The album's schizoid ruse is neatly summed-up by Make Art Not Friends, which makes its wondrous metamorphosis from lithe dance track to all-American rocker in just under six minutes. [Nov 2019, p.86]

Giles Martin hasn't dug up Abbey Road; but his subtle improvements have smoothed out the odd bump. [Nov 2019, p.103]

With its transforming moods and quiet beauty, Stars Are The Light might just be Moon Duo's finest to date. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Interesting as the Wallace mixes are, the band is most compelling thrashing through Talent Show and I Won't, live in Milwaukee. [Nov 2019, p.102]

The lack of personal revelations that brought nuance and light to 2016's Made In The Manor often makes these vivid, grim depictions of inner city strife uncomfortable listening. [Nov 2019, p.89]

Morse Code is more concerned with our collective lost soul rather than individual anxiety. [Nov 2019, p.86]

Armon-Jones's fiery soloing is intrinsic to the headnoddable whole. [Oct 2019, p.91]

An experimental and deeply idiosyncratic record. [Oct 2019, p.90]

[Alice Moki Jayne's] one-hour length is rather testing. The 29-minute 8 Spring Streeet is more structured and achieves a thrilling momentum. ... 35 minutes in [Galaxies (Sky)], the 12-strong, 12-string "guitar army," directed by Moore hit a breathtaking peak. It feels like a spectacular end, but then there are still over 20 minutes to go. [Oct 2019, p.86]

The Talkies is a scarifying, perverse noise-rock treat. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Radiating breezy melancholic warmth and lonely midnight chills. [Oct 2019, p.89]

A second set of tuneful snark. [Oct 2019, p.92]

It's tasteful and meticulous throughout, but the longer, more adventurously songs exert a greater grip on the imagination. [Oct 2019, p.91]

Everything on Sinematic is huge, layered, expertly grooved and overladen with Robertson's parched voice hamming up lyrics which offset the standard portentousness of a rock great sermonising from the Mount with underspun True Crime yarns like I Hear You Paint House, Shanghai Blues and the Orson Wells tribute, The Shadow. [Oct 2019, p.84]

These are stories about patterns of behaviour, like dreams that keep returning, or won't end. The way out, these songs counsel, lies in relinquishing. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Jamie is a giant leap forward: a testimony of liberation, creatively uncompromising but just as accessible as Howard's old music. [Oct 2019, p.80]

This sad skewed pop with shades of Momus, Sakamoto, L. pierre and Bjork weaves its magic on the fluttering yet forthright Salty, vocal tapestry of Come Behind Me, So Good! and raw emoting of Meo, but palls a little before its haunting apex on spaced-out sign-off Coyote, with spectral echoes of Kazu's complicated past. [Oct 2019, p.86]

Terms Of Surrender presents a man sinking on the edges but bullishly so, not countenancing change. The effect is disquieting, uncomfortable, especially with Aaron Dessner's sumptuous production giving these songs a contrastingly romantic sheen. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Hval deals in big cerebral questions, but these songs--intimate, intricately fleshed out--have roots in both body and mind. [Oct 2019, p.86]

The Return could do with some editing as it's unwieldy 78 minutes risk losing the audience before its finest songs: the epic, autobiographical title track, and the redemptive, gospel-soaked closer Made Us better. But Too much of a good thing is nothing to hold a grudge over. [Oct 2019, p.89]

This is Black Star Riders' best work yet. [Oct 2019, p.88]

The best new tracks' confidence boosts the band's emotional clout. [Oct 2019, p.88]

It's a familiar world they inhabit, but still a deeply odd one. [Oct 2019, p.82]

Real heart pulses behind the earwiggy riffs, the lyrics tracing ideas of love from first stage to last, more nuances being revealed on each play. [Oct 2019, p.85]

There are a few other naff moments, but Gallagher's voice carries everything, sounding fantastic, high and bright in the mix. [Oct 2019, p.82]

The result is charged and post-apocalyptic. [Oct 2019, p.90]

Pang! doesn't just look forward to a blazing global meltdown. Beneath the modernist sheen, Rhys roots these songs in something older and wiser. [Oct 2019, p.83]

Groovy and moving, in all the right directions. [Oct 2019, p.88]