Brooding and complex, Deafman Glance isn't easy to grasp, but repeated listens get you through the sophisticated structures to appreciate some mid-blowing moments, out-there lyrics, and, on Telluride Speed, hard-won prettiness. [Jul 2018, p.118]

There's a richness here that's been absent from previous Jicks records. [Jul 2018, p.115]

A starkly modern folk record centered on a narrative of a mother leaving her family. [Jul 2018, p.114]

A much stronger set of songs. Her debut album's primary coloured backdrop having been swapped out for a richer, more nuanced palette. [Jul 2018, p.119]

While these 12 tracks occasionally meld into one [an]other a little too easily, there are many moments of promise. [Jul 2018, p.111]

Chaotic, visionary and righteously pissed off, Wide Awake! feels like the perfect rock record for the times. [Jul 2018, p.113]

Altogether, it's a thing of great beauty. [Jul 2018, p.112]

Fierce, honest and a challenge to the forces of obsolescence, Dirty Computer feels like a vital upgrade from a true renegade. [Jul 2018, p.110]

Quietly intoxicating, it's equal parts brain and beauty. [Jul 2018, p.111]

[Noody's Fault But Mine is] A career-high in an album of highs. [Jul 2018, p.111]

There's plenty to uncover within its slowly crashing waves of sound, but the main problem is that it all washes over you without leaving a lasting impression. Sumptuous, but forgettable. [Jul 2018, p.108]

A little indie olive branch, Dove is as welcoming as it is welcome. [Jul 2018, p.108]

It's a strange, wonderful album, one that almost feels like Arctic Monkeys have embarked on their own full-band side-project. [Jul 2018, p.106]

The record's sexual frankness unfairly overshadowed the intricate songwriting idiosyncrasies or Phair's deadpan articulation of relationship dynamics. ... [The Girly-Sound tapes] provide a fascinating roadmap to her debut. [Jun 2018, p.119]

Both stunning and original. [Jun 2018, p.106]

Although they occasionally slip into boilerplate territory, overall Peace are finally dancing to the beat of their own, pared-back, drum. [Jun 2018, p.113]

Heaven Before All Hell Breaks Loose is a fine record, but the restraint shows. [Jun 2018, p.115]

It's not the most direct communicator, but Panic Blooms still transmits its unease very effectively. [Jun 2018, p.106]

Dive in unreservedly. [Jun 2018, p.119]

Classic soul opener Bet Ain't Worth The Hand sounds like the Philly soul of The Delfonics, but it's not long before we're into more up-to-date sonic shapes witht he dislocated beats of Lions. [Jun 2018, p.109]

Gracie's at his best, however, when dialling it down for the high-end folk of When You Go or hanging out over the ragged edge for The Death Of You & I. [Jun 2018, p.114]

Glorious stuff. [Jun 2018, p.116]

Knock Knock is a visionary blend of minimal techno and armchair psychedelia, jammed with canny features. [Jun 2018, p.117]

Singularity is rich enough to let your mind wander through it. [Jun 2018, p.104]

An album that shows just how ambitious, fresh and vital-sounding guitar music can still be. [Jun 2018, p.108]

Not every song is a slow ride--True Love and Heart Killer are bluesy folk stompers--but on the likes of the luxurious Buzzing In The Light and Critical Equation they allow themselves to revel in dreaminess. [Jun 2018, p.110]

Some may scoff at the limited musical palette on tracks such as the La's-like Lazy Love, but beneath the bluff exterior beats the heart of a great pop band. [Jun 2018, p.109]

Not quite a greatest hits then, but not short of a few crowd-pleasers either. [Jun 2018, p.106]

Melodically subtler than Friedberger's past albums, Rebound still swings thanks to her innate, and often-overlooked, knack for songwriting. [Jun 2018, p.112]

For every moment of immaculate pop, there's a moment of strangeness. [Jun 2018, p.116]

He mostly enchants, squaring literary pretensions with the band's happy fate as indie-rock comfort food. [Jun 2018, p.113]

Beneath their silly-string riffs are nuanced screamers. [Jun 2018, p.114]

This follow-up goes the whole hog. ... Frank Ocean's Blonde reportedly influenced the tech-driven songwriting process, but there are echoes, too, of U2 at their more exploratory, and, on the twisty-riffed In Waves, last year's QOTSA album. Olympian. [Jun 2018, p.110]

Hedley makes no apology for his love of country's golden age, ad where naysayers might cry "pastiche," plenty more will be happy kicking up their heels on the hayride. [May 2018, p.91]

It's hugely impressive stuff, and in the midst of all the musical pyrotechnics, there's still room for standout melodies. [Jun 2018, p.114]

There are toe-curling moments. ... However, their voices are a convivial fit, most effectively on the gentle 22nd Street and the harsher, more restless Night Shift and both escape, dignity intact. [Jun 2018, p.114]

Hippo Lite is brilliantly abrasive, any prettier blips overwhelmed by Real Outside's uncanny whirl or the ESP crackle of Corner shops. ... Such insularity only means you lean in, however, as close as possible to their intriguing transmissions. [Jun 2018, p.110]

Like Leto's performance in the risible Suicide Squad, the result is unsubtle, self-important and not half as good as it thinks it is. [Jun 2018, p.106]

In its street-level politics, lucid delivery and hypnotic hooks, Novelist Guy is confirmation that this wave has a lot further to roll yet. [Jun 2018, p.107]

Confident Music for Confident People largely succeeds in maintaining the hi-NRG entertainment. ... It comes unstuck, though, when the sugary fun becomes simply irritating, as on the bratty C.O.O.L Party. [Jun 2018, p.109]

The Straight Hits! feels so unlike 2011's exquisitely miserable Last Of The Country Gentlemen. Pearson wrote the LP according to five songwriting "pillars" and the constraints, paradoxically, have freed him up. [Jun 2018, p.114]

Things calm down in the second half; You Of All People and Join are an angelic two-step, providing a welcome respite to end the album on a hopeful note. [Jun 2018, p.116]

On guard, but never defensive, The Lookout is a wonder--open-hearted, free-thinking and grown-up in all the best ways. [Jun 2018, p.116]

Admittedly, the mostly spoken Musical Theatre is indulgent twaddle and she often squawks where others sing, but there's Hole-like grit to both Life In Oink and the raised middle finger of Hate You, where cascading choruses butt against stroppy verses. [Jun 2018, p.113]

Dimensional People III is the key. Its multi-layered ambience is indicative of the record as a whole and it serves to highlight this duo's zest for reinvention. [Jun 2018, p.113]

Too often, however, these songs underwhelm. the likes of Sand and Boyfriend confusing unengaging plodding earnestness for emotional heft. [Jun 2018, p.113]

In a career already dotted with peaks, this is definitely another. [Jun 2018, p.113]

I Don't Run often feels like a post-tour comedown, meandering and forlorn, where its predecessor was uplifting and catchy. [Jun 2018, p.110]

An album of subtle, but nonetheless wonderful ear-worms. [Jun 2018, p.110]

This doesn't have the deranged glee of Smash It Up, but follows the streamlined energy of classic 1982 Damned album Strawberries, with a stern rock pulse at a time when their contemporaries would be glad of any kind of pulse. [Jun 2018, p.109]

Longwave is more improvisational, and the results are even more spidery than before. [Jun 2018, p.109]

Pop-house banger Bipolaire-Les Noirs and the double-jointed Afrobeats of Soleil De Volt show a knack for memorable hooks, while the album's meditative second act, not least the expansive Peau De Chagrin-Bleu De Nuit, brings emotional depth to a fascinating journey across cultures. [Jun 2018, p.106]

Isolation showcases just what made others scramble for her number: natural pop charisma and an ability to glide effortlessly between genres. [May 2018, p.113]

The result is great, as Tundra reforms the duo's patent snark in his own electro-pop image. [May 2018, p.106]

Nihilistic Glamour Shots is a 35-minute burst of frustration and cynicism ... Not subtle, but then it doesn't need to be. [May 2018, p.104]

This first rate box-set shines a light on the bass magus's idiosyncratic solo output. [May 2018, p.117]

Gut-wrenching, heart-rendering and brilliant. [May 2018, p.114]

Sex & Food is more grounded, focusing on such concerns as the state of the world. Yet it's all wrapped in warped, layered music as complex as the mess we're in. [May 2018, p.114]

They sound revitalised by the radiance of these songs, liberated from the heavy burden of being the Manic Street Preachers. [May 2018, p.102]

McMahon has found new ways to expand his wild-eyed sound, thickening the psychic murk with electronic textures but keeping the emotional edges bright. [May 2018, p.104]

The Deconstruction doesn't deviate wildly from his trusty blueprint, being a mix of rattling '60s-ish pop songs and lovely, aching ballads. ... As ever, these sweeten the sadness and hard truths of the lyrics. [May 2018, p.108]

This isn't an album that's really imbued with the sound of his own travels. that said, it's a warm, optimistic pop'n'roll record that is hard not to like. [May 2018, p.108]

It's fantastically alive, electrifying and witty stuff, the sound of something fresh and thrilling occurring. [May 2018, p.109]

Kline's disclosures are striking because they feel genuinely homespun, less rallying cry than cheery counsel from a friend perched on your bed. [May 2018, p.107]

Fourth effort Combat Sports combines their early impish exuberance with English GGraffiti's more polished musicality. [May 2018, p.114]

The whole thing might be like travelling back to a nightclub in Leeds in 1983 but it's executed with a gloomy elan that allows you to forgive its occasional silliness. [May 2018, p.112]

Loneliness and melancholy rarely sound this positive and on more upbeat tracks such as Two Cold Nights In Buffalo, Andrews happily confronts and owns her life choices. [May 2018, p.104]

He achieves an almost architectural sense of scale. [May 2018, p.115]

Perhaps not the best introduction to Gane's soundworld, but for fans Hormone Lemonade offers a familiar landscape dotted with enough new structures to make it worth exploring. [May 2018, p.104]

The vintage record store rummaging has given way to a more pared-back sound. Here, retro guitar tones and proggy breakdowns complement rather than dominate. [May 2018, p.114]

An atmospheric masterclass. [May 2018, p.104]

While Space Gun has its moments of off-kilter brilliance, they are cancelled out by more earthbound, laboured-sounding fare. [May 2018, p.108]

Hardly reinventing the wheel, but still a triumph of resilience. [May 2018, p.112]

Their self-titled debut crackles with youthful brio. [May 2018, p.111]

New Path has an almost cinematic drama that makes its propulsive dancefloor rhythms thunderously exhilarating. [May 2018, p.108]

This is a winner from start to finish. [May 2018, p.111]

A brilliant distillation of Reich's twin enduring motifs: repetition and melancholia. [Apr 2018, p.112]

It combines psychedelic elevation with a curious sense of order. [May 2018, p.107]

Mostly the pace unfolds with the urgency of a melting icicle, couching expressions of fear, hope and love amid forlorn synth arcs and just enough fuzz to keep things frisky. [May 2018, p.105]

Brand New Abyss is alive with twinkly, sometimes childlike soundscapes that occasionally overpower Khaela Maricich's whispery half-spoken word vocals. [May 2018, p.104]

There's nothing here likely to be adopted as a stadium chant, but in its tethered imagination, Boarding House Reach is the most surprising and eccentric record White's made. [May 2018, p.110]

The only gripe here is that the odd longueur makes Historian solid rather than spectacular. [May 2018, p.107]

It's the vocals which gives this debut its distinctive flavour. [May 2018, p.107]

Music as tense as Pink Squirrel and as Kraftwerky as Tokyo Metro comes together quite happily in the snarling Creep Show sound. [May 2018, p.107]

The results okays to their strengths. ... There's a lightness of touch here lost since An End Has A Start a decade ago. [May 2018, p.108]

The mix of therapy sessions and swooning love songs make for a slightly confused LP but not an unenjoyable one. [May 2018, p.108]

This enticingly dusky debut reveals a welcome underside to their home city of Tallinn's sometimes cloying indie-pop scene. [May 2018, p.111]

While some of it is great, much of Francis Trouble chugs amiably along without really sinking its teeth in. [May 2018, p.111]

The shine wears off before the final, 14th, song. But it's fun until then. [May 2018, p.111]

This is the sound of someone surveying a world turning to ashes. In other words, anyone looking for upbeat club songs to soundtrack adverts may be disappointed. [May 2018, p.111]

Another quixotic foray into New Age vibrations, all hazy Balearic moods and flashback to '50s exotica. [May 2018, p.112]

Despite the slight air of "tell me something I don't know" hanging over proceedings, both musically and lyrically, there is an earworming swagger here. [May 2018, p.112]

Songs swerve through ranting country, Celtic balladry and doo-wop. And you have to raise a glass to anyone who dares defile Like A Rolling Stone by redirecting its venom inwards. [May 2018, p.114]

Highlights aren't hard to find. ... But there's a fair amount of flab too, and at 78 minutes long there's the sense that Rare Birds is too sprawling for its own good. [May 2018, p.114]

He's still more lyrically adept than most peers, with a warm, lilting voice that skips across the tracks; he still get diverted by the occasional flaccid soul tune, as on the dreary No Place To Run; and he can still spark up a tune. [May 2018, p.114]

The results are largely impressive, particularly on the fragile country of Follow Me Down, but you can't help feeling that eventually Nap Eyes will need to look to more distant horizons to maintain everyone's interest. [Apr 2018, p.112]

While they haven't lost their taste for repointing American and European folk, there's a brash, stadium-rock dazzle to these songs, proving that The Decemberists, at least, aren't taking the awfulness lying down. [Apr 2018, p.108]

Tearing At The Seams more accurately captures the feel of Rateliff's stirring live performances. [Apr 2018, p.112]