Imarhan's 11 songs come wrapped in a soundscape; a surround-sound version would have the guitars and vocal central, but dust devils and translucent scorpions in the corners of your room, a sweet tea bubbling away and, after dark, the shuffling of a hyena behind the settee. the music expands to fill the space. [Mar 2022, p.82]

There's not much here to rival very top Tull but then nothing that sullies the venerable brand either. [Feb 2022, p.83]

Her songs sound simultaneously safe and familiar, yet strange and unknowable. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Apart from the upbeat soul of Never Want To Be Kissed, featuring Stax veteran William bell on vocals, Set Sail stumbles and squints through its nine other tracks, although on Bumpin' they at least rouse themselves long enough to sound like Tony Joe White imitating Sly Stone. [Mar 2022, p.86]

The musical density doesn't quite complement the elegiac lyrical flow, and a change of pace might have meant another way forward, but there's tenderness to spare. [Feb 2022, p.90]

Hall explores his anger and depression through mostly downbeat but frequently beautiful ballads. [Feb 2022, p.87]

If the forward-looking, ever exploratory production just occasionally outguns the songwriting, Daft Punk-ish floor-filler The Last Dance is unimpeachable, a defiant shimmy toward the apocalypse. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Deceptively simple, the result is a lovely thing. [Feb 2022, p.86]

This hour-long excerpt inevitably loses that multimedia narrative heft, yet its marriage of dronescape synths and Chinese libretto - voices alternatively soaring, skittering and sorrowful - still casts an otherworldly spell. [Feb 2022, p.84]

There's a new directness, a more linear approach to melody, and, most unexpectedly, the overt presence of synthesizers. [Mar 2022, p.86]

While Time Skiffs sounds deeply, existentially scattered, every atom is in its rightful place. [Mar 2022, p.87]

Tackling eight traditional songs, he plays Just A Close Walk With Thee and Old Rugged Cross relatively straight, but turns the likes of We Shall Rise and Are You Washed In Blood? into glorious Southern boogie, replete with screaming guitar solos. [Mar 2022, p.82]

Part happy break-up LP, part honest look in the mirror, Extreme Witchcraft works magic. [Feb 2022, p.82]

This is a record of delicately sculped nuages, all wispily sung by guitarist/keyboard-player Wata. [Mar 2022, p.80]

It's hard not to wonder whether Aksnes has been crowded-out on her own album [Mar 2022, p.83]

He's pushed his sound forwards into more mature, less swaggering territory and recruited non-threatening guests Paul O'Grady and Corinne Bailey Rae. [Mar 2022, p.83]

It's on hypnotic original compositions such as Excess Success or reworked pieces like La Jetee that Parker's true genius shines through, an ability to create entire new sonic worlds from the tiniest of elements. [Mar 2022, p.88]

While opener Der Lange Marsh 1 sways like a marram grass in the breeze, there's a relentlessness to the album's overall progress. [Mar 2022, p.87]

In its Thatcher-ite commitment to pop perfection, it turns the art of the album into a sausage factory of hit making. Alexander's Years & Years sounds like a ragbag of contemporary influences rather than possessing a distinct sound of its own. [Mar 2022, p.85]

An accomplished study in post-punk boom, synth whoosh and creepy-crawl vocals. [Mar 2022, p.90]

It feels like Palace's first significant work. [Feb 2021, p.85]

The nine tracks sound pleasingly out of step with contemporary norms. [Feb 2022, p.91]

Though the album's polished backdrops are a far cry from the raw Delta blues records that inspired Keb' Mo' at the dawn of his career, there's no doubting the authenticity of the deep feeling he [ours into his vocal performances. [Feb 2022, p.89]

Easily Band Of horses' best LP in over a decade. [Feb 2022, p.86]

She further unleashes her psyche in a voice of throaty, Diamanda Galas-style intesity. [Jan 2022, p.88]

An exhilarating record by a band not only thriving under pressure but already finding new ways to adapt to its force. [Feb 2022, p.80]

Soundtrack to Mona Fastvold's story of love amid tough rural landscapes has similar mood contrasts. [Feb 2022, p.92]

It's not all folkie freak-out - on Djinn Pulse or Cupa Cupa they decelerate to conjure hypnotic beauty. [Nov 2021, p.87]