Farrar’s a reluctant figurehead for the down there and downtrodden. There are no gilded towers here, no tyrannies of elitist plutocrats, just the open highway and a ride in an old boneshaker with an engine leaking hopes and dreams.

The Route To The Harmonium feels like a return to the warmth of some of his earlier outings--not that he’s exactly satisfied--with a more mature Yorkston having crafted perhaps the album of his career.

The album improves halfway through, settling into a spacier late-night feel: retro electronic drums sprinkled over better tunes, with chunky bass and the twin male and female vocals more relaxed.

As with any Car Seat Headrest record, there’s always a whisper of a phrase, or an unusual lyric that passes you by and later stops you in your tracks. Likewise, there are plenty of musical layers and varied instrumentation that draw your ears one way and another.

If the thrill of the fight is one answer, The Blue Hour is up to it. Re-energised on all fronts, Suede are in the shape of their lives.

Boss Hog still thrill, still hint at a better future. Just one that comes before 2034 you’d hope.

There are likeable enough moments: Cuomo has such an instinctive way with melody that he won’t ever release an album without some saving graces. But, for the most part, this is no improvement on Weezer’s medicore output of the past decade.

There’s no doubting Howe’s immense talent but, though each album stands alone individually, bundled together here the material becomes slightly indistinct.

To put it bluntly, it’s the sound of REM album tracks circa 2001-2008, only with a less interesting frontman and a lyrical conceit that can often exclude the listener.

The Reckoning sees Johns sounding comfortable in his own skin and making a quietly accomplished record.

The 11 tracks, all originals penned or co-penned by Neville or Krasno, get to Neville’s very heart, placing his sweet voice in a gritty R&B setting.

It’s a sound of today with echoes of a gloriously simple past. It makes you wish that Hank Williams was around for a duet.

Veteran Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts sounds completely at home on Meets The Danish Radio Big Band.

A behemoth of a box, The Public Image Is Rotten offers over six hours of PiL brilliance.

Hearing these oddly innocent songs (and his speaking voice) can’t help but reignite that overwhelming sense of loss, and also wonder, since Bowie passed on nearly three years ago: has any artist been so loved or missed by so many? Even with all its frolics, fumbles, filler and foibles, Conversation Piece can only be welcomed and celebrated.

It's Efterklang's lushest, most straightforward and earwormy album to date. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Throughout, Shura blends acoustic guitar with melancholy synthesisers as beautifully as she blends her vocal harmonies, which, along with a sprinkling of woodwind and funk bass, come together in muted catharsis. [Jul 2025, p.105]

Butler's increasingly woodsy timbre serves People Move On nicely. It's not as stirring, with Butler's intimate tilt at post-Suede liberation anthem Not Alone losing the original's euphoric flush, though the trio's euphonious harmonies prove reliable - if occasionally drowsy - elsewhere. [Apr 2026, p.105]

Opener Let’s Make Out begins with 60s-style, chorused “whooos” before Mjöll (imagine Karen O with Björk vowels) urges us to have a snog, embracing you in a hook so strong you may well find strangers puckering up. That of the blissful, blistering Fire is even harder to escape, while Love Without Passion is a sweet hymn to a pure, non-sexual deep connection. Whatever their mood, Dream Wife are a band to fall for.

It's apparent that a lot of work has gone into paring these jams down into a focused and always interesting collection.

Son Lux haven’t quite lost it to trying, but the album does feel like it’s being pulled in two different directions--one far more interesting than the other.

It’s a stunning record – from the album artwork down to the perfectly-weighted running order, nothing is out of place and nothing jars. Matt Berninger didn’t want to write a solo record. But thank god he did.

It may be over a decade since their last album, but when Last Place chugs into life with Why We Won’t, it feels as if Grandaddy haven’t aged a day.

While it’s probably a good thing that the rest of record isn’t quite as intense as that [Waiting On My Horrible Warning], the 11 songs that follow remain a deliberately overbearing barrage of droning, snarling and unrelenting noise punk.

While not the cutting-edge of US punk, it’s still a wholly engaging retread.

Make It Fit is a worthy reunion record that extends Karate's legacy in all the right ways. [Dec 2024, p.107]

Throughout, this is the sound of the Alice Cooper band playing with revitalised vigour and tangibly loving soul, riven with the unexpected “left turns” Alice credits to Dunaway and Smith. .... The Alice Cooper band and Ezrin have produced 2025’s most faith-restoring rock’n’roll set, that does their fallen comrade proud. [Aug 2025, p.100]

Wherever you listen, Ruins pairs tough truths and tender melodies with tremendous expressive punch, from the piercing self-investigations of the title-track to Hem Of Her Dress, where heartache and rage merge with raucous honesty. Meanwhile, Nothing Has To Be True hews beauty from transformative circumstance.

Huge swathes of the album are like an elaborate game of spot the steal. ... Overall, the songs are better crafted than on his previous HFB albums, more persuasive and memorable.

The Other Life checks in at the expected redneck haunts, but with the lyrical verve of writers from further afield.

She steps gingerly out of her comfort zone again on I Never Wear White, its harsh guitars veering towards garage rock, and the banjo-led angry man blues of Song Of The Stoic. If any of this proves too much for less adventurous fans, the literate whimsy of Crack In The Wall and Silver Bridge trek across more familiar terrain.

His music admittedly feels a little more battle-scarred nowadays, but this world-weariness fits the LP’s resigned, roots-tinged ballads Good Enough and There It Goes like a glove.

Despite a couple of bland sections--St Martha’s in particular--The Starless Room is worthy of many repeat, and extended, visits.

Holter is a master at conjuring up beguiling atmospherics. Here, backed by her usual live touring accompaniment of drums, viola and double bass she concocts a variety of striking permutations on familiar work.

Melding the ethereal and otherworldly with some wonderfully punishing basslines on future classics like Ring The Alarm. [Jun 2026, p.103]

He’s painstakingly conceived a uniquely personal concept which, for the first time, includes creating new music for the project.

This, with producer Dan Carey keeping things sharp, is another streamlined thriller, recorded in double-quick time. [Jun 2024, p.100]

The claims these guys make of being an “anti-band” are redundant in light of how clean and complex Early Risers is, but, on the whole, it’s oddly unmemorable.

Occasionally the record can lose focus, without a standalone frontman/woman--and while that doesn’t make Hug Of Thunder bad, it can feel disjointed, like listening to a decade-spanning compilation, moving through genres and line-ups with discombobulating results. Still, better to have too much than not enough.

A preoccupied and deeply immersed heart-art journal, graced with discreetly nailed-on band performances while simultaneously worrying away at its own edges.

[Vanishing Point is] raw and unrefined, it has as much energy and attitude as any of their previous albums.

It sounds like a lost album that should have come out after 1979’s I Am: a very shrewd approximation of the EWF we know and love, it’s crammed with sophisticated R&B, gossamer-light jazz and powerful, soulful vocals with a positive message.

A long overdue return, and well worth the wait.

Wrangler make vibrant, organic electronic music that respects the genre’s history while turning a fresh page.

Nothing here is going to uproot trees, but given Hillman’s recent lack of activity the release is welcome. The ideal aural companion to Johnny Rogan’s comprehsive Byrds books.

Loose Talk is a tightly crafted exploration of live unmoored. [May 2025, p.104]

Often it’s Himeno’s drums alone which provide any sense of conventional structure, adding hypnotic rhythms to the cicada chatter and guitar feedback of #2 before Zaikawa’s heartbeat-like bassline belatedly joins in.

It’s an album to truly cherish.

A compelling snapshot of the group in their infancy, but already on their way to being fully formed, it captures then in a joyous mood. [Aug 2025, p.94]

Anyone who likes instrumental prog will be pretty at home with this, which might just also turn a new generation onto the genre’s noodly stylings. Waverers may be persuaded by the four star film, making the CD package the best purchase.

It all hangs together with ease, making for Kings Of Leon's most fun album since the Noughties. [Jun 2024, p.102]

Subtle and understated, yet brimming with raw passion, this is songwriting at its cathartic, confessional best.

It’s hard not to be cynical about such repackaging, even if the music within is so special.

From the barroom country-rock of Shouting Match to the tear-stained seasonal misgivings of A Very Sorry Christmas, the whimsical warmth of If Only You Knew Her and the back porch baroque of Out Of The Lime, this is perfect and brilliantly realised melodic pop.

Finn senior’s prescient lyrics, sugarcoated with melody for ease of delivery, help make Dreamers Are Waiting both tart and timeless.

As with his previous albums though, GRIP most impresses in its introspective moments (Spades, Lucky Me) -- perhaps next time we'll get the morning after album. [Feb 2024, p.103]

British Road Movies comfortably flits between exhilaration and devastation, with the production careful to mimic the song’s subjects. It’s an album that firmly points Jackson in a new direction, allowing her to flourish on her own terms.

Their most ambitious to date. Presented as an old-school double album split into four thematic sides, it serves (by design or otherwise) as a thoughtful precis of the band's 20-year history. [Jul 2024, p.105]

It’s true that Quilt have tightened their sound and clearly production values are high across the whole of Plaza. But sadly, in lieu of a more unified sound or approach, their music might be doomed to be like an actual quilt--with all the filling annoyingly on one side.

Delt’s high voice and pretty 60s-harking melodies make even Phase Zero’s fastest-tempo track feel decidedly chilled. It’s not always clear what message these melodies intend to impart as many of them remain clouded in a fog of heady effects.

The original record’s improvisational nature is still here but hidden, its minimalist touches are scant.

The uncharacteristically tonguein- cheek, Bowie-esque Japan To Jupiter is arguably the record’s apex, but quality and contemporary relevance abound, ensuring Folly is a comeback that equates with anything but the absurdity suggested by its title.

Although troubled themes lurk in the lyrics, boogie-driven closer Daily Blues encapsulates the album’s appeal neatly: for pure retro-rock escapism, this Flight is just the ticket.

In the now vastly-populated electronic marketplace, this is an album well worth investigating as an example of passionate scientists adding the music’s past immortal strategies to the planet’s ever-buzzing soundtrack to take it proudly into the future, rather than contenting themselves with replicating hoary old blueprints.

Overall, the record harks back to past glories, but it's doubtful it would have reversed his fortunes quite so dramatically as the Rubin makeover. [Aug 2024, p.103]

At times, Katie Ball's high-pitched vocals bring a somewhat incongruous phantasmagorical element. But they bring the tunes, too. [Dec 2025, p.101]

Mostly, this is same ol’ same ol’ JSBX: maybe no bad thing, but it won’t grab you by the collar.

It’s a pleasure to report that he’s come up with something much more tangible than a mere phoned-in hash of former glories.

Byrne isn’t on fire here: while the songs do sometimes deal with biggish issues with elan, the music’s just too merry, too jovial. Of course, that contrast is deliberate, but – perhaps it’s the times we live in – it feels pat in context, even glib. [Oct 2025, p.132]

Sun Gong comes across like Laraaji’s own personal answer to the Reverend CL Franklin’s rhythmic yet unsettlingly intense sermons.

Melodically reminiscent of Portishead’s Mysterons in its early stages, The Gathering sees a rueful violin-led melody spill over into a distorted and sorrowful mass many times its original size. Some Were Saved, Some Drowned has melancholy violins hang in the air as a doom laden riff cuts despondent, bluesy grooves deep into the piece’s core.

It sounds like it must have already existed, but therein lies the appeal of a record that is tribute to perseverance and belief, and the power of truly, great timeless songs. Mark it down as the first great album of 2026. [Jan 2026, p.102]

It’s the kind of album that’s easy to grow very attached to: a personal, secret soundtrack likely to be loved by many.

A by-the-book cover of the arguably too familiar Rainy Night In Georgia aside, this is an engaging and enticing set of tunes breathing fresh life into a bygone form; they’ll melt your heart while making you want to dance.

The angular but ambling instrumental Fauster can arguably be glossed over and there’s nothing here with the cliff-hanger intensity of Mend’s best track Cathkin Braes, but with the slow-burning Spectres and the churning, dirge-like The Mute, De Rosa have nonetheless book-ended Weem with a pair of their most bewitching power plays to date.

It’ll be a shock to the system for Futureheads fanatics anticipating herky-jerky guitar pop, but with the distraught Monster Again, nakedly vulnerable Thunder Song and the graceful, elegiac titular song standing out; it makes for an intensely cathartic and wholly absorbing experience for listeners prepared to dump their preconceptions at the door.

It isn’t easy to love, that detached remoteness permeates throughout, but it is a well-crafted collection of songs.

Spirit Reflection entrances with its delicate, gossamer vocals drizzled over dreamy, summery soundscapes.

Just one minor grumble: more phin next time, please. That thing cuts through a crowd like a backstage pass.

Songs here frequently unsettle, like the hypnotic Where The Bough Has Broken or the sinister Blood Orange. At times, it's a little too abstract and difficult to connect to--perhaps because of how personal this feels to Woods. Nevertheless, you'll still enjoy losing yourself in this vast, enigmatic world. [Jan 2024, p.101]

Orzabel and Smith still superbly soundtrack our mad world. [Dec 2024, p.109]

The apple doesn't fall far, as they say, and a 62-year-old Femi is still raging against the system on Journey Through Life. [Apr 2025, p.102]

Another fautless collection from Nadler, fast becoming one of the most distinctive voices in American music. There’s comfort in melancholy, as someone once said.

There are times when Music Complete seems like the result of a newly passionate group’s desire to squeeze a decade-worth of ideas--and another quarter century of influences--onto one album. That said, it’s still their best work since the age of Republic.

Produced by Edwyn Collins, it’s full of immediately infectious tracks that burrow deep into your head before working their way down to your limbs.

Belle & Sebastian--now much more of a unit than ever before--have found their stride, turning in one of the most satisfying, complete and cinematic albums of their 19-year career.

This doesn’t disappoint. Undoing A Luciferian Towers opens proceedings and wastes no time in transporting the listener into their world.

Inimitable, occasionally impenetrable, but never less than intriguing.

There will be few debut records as accomplished or thrilling as Los Angeles in 2023.

[Opening track Low Season is] a bizarre blip on an album that fans will lap up.

Recorded last year at Bestival on the Isle Of Wight, the band are as tight as ever; they’re clearly having a ball.

Conceptually distinctive album. [Nov 2025, p.103]

Enriched and incisive, expansive and introspective, The Demise Of Planet X never settles for second-hand goods. [Feb 2026, p.100]

It’s successful, on the whole, and fans of this ever-refreshing Britpop behemoth will find plenty to cheer.

Slower, heavier and maybe a little bit more messed up than before, while not stabbing at the same loud/quiet buttons, AYHL is a most welcome, if mildly unhinged continuation.

No sanitary in-concert “best of” is this, for The Notwist have the knack of performing their pieces in a pretty faithful manner before all politeness is forgotten as they swerve into yet another freshly fleshed-out reinterpretation.

While some might contend that Freedom Jazz Dance’s exposure of Miles’ working methods divests him of his all-important mystique, rather, the project actually enhances rather than diminishes our appreciation and understanding of him. And that can only be a good thing.

Birding takes wing with mellifluous delicacy and sturdy dynamism, held in fine balance. [Apr 2026, p.105]