It's their best album in nearly 20 years. [Aug 2016, p.112]

Tracks can occasionally patter past without triggering the same fight-or-flight response, but when their machinery really gears up, they remain masters of electronic mood. [Aug 2016, p.115]

[Hollow Bones] is Rival Sons' finest work yet. [Aug 2016, p.115]

It's frustratingly patchy. [Aug 2016, p.114]

An odd, deliberately unpunchy comeback. [Aug 2016, p.114]

Underneath their smart stylistic kinks, however, lies a fundamentally old-fashioned imagination. [Aug 2016, p.107]

Deftly deploying percolating electronica, natural instruments and overlapping vocal lines all the more emotionally gripping for the studied semi-affectlessness of Georgas's intimate delivery, Walsh transforms good songs into a great record. [Aug 2016, p.112]

Ultimately, with its emphasis on synths and beats over the sterling melodies of Love Letters, Summer 08 ends up coming over like a stopgap offering--or a Joe Mount solo record--rather than the next Metronomy album proper. However, those who miss the slightly demented groves of the pre-fame Metronomy are advised to dive in. [Aug 2016, p.112]

After nearly 20 years, their sonic spell shows no sign of fading. [Aug 2016, p.111]

It won't dethrone Endtroducing... from the pantheon but at last Davis has rediscovered the hidden door to that entrancing night-time world. [Aug 2016, p.111]

In the moving figure of The Bride, Khan has delivered her defining statement as an artist. [Aug 2016, p.109]

Against the odds, Norris and Alkan really do possess the magic touch. [Aug 2016, p.108]

California is desperately unadventurous. [Aug 2016, p.108]

Crackling with the background ambience of heckle and cheer, it's a decent attempt at bottling live lightning, if a slightly self-satisfied one. [#361, p.107]

A record that hasn't cut itself off from its predecessor, yet sounds more dramatically expansive and forward-facing. [Jul 2016, p.102]

A wonderful album that exists in its own little world. [#361, p.112]

They're far from failed experiments, but they do reinforce the notion that Necro Deathmort are much better at making atonal soundscapes. [Jul 2016, p.112]

Yes, there's a touch of the body-painted Glastonbury theatre troupe here, but Let's Eat Grandma's spell is binding. [#361, p.111]

This time around, Bugg writes every track. It only makes the stand-out tunes even more impressive. [#361, p.113]

Bold and uncompromising, Transmission is Death In Vegas' most coherent and compelling record yet. [Jul 2016, p.110]

Wrong Crowd may still be driven by piano but it charts a new path for Odell. [#361, p.106]

Her lyrics are folk-like in that they seem ancient yet new, delivered by a voice that's both angelic and sharp as a whip-crack. [#361, p.112]

Ridha's focus here isn't on beauty but the beats. [Jul 2016, p.104]

Reassuringly, life is good once more. [#361, p.107]

A song cycle that ruminates on his condition and travails to an orch-pop soundtrack of piano, strings and voice. [#361, p.111]

It's an enjoyable debut, but a few more surprises like [a saxophone solo in Who Are You] would've helped mix things up. [#361, p.115]

The results are spellbinding. [#361, p.111]

They still know their way around a pretty tune, though, and they still understand the value of smart sweetness. [#361, p.112]

The mix is full of voices, all snipped up in fragments or rendered as blurred tones. The results lends his exquisite productions a haunting emotional resonance. [#361, p.115]

Though resolutely glum, their debut is alluring in its foggy melancholia. [#361, p.111]

There's an air around The Exodus Suite of something not quite being finished. [#361, p.114]

The narrow emotional and musical range suggests Kygo doesn't have unexplored depths, but he doesn't need them. [#361, p.111]

It's remarkably poised, perfectly calibrated vocal swells evoking the synthetic English pastoral of XTC or Julia Holter's experimental layering. [#361, p.112]

Comically, the group never actually met while recording it. Imagine what they could do in the same room. [#361, p.112]

Perfectly balanced, 2011's So Beautiful Or So What was a triumph, which Stranger To Stranger continues. [#361, p.115]

Konnichiwa is not just hit-packed, but almost flawless. [#361, p.115]

A catalogue of enjoyable sun-drenched rock'n'roll, if you don't listen too closely to the words. [#361, p.116]

An exquisitely warm, olde-worlde soup in which to bathe one's auditory senses. [#361, p.116]

While Vance's pipes are impressive--a mix of Van Morrison and John Fogerty--it's his lyrical googlies that hook you in. [#361, p.116]

This is the sound of a band hitting their stride, albeit belatedly. [#361, p.116]

There's a calculation to much of what's on offer here that undercuts all the other advancements. [#361, p.116]

Anyone who's ever loved a record by Midlake or the Fleet Foxes should investigate immediately. [#361, p.117]

[A] wonderful album of covers showcasing his mastery of pianistic romance, witticism and flourish. [#361, p.116]

Ash & Ice isn't really a reinvention but it does triumph as a bold restatement of just what makes The Kills unique. [#361, p.109]

This one feels more grounded, less frantic and, despite that constant pulsing movement, more at home. [#361, p.109]

Not a straightforward journey, then, but still a rewarding one. [#361, p.108]

He resurfaes as a country-tinged singer-songwriter of poise and substance. [#361, p.108]

Its gorgeous chamber-pop is painted from a muted colour palette, with Farfisa organs, Hollies/Mamas harmonies and lyrics about weeping willows and late afternoons. [#361, p.108]

From the off, it's beguiling stuff. [#361, p.108]

Aided by Pixies producer Gil Norton, they've audibly thrown everything at By Default. [#361, p.107]

It's impressive she even had enough time to record an album, let alone one as accomplished as Fading Lines. [#361, p.107]

The overall effect is of a band who have experienced life's slings and arrows but now exude both tenderness and wisdom. [Jul 2016, p.106]

Catching the eye more than the ear, the rickety Maybe I Am Amused features Nirvana's Krist Novoselic. Meatier stuff surfaces on the quintessentially sludgy War Pussy, while I Want To Tell You thrillingly imagines Osborne's heroes, Kiss, covering The Beatles in hypermelodic proto-psych mode. [Jul 2016, p.111]

For all the deft production touches, it's Lanza's lost-on-the-dancefloor persona, at once sensuous and mysterious, which supplies the magic touch. [Jul 2016, p.109]

It all makes for a remarkable second album. [Jul 2016, p.110]

These songs are Blake at his best and most sonically inventive. At 75 minutes-plus and 17 tracks, though, the whole presents a challenge at odds with the sensitivity of those romantic reveries. [#361, p.117]

The middle section boast a tougher, truculent edge reminiscent of last year's mixtape If You're Reading This It's Too Late. But it's during the final sequence that everything clicks. [#361, p.114]

Lemonade hits hard. Beyonce has chosen to portray herself like this, and those choices are bold, powerful and at times, properly shocking. [#361, p.110]

For the most part, though, the excellence of what's here is less a matter of particular details than the way they combine to produce long stretches of real magic. [#361, p.104]

Eyes On The Lines is the follow-up to his excellent 2014 album Way Out Weather and it finds Gunn rolling down the same never-ending dusty highway. [Jul 2016, p.108]

It's straightforward rock'n'roll and it's done with irresistible vim and contagious melody. [Jul 2016, p.107]

All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us is a confrontationally loud, brilliant album, and every bit as bleak as its title. [Jul 2016, p.103]

Traces of Interpol, The Chameleons and post-rock heavies Trans Am are all over these songs, but if Fews don't wear their influences lightly, they know how to show them off to dark advantage. [Jul 2016, p.106]

The best moments are the ones that--whisper it--don't sound anything like the Grateful Dead. [Jul 2016, p.118]

An intriguing drivetime playlist results. [Jul 2016, p.109]

Separations, divorce, remarriage and kids all feed into 12 tracks of disastrous love, welcome redemption and rekindled fire, but not everything works. [May 2016, p.111]

It won't change the world, but These People will give those other troubadours something to think about. [Jun 2016, p.106]

Unlike the singer, the songs need to project a little more, but Beauty Already Beautiful sounds an intriguing first note. [Jul 2016, p.114]

The Heart Speaks In Whispers is the sound of her getting it right again. [Jul 2016, p.105]

Nothing quite matches its [Snow's] shock and awe and there's some of the old water-treading in Falling, but there's menace in the repetition of "my tears well up and cry for you" on the spooked Petals and she's never sounded quite so otherworldly as she does on Corduroy Legs. [Jul 2016, p.113]

Having given himself just eight tracks to play with, Broder ends up with more ideas than he has songs to fit them into. [Jul 2016, p.106]

Weber's trademark fusion of cascading chimes and subdued yet propulsive rhythm has expanded radically in scope. [Jul 2016, p.113]

At times, this records triggers the vision of Ivor Cutler fronting Pet Shop Boys, the barrage of synths and layered vocals making for a mostly exhilarating experience. [Jul 2016, p.112]

Yak shoot from the hip with an impetuous first-timers' racket that's rarely short of breathtaking. [Jul 2016, p.113]

A beautiful album that nudges a classic past into a brave future. [Jul 2016, p.109]

Disengage your brain; you might just enjoy it. [Jul 2016, p.115]

It might all sound as comfortable as an old cardigan feels but at this point, that seems fair enough. [Jul 2016, p.115]

Those ideas aren't all great, but the strike rate is remarkably high. [Jul 2016, p.114]

A Sailor's Guide to Earth is audacious in a genre that prizes hat size over innovation, a concept album about parenting and childhood intended for consumption in one continuous sitting like a short story. [Jul 2016, p.114]

It's a compelling mix, although the gaseous atmospheres and subtle melodies of Unbalancing Acts and To Swim drift too far toward shapelessness. It's a highly promising debut nonetheless. [Jul 2016, p.111]

As a calling card, it's as close to perfection as the title suggests. [Jul 2016, p.109]

Beauty that can slice down to bone: double-edged and deep. [Jul 2016, p.108]

Only Break's lapse into unreconstructed arena-rock strikes a jarring note. [Jul 2016, p.107]

File under soundtracks to mescaline days and animal sacrifice nights. [Jul 2016, p.104]

It's all a bit of a mess, with even more arresting efforts--Julia Holter's seraphic turn on These Creatures and Swipe To The Right's giddy Cyndi Lauper-assisted disco--sounding like they belong on different albums. [Jul 2016, p.109]

IN Memory he finds his most reflective tone--the hurt still keening, but distant enough now to bring a gentleness and fluidity to his thought. [Jul 2016, p.111]

They've decided to jag in a radically different direction, aiming here for a shimmering gloom that's reminiscent of early Cure records. By and large, it works. [Jul 2016, p.106]

It's an album that will send you to sleep, and to dreams of another dimension. [Jul 2016, p.114]

The thing that's missing from Detour, though, is emotion. [Jul 2016, p.110]

The music matches the rhetoric, and it's an undeniable triumph. [Jun 2016, p.109]

Tahabort, however, soon kicks up a rousigly Fela Kuti groove, and there follow divergent echoes of Saharan folk and, on the band's titular tune, Algerian Rai, to vary up the ever-pleasing dusty meanderings. [Jun 2016, p.112]

The songs become more conventionally meaningful, but less mysterious [on the disc of English interpretations]. [Jun 2016, p.108]

Only the occasional squalling, free-jazz meltdown gets in the way of letting the good times roll. [Jun 2016, p.114]

Aladdin could more properly be called Peter Pan, the work of a boy who never really grew up. It doesn't help that it comes with a sickly, stoner-friendly concept attached. [Jun 2016, p.111]

It's seamless, silly, but seriously good stuff. [Jun 2016, p.113]

This wonderfully sleazy chunk of dirty, dangerous rock'n'roll gets Stuart firmly back in the game. [Mar 2016, p.115]

There is too little variety on show and the lack of breathing space is more likely to induce mild claustrophobia than any genuine excitement. [May 2016, p.118]

This is an album you need to be enveloped by--the louder it is, the better it sounds. [Jun 2016, p.115]