Covering Blondie's Sunny Girl in a straight '70s power-pop style seems strangely redundant, but easy listening standard Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me suits She & Him down to the ground. [Jun 2013, p.104]

When they equal their best source material, they're brilliant; but when that material is merely daft, they're less good. [Jun 2013, p.104]

This debut is dip-dyed electronica for the Tumblr generation. [Jun 2013, p.103]

Choruses fizzle, lyrics fail to engage and every song is at least a minute too long. [Jun 2013, p.102]

The only annoyance is the production, which seems to believe that America will only buy rock by a Scotsman from London if it's laden with stadium-pop Waterboys/Mumfords/Titanic Celtic cack rock. [Jun 2013, p.101]

If you haven't bought one of his [Mark Lanegan's] records for a while, this is a great place to get reacquainted. [Jun 2013, p.100]

It's hard not to be drawn into their occult world. [Jun 2013, p.99]

Savages are still best viewed in the wild, then, but Silence Yourself documents a spirit and passion that could never be background music. [Jun 2013, p.98]

While there are some fine original songs, it's Harvey's choice of covers and collaborations that are most telling. [Jun 2013, p.98]

Primal Scream haven't sounded this vital in at least a decade. [Jun 2013, p.97]

Not since Massive Attack's Blue Lines have a heavy heart and urban dread been so absorbing. [Jun 2013, p.97]

A delicious vision of pop crooked enough to pull corks with. [Jun 2013, p.96]

Not all the tracks have the same impact, however, and a certain sameness in tone saps thrills. [Jun 2013, p.95]

While it's genuinely marvellous to hear one of pop's most underrated voices back, you do long to hear material suited to the modern era. [Jun 2013, p.94]

The result is gorgeous. [Jun 2013, p.93]

He seems content to occupy the same '90s underground niche he's always done. [Jun 2013, p.90]

Amidon has honed his music's suspenseful edge. [Jun 2013, p.90]

Those who think that somewhere, a liberal arts college is missing its creative writing teachers, might not be surprised this is a clever record. It's also, however, one that glows with tangible human warmth, heartbeat never failing to keep pace with its brainwaves. [Jun 2013, p.91]

Daft Punk's best album in a career that's already redefined dance music at least twice. It is, in short, a mind-blower. [Jun 2013, p.88]

This follow-up is a return to the dullsville rock of old. [May 2013, p.99]

Fatally it offers nothing to suggest a band moving forwards. [May 2013, p.109]

It's ridiculous and a lot of fun. [Apr 2013, p.100]

Those two moments ["Powerless" and "Waiting All Night"] aside, Home is a very satisfying debut. [May 2013, p.107]

Lyrical concerns are accordingly way less uptight and conceptual. [May 2013, p.99]

For the listener wanting a more reflective experience, 50 sometimes enthralling minutes await. [May 2013, p.94]

Shocking, in the best sense. [May 2013, p.99]

It takes alt-rock drama and boy-band syrup and bolts on some fun.-size arena-singalong choruses. [May 2013, p.103]

Concise at just 30 minutes, perhaps explaining why "the concept" is not fully realised, but it's still unlikely you'll hear a better anti-fascist-Marxist-electro-pop record all year. [May 2013, p.106]

Its rambling nature irks, for in among its nearly 80 minutes there are pop diamonds that would have made a sharp and spectacular single LP. [May 2013, p.109]

Even if this album is only for a limited audience, it's the sound of a band pushing onwards and upwards into the blue. [May 2013, p.94]

Some judicious pruning would have helped, but this is a promising first step forwards, even if it spends it s entire running time looking backwards. [May 2013, p.96]

Along with Johnston's clanging, winningly direct originals, there are contributions from fellow alt-rock comrades such as Eleanor Friedberger and, perhaps more surprisingly, Jake Bugg. [May 2013, p.104]

Far from a mid-life indulgence or quirky side project, this is a brave and beautiful album. [May 2013, p.102]

Paul Kelly still captivates with the strength of his storytelling. [May 2013, p.102]

The follow-up adds a little of their own personality and comes submerged in a refreshingly bratty wall of noise. [May 2013, p.107]

It's a tangled combination, but if you've got the patience it's worth trying to unpick. [May 2013, p.101]

Now on their fourth singer, their music is built on lunkheadness, all dumb riffs and blustery choruses. [May 2013, p.99]

Wisely, everything is as it was. [May 2013, p.111]

[The glitchy beats and samples] gives them a whole new playground but even the most synthesized moments here sound natural and unforced. [May 2013, p.109]

One to bask in. [May 2013, p.94]

Birthmarks is far from being a poor record, but it's limited in ambition and reach. [May 2013, p.97]

These considered songs are slow to blossom but, like Junip, they're worth the wait. [May 2013, p.104]

Externalising her feeling with space and power, I Awake gives everyone's inner life its due, the personal rendered universal. [May 2013, p.95]

Pretty much everyone sleepwalks through a cabaret mix of standards and new songs. [May 2013, p.102]

A simple, joyful late-career bloom. [May 2013, p.106]

Not everything succeeds but on Imagination's fusion of ambient synths and stadium-rock guitars or the electro-pop of Collide-A-Scope, Rundgren fashions a sound that offers nods to his '70s prog past but still sounds utterly of the moment. [May 2013, p.109]

Each of the 11 new songs on Bottom Of The World twinkles mournfully, chamber-country meditations which blend the playful and sinister in his patented fantasia set in the US-Mexico borderlands. [May 2013, p.95]

Third time around there's some deviation from the formula, but the lack of subtlety is a little wearing. [May 2013, p.95]

The Low Highway has the brains and passion of Earle's last few releases, even if it's not especially surprising. [May 2013, p.100]

10 ready-made, slightly wonky theme tunes. [May 2013, p.113]

On this career highlight they deliver their memorandum as effectively as at any time in their 30-odd-years of operation. [May 2013, p.113]

Wilson never forgets the melodies or real sentiment. [May 2013, p.113]

They up the anthem count and resemble a lo-fi Dire Straits. [May 2013, p.112]

["Cadillac Walk" is] a refreshing change of pace on an album whose smoothness palls just a little over 12 songs. [May 2013, p.110]

The melodies running through City People, City Things and Julie, with their hints of Paul Simon at his most wistful, are the measure of anything from Rouse's 2002 purple patch. The rest is charming if sometimes sugar-sweet and a little too inoffensive. [May 2013, p.109]

Ritter's seventh album may not be quite the same league as Dylan's masterpiece, but post his own divorce it does contain all the same edgy recrimination and pain. [May 2013, p.109]

[The soundtrack is paring] the sound down for wistful and occasionally beautiful miniatures. [May 2013, p.106]

Though Candela never fully eludes to Pierce's studied background, the foundations are strong enough for him to go wild with the decorations. [May 2013, p.106]

A surprisingly well-nourished beast. [May 2013, p.105]

Silvery two-part harmonies, cello and snare rolls combine to excellent effect on Light Out, while Drummachines lopes along, a fuzzy bass loop and booming drum kicks offset with mildly Auto-Tuned vocals. [May 2013, p.103]

Sad, happy, tragic and triumphant, just like country music should be. [May 2013, p.102]

The Growlers might just be on to something here. [May 2013, p.101]

There are songs here which recall protestant hymns, others full of Kurt Weill cabaret humour and slick, modern white blues that suggest an energised, liberal attitude to the traditions in which he's working. [May 2013, p.101]

They pack in an astounding brutality reminiscent of Napalm Death's grueling grindcore. [May 2013, p.99]

On Old Sock, he sings some that are to him as comfy as and to us as whiffy as the album's title. [May 2013, p.99]

There isn't quite enough to genuinely stand out from the crowd. [May 2013, p.98]

At the infernal din's core are some excellent, urgent songs of anti-fashion disillusionment. [May 2013, p.98]

Jovi's delivery of the usual cliches has a curious, sickly sheen. [May 2013, p.96]

This is cosmic R&B. [May 2013, p.95]

His revisiting of old tapes and melodic ideas from his tenure mean it echoes his former group's discography in rewarding ways. [May 2013, p.95]

[A] forgettable collection of rheumy blues and soul rock. [May 2013, p.98]

There's nothing here to match the heavy thump of his mid-noughties collaborations with the Melvins such as Sieg Howdy!, but it still punches hard. [May 2013, p.95]

They're still here and they're still very good. [May 2013, p.93]

This isn't his masterpiece, but it is the unexpected sound of the road of excess leading to the palace of wisdom. [May 2013, p.103]

Occasionally distant, the restrained urgency of Dracula and soulful vocals of Closer ripple with an enticing warmth. [May 2013, p.113]

[They sound] pissed off, over-amped, just the right side of sloppy, shorn of the brass grafted into recent outings--i.e. exactly like themselves. [May 2013, p.106]

Amygdala is the sort of wonderfully slowed-down and spun-out electronica that suggests DJ Koze should get himself into the studio more often. [May 2013, p.104]

This a rare and colourful leap forward. [May 2013, p.102]

This is direct, explosive and packed with big choruses. [May 2013, p.99]

At only 37 minutes long, it never outstays its welcome. [May 2013, p.99]

This is the sound of someone learning, brilliantly on the job. [May 2013, p.96]

An acquired taste, but an enjoyable one. [May 2013, p.94]

Less dazzling than Silent Shout, but The knife still create a world like no one else's. [May 2013, p.105]

It hasn't got all the best tunes, but this bullishly self-titled album hits the target like a hair-dyed, tattooed William Tell. [May 2013, p.111]

This doesn't veer wildly in style from Vile's previous four--he still sounds like a stoned Springsteen singing from the bottom of a well--but his songwriting reaches a mesmeric peak. [May 2013, p.112]

It's one of their finest. [May 2013, p.98]

There might not be any hits, but it's still a convincing chapter few would have predicted. [May 2013, p.102]

Enjoyable and fresh, retro and modern, English Electric's only fault is that its creators try a bit too hard to sound like their own past. [May 2013, p.107]

As much as it recaptures some of their buccaneering early spirit, it also shows off some explosive new tricks too. [May 2013, p.108]

It's a more commercial, fuller album, even if it does slightly lack the spirit of their previous work. [May 2013, p.105]

This follow-up takes on a conventional band set-up, but it's as impressive, offering a crisply original take on the classic singer-songwriter approach. [May 2013, p.109]

The Terror is dark and experimental, full of synths and loops that owe more to Krautrock than guitar bands. [May 2013, p.101]

The album possibly fails to deliver singles like Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix did, but nothing here suggests unpaid debts, a splurge before the bailiffs come or a lack of confidence, despite the title. [May 2013, p.97]

Bolstered by members of Dylan's band, the songs are built on buoyant '60s pop and Beach Boys harmonies soar alongside lively brass. [May 2013, p.103]

His sometimes-still-too-warbly voice is the main instrument on this follow-up, but it's pockmarked with new friends' influence. [May 2013, p.96]

Yes, he's a magpie--like, is My Girl really not a Ramones cover?--but Willy Moon is classy, forward-looking and 100 per cent on the money. [May 2013, p.100]

Numbingly tedious, bashed-out-in-an-afternoon grunt-a-longs about, well, numbingly tedious stuff that we may already have come to term with. [Aug 2012, p.109]

American Twilight is lifted above cliche, though, and works best when heading full pelt toward the horizon. [Apr 2013, p.98]