The result is a more polished sound that lets Nau's '60s/'70s-echoing songs shine. [Sep 2018, p.117]

A record whose hooks sometimes struggle to sink their claws in. [Sep 2018, p.113]

All That Reckoning hums with barely suppressed threat. [Sep 2018, p.110]

Sun-kissed first single Love Lasts Forever aside, the songs are often suffocated by vaguely outre production flourishes. [Sep 2018, p.110]

Her penchant for acid blurts and seductive basslines rings throughout this characterful collection, drawing constellations between electro glitz, darkwave gloom and post-punk austerity. [Aug 2018, p.111]

The results are pleasantly bouncy rather than riotously fun. [Aug 2018, p.114]

This slow-moving record is full of secrets yet reveals barely anything at all. [Summer 2018, p.116]

Intimate without being indulgent, the crackly production only enhances the home-baked mood. [Summer 2018, p.113]

Slick, wonderful album. [Aug 2018, p.114]

Weatherall gleefully proves there's life for house music beyond four-to-the-floor bangers. [Aug 2018, p.114]

His second LP plays to his familiar strength--that lightly Auto-Tuned voice--and a batch of R&B-friendly tunes with minimal instrumentation, the echoing paranoia of Watch Who You Tell and Call Me's sunny clatter being particular highlights. [Aug 2018, p.114]

The result is intense, fractured and uncomfortable. However, by continuing the trajectory of Mess, only deep-diving further into abstract electronics, it also reveals itself as a strangely exhilarating listen. It's a shame they didn't have time to explore it further. [Aug 2018, p.113]

Though for all the slick instrumental interplay, with guitarist Steve Lacy again outstanding, it's Syd's hushed, Aaliyah-like delivery that supplies the core emotional connection. [Aug 2018, p.111]

It walks to the wobbly line between the sparkling and the indulgent with the former just about winning out. [Aug 2018, p.116]

An exercise in restraint. [Aug 2018, p.114]

Sam Owen's milky vocals give these songs a bloodless, etiolated quality that's as sinister as it is pretty. [Summer 2018, p.114]

An understated but always involving affair. [Summer 2018, p.116]

The maestro's arpeggiators show no signs of seizing up, even if there's a touch of melancholia about Tangerine Dream-like opener First Movement and Clean Air. [Aug 2018, p.116]

For a "difficult" record, it's an oddly easy sell--an instant, atmospheric disturbance, a tiny portable wormhole. [Aug 2018, p.108]

This is nervy, restless music for turbulent times. And all the better for it. [Aug 2018, p.113]

It's a tough listen--Lotic's aural trademark, a kind of restless arrhythmia, can be exhausting--but pays off with dazzling highs such as Bulletproof, the blueprint for a reconstructed avant-pop paradigm. [Aug 2018, p.113]

Full marks, then, for ambitions but there's still a powerful sense here of a man trying way too hard. [Aug 2018, p.108]

An agreeably self-assured comeback from a talent who's come up the hard way. [Summer 2018, p.106]

Years & Years currently seem unconcerned with idiosyncrasy and edge, but it's hard to mind when they've hit a pop spot this sweet. [Summer 2018, p.112]

Randell's lyrics reveal subversiveness too, telling of teenage insurrections and small-town upsets. Steve Hassett's backing, meanwhile, is characterised by enough strange impulses and pleasing deviations to whirr and rattle through the stillness. The band's third album is filled with such quirks and quiet rebellions. [Aug 2018, p.113]

The San Francisco five-piece remain unforgiving epic, vocals mostly descendant from that same raspy wraith lineage. [Aug 2018, p.108]

Its breezy mix of acid pop, acoustic whimsy and sunshine funk drifts by with all the staying power of a warm afternoon. [Aug 2018, p.108]

The result is an album that feels mystifyingly oblique, but also unburdened with the pursuit of anything bar a gentle beauty. [Aug 2018, p.111]

Call The Comet firmly underlines Johnny Marr's commitment to his solo career. [Aug 2018, p.110]

It's the fiery One Up, One Down and the four zigzagging interpretations of Impressions that truly add tot he indispensability of this set. [Aug 2018, p.119]

A set that sounds hauled up from another time and place. [Aug 2018, p.111]

It's an album that makes you feel the real Florence Welch is only beginning. [Aug 2018, p.106]

Overall, Endless Scroll feels self-righteous and misses the crucial idea that insurrection can actually be fun. [Jul 2018, p.108]

Be More Kind strikes a balance between the personal and the political. [Jun 2018, p.116]

The whole exercise has an infectious exuberance, even if it isn't quite the must-have document its title suggests. [Summer 2018, p.114]

It's a hugely entertaining album. A musical travelogue whose breadth of styles fits the vast nation it eulogises. [Summer 2018, p.107]

Moral and financial considerations aside, this stands a monument to success and excess. [Summer 2018, p.118]

It's that juxtaposition between sunshiny pop and yearning lyrics that defines much of The Now Now. ... This latest chapter in the Gorillaz story sounds like a deeply confessional one. [Summer 2018, p.108]

They've revealed themselves as a rare, brilliant talent. [Summer 2018, p.104]

Now it would seem that the 40-year-old is keen to get back to that place, smashing through extremo rockers such as You Get To Rome and enjoying himself so much that he often audibly breaks into laughter. Sometimes, though, it tips over in to jammy self-indulgence. [Summer 2018, p.110]

It's breathless and occasionally shallow, but never less than entertaining. [Summer 2018, p.114]

Zebra finds Georgopoulos in purely instrumental mode, boundary-blurring jazz, African, Balearic and kosmische influences with mixed results. [Summer 2018, p.106]

The latest outing re-establishes them as sculptors of heavy-but-humourous CD-length aural odysseys. [Summer 2018, p.113]

Thirty years in NIN sound reinvigorated. [Summer 2018, p.116]

The fifth outing as Immersion finds the couple at their most sumptuous. [Summer 2018, p.110]

Washington's gift for euphonic arrangements and eagerness to explore new forms is evident throughout. [Summer 2018, p.115]

It's liable to tail off in trippier moments, but Kazuashita is magical enough to reward its hyperactive ambition. [Summer 2018, p.109]

The music itself remains more in debt to Blue Note classicism, but the palatability is alluring. [Summer 2018, p.113]

The result is a record that's more one-note wonder than fully-fledged triumph. [Summer 2018, p.109]

It might be summer, but autumnal is the atmosphere here. [Summer 2018, p.114]

Animal Wisdom is pretty enough, while drone epic Silent Stream nails his Velvets fetish. But to call the other Nuggets-style fodder here "something else" is overstating it. [Summer 2018, p.109]

Whatever she make you feel, it's a ferociously sensual work. [Summer 2018, p.117]

It's a patchwork, with many edges left untrimmed, but Idehen's word's are always worth leaning in for. [Summer 2018, p.106]

A pleasingly, gently adventurous collection. [May 2018, p.104]

Despite the relaxed setting, these songs have a restless urgency. [Summer 2018, p.106]

A brisk 11 tracks and not a duff moment on it. [Summer 2018, p.106]

It's hard to keep up, but it's an enjoyably bonkers journey. [Summer 2018, p.113]

Rhythmically complex yet deftly controlled. [Jul 2018, p.116]

His first LP of originals since the '80s is thrillingly belligerent, bassist Norman Watt-Roy and drummer Dylan Howe supplying a muscular foundation to Johnson's machete guitar, a combination more than compensating for the star's lack of vocal prowess. [Summer 2018, p.110]

It's quite sublime. [Summer 2018, p.116]

Bad Contestant may sound studiously restrained, but Maltese never lets things stagnate, buoying the album along with his amusing lyricism. [Jul 2018, p.115]

Massiveness should be assured. [Summer 2018, p.114]

Fusion of nerdiness and fun. [Summer 2018, p.109]

Politically charged, smart, melodic and irrepressible--it's a fascinating record. [Summer 2018, p.116]

These songs come with fuzzy edges, a puff of smoke, a gentle wobble. It's Owen's solid songwriting skills that tether them to Earth, though. [Summer 2018, p.109]

Hope Downs shows how jangling indie should be done. [Summer 2018, p.114]

No Shame is a reminder that this is what Allen does, and she does it very well. [Summer 2018, p.111]

Perhaps in time she will dig deeper, but it's an assured start. [Summer 2018, p.114]

A parade of intriguing timbres and textures ensures each song is as seductive as the last. [Summer 2018, p.113]

Fans of Four Tet and Jon Hopkins are advised to check out this master at work. [Summer 2018, p.110]

Murky depths, glittering enchantment, and the swell of heightened grandeur. [Summer 2018, p.109]

Through its trippy ballads and spacey funk, Childqueen is quite a sonic journey. [Summer 2018, p.106]

On his masterful second album, the choirboy-turned-beat-maker beds down in this uneasy state, lacing opulent production with minor-key anxiety. [Jul 2018, p.111]

Howard's evolving sound is fast becoming distinctively his own. [Jul 2018, p.118]

The yelpy, sub-Beasties rapping from Clams Baker renders Whale city all but unlistenable. A shame, because the backing tracks' raucous Fall-isms consititute a long-anticipated high-energy flipside to the smacky languor of Adamczewski's main band. [Jul 2018, p.118]

It's all quite ridiculous and lots of fun. [Jul 2018, p.111]

Daltrey climbs inside every song, slaps it around a bit and makes it his own. [Jul 2018, p.111]

The sense here is of two artists drawing creative sustenance from new light. [Jul 2018, p.112]

By the end, Lopatin has captured the uneasy calm of a mind unhinged by information overload. [Jul 2018, p.115]

Even if there's a sense of darkness descending, in his best solo album yet, Gruff Rhys paints with bright and uplifting colours. [Jul 2018, p.109]

The result is a surprisingly jubilant follow-up, with the Richmond, Virginia-based singer-songwriter largely disposing of her delicate sound in favour of groove, R&B and '80s pop. [Jul 2018, p.116]

It shows that whatever life brings her, Case can turn it into something startling. [Jul 2018, p.108]

Modest and muted they may be, but after the mid-'80s bombast, what comes through is the nuance and intimacy of the songs. [Jul 2018, p.121]

A sparkling record whose polished exterior barely masks the turmoil at its heart. [Jul 2018, p.116]

[The] sun-flecked sense of bliss is present throughout and halfway through they even drop in something approaching a conventional pop song with the cooling breeze of Already Gone. That lightness of touch is the real revelation here. [Jul 2018, p.118]

This is a heady journey through excess, absurdity and 21st century mores from arguably the world's most eloquent singer-songwriter, which seems to take us that bit closer to who he really is. [Jul 2018, p.117]

Lovelaws feels like an act of introspection that's gone too far, one that might have benefited from a breath of fresh air, a trip outside its head. [Jul 2018, p.118]

An intriguing, if not quite essential, addition to the Maus canon. [Jul 2018, p.115]

Love Is Dead's songs, however, don't so much burrow into your brain as thwack you over the head, and the band's tendency to fashion refrains from little more than the song titles means some tracks are memorable simply by dint of merciless repetition. [Jul 2018, p.114]

Part Of The Light finds him in dream-like mode, and though he'll never rival Guy Garvey for loquacity, he's so comfortable in his own skin that To The Sea details a cheery trip to the seaside and his voice soars where it once growled. [Jul 2018, p.112]

It's sweetly out of step with prevailing pop trends, but it will certainly strike a chord with anyone who has ever had their heart broken. [Jul 2018, p.108]

This follow-up displays an admirable desire for transformation. [Jun 2018, p.111]

It's hardly surprisingly that it's less interesting musically than it is lyrically. ... That said, there's not a dull moment here. [Jul 2018, p.111]

Kacy & Clayton's ability to enchant remains potent on The Siren's Song. [Jul 2018, p.112]

This is a record of fiery energy, spinning into sight like a chunk of chrome off a satellite, fierce, funny and beautifully unpredictable. [Jul 2018, p.116]

It feels like a middling album that would've made an incredible EP, but when Wiley thrills, he really thrills. [Jul 2018, p.116]

There's nothing here to quicken the pulse, but like an uneventful beach holiday it's the perfect place to pause and refresh. [Jun 2018, p.114]

Yet the band's mastery of mood often comes at the expense of memorability, with the melodies and refrains of individual tracks tending to merge into a single mass of bittersweet malaise. [Jul 2018, p.112]