A lean collection of blues and ballads accentuated by discreet overdubs by the surviving members of Waylon's backing band The Waylors, along with some occasional new blood. [Nov 2025, p.101]

Blight is powerful, but hermetically airless. [Nov 2025, p.91]

The LA portion of the album is a noticeably better recording - the drum sound has improved for a start - and it's a high energy show featuring William Bell and Carla Thomas. [Oct 2025, p.94]

Freak Out City owes little to Flight Of The Conchords, but much to '70s US songwriters with a kitchen-sink production. [Oct 2025, p.89]

The songs are charged with love for both the music and Molina. [Oct 2025, p.80]

Don't head here for untrammelled novelty, but Idlewild is a record worthy of the name. [Nov 2025, p.89]

It's stunningly polished new take on their heavy concept album. [Nov 2025, p.98]

Frustratingly for JM solo-heads, as well as Neil Tennant hanging around for a superfluous Rebel Rebel, instead of The Messenger we get The Passenger. Top notch performances, though. [Nov 2025, p.87]

Amanda Shires has made the year's most emotionally raw album. [Nov 2025, p.86]

He reinterprets key moments from his back catalogue. [Oct 2025, p.87]

The humour enhances the band's vigour: loud and ragged, they sound like a band much younger than their years, although the high quality of songcraft is a giveaway of their veteran status. [Nov 2025, p.93]

This stately, sometimes gospel-esque, album has the forceful intensity of a coiled spring. [Oct 2025, p.84]

The groove here is mostly grainy, organic, natural. [Nov 2025, p.83]

The folk-adjacent auteur’s ninth studio LP is alive, Natalie Merchant-style, to the marvels of creation, but also the vulnerability that comes with suddenly having a physical stake in the future of humanity. [Oct 2025, p.88]

It's Orcutt's genius to find tenderness in the most forbidding places, and this time out he does so in the best possible company. [Oct 2025, p.85]

There's some really good songs here - Creature From The Wild is classic Fruit Bats, Moon's Too Bright is a beauty, and so is his moving cover of the Incredibke String Band song First Girl I loved - but the overall feeling is of an abandoned demo album [Nov 2025, p.93]

Another exquisite recording documenting the near-telepathic connection between guitarist Oren Ambarci, bassists Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin. [Oct 2025, p.86]

A third album bursting with intense energy and sparkling invention. [Nov 2025, p.85]

A lyrically rich and musically colourful set of songs which is as emotionally exhilarating as it is often rawly painful. [Nov 2025, p.88]

Yes, they're flavour of the month, but they're the real deal too. [Nov 2025, p.88]

It's a beauty. [Oct 2025, p.81]

Across 10 intimate songs deftly ornamented by guitarists Matt Worley and Tony Kelsey and cellist Barney Morse-Brown, magic happens. [Nov 2025, p.88]

As a triple record, there are tracks that are less necessary than others, but remarkably it all flows as a cohesive whole, and never loses the listener's attention. [Nov 2025, p.80]

From labyrinthine opener Men In Bed, the material is inimitably Smith-esque, and if it is tempting to dig for premonitions of mortality, the Frank Zappa-via Hanna-Barbera thrills of Busty Beez or Skating feel like the work of a very much living artist. [Nov 2025, p.89]

Lots here is clever and fun, and maybe Oh Snap is an album she needed to make, but heard end to end it's a bumpy ride. [Nov 2025, p.86]

Band kiss-and-makeups can seem contrived, unconvincing; but this one feels genuine and sparky, Biffy's urgent, passionate music oxygenated by time away. [Nov 2025, p.83]

These 14 songs mostly charm and world-build in under three minutes. [Sep 2025, p.79]

A likeable collection of songs about family and companionship. .... The happy point where Belle And Sebastian meets Stephen Sondheim. [Nov 2025, p.88]