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]