Although it's all competently realised, it's hard to escape the feeling that this has been done many times over before. [Jun 2015, p.108]

FILA is not his monumental debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, but it maintains the revival in form that began with its 2009 sequel. [Jun 2015, p.111]

This is a record marked by its elegance, pace and excitement. [Jun 2015, p.110]

From start to finish, it's moving and beautiful stuff. [Jun 2015, p.105]

Such is the accessibility of the music here that its myriad stylistic zigzags don't jar, they simply thrill. [Jun 2015, p.104]

Waterfall finds them back doing what they do best. [Jun 2015, p.108]

MG is a frequently intriguing set of intimate modernist atmospherics. [Jun 2015, p.108]

Hypnophobia is enjoyably immersive while it lasts, yet like so many dreams it's hard to recall any of the specific details once it's been and gone. [Jun 2015, p.106]

It's a challenging, ambitious combination of words and music that becomes increasingly absorbing over time. [Jun 2015, p.103]

Side one isn't bad either, even if it doesn't quite scale the same heights.... A mostly impressive set. [Jun 2015, p.103]

The mood is largely sombre, quiet reflection the order of the day, although the odd striking lyric does leap out.... A grower. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Complex listening that never gets too wrapped up in its own ideas, Braids here discover a perfect balance. [Jun 2015, p.102]

Why Make Sense? is a meaty electro-grooving celebration of love, hope, dancing. [Jun 2015, p.101]

The polished alt-rock on show here may be serviceable and vaguely reminiscent of Hole circa Live Through This, but it also lacks any of the band's own DNA. [Jun 2015, p.100]

A record to get lost in. [Jun 2015, p.99]

Likely to frustrate fans of folk music as much as fans of 10,000 Maniacs, Twice Told tales is a double disappointment. [Jun 2015, p.99]

While it might not feature too many songs the faithful will be hollering for at gigs, it's crammed full of ear candy. [Jun 2015, p.98]

If Not Now, When? sounds like a band operating admirably in the present tense. ;[May 2015, p.100]

Fading Love is hard to fault on its own terms, but in a world where there's just so much music, sometimes being decent isn't enough. A bit of nastiness wouldn't go amiss. [May 2015, p.105]

After almost a decade in the shadows, Eska is ready to take her place in the spotlight. [May 2015, p.104]

Songs such as Ripe For Love and merry Nightmare are lengthier and more fully realised than anything he's attempted before but they remain enveloped in a fog of gauzy effects and disconcerting time changes. [May 2015, p.111]

It's a record which ultimately leaves you cleansed. [May 2015, p.108]

This second LP, though, sees the four-piece flit between the two camps with varying degrees of success. [May 2015, p.103]

Surf's up, and deservedly so. [May 2015, p.112]

Hemming's voice has an authentic catch, but for all the lyrical loneliness, his lavish arrangements are packed with ideas. [May 2015, p.107]

Not a huge departure from the day job, but who cares if the result is as consistently enjoyable as this. [May 2015, p.100]

There is nothing much new here for longtime fans, but Royal Albert Hall is a fine live record of one of popular music's minor-key geniuses. [May 2015, p.104]

Portico are definitely onto something here, but just haven't fully realised it yet.[May 2015, p.109]

A moody, sensual record that unwraps its pleasures slowly. [May 2015, p.111]

Damogen Furies is one of his more consistent efforts. [May 2015, p.111]

Georgiadis and his crew have all the chops and charisma to pull this lunacy off. [May 2015, p.114]

They still sound confident and all-conquering. [May 2015, p.103]

All in all, it makes for a promising re-start. [May 2015, p.106]

When Mendel cranks things up, he's on shakier ground. [May 2015, p.107]

This enthralling, enigmatic statement conjures a mood that's all its own. [May 2015, p.108]

It's a harder-edged, slightly less cartoony thing than their youthful debut, but it's still exuberant and frantic like a puppy with an important message. [May 2015, p.110]

An assured second outing, Fast Food is a full realisation of Shah's noirish visions. [May 2015, p.111]

It might be a little too smooth for plant-seducing ubiquity, but Tuxedo still deserves to get lucky. [May 2015, p.114]

If some of Stornoway's folkier past has been lost in transition, then so be it. Fortunately, the conceptual nods to birdlife on every song from chief songwriter and rained ornithologist Brian Biggs compensate by finding a mainstream-friendly alternative. [May 2014, p.112]

If there is an immediate impression here it is one of polish and precision. [May 2015, p.104]

A collection that feels like a fresh bookend to their first three classic albums. [May 2015, p.115]

They're onto something here. [May 2015, p.115]

Clever as it is, there's all too little that actually engages the heart as well as the mind. [May 2015, p.111]

Calexico rarely disappoint. But this is a definite leap forward. [May 2015, p.102]

It's purging stuff, for sure, but clearly empowering and, as a listener, you're with him every step by highly emotional step. [May 2015, p.101]

They've seemingly ditched their Wicker Man aesthetic for something altogether more contemporary, bringing in programmed with all the glitzy sheen of, in fact, an '80s revival. [May 2015, p.112]

A little extra salt in his songwriting and he could yet conjure up a classic. [May 2015, p.100]

The familiarity of Ivy Tripp breeds disquiet, rather than contempt, its surface cracking like thin ice, revealing its depths. [May 2015, p.115]

The sound is raw, yet dense and intense, each track a microdrama of shifting textures and competing motifs. [May 2015, p.113]

His fourth record tempers his languid synth wavering with a playful classicism. [May 2015, p.113]

Sometimes I Sit And Think is littered with wry, smile-inducing couplets and wonderfully mundane detail. [May 2015, p.114]

For Much of Bashed Out, emotion is shown rather than told, but once the layers have been unpicked, it's obviously special. [May 2015, p.112]

Song quality is key: at home writing cheery or wistful postcards rather than deep and meaningful navel-gazing, Ringo had yarns to spin, vibes to spread and lucky stars to thank. [May 2015, p.112]

It's not to say he's workmanlike, but he does the job. [May 2015, p.110]

Duets guns unerringly for lounge-y stasis, swerving any trace of the funk, grit or bile which make Morrison such a unique treasure.... Criminal. [May 2015, p.108]

It's when Moorer drops her guard on Like It Used To Be, Thunderstorm/Hurricane and the self-lacerating Mama Let the World In that Down To Believing bursts from black and white into full colour. [May 2015, p.109]

A Certain Pleasure, nods to Sonic Youth's twisty-turny Daydream Nation, and Natural Vision is pure Dinosaur Jr, circa '86-87. They need a whole lot more of that relative light to offset their predominant, brutal darkness. [May 2015, p.105]

His low-key, unhurried approach is unchanged. [May 2015, p.107]

It's the explosion in Diamandis's songwriting that's most noticeable here. [May 2015, p.107]

The overall effect is expansive--this is kosmische musik for a desert rather than an autobahn--and it's far-out in the best possible way. [May 2015, p.105]

As Desolation Sounds progresses, so the mood becomes more considered and expansive. [May 2015, p.105]

They've simply honed their sound to an aggressively melodic point. [May 2015, p.104]

In its own flawed, modest, off-kilter way, this might turn out to be one of the most accomplished records of the year. [May 2015, p.98]

Heroic. [May 2015, p.100]

A few more songs like the kaleidoscopic Beyond The Deathray would've broken the relentless pace but on the whole this is another shape-shifting evolution in a career full of them. [May 2015, p.103]

It's a lush, moving affair. [May 2015, p.103]

There's a pleasing magpie approach to his songwriting.... At times, however, his influences are too transparently obvious. [Apr 2015, p.107]

An album filled with skill, invention and genrey-defying fun. [Apr 2015, p.104]

[Neil Arthur] is still in strong voice, his spare, pop-savvy synths tracks are a fitting canvas for his absurdist, trenchant narratives. [Apr 2015, p.97]

It's 20-minute closer Unrelenting Unconditional, however, which steals the show with its spectacular reimagining of Miles Davis's epic early '70s experiments in transcendental jazz-funk. [Apr 2015, p.108]

The overall sense is that for all its unhinged eclecticism, Control is the product of a fiendishly inventive mind. If he can find focus, he'll be a real force. [Apr 2015, p.99]

Essential not only for fans of roots music but anyone who cares about how it shaped rock. [Apr 2015, p.116]

Campbell has picked over the bones of the past and rearranged them into something utterly brilliant. [Apr 2015, p.107]

Only on closing track Myth Me does he give into temptation and step up to the mic, unfurling a quirky, lisping ballad that shows he still can't quite play it straight. [Apr 2015, p.102]

Seasick Steve has settled into his stride with a seventh studio album that breaks no new ground but comfortably vaults the bar of his own setting. [Apr 2015, p.109]

It all works rather well. [Apr 2015, p.102]

If there's an unstable, degraded wobble under their music, it's icily controlled, a deliberate reaction to an uncertain world. [Apr 2015, p.99]

Combining jazzy looseness, rustic picking and an undertow of drugular mind expansion, this is one head cocktail that leaves no pain after it hits. [Apr 2015, p.113]

It really is an indie-pop romp to die for. [Apr 2015, p.105]

Unquestionably his finest album to date. [Apr 2015, p.113]

The genre pinballing can work--Brock pulls out his carney Tom Waits voice for Sugar Boats--but it's also uneven, unsteadying. [Apr 2015, p.94]

Absorbing, if not exactly inviting. [Apr 2015, p.100]

S&P might not have rewritten the dub rulebook here, but they've certainly minted a thrilling new chapter. [Mar 2015, p.116]

Night In the Dark is retrograde, but it's a refinement too. [Apr 2015, p.97]

The gauzy production effects on Lamplight are among the few concessions to modernity, though the opening credits theme proper--where Zeffira breathily channels chanteuse Francoise Hardy--is hauntingly gorgeous. [Apr 2015, p.98]

Its meticulously layered creations are hampered by both a pervasive aura of high seriousness and general lack of sonic variation. [Mar 2015, p.110]

Disappointingly unremarkable. [Apr 2015, p.97]

While they are likely to appease their devotees with this solid, if unadventurous record, it seems that Death Cab For Cutie will continue preaching to the converted. [Apr 2015, p.110]

[The album] is filled with intricate detail. [Mar 2015, p.113]

Presenting a sound closer to the black-hearted blues of their Brummie idols more than ever before. [Apr 2015, p.97]

It's imaginative, if profoundly unbalanced. [Mar 2015, p.109]

Jesso's winsome melodies and gorgeous chord changes never fail to hit the spot. [Apr 2015, p.103]

There's no shortage of character. [Mar 2015, p.119]

It's less of an album. more of a grand seduction: sultry, beguiling and entirely irresistible. [Apr 2015, p.98]

A strange, intoxicating and utterly brave record. [Apr 2015, p.86]

The Velvet Trail finds him firmly on home turf: sparkling glam-noir and sumptuous balladeering. [Apr 2015, p.85]

The occasional vocals dilute the atmosphere, softening the bionic techno edge of the best tracks, but on Dilate, Vessels sound like a band widening their horizons to impressive effect. [Apr 2015, p.112]

There's a lot going on here. [Apr 2015, p.111]