Eucalyptus is a carefully constructed illusion of random perceptions, an apparently scattered psyche coming together beautifully. [Aug 2017, p.102]

The poolside psychedelia of Space Static Lover is a sparkling highlight; how much of the rest appeals hinges on your tolerance for ruthless pop efficiency. [Aug 2017, p.103]

Everything Now offers an underwhelming kind of overload: too much, but still not quite enough. [Aug 2017, p.113]

This irresistibly funky makeover feels like the emergence of a major new talent. [Aug 2017, p.108]

A sweetly gloomy affair mostly for guitars and voice. [Aug 2017, p.105]

It sometimes sounds like it was prodded out on a tablet. At other times, the production and the plus-sized pop tunes are perfectly matched. It's an ongoing struggle between DIY and deluxe, with the latter just about winning. [Aug 2017, p.109]

As befits a title meaning "peaceful," Eirenic Life is background balm for modern life. [Aug 2017, p.109]

Steadman sounds totally at home. [Aug 2017, p.109]

Pure quality, from start to finish. [Aug 2017, p.109]

Thankfully, there are no extraneous Latino musical quirks tacked on, instead she is at er best at her most intimate, albeit with a new gust of openness from her far-flung adventures. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Butler's spacey sing-song tones skip across the muddy off-kilter beats, forging a sound that is both immediate and moreish. [Aug 2017, p.110]

The result is a wildly primal and consistently brilliant rock'n'roll record. [Aug 2017, p.112]

Throughout, Crutchfield maintains a seething, triumphant line in catharsis that she channels into gruff college rock ad dreamy introspection. [Aug 2017, p.112]

Get Lost is a deliberate break with the woozy synths of his earlier work. The rest of the LP doesn't quite follow through n that adventurousness. [Aug 2017, p.112]

The album plays its best cards early. [Aug 2017, p.112]

There's a cheesy feel to many tracks but it's good fun, delivered with Chilli's soaring harmonies tempering T-Boz's throaty growl. [Aug 2017, p.112]

This lean, tightly structured follow-up ramps up the intensity. Built around raw, electronic productions, it also showcases his ability to rhyme with devastating candour over wildly varying beats. [Aug 2017, p.111]

Worthy of far more than 15 minutes of fame. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Butler's spacey sing-song tones skip across the muddy off-kilter beats, forging a sound that is both immediate and moreish. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Poignant and powerful. [Aug 2017, p.110]

This is guitar music at its most acerbic and romantic. [Aug 2017, p.110]

The first section bristles with churning intensity, but offers little in the way of surprises. The soundtrack, however, an unnerving sound collage, is far better. [Aug 2017, p.109]

The result is a return to the giddy highs of their heyday. [Aug 2017, p.107]

It doesn't hold back on the lysergic craziness. [Aug 2017, p.106]

It's a boring splodge on the pop landscape, so relentlessly samey and entitled. [Aug 2017, p.106]

Throughout, his control is masterful: spry on Make It Up, clarion and clipped on Grief Is Not Coming, familiar and uncanny all at once. [Aug 2017, p.105]

Earle isn't breaking any boundaries here, and he runs out of steam before the closing Goodbye Michelangelo, but he's doing what he does best--and that's better than most. [Aug 2017, p.105]

The intended fully immersive Sensurround experience eludes them, leaving just an occasionally diverting breeze. [Aug 2017, p.105]

They still sound a bit like a millennial Fleetwood Mac with a love of En Vogue--and they've retained a bit of sonic weirdness. [Aug 2017, p.104]

It's a glorious return; joyous, enraged and exciting. [Aug 2017, p.103]

We're All Alright! has admirably little truck with nostalgia. [Aug 2017, p.102]

Disarmingly intimate songs. [Aug 2017, p.102]

Even if some of the dizzying stylistic shifts will be familiar from his day job, the quirky, urbane character is all Baio. [Aug 2017, p.102]

Lorde's biggest achievement is retaining her emotional insight into herself and her generation despite her utterly transformed life. [Aug 2017, p.100]

Combined with massive hooks, flashes of Robyn and Rihanna, and drops that will give you chills, heartache has never been so much fun. [Jul 2017, p.109]

This remaster makes it glisten like the first time you heard it, while three unreleased tracks show that their vision didn't properly take shape until well into recording. [Aug 2017, p.113]

While The Singles offers a skewed perspective on their career, the real attraction lies in the rarity of some of the material, such as Turtles Have Short Legs. A must for diehards, then. [Aug 2017, p.113]

It's a musically diverse set of songs, drawing together folk, gospel, R&B, a collaboration with Kwabs, a cover of Elliott Smith's Twilight, and reintroducing Moore's remarkable voice. [Aug 2017, p.107]

The results are highly satisfying. [Aug 2017, p.110]

She's gone big and bold. [Aug 2017, p.107]

There are moments when the slick threatens to overwhelm the raw, and not just when extraneous elements are introduced. But the gut-level punch of Kerr's bass and the thunderstruck gallop of Thatcher's drumming cannot be denied. [Aug 2017, p.106]

Only a pair of horribly grafted on cameos from Iggy Pop and Elf Kid threatens to undo the good work. Otherwise, the charm offensive continues apace. [Aug 2017, p.108]

It's their artless harmonies and feel for rhythmic space that lift the songs to another level. [Aug 2017, p.107]

The familiarity of the material is offset by the uniqueness of the approach. [Aug 2017, p.104]

What results is almost a straight collection of intimate folk and pop. Like constant rainfall, though, his continued use of audio interference is the sonic frame that gives the songs their otherworldly depth and scope. [Aug 2017, p.103]

It's on the final track, Punch, however, that they reach a brand of strung-out, sun-soaked lamentation that feels entirely of their own making. If only there were a little bit more of that elsewhere. [Aug 2017, p.100]

While the music is mellow, his stories can be tricky. [Aug 2017, p.107]

It's pulled down by too many mid-paced ballads and inordinate length. [Aug 2017, p.104]

Moments of spine-tingling transcendence outweigh those of aimless noodling. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Sleeping Around The Corner is a finely calibrated update of their FM-rock blueprint, while Too Far Gone nods cheekily to Tango In The Night's Big Love. [Aug 2017, p.100]

A credible effort, then, but not so groundbreaking as to prompt deep re-evaluation of their place in the world. [Aug 2017, p.109]

The remaster reveals The Joshua Tree in all its sonic wonder, and its capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle imperfections, which makes it all the more real and riveting listening experience. ... Thirty years on, it's a complete picture of The Joshua Tree, past and present. [Jul 2017, p.116]

Older, possibly wiser, cleaner and sounding as majestically ramshackle as ever. The only snag is that their new album is a live recap of their career highlights with no new songs to justify it as a comeback. [Aug 2017, p.108]

City Music maps a landscape of uncertainty and wonder, Morby first steadying the wheel with his sure songwriting, then letting it spin. We've all been there, but not quite like this. [Aug 2017, p.111]

If Fake Sugar lands, the mainstream's in for a sweet treat. [Aug 2017, p.103]

Dalmais's new album arrives wrapped in conceptual packaging and plays beguiling tricks with her remarkable voice, at times airy, at others earthy. [Aug 2017, p.100]

An uneven but fitting swansong, then. [Aug 2017, p.100]

As the sound of a band revelling in what they do best, it makes for an album that's up there with their most purely enjoyable. [Aug 2017, p.105]

Occasionally Hawkline veers off the rails, but his overall cryptic psyche surrenders its charms easily. [Jul 2017, p.108]

Wilson's fragile vocals dominate, but her sidekicks add musical lightness. [Aug 2017, p.110]

Despite Styles' self-conscious references, his debut avoids indulgence. [Aug 2017, p.110]

It's a thrilling ride with an artist who keeps everyone on their toes. [Aug 2017, p.108]

It's a multilayered, detailed affair, which proves that 27 years after their debut, their edge is still keen. [Aug 2017, p.108]

Sometimes, these stresses and strains seem to swallow her dreamy synth-pop whole, but there's at least a striking EP's worth here. [Aug 2017, p.108]

While these 12 songs carry a lick of humour, there is a sublime tenderness here too. [Aug 2017, p.107]

It confirms that rarest of achievements: a group somehow hanging on to the essence who they are, while pushing their art into thrillingly unforeseen places. [Aug 2017, p.99]

Some workmanlike settings, but when the vocals spar and catch the tune just right, it all soars with a gospel-like wonder. [Aug 2017, p.100]

It can get a bit overly conceptual, but Gone Now is so irresistibly joyful that it can be forgiven. [Aug 2017, p.100]

Relaxer is a special album. [Aug 2017, p.101]

The band make a powerful case for letting it all hang out. [Aug 2017, p.103]

His overgrown rustic dream, though, is oddly modern and littered with fly-tipped rubbish, with free-ranging neo-folk mini-dramas drawing parallels between imagined past and haunted present. [Aug 2017, p.103]

It's a beautiful thing--its 10 songs have a drowsy, mizzled feel, reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins. [Aug 2017, p.103]

The music itself, a combination of gentle piano and tremulous, echoing synth, is mesmerisingly samey, like scenery rushing past your car window on a long road trip. [Aug 2017, p.102]

It's moments like this [on Malibu Man] when Auerbach hits the classic soul button that his versatility really shines. [Jul 2017, p.113]

Leftism is tough to improve on. [Jun 2017, p.114]

It's the interregnum between rock'n'roll and The Beatles and, if the line-up is disparate, the tone is constant, one of languor and melancholy, with re-creation rather than reinterpretation the aim. [Jun 2017, p.112]

Edgar Jones offers up grit and depth often lacking in modern production. [Jun 2017, p.109]

George Martin's son Giles's work here is superb. It helps you hear an album you know inside-out as if for the first time. [Jul 2017, p.116]

Sweet Kind Of Blue may shock people who only know Barker through her theme tune for Kenneth Branagh's Wallander, but it finally set out her true claim for stardom. [Jul 2017, p.104]

The Amazons are much better when they add a little intricacy to their snarling rock. [Jul 2017, p.110]

It's exhilarating in both its fury and its craft. [Jul 2017, p.114]

Baby filters modern life through psychedelia, early Beck and , on Graveyard Dawn, exciting imaginings of a Giorgio Moroder-produced Pink Floyd. [Jun 2017, p.105]

Some newer tracks while still enjoyably bleak, play straighter with acoustic guitars and a lot of vocal noodling, though it never feels like Radio 2-friendly folk pop is where Parker's strengths lie. [Jul 2017, p.112]

The inimitable genius of B.I.G.--the mordant wit, the complex lyricism--is painfully diluted here. [Jul 2017, p.107]

Remarkably fresh, contemporary and upbeat for a band's 13th studio album. [Jul 2017, p.106]

A concept record about femininity that finely balances intelligence with accessibility, The Witch gets better and better with repeated listens. [Jul 2017, p.112]

Green Twins is high on sonic invention. [Jul 2017, p.108]

Understated yet charismatic, Harding has the gift of making reality seem like a very fragile and porous thing indeed. [Jul 2017, p.108]

She's sometimes bogged down by her own weightiness, but Paradise won't stall her slow but steady climb. [May 2017, p.104]

Vince Clarke's melodic electro-motifs and Andy Bell's dramatic voice may be in place, but laments for long romance and fake news alerts make for sombre listening. [Jul 2017, p.107]

There's almost a manic feel to it. [Jul 2017, p.114]

Business-as-usual for Jones, cranked up to 11. [Jul 2017, p.108]

Eloquent, revelatory and moving. [Jul 2017, p.111]

There are clear parallels with Factory Floor, Mica Levi and early Grimes, but Owens has clearly found her calling. [Jul 2017, p.111]

Visuals spatters Mew's art-rock sensibilities on a pop canvas. [Jul 2017, p.111]

This sequel journeys into the light. [Jul 2017, p.111]

Big Bad Luv ramps up Moreland's passion for mainstream melody without compromising any of the heartache that sets him apart. [Jul 2017, p.111]

The pair mesh with ease. [Jul 2017, p.112]