It's a serious, pensive album that makes its points with articulacy and no risk of ever outstaying its welcome. [Feb 2025, p.104]

There's promise here, but further Theroising might require firmer definition in practice. [Feb 2025, p.105]

The country accompaniments are elegant and often subtle, yet never dreary. [Jan 2025, p.102]

So full of moments of disarming beauty is Heard Noises that it’s often easy to miss the discomfiting observations within. .... Arguably his best album yet. [Jan 2025, p.102]

This is blazing, and even now nobody does it better. [Feb 2025, p.104]

Just when you're thinking Saint Etienne can't possibly maintain such high standards after three decades, The Night begins to turn your head around. [Feb 2025, p.105]

These are well-written, well-delivered songs. Look Up works because Ringo is being taken seriously. He is, of course, his own worst enemy at times, but Burnett won’t allow Ringo to stray too far into ‘personality’ songs. [Feb 2025, p.102]

It's Only A Love Song is a rapturous record keeps you coming back for more. [Jan 2025, p.103]

Their last outing earned them a Grammy, but the confidence and cohesion of Bloom is arguably even more worthy of gongs. [Jan 2025, p.103]

Critical Thinking lashes out against the ills of the modern world and asks vital questions about the purpose of art and their own relevance. If that sounds heavy, it’s mostly set to some of the most uplifting music of their career, all shimmering, arpeggiated 80s indie, exultant choruses, and their take on the Big Music (Bunnymen, early Simple Minds, Waterboys) that set the teenage Manics’ hearts racing. [Jan 2025, p.100]

[Producer John "Spud" Murphy] brings a sense of space and simplicity to the music, the better to listen to Savage's warm, consoling voice and lyricism. [Jan 2025, p.105]

This is a bold, powerful and brilliant reinvention. [Jan 2025, p.103]

Even on a record of many detours, the closing three tracks are uniquely surprising. [Jan 2025, p.104]

Jamieson might be left with more questions than answers, but her talent for emotional incisions is beyond doubt. [Jan 2025, p.103]

On Héritage, they go back to the source, and prove there’s plenty of life to be celebrated. [Jan 2025, p.105]

This one lives up to the hype, producing acme-level chamber jazz and acknowledging Blue Note's history while pushing the label's narrative forward toward futurity. [Jan 2025, p.105]

Late in the year, it’s the most all-round glorious reissue of 2024. [Jan 2025, p.90]

A record of complex emotions and fine-grained nuance. [Jan 2025, p.105]

A hit/miss curio of a record. [Jan 2025, p.104]

Talking Heads: 77 is truly fascinating. From the demos and outtakes through the album to the live show, it demonstrates a young bad, without a route map, re-writing pop music. [Jan 2025, p.95]

Serious times call for serious records, which Franz Ferdinand have delivered with their sixth studio album. Well, sort of. Fear in all forms is examined on The Human Fear, but there's still that lightness of touch that marks them out as a band it's fun to dance to. [Jan 2025, p.102]

This anthemic approach will undoubtedly work in a live setting, tracks such as Flowers In The Rain ad=nd the Evocative I Will Set Fire To The House indicate a wide repertoire. Fascinating to see how they develop their sound next time round. [Jan 2025, p.105]

Moore's laconic vocal style serves every track well. [Jan 2025, p.104]

There's a certain amount of aggression here - see Purge, an homage to the horror film series - but otherwise Merciless is largely a toetapper rather than a headbanger. [Jan 2025, p.102]

The album's highlights range from toe-tapping big band swingers (Big John's Special) and serene Ballads (Tapestry For An Asteroid) to more Outre pieces like the epic Friendly Galaxy and the otherworldly Reflects Motion. [Jan 2025, p.92]

Its 21 affectingly overdub-free songs reveal an essential truth of The National in the 202s, that they're a band at the absolute height of their live powers. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

12 is a bright, fresh joy, lovingly tooled for pure uplift. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

An intriguing but ultimately underwhelming record. [Christmas 2024, p.131]

Halo Moon distils everything that makes them great on one handy album. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

Some of the best playing of his career. Essential listening. [Christmas 2024, p.121]

Another winner with their seventh album. A big part of its success is down to smart collaborations. [Christmas 2024, p.131]

Elusive but unerringly questing and beautiful, Camelot thinks bigger than any billboard. [Christmas 2024, p.130]

Highlights abound, but it's hard to beat the sorrowful strains of Double Business Bound and its swirl of piano and steel guitar, or the overhauled Tom Petty jangle of Taught By Experts. [Christmas 2024, p.133]

There are subtler, sometimes surprising, details lurking in the main maelstrom. Also in contrast to that cathartically apocalyptic racket, the duo have added some nice warm brass parts. [Christmas 2024, p.131]

An album that's one long masterstroke. [Christmas 2024, p.132]

This isn’t an album in the Simon & Garfunkel mould, a folk-tinged duo with a good-humoured foray into the past. There’s barely a guitar in sight, instead all violins and cellos, just a touch of electro going on amid the orchestrations that make it, at times, dark and moody, and always thoughtful and imaginative. The orchestrations are deftly arranged, far from simply a star singing with strings attached. [Christmas 2024, p.128]

Campbell'n'Lanegan-ish duet Driving Nowhere (with Pat Dam Smyth) could use more tension, but the guitar spiked likes of Daily Rituals and Ceremony sow determination and fortitude. [Dec 2024, p.109]

This new remix of the album’s original 11 songs is subtle rather than headline-grabbing, thanks to the sympathetic diligence of triple Grammy-winner Paul Hicks, a longtime friend of the Harrison family. That’s borne out by the softly-softly handling of the previously unheard outtakes, polished for public consumption but never at the expense of their embryonic intimacy. [Christmas 2024, p.123]

Once you’ve finished playing spot the difference it’s a blast. .... And the mono mixes have a vitality and punch often lacking from recent remixes. [Christmas 2024, p.120]

In terms of the original nine-track album, a new stereo mix is designed to bring a warmer ambience to proceedings, and it succeeds especially on The Night Comes Down’s clearly defined separations of May’s many multi-layered guitars, a fuller in-your-face theatricality to Freddie Mercury’s voice (on Great King Rat and Jesus most effectively), and more organically resonant drums throughout. .... This is a record that continues to impress as a groundbreaking hybrid of heavy rock, prog and glam. [Dec 2024, p.97]

The cumulative effect of the 81 tracks that make up Retrospective’s five themed discs – The Best Of Bryan Ferry, Compositions, Interpretations, The Bryan Ferry Orchestra, Rare And Unreleased – is to create less a timelessness than a no-time in which Ferry hangs suspended, a woman hovering over his shoulder… leaving, staying, it’s all the same to the man who’s observing the “in” crowd even as he stands within it, replaying its antics in the projection room of his mind. [Nov 2024, p.89]

For the Can-curious, a remarkable place to start. .... Thoroughly recommended. [Dec 2024, p.94]

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

Here's he's reimagining his own work, and not necessarily the best known. [Dec 2024, p.98]

It captures her on spine tinging versions of 60s mod club favourites. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Tillman sounds abundantly alive: flushed with wit and luminous melodies, his songcraft remains an inexhaustible pleasure. [Dec 2024, p.106]

With the hollering title track even lamenting astronomical energy bills, it seems Warmduscher have fuel left in the tank yet. [Dec 2024, p.109]

By the time the album ends with a sprawling I Don't Live Here Anymore, which boasts sparkling keyboards and chiming riffs the emotional catharsis is deeply satisfying. [Dec 2024, p.109]

This wide-ranging collection is a reminder of why Kim deal remains such a powerful inspiration. [Dec 2024, p.106]

It's a record built to last, from an artist both asserting his footing and opening himself wide, embracing the demands of changes big or small. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Community and self-realisation win out on Our Girl's sublime second album. [Dec 2024, p.108]

There's a tight band of bluegrass/country players and the music takes off accordingly. erudite picking alongside intelligent lyrics with subtle rock sensibility. [Dec 2024, p.107]

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

Gillespie's words can sound like platitudes when they're written down, but his sincerity and the music's sonic freshness and influence-exposing urgency elevate the material, evoking the Primal Scream of 30 years ago. [Dec 2024, p.104]

The quality doesn't let up. [Dec 2024, p.109]

Treated and more elaborately arranged vocals are the fore on Strawberry Hotel. [Dec 2024, p.109]

With the help of collaborators, showcases the full spectrum of a unique talent. [Dec 2024, p.109]

The buoyant Abigail and the jangly dream-pop of Some Sunny Day lend the album some welcome lightness in the face of the melancholy that we all have to endure at times. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Tracks like the clipped, infectious Zombie Love and strutting, preening Cool People show that their ability to write catchy hooks with a sharp edge remains undimmed. [Dec 2024, p.108]

While some songs are slow-builds - though alt-ballad I get Lost is delicately untouched - the likes of God Of Everything Else and You Will Come Home take on an overwhelming intensity at a stroke. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Witty, wise and wonderful. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Bright, nimble and eager, Someday, Now is a shape-shifting treat. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Ruari Meehan's nuanced production provides for a far more immersive listen. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Although Key possesses some lovely moments - an intrigue-filled Fire, the gothic synth-pop of My Right A.R.M., a tender World Without End - many of these re-dos possess a curious lack of energy. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Vocalist Maria McKee's pure, twangy holler takes centre-stage on the early Lone Justice setlist staple Rattlesnake Mama and a Benmont Trench-led swing through MC5's Sister Anne. [Dec 2024, p.107]

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

A perfect, if bittersweet, swansong. [Dec 2024, p.107]

The results exceed expectations. A feeling of spontaneity, bonhomie and effortless musicality informs every groove. [Dec 2024, p.107]

An album of fevered imagination and boundless musical daring. [Dec 2024, p.107]

Lyrics apart, the opening title track features lush orchestration and twinkling piano used to nice effect throughout. [Dec 2024, p.106]

The Canadian musician's addiction to discovering the new and unusual remains nothing less than compelling, although sometimes this results in truly great music (here that means Volume's dreamy house reinterpretation of MARRS' 1987 rave classic Pump Up The Volume, the albums standout) and other times the expansive sense of ambition doesn't achieve lift-off (such as Campfire's nebulous and hard to grasp electro-folk). [Dec 2024, p.106]

It's a beautiful album, finely written and exquisitely executed. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Oberst's lyrical palette bulges with literary references, Elon Musk critiques and confessional plaints, while spectral Chan Marshall duet All Threes hits a note of welcome restraint. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Although recorded with different producers in Mexico and Nashville, you can't hear the joins on Bridges' warm embraces. [Dec 2024, p.106]

An intimate, expansive take on Brit-folk influences, mapping unexpected detours before achieving a communal flush. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Amyl's best album yet is also their most varied, finding the messy dumb fun in a mad dangerous word. [Dec 2024, p.106]

It is sad and striking in beautiful waves. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Sun-dappled and introspective, O Avalanche is a delight. [Dec 2024, p.108]

Songs Of A Lost World is a straight-up, bona fide masterpiece. [Dec 2024, p.102]

In flickers of keenly inquisitive intelligence and lambent beauty, Patterns In Repeat puts any fears about parenthood and artistry softly yet surely to bed. [Nov 2024, p.98]

Ultimately, it's the live tracks fans are likely to return to most often, ranging from intimate solo simplicity to the ferocity of Crazy Horse in full gallop. [Nov 2024, p.95]

This is an album which doesn't reveal its secrets all at once, and instead invites you to spend time with it. [Nov 2024, p.101]

The fun again sometimes tips over into irritating self-indulgence. [Nov 2024, p.101]

This is soul-bearing at its most intriguing, the listener never quite sure of the root of the singer's malaise but nonetheless urging him to find his way to where he's going in one piece. [Nov 2024, p.101]

Bittersweet and heartfelt. [Nov 2024, p.101]

A magnificently moving elegy in musical form. [Nov 2024, p.101]

Amid choppy tales of panic attacks (En Forma) and break-ups (the Can't Stand Me Now-ish On My Own), Coffee's disarmingly breezy valentine to self-indulgence serves dreamy catharsis. [Nov 2024, p.100]

The more you add of yourself, the more of the classic song you risk losing, and this is emphatically homage, not reinvention. Diehard Hitchcock fans – are there any other kind? – will nevertheless devour. [Nov 2024, p.100]

It's the details, such as Joey Santiago's feisty guitar licks and Francis's unpredictable lyricism that steer the gentler material from the middle of the road. [Nov 2024, p.101]

The musical departures are oddly interesting. .... Compellingly underpinned by Thompson's precision thunder, Blind Eye and Can't Be Found are easily the most power-packed cuts. If only he could have elevated the whole album. [Nov 2024, p.100]

Reminiscent of Fela's work at its best. [Nov 2024, p.100]

If they skip between genres with less restlessness than on their best albums, the more focused precision presents its own strand of guile, with repeat plays revealing hidden depths. [Nov 2024, p.99]

That dance between light and shade is assisted by an Ian Broudie production which juxtaposes the jaunty with the jaundiced. All human life isn’t here – not quite – but the life that’s here is wonderfully human. [Nov 2024, p.99]

10 wonderfully intense songs. [Nov 2024, p.99]

The 25 tracks offered on Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-1965 vary from lost gems, through proficient approximations of hit-makers like Phil Spector, to throwaway misfires. [Nov 2024, p.95]

Goat continue to make some magical and mysterious music. [Nov 2024, p.99]

Despite the wide range of often contrasting material on offer it hangs together as an exceptionally unified and hugely accessible body of work. [Nov 2024, p.130]

While the album’s name and vintage of some of the tracks suggests a clearing of the decks, Cutouts is too cohesive, energetic and imaginative to feel like a mere odds’n’sods collection. Our beautiful world may well be melting, but at least The Smile are providing a fitting soundtrack. [Nov 2024, p.99]