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]

Jake undoubtedly knows his way around a catchy melody, even if he seems reluctant to break fresh ground any substantive distance from his previously established comfort zone. [Nov 2024, p.99]

Singer Vanessa Briscoe-Hay adds an arch local flavour on Dormant Til Explosion, but it's the Beautiful fingerpicked atmospherics of Armchair View which bring new colours to add in, to last the course for the next two decades. [Nov 2024, p.100]

It's a hard-hitting statement album that raises the bar the band set with their previous offering to an insanely higher level. The grooves seem deeper, the horns punchier and the hooks catchier. [Oct 2024, p.100]

Far from a mere collection of diffuse songs with big voices upfront, the result is a properly wrought album of dynamic contrasts, its singers fully committed to Marshall’s sense of big-rock drama. There’s darkness within, for sure, but it’s also a record that knows the value of letting the light in. [Aug 2024, p.102]

Look for signs of grief if you must, but Sparhawk's return is a dramatic adventure on any terms. [Oct 2024, p.103]

Odyssey finds the ambitious Garcia pushing herself harder, taking on the role of orchestrator as well as composer, resulting in a magnificent large canvas project where her molten saxophone melodies are framed by the lush but never syrupy strings of the Chineke! Orchestra. [Oct 2024, p.101]

If the title track is effectively Bowie's It's No Game (No 1) on steroids and Druantia has you checking the label copy for an Eno credit, there's an intensity of commitment and a density of sound to both that wrestles you into submission. Things let up on redemption ballad I Belong To. [Oct 2024, p.103]

By the time it’s [Ballad Of A Thin Man is] last played (Disc 25, Inglewood, California) it has the feel of the pivotal point in the entire set. It’s an illustration of those moments when the unavoidable repetition of songs serves a genuine purpose, where the listeners’ patience/tolerance is rewarded with a sense they’re party to something truly human; a living, breathing entity that shifts in mood or tone influenced by the size or shape of the room and the response from the people witnessing it first-hand in that particular room.

The Venezuela-born, Indiana-based Rui has plenty to say here and delivers it with a compelling, articulate set. [Oct 2024, p.101]

None of the dozen track outstay their welcome and it's nice to hear Lower putting smiles on faces again instead of pondering life's woes. [Oct 2024, p.103]

For all their upstart imitators, The Jesus Lizard return as the kings of the scene. [Oct 2024, p.101]

The music boasts a crunchy (but pleasantly sweet) production sheen that owes a debt to classic British power pop. [Oct 2024, p.103]

Woof. is almost overwhelmingly of the moment, yet destined to stick around. [Oct 2024, p.101]

Undeniably well-crafted as the hooks are, over a whole album they sound hollow and forced. [Oct 2024, p.101]

It's an album that shows, beyond any doubt, that Jon Hopkins is a singular electronic talent not bound by either his past or expectations. [Oct 2024, p.101]

Might be his best effort yet. [Oct 2024, p.102]

It's certainly a feast for the ears, and possibly the most satisfying listen since 2011 masterpiece Underneath The Pine. [Oct 2024, p.103]

If music that sounds as if it might come off the rails at any moment is your cup of tea, this album is for you. [Oct 2024, p.103]

Pom Poko follow 2021's jazz-tinged Cheater with more straightforward, earworm-y songwriting. [Oct 2024, p.103]

If Common himself has never quite made it into such rarefied company [Prince, Biggie, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr.], the album acknowledges that dependability is a desirable asset in turbulent times. [Oct 2024, p.100]

Beabadoobee's most charming yet. [Oct 2024, p.100]

Born Horses was a slow process – Donahue compares the patient approach to recognising the “statue already inside the marble” – but it has given rich rewards; a change in focus that remains unmistakably Mercury Rev. [Oct 2024, p.98]

Their first since Ghosteen is rich in the singer’s blend of archness and romantic yearning, while his simpatico cohorts’ dynamics throb and tingle. [Oct 2024, p.100]

Against the odds, it is worth the wait. .... The 12 new songs mostly recall the commercial peaks of Mind Bomb and Dusk, and there’s a comforting, analogue hum to the proceedings. A Johnny Marr-esque lick here, and a Bernard Herrmann horn stab there: all help create the warm, dusty sound instantly recognisable as The The.

This is Amy's album, wild, sometimes snarling songs that, with a twinkle in the eye, namecheck everyone from Warren Beatty to Marianne Faithfull to Hannibal Lecter. .... Very enjoyable. [Sep 2024, p.133]

It is a contemporary sounding album full of songs worth revisiting, out of love, not some old Floydian care of duty. [Sep 2024, p.130]

The storytelling is more linear and less elliptical than we might expect from Anderson, though any restraint in the storytelling services the cinematic scope of the project, where soundscapes segue with ease as vertiginous strings swoop and dive, and Anohni provides vocal interjections. [Sep 2024, p.130]

These ruminations on love form what could be described as a grownup concept album, with the Norwegian singer using all her experience and expertise wisely and reassuringly. [Sep 2024, p.133]

Highlights come thick and fast, but toe-tapping and self-referential opener Enjoy The Ride, the 70s funk of 1972 and the exquisitely expressive Let it Burn do a good job of framing this exciting release. [Sep 2024, p.130]

It's a beautiful, soothing record. [Sep 2024, p.133]

Some of their best, most expansive music yet. [Sep 2024, p.132]

Gillan isn't quite the octave-busting vocalist of old, while his lyrical subject matter often recalls the laddishness of his erstwhile self-named group. [Sep 2024, p.131]

A major talent continues to flourish. [Sep 2024, p.131]

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.

While their familiar stargazing disco again dominates, the songwriting is at its sharpest as fresh influences add bite. [Aug 2024, p.103]

File under late and inessential. [Jul 2024, p.101]

It all adds up to a stylish album that rolls back the years yet sounds right up to date without ever deviating from what Gouldman knows and does so well. We have no notes for you, Graham Gouldman. [Aug 2024, p.100]

The opening Introduction To Why I Did It is a pocket masterpiece, a lyrical meditation on lost smalltown 80s indie youth, but often this musically satisfying album feels wanting for more of the story which inspired it. [Aug 2024, p.105]

Infused with ennui and a fascination with death, with a sense of teenage mopiness hitting the listener like waves of passive aggression coming through a bedroom wall. Nevertheless, it's not without its charm. [Aug 2024, p.105]

The music on II is undoubtedly a gorgeous trip, but it's a sound which many producers have caught up with in the last decade. [Aug 2024, p.104]

It's introspection with a keen ear for accessible melodies that help sweeten the bitter pills with which he's self-medicating. [Aug 2024, p.105]