Ultimately, Qualia's propulsive grooves make it the perfect soundtrack to a journey. [Nov 2017, p.115]

The neverending quest for bangers leads Hurts to lean heavily on foot-stomping choruses to carry songs, but it's to their credit that Desire has a lighter touch than previous albums. [Nov 2017, p.108]

Sampling Michelle Obama on No Man Is Big Enough For My Arms feels glib, while Vale aspires to Solange-like authority but, unlike their voices never quite strikes the right note. [Nov 2017, p.111]

It finds them in rejuvenated form. Their lyrical seriousness is present and correct. [Nov 2017, p.115]

As ever, the Californian threesome's pervasive wackiness is matched by a breathtaking sense of musicality punctuated by Claypool's manic basslines. [Nov 2017, p.112]

Que Aura presents his top-drawer songwriting in the form of new-wave psychedelia, smart guitar-pop and budget R&B. [Oct 2017, p.111]

Their fourth LP is their best yet. [Nov 2017, p.112]

A compelling new Brit-folk triumph. [Nov 2017, p.115]

Conflict was always at the root of Living Colour's sound, and finding a balance remains a challenge; even more so for a group whose members work together so occasionally. [Nov 2017, p.111]

These ate anthemic, headlining songs from a band that is fast becoming one of our finest. [Nov 2017, p.110]

Hallelujah Anyhow is the sound of a man happy in his own skin. [Nov 2017, p.108]

It swaps the ramped-up volume of the past for a jittery urgency that mirrors 21st-century urban Britain. [Nov 2017, p.108]

They're at their most effective when they ease back on the aggro, as on the luminous Side Effects or the '60s-garage pop-influenced Two Birds. [Nov 2017, p.107]

Her marriage of musical gentleness and raw despair takes her to a whole new level. [Nov 2017, p.104]

There is much to savour here. If this is a swansong, it's most definitely a worthy one. [Nov 2017, p.104]

All through, the harmonies are urgent, uplifting and unspun, a reminder that not everything needs a recoat to look perfectly at home. [Nov 2017, p.104]

[Deluxe's] successor is equally likeable. [Oct 2017, p.108]

The most Tricky-like he's sounded in years. [Oct 2017, p.104]

Wonderful Wonderful is a glossy indie-pop album with sonics as slick and glistening as a brand-new Vegas skyscraper. [Oct 2017, p.110]

Lovers isn't instant, but perseverance brings great rewards. [Oct 2017, p.100]

Extraordinary. [Oct 2017, p.108]

A work of lovely, floaty wonder. [Oct 2017, p.103]

Numan and collaborator Ade Fenton complement the narrative with a sand-blown, Eastern gothic mood, featuring use of Arabic scales, which evoke a desert within the human soul as much as any hypothetical desert Earth. [Oct 2017, p.107]

Anyone expecting an album of unchallenging fodder is in for a shock. Like the voyage faced by its desperate, stateless subjects, I Tell A Fly is no easy ride. [Oct 2017, p.101]

Confusion's left in its wake, of course, but such is the price of the peaks. [Oct 2017, p.100]

What it lack in surprises it makes up for in songcraft. [Oct 2017, p.108]

Scott can't help but overcook things occasionally but fans will gorge on this rich feast of country, soul and downhome rock'n'roll. [Oct 2017, p.111]

It feels like a step into a brave new world. [Oct 2017, p.108]

[Myela] descends into a bit of a toe-curlingly worthy WOMAD sing-along. More subtle and far better are gentle ballad When the Body Is Gone and lovely closer Infinite Trees. [Oct 2017, p.107]

Unfortunately, aside from Stranger's Kiss, the overall level of artifice here is simply too steep to surmount. [Oct 2017, p.100]

V feels bigger than its predecessors, but it still disturbs. [Oct 2017, p.105]

Concrete And Gold is a straightforward Foo Fighters album, albeit one that does occasionally fulfill its promise to deliver both aural lavishness and maximum heaviosity. [Oct 2017, p.102]

The message is as subtle as a street riot but the delivery mechanism ('90s funk metal, barked tirades) creaks with age. [Oct 2017, p.108]

The forgettable radio-pop of Laughable or Show Me The Way suggests a musician with nothing to prove having fun with his friends. After five songs, though, Give More Love nosedives into by-numbers country rock. [Oct 2017, p.111]

Outrage! Is Now makes a convincing fist of them not sounding like a band pushing 40. [Oct 2017, p.100]

The dystopian mood ultimately delivers more chills than thrills. [Aug 2017, p.112]

Their sound is now driven by a tensile energy that sounds like they've been mainlining the early Factory catalogue. [Oct 2017, p.107]

Guided by a love of '80s synth-pop, but feeding in elements gleaned from Chicago house and Italo disco, they come across like a Nordic Junior Boys. [Oct 2017, p.107]

INHeaven's potential is huge, it's just not fully realised here. [Oct 2017, p.105]

On this fourth LP, the hook-laden Here Among You is as celestial as pop music can be: if they have a breakout song it's this, but it's far from the only moment of magic. [Oct 2017, p.100]

His fourth album shows a continuing talent for both dynamite house beats and reframing idiosyncratic vocalists. [Oct 2017, p.105]

This one has it's moments, but somehow never quite catches fire. [Oct 2017, p.106]

There are moments when it becomes a bit Baltic Eurovision, but Okovi is as tender as it is tough. [Oct 2017, p.111]

It's not a wildly eclectic trip, but for dependable hooks and relatable emotion, Alvvays are spot on. [Oct 2017, p.100]

An album that advances the sound of LCD Soundsystem and more than justifies their return, while retaining all that was brilliant about them in the first place. [Oct 2017, p.98]

At its worst (Jealousy Is A Powerful Emotion), he's overwrought and stodgy. More often, though, Draper is an unceasingly self-lacerating lyricist unafraid to deal with his past. [Oct 2017, p.103]

Vibrant and outward-looking, the record has a buoyant, dancified energy that flows. [Oct 2017, p.103]

All in all, a brooding and brilliant record. [Oct 2017, p.103]

Much here amounts to solid AOR, by turns over-polished and underwhelming. [Oct 2017, p.103]

Oddly, it [maturity] suits them well. [Oct 2017, p.105]

Under all the Iggy Pop mumbling, splintered ballads and warped Western themes, it seems they keep bubbling back up. [Oct 2017, p.105]

Orc is an incredibly full-on record. [Oct 2017, p.107]

Shah isn't doing anything especially new here, but she is blending 2017's concerns, with unalloyed fury and genuine musical craft. [Oct 2017, p.108]

Sleep Well Beast is undoubtedly richly textured, but it still demands the listener lean in. [Oct 2017, p.109]

A beautifully unsettling album. [Oct 2017, p.111]

Ultimately, floating voters will lament the lack of a flat-out glam and/or electro-disco belter to rival their hits. [Oct 2017, p.111]

This 147-track box (plus 92-page booklet) is thankfully packed with predominately great music. [Oct 2017, p.113]

It's a sensational return. [Sep 2017, p.115]

The pint pot-rattling To The Pub reflects on disappointment, while the spine-chilling Melting Man is a horrific account of putrefaction and dying alone. [Aug 2017, p.106]

This lush 36-track comp traces Richter's influences,meandering from vintage to post-rock to contemporary and is twinkling, Sunday-morning music in excelsis. [Aug 2017, p.115]

Echoes of early Pink Floyd, Saint Etienne and a tougher Vashti Bunyan prevail, but this is an original and haunting collection. [Sep 2017, p.109]

Lynne and Moorer are at their best on the straight country material, but their take on The Killers' My List usurps the original. Sadly, things take a turn for the worse later. [Sep 2017, p.113]

His fourth LP proves his strongest to date, a mesmerising meditation on uncertainty and unease, which bridges the gaps between urban poetry, post-rock and brooding electronica. [Sep 2017, p.117]

As ever, it's wildly inventive. [Jul 2017, p.108]

Stratton is much richer musically than lyrically but, like a fast-flowing stream, he carries you along with him regardless. [Sep 2017, p.115]

The 21-year-old's eclectic debut oozes attitude, his pithy social commentary binding together sonic excursions into breezy funk-punk, poundshop hip-hop and indie tearjerkers. [Sep 2017, p.115]

QOTSA's seventh album wisely tweaks the recipe just enough to keep things spicy. [Sep 2017, p.114]

Despite the gentle, plaintive Sticks Not Twigs and the lugubrious Dead At The Wheel, it's Albini in excelsis: a super-fast, super-loud cathartic howl, but this being The Cribs, it's leavened by their trademark way with a manly melody. [Sep 2017, p.106]

Its tight-wound electronica is perfect for anyone wanting a visual-free sensation of mounting suspense in the comfort of their own home. [Sep 2017, p.113]

Beast Epic arks a surprising loop back to the more insular feel of his earlier material. [Sep 2017, p.110]

It's not a perfect album--some songs feel too fast, almost manic in their desire to exist--but its message is clear. Kesha is surviving, yes, but thriving too. [Sep 2017, p.108]

There are no hidden depths to find here, but sugar rushes aplenty. [Sep 2017, p.106]

The 32-year-old's always-phenomenal flow is now matched by weighty content. [Sep 2017, p.112]

The results are rich in impact and surprise. [Sep 2017, p.113]

The Grocery [is] riveting. If Manchester Orchestra are guilty of being a tad too serene elsewhere, it must also be noted that sounding beautiful is a good problem to have. [Sep 2017, p.113]

Sounds more focused than ever. [Sep 2017, p.115]

It's pop opulence with the wires sticking out the back, high-end songwriting with a coat of lead paint, but those flaw and fixes give Shitty Hits a compelling outsider edge. [Sep 2017, p.116]

These dreamy but ambivalent folk and pop pieces have an incantatory quality. [Sep 2017, p.116]

Immersive and enigmatic, it's the work of a singular talent. [Sep 2017, p.116]

There aren't any bad songs here, there just aren't enough brilliant ones either. [Sep 2017, p.116]

It's all wonderfully executed. [Sep 2017, p.116]

In cinematic terms, not a bomb. But not a blockbuster, either. [Sep 2017, p.116]

It might just be Everything Everything's most human record to date. [Sep 2017, p.107]

There's beauty amid the sonic desolation. [Sep 2017, p.116]

This one's a colorful addition to Smith's rambling canon. [Sep 2017, p.109]

Personal but detached, fizzling but restrained, it's indie-pop with a brain and a soul. [Sep 2017, p.110]

There's neither a wasted note nor wasted word. [Sep 2017, p.110]

It's 10 tracks are produced by veteran Chicagoan No ID, who provides a consistently soulful feel for the rapper's reflection on family, fatherhood and fidelity. [Sep 2017, p.110]

A more than a welcome return, Painted Ruins is the album you suspect Grizzly Bear didn't think they'd ever make. [Sep 2017, p.111]

There are echoes of Bibio's pastoral folktronica woven throughout. [Sep 2017, p.110]

The band's simmering anger are leavened by a sophisticated musical backdrop utilising brass and keyboards. [Sep 2017, p.109]

The War On Drugs might never quite find what they're looking for but with a record as gloriously realised as A Deeper Understanding, it feels like they're getting closer every day. [Sep 2017, p.104]

These are deftly executed songs that regularly throw out unexpected curveballs within their Gorky's Zygotic Mynci-like bounce. [Sep 2017, p.109]

Sweet Sweet Silent is hardly the most strident listen, but it's not without grit. The choruses are understated but addictive and the fragile intricacies are beguiling. [Sep 2017, p.115]

[Randy Newman returns] to what he does best: write and sing songs that veer from wild sentimentality to ambiguity to deep cynicism. [Sep 2017, p.113]

This seems just to mean lots of beeps and bloops and using a theremin, rather than any structural inventiveness or lyrical avant-gardisms. Still, he's conjured a neat package of 10 perfectly listenable songs. [Sep 2017, p.106]

Their prog-packaged second LP, split between six duo tracks and nine augmented by stellar sax, trumpet, harp, tabla and drums maestri, will indeed unite you with the cosmos but you can't help moving to the groove too. [Sep 2017, p.106]

Stein sounds like she's coming of age on this album, addressing both her past and future, and mostly liking what she sees. [Aug 2017, p.112]