's a free-wheeling surge of glitchy beats and fizzing, ravey energy, with the wobbly UK garage underpinnings of Echo Party a notable standout. [Oct 2022, p.86]

TKO raps over vignettes with sonic left turns. His style sneaks in social comment. [Oct 2022, p.92]

A mix of pulsing, oven-ready bangers and darker reflections, Freakout/Release exudes the confidence of a band operating at its giddy peak. [Sep 2022, p.91]

Heartmind is unlikely to break him out of the smoked-glass shell of cultdom. ... Yet this album does display notable lushness. ... It proves McCombs doesn't need any dream machine to induce new visions: 10 albums in, he's more than capable of looking at the world differently all by himself. [Sep 2022, p.84]

Fluorescent keyboards crowd Kiwi Jr.'s once-open spaces on Chopper, making the surface of their first "produced" LP feel more like an oil slick than the band's past terrain of jagged delights. [Sep 2022, p.93]

Breathlessly brilliant stuff. [Sep 2022, p.93]

Danger Mouse's illustrious production CV is a big draw but it's his classy discretion in play here, giving plenty of space for Black Thought. [Sep 2022, p.86]

The entirety celebrates the ecstatic simplicity of that era [1950s-60s] of pop. [Sep 2022, p.86]

Mixture of West Africa and Caribbean influences. Oscar Jerome's glowing highlife guitar opens Dide O, a midway tryptic with Soul Searching (Afrobeat) and We Give Thanks. (soul). [Sep 2022, p.96]

Branch's inspired improvisations, bold melodic leaps and bluesy burr of a voice buoy over Nazary's inventive, depth-charged beats. [Jul 2022, p.91]

Escapology is frequently, characteristically unsettling. [Sep 2022, p.86]

This sequel traverses reassuringly similar zones, with Tuttle's banjo threading in and out of the FX atmospherics, and an expanded instrumental cast - notably fellow travellers Chuck Johnson and Luke Schneider on pedal steel - operating with equal subtlety. [Sep 2022, p.86]

Charming. [Sep 2022, p.95]

Patina exists on an arc where grunge, the rave era, Britpop et al never occurred. What would have happened if the second half of the '80s had defined much of what came next? Tallies provide the answer - these nine tracks are that good. [Sep 2022, p.94]

Wriggins remains his own elusive self, his songs forever moving between the prosaic and the ecstatic. [Sep 2022, p.89]

Intense. But the much tougher stuff here is emotional. [Sep 2022, p.86]

Deschanel's light, Astrud Gilberto-style vocals float wistfully and when they collide with Ward's harmonies on Deirdre or with er own harmonies on Melt Away, it soars. [Sep 2022, p.94]

The band retreated into the more self-contained approach which has spawned My other People. [Jul 2022, p.92]

The result is a sparkling 24-minute digital raga that builds to a tumultuous mid-point crescendo, before gliding elegantly out of the other side. Euphoric synth-pop that's smart and never po-faced. [Sep 2022, p.90]