Third album Black Dog Barking can be a lot of fun. [Jul 2013, p.111]

It might lack Ryder-Jones's delicate invention, but it's still a lesson in enjoyable lucid songwriting. [Jul 2013, p.109]

Less fixatedly house-centric than before, I'm Leaving incorporates fuzzy dance-rock under the influence of girl groups and New Order. [Jul 2013, p.106]

The default mode is now so soft as to resemble a big bowl of ice cream for a man who's lost his dentures. [Jul 2013, p.103]

[Co-producer Richard Hawley] takes Texas deep into their rock-soul roots without sacrificing their strengths or wearily re-treading past glories. [Jul 2013, p.110]

There are too many songs here set to the same humdrum pace. But those are the sort of flaws you expect from a debut. [May 2013, p.112]

When they're not trying to be someone else, these lavishly layered, exquisitely crafted songs add to the mystery of why The Veils keep missing out. [Jul 2013, p.112]

There's a curious romance at play throughout their debut album. [Jul 2013, p.112]

They're still relentlessly heavy, just less hypnotically so. [Jul 2013, p.111]

Four albums in and Tunstall's voice remains original and excellent. [Jul 2013, p.111]

False Idols might fall short of such heights [of his debut], but at least sounds like the same person made it to the studio. [Jul 2013, p.111]

Giant "woooaaahhs" abound but as with anything frantically chasing arena singalongs, Love Lust Faith + Dreams feels empty in the extreme. [Jul 2013, p.111]

Still Corners show that they're not just marking time and counting sheep. [Jul 2013, p.110]

A record that's been worth the wait, it's the sound of music made by true originals. [Jul 2013, p.109]

Songwriting thus warm and wise can't be as easy as Musgraves makes it sound. [Jul 2013, p.108]

He acquits himself impressively as pianist and singer, his affinity with the material elevating it above mere expensive pastiche. [Jul 2013, p.106]

His songs are funny clever, rather than funny ha-ha, making Dad Country a serious business. [Jul 2013, p.105]

Wilderness quickly makes it clear that the passing of time hasn't dampened down their taste for the macabre mysteries if existence. [Jul 2013, p.105]

It all feels empty, like they're striking a pose without knowing why. [Jul 2013, p.104]

It's her devastating voice and ear for the smallest details that ultimately makes all the difference. [Jul 2013, p.104]

The fifth album from New Jersey's The Dillinger Escape Plan is another step back towards the math-metal that made their name. [Jul 2013, p.103]

The Archer Trilogy were exercises in electronic indie that were sparsely fragile (pt. 1, mostly) or verging on Europop (much of Pt. 2). The final installment manages to combine both and is all the better for it. [Jul 2013, p.101]

They can still write a tune but they've done away with much of what made them unique. [Jul 2013, p.101]

It's a pleasant listen but never quite sparks. [Jul 2013, p.100]

Though the structures are still experimental, there's enough gentle rhythm and memorable refrains here to keep it grounded and gorgeous. [Jul 2013, p.100]

Benga is still adept at lacing abrasive beats with airplay-ready soul, but the songwriting doesn't always measure up. [Jul 2013, p.99]

When It Was Now comes across like French soft-rockers Phoenix without the arty twists. [Jul 2013, p.99]

The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here falls from the same mould [as 1992's Dirt]. [Jul 2013, p.99]

The harsh tones and minimal melodies may not carry universal appeal, but then Kuperus and Miller have always preferred to dance in the shadows. [Jul 2013, p.99]

Rarely longer than three minutes, Zomby tracks don't make much sense in isolation but the cumulative effect over 80 minutes is moving in ways that are hard to explain. [Jul 2013, p.113]

With this 30th outing there's a troubling sense of treading water. [Jul 2013, p.103]

It's a predictable sound, though there's a thrilling intensity here. [Jul 2013, p.110]

The naysayer might dismiss it as an elaborate pastiche, but this would be to miss the point of an often intoxicating LP that's more than the sum of its parts. [Jul 2013, p.108]

There's a substance and sense of space in these meditative moments that makes for a satisfying, deep listening experience. [Jul 2013, p.113]

The results are beautifully muted yet murkily enticing, evoking Robert Wyatt's pastoral-prog reverie Rock Bottom. [Jul 2013, p.111]

Amid all the wanton airy-fairyness, this is just brilliant pop music. [Jul 2013, p.106]

If From The Hills doesn't quite have the swing and swagger of 2012's self-titled EP, it shouldn't be hard to recapture that promise next time around. [Jul 2013, p.105]

[The title track] like the rest of this exceptional LP, works fine as one chapter in an elaborate concept opus, but is just as satisfying for those with both feet in reality. [Jul 2013, p.98]

It may be a little too low-key for its own good--Four Tet explores similar territory with more urgency--but it's full of dog-eared charm. [Jul 2013, p.104]

Settle may be a lot less rowdy than Basement Jaxx's bellwether 1999 album Remedy, but it pulls off a similarly timely coup by pulling together a number of clubland threads, imposing a keen pop sensibility and idiosyncratic vision, and riding the crest of a rising tide. [Jul 2013, p.104]

Surrounding themselves with wise old heads clearly helps, but The Days Run Away shows Frankie & Co have plenty ideas of their own. [Jul 2013, p.103]

If Emika's voice lets her down a bit in places, as a producer she knows how to mould it into strange and interesting shapes. [Jul 2013, p.103]

In upbeat pop mode, the quintet are impressive, but when slipping downtempo into ballads, Camera Obscura are in a league of their own. [Jul 2013, p.100]

It's hard not to think that CSS's moment has passed. [Jul 2013, p.101]

Here they sound as out of place as ever, and all the better for it. [Jul 2013, p.101]

They might be old, they might be poorly and they might be running scared from their wives, but on 13 Black Sabbath roll back the years and sound young again--and blacker than ever. [Jul 2013, p.102]

...Like Clockwork is a return to form. [Jul 2013, p.107]

Entirely meritless. [Apr 2013, p.104]

Chastising them for not reinventing the wheel seems churlish when they sound like they're having so much fun spinning the old one. [Apr 2013, p.111]

Often, though, it's just a bit pompous and boring. [Apr 2013, p.94]

It's mix of precision and passion reminds of Muse's debut. [Jun 2013, p.91]

It's a record to be applauded for its ambitions, even if the songs sometimes struggle to carry the weight. [Jun 2013, p.100]

Disturbingly sensual stuff. [Jun 2013, p.99]

There are moments the focus blurs. But it's the exception on an album that dynamic, dramatic and remarkable free of self-indulgence. [Jun 2013, p.99]

The Casadys' knack for sifting vivid, dreamy songs out of harrowing subject matter is no less potent here. [Jun 2013, p.96]

[Wiesenfeld has an] uncommon ear for texture and rhythm, albeit one compromised by a weakness for self-consciously introspective lyrics and highfalutin sixth form poetry. [Jun 2013, p.93]

As harrowing and honest as some lyrics may be, though, the intensely beautiful Southern Sky at least offers his "crooked arms" some redemption. [Sep 2012, p.104]

Once I Was An Eagle is entirely Laura Marling's trip--beautiful, heartfelt, searching, sublime, and thrillingly open-ended. [Jun 2013, p.92]

Sigworth is Moyet's musical soulmate and this is her best LP in decades. [Jun 2013, p.103]

Once the listener gets beyond the references, Clarietta really hits the mark, with a high strike rate of knockout tunes. [Jun 2013, p.94]

On their first LP in five years, Thomas and his 15 collaborators lovingly craft 12 richly layered but never precious songs which burst with invention, melody and surprising saxophone, all underpinned by chief singer Carol Catherine's appealing melancholy. [Jun 2013, p.104]

It's a mess, characteristically dark but the riffs are scruffy and their once-mesmerising power is gone. [May 2013, p.99]

It's Up To Emma feels like eavesdropping on someone's post-break-up revenge fantasy. [Jun 2013, p.104]

Sadly, it plonks them squarely in the polished but unremarkable heartland of inoffensive US shopping mall metal. [Jun 2013, p.99]

Even though Nagalo Ni Piny Odag opens their second album in "traditional" style, all chirping percussion and Nyamungu's stringy twang, the tracks which follows cut across genre with winning flair. [Jun 2013, p.103]

Odd couples don't come more unlikely, nor as complementary. [Jun 2013, p.95]

He gets his message across smoothly without ever needing to resort to heavy-handedness. [Jun 2013, p.107]

True, few tracks contain anything as mundane as a tune, but this sound of the underground taps an exhilarating energy. [Jun 2013, p.116]

For a band who sing so often about matters of the heart and emotional connection, much of Trouble Will Find Me sounds oddly on autopilot. [Jun 2013, p.106]

Rocky Tinder and Eric Phipps's songs have a sharpness to them that makes them sparkle through the lysergic fug. [Jun 2013, p.108]

His originality peaked in '74, but for groovy, tuneful pizazz, Wings Of Love takes it even higher. [Jun 2013, p.115]

While it might have been kinder to leave Bury, Bury, Bury Another and Runnin' Around unreleased, much of the rest offers hints at just what a thrilling band they were becoming. [Jun 2013, p.113]

She might not be as well known, but at times she really is that good. [Jun 2013, p.109]

The band's ability to properly play together more than justifies the album's title, an archaic English word for feeling pleased. [Jun 2013, p.109]

True, he sometimes overdoes the theatrical flourishes, but high drama is what this record is all about, so he can be forgiven for that. [Jun 2013, p.108]

It's possessed and peaceful at once, absorbing and wholly gorgeous. [Jun 2013, p.108]

An intriguing collision of the musical outer reaches and American indie rock. [Jun 2013, p.107]

All 11 tracks on the album jump, shout and twang the heartstrings, albeit with a knowing wink. [Jun 2013, p.105]

They've bottled the lightning in an album of satirical wit, edgy intelligence and what fans crave most of all, raw power. [Jun 2013, p.105]

Functional yet uninspiring, Optica is pop as Ikea catalog. [Jun 2013, p.104]

Parquet Courts are a charmingly old-fashioned band, transmitting cryptic, collapsible songs to an anyone who can build a receiver from Guided By Voices-coloured vinyl and Pavement fanzines. [Jun 2013, p.104]

Occasionally, things lift out of the bluster--unfortunately, in the case of Preacher, a terrible lyric--but even the Everybody Wants To Rule The World guitar on Life in Color or the relatively stately synth-pop of Something's Gotta Give can't make Native Anything but a great gas giant of a record. [Jun 2013, p.103]

Much as their guitars cascade and their lyrics have a dark undertow, there's too much heavy-footed stodginess, notably in the plodding Staying Up, to make them truly engaging. [Jun 2013, p.103]

It's when Pentz dials it down that it gets interesting. [Jun 2013, p.101]

Their take on the latter's [Rustie's] maximal funk inevitably lacks the shock of the new, a heard-it-all-before feeling which persists through bumping house jams and detours into vintage jazz. [Jun 2013, p.100]

Soppiness has become overbearing on recent records, This eighth LP, though, rediscovers their heaviness. [Jun 2013, p.99]

It's a more searing and cranked-up affair than its predecessor. [Jun 2013, p.99]

The sound may gain more traction in a post-Mark Ronson world than his previous electro-based efforts. If only Tillmann didn't have to excise the fun to achieve it. [Jun 2013, p.98]

What could easily have sounded contrived instead works wonderfully. [Jun 2013, p.96]

When the quartet let loose, like on the screeching demonic cacophony of Island Epiphany, all hell breaks loose. [Jun 2013, p.96]

Purists may lament the loss of some immediacy to his songs. [Jun 2013, p.95]

Untamed Beast proves the band to be much more than just the rock'n'roll Alabama Shakes. [Jun 2013, p.95]

They've long threatened to make an album that would propel them to metal's major league. This might be it. [Jun 2013, p.95]

This is living, breathing music that avoids the trap of comfy nostalgia. [Jun 2013, p.94]

His new project is even more deranged, much of its sounding like Butthole Surfers driving at you on a space-age steamroller. [Jun 2013, p.93]

This fourth album finally hits the spot. [Jun 2013, p.93]

This is no Loveless but it is lovely. [Jun 2013, p.93]

Their fifth album is more about the song and less groove-based than their previous output. [Jun 2013, p.90]