The torch chanteuse of yore is still much in evidence, but with some pleasing detours into more varied terrain. [Aug 2024, p.105]

The results occasionally come within touching distance of essential. .... Yet more often than not it resembles a New York-flavoured spin in the retro coffee table house of Zero 7 or Lamb. [Aug 2024, p.105]

True, the stoner-rock Passengers interrupts the flow - but not for long. Ironically, it makes for Kasabian's most epic album since Empire 18 years ago. [Aug 2024, p.104]

My Light, My Destroyer is the work of a master storyteller, capable of inhabiting characters with real empathy and noticing evocative details. [Aug 2024, p.104]

Harmonics is another bold step in the world of the grown-up youth club. [Aug 2024, p.104]

X's unspools warm, rarefied variants on his meticulously maintained minimalism. [Aug 2024, p.103]

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]

The intimate piano ballad Poor Symmetry, indie-pop of Sign Of A Past Life and the anthemic Wild Geese, Wild Love (think Cat Power fronting War On Drugs) emphasise her versatility. [Aug 2024, p.103]

It’s a whole lot of matter for Mind, but it acts as a fascinating documentary, as does the extensive, detailed book. What are the takeaways? It’s like finding a hidden treasure in the middle of a catalogue that is well-known but only partially adored; Out The Blue, Aisumasen (I’m Sorry) and I Know (I Know) are deeply confessional and equal to anything Lennon has ever written. [Aug 2024, p.90]

The second disc hosts material that deemed "mellower". All that means is it's slower in tempo than the earlier tracks and still heavy as fuu-ck. [Jul 24, p.105]

From the very start, the listener is made to feel as if they're in the room with the band, privy to an unfiltered outpouring of creativity. [Jul 2024, p.106]

A remarkable and imaginative album. [Jul 2024, p.106]

There’s an ethereal feel, something that transcends the boundaries of folk, a gentleness yet something more, helped by the guitar of Richard.

The odd, bleeping internal monologue My Name Is Duglas (Don't Listen To What They Say) aside, it's classic Bandit country. [May 2024, p.102]

Heady stuff that pays imaginative tribute to the duo's shared Latin American diasporic heritage. [Jul 2024, p.105]

Miracle Focus testifies to the revivifying powers of curiosity and communion with invitingly expansive, epiphanic fervour. [Jul 24, p.107]

Among the highlights are Carla's Beads, with its enveloping synth swirls and ringing percussion, and the mellow ambient jazz of Bi-Location. [Jul 2024, p.107]

There's a decent hardcore punk song, Two Fists. Elsewhere, there's too much mid-tempo chug to make this album fully adrenalised. [Jul 2024, p.105]

The guitar-laden Switch and psychedelic Submarine are familiarly winning alternative pop. Everywhere else, Templeman bounces over into muscular funk, propelled by his new startling falsetto and the kind of meaty basslines that have kept Phoenix in business for 25 years. [Jul 2024, p.105]

This album digs beneath the taut skins of White's kit, charting a mutually invigorating relationship between player and instrument, alternating from visceral frolics to pointillist sensitivity at the drop of a beat. [Jul 2024, p.107]

He's ultimately birthed another milestone. [Jul 2024, p.107]

Dessner's patronage will hopefully propel her to the Radio 2 attention such consistently insistent, early evening festival potential singalongs deserve. [Jul 2024, p.104]

There's a lot to admire about Hovvdy's quiet wonder - and a lot to skip over too. [Jul 2024, p.105]

The album bristles with tunefulness and class. [Jul 2024, p.105]

Over the course of 12 bittersweet tracks, it becomes clearer and clearer just how lucky we are to be around for any time at all. [Jul 2024, p.105]

"Time's wasting out," she sings, but Below The Waste, cultivates a bracingly resourceful mindset. [Jul 2024, p.105]

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]

POPtical Illusion is another engaging set that rewards repeat plays on account of the inventive electronic textures and Cale's reflective, often politically tinged lyrics. [Jul 2024, p.104]

A rich and dense record that rewards repeated, attentive listening. Yet despite the lyrical prowess on display, it's the incredibly detailed soundscape that really impresses. ... Grant is well on the way on creating a musical language all his own. [Jul 2024, p.102]

In showing the workings behind the most important transformation of his career, Rock’n’Roll Star! underscores just what a remarkable thing Bowie achieved: this is the mortal man behind the extraterrestrial dressing, and it’s no less compelling for that.

Occasionally too impressionistic at the expense of a coherent song, Morton nonetheless races past standard traps of actors' musical diversions. [Jul 24, p.106]

An often-electrifying listen, full of surprise. Although rough and ready, Paul McCartney's ineluctable creativity shines through. [Jul 2024, p.97]

A few more typically sparse arrangement - as on What's Left To Lose, a standout that fades too early - might have leavened things. But long-time fans will not be disappointed. [Jun 2024, p.103]

Not her best, but never dull. [Jun 2024, p.103]

Veering between raw intimacy and a suffocating world-weary sigh, O'Brien mostly gets the balance right. [Jun 2024, p.103]

The album would have benefitted from a slightly wider variation in pace, with an additional up-tempo song or two. [Jun 2024, p.103]

A dynamic, bluesy set that energetically declares itself from the outset. [Jun 2024, p.103]

An album that embodies the punk energy his Tuareg band are able to marshal in a live setting. [Jun 2024, p.103]

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

One of 2024's evocatively cool finest. [Jun 2024, p.102]

It's mostly what could be called ballads, although with the mesmerising pop edge of something from the late 50s, all tinkling guitar and bobbling bass. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Murky, dour and troubled, Frog In Boiling water is a beautiful warning, but a warning nonetheless. [Jun 2024, p.101]

The mix of glinting guitars and sing-song vocals can risk evaporating, but there's plenty here to beguile and charm. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Her woozy baroque pop has always walked a delicate line between Kate Bush and Enya: here, it lapses into perfume-ad whimsy. [Jun 2024, p.101]

Where sparse electronics appear, they either lend a poppy, Neu!-like sheen to the downbeat 4316 or shroud Take This Poison in menace and foreboding. [Jun 2024, p.101]

McMahon's quivering tenor is a little mannered, but as the lush Round The World stretches its apocalyptic anxieties over nine shape-shifting minutes, you can't fault his questing ambition. [Jun 2024, p.101]

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

Butler isn't about to spoon-feed his listeners the answers to anything, though, and ultimately the most audacious trick Good Grief pulls off is in using veiled autobiography to frame portraits of the fragility of the human soul, which speaks to everyone. [Jun 2024, p.100]

The Big Decider spins and struts with the joie de vivre of old, statements of intent provided by crunchy opener Creeping On The Dancefloor and Pauline, another groove-infused witty ode to a difficult woman, cut from the same cloth as Valerie. [May 2024, p.105]

Close your eyes and you can easily forget this fella is 84. [May 2024, p.103]

Drunk and Sick Of Dreaming carry over Surrender's sophisticated playlist-friendly infectiousness, with Never Going Home's pared-back Nashville mood still as accomplished as it is catchy. [May 2024, p.105]

As with Robed In Rareness, the music here is insular, at times verging on the claustrophobic, though Butler again looks out to his wider network, granting features on all but one of the collection's seven track. [May 2024, p.105]

Naysayers might dismiss it all as derivative, but who cares when it's despatched with such confidence and an innate understanding of pop's rich grammar. [May 2024, p.103]

It took a while, but this album is certainly worth the wait. [May 2024, p.103]

Over When It's Over flirts with the dance floor while the hushed Whatever You Want is worthy of Tapestryeta Carole King, as a driven and articulate artist confidently finds her feet again. [May 2024, p.105]

One thing which has barely changed since their Psalm 69 peak is the Ministry formula of chugging metal machine grooves, newsreel samples and stuck-pig screaming. But, when it works, they can still make the apocalypse sound fun. [May 2024, p.103]

An enthralling spiritual jazz manifesto. [May 2024, p.93]

Throughout the album, vibrant melodies and guitars come accompanied by gnawing doubts and dense, agitated settings. Even the dreamy Capricorn wears its soundscape like a shroud, while Hope's plea for release evokes The National at their most elegantly fraught. [May 2024, p.105]

Their name might reflect their roots and imply tedious student japes await, but in capturing so many club moods, Porij are one of heartfelt pop's best recent examples. [May 2024, p.104]

Forgiveness Is Yours is without question the band's best album to date, full of surprising diversions and even more surprising musical ideas that sometimes border on the sophisticated. Even though there's little uniformity, it hangs together nicely and is always intriguing, like a series of vignettes or short stories. [May 2024, p.104]

There's a floating eeriness to The Night Sky while near-title track Traveller Of Time & Space is a dreamy, wistful wonder. [May 2024, p.103]

On their 15th attempt, producer James Ford rides the faders and filters to shape Chris Lowe's synths into the perfect balance of modernity and timelessness. [May 2024, p.103]

Hutchings fashions a series of pastoral soundscapes dominated by breathy flutes. It's not all a case of sonic stasis and folky bucolic minimalism, though, as Body To Inhabit proves, lit up by rapper Elucid's verbal fireworks. [May 2024, p.105]

Another crack compilation from Analog Africa. [May 2024, p.99]

This both feels and swings. [May 2024, p.105]

While older and greyer, Les Savy Fav's fun, raucous and occasionally silly sound remains largely intact. [May 2024, p.103]

The more the album continues, the more these become influences absorbed and owned, the sound of a band not so much reinventing as realigning themselves. [Apr 2024, p.100]

Frontwoman Beth Ditto, as close to a truly classic soul singer as alternative music has served up in the 21st century, is on sumptuous form, at turns forceful and tender as she contemplates love and self-affirmation. [Apr 2024, p.103]

It's a sleek, hypnotically danceable collection of nicely-crafted tunes; a pan-Afro-pean pop record undercut with electronic ingenuity. [Apr 2024, p.102]

James sound like a band bursting with life here. [Apr 2024, p.105]

Wherever you listen, ideas accrue: given a gleaming production by Tunng's Mike Lindsay, Springs ... contains outsider art-pop multitudes. [Apr 2024, p.103]

A blissful, immersive listen. [Apr 2024, p.104]

It's an often dense listen, but with enough light and shade to ease the passage of its makers social conscience lyrics. [Apr 2024, p.103]

Their legs haven't gone entirely, but this feels more weathered warhorse than Warhol. [Apr 2024, p.103]

Her music and mesmerising voice also alight upon jazz-folk (Get Wise), sparse rock (Blood Bond) and orchestral indie-rock (Desire Path), building a positively cinematic collection which speaks softly but firmly of the state of the world today. [Apr 2024, p.105]

It's the sound of an endlessly curious mind in love with the possibilities of sonics and melody and a very welcome reinvention. [Apr 2024, p.103]

The result, which she deemed an "experiment in collaboration", is Lenker's most relatable to date. [Apr 2024, p.103]

At times it's near pure pop--the slow, echoing Queen Of Hearts and the synth sensations of Honey while Superstar sees the voice soaring above an electronica rhythm. Self Love is a blistering guitar rocker while the near five-minute title track switches from balladry to boisterous roars. A fitting finale. [Mar 2024, p.103]

Neither classic comeback nor addled disaster, it's hopefully a stepping stone to again becoming a functioning exciting live act and more productive studio band. [Mar 2024, p.105]

Overall, the album's sense of play is strong and, like its predecessor, the good ultimately wins out. [Mar 2024, p.102]

A welcome return to form. [Mar 2024, p.105]

A spare but slippery showcase of spontaneous-seeming instinct. [Mar 2024, p.105]

Their seventh effort might start with short, low-key ballad Bluebird but that turns out to be a complete misnomer for an album chock-full of effervescent indie anthems and buoyant guitars. [Mar 2024, p.103]

While there's no shortage of ideas buzzing around these tracks they often have a tendency to come across as incomplete; meanders down sonic and lyrical avenues that fall just short of feeling whole. [Mar 2024, p.103]

It rattles along at a fine old pace, awash with cheek and charm, and is genuinely touching on paean to lifelong friendships The Lads. [Mar 2024, p.103]

Echoes of the past but very much of today. [Mar 2024, p.105]

Their 19th studio album captures the dynamism of Firepower but tweaks the structure a little so that the material is no less heavy but is perhaps less predictable. [Mar 2024, p.103]

Krieger still has an ear for organists, and moody interplay with Ed Roth, as on the track Samosas & Kingfishers, remains his comfort zone. More genteel than their name would suggest, The Savages are nonetheless consummate players, with textured grooves at their dexterous fingertips. [Mar 2024, p.104]

The brisk Don't Forget You're Mine harbours a dicier wake-up call ("A good slap is what you need"), though the Wurlitzer-enhanced La Nageuse Nue reunites with The Choir to advocate "a cleansing": becalmed advice for a troubled world on a coolly composed album of healing and harmony. [Mar 2024, p.105]

From glam-tinged art-rock to spellbinding chamber-soul, this ever-elegant examination of the heart and the mind is like Bukowski rifling through priceless musical boxes and releasing a thousand hummingbirds. .... Magnificent heaven. [Mar 2024, p.103]

The bleakness can be oppressive but as Wolfe sings of "wings on our lungs" on the hymnal Place In The Sun, her voice takes flight with commanding power. [Feb 2024, p.103]

Between fleeting romances and the railroad, the result serves robust snapshots of self-discovery in resilient motion: nodding to the climax of Titanic in closer Ogallala, The Past ... clings to life in the face of loss. [Feb 2024, p.101]

Testing her vocals as much as her songwriting, Howard emerges as one of the boldest talents around. [Feb 2024, p.101]

Loss Of Life feels more at ease with itself. Happily, though, none of this comes at the expense of the band's exploratory urges. [Feb 2024, p.102]

Wherever you listen, these are some of the loveliest examples of Lytle's wryly empathetic story-songs yet, with widescreen closer Nothin' To Lose teasing at potential future attractions. Long may his wav roll. [Feb 2024, p.101]

The rhythm guitars remain acoustic and there are country-style embellishments from piano and pedal-steel players. The overall impression, though, is that the circles in the Venn diagram of Mascis' solo and Dino works are overlapping more than ever. [Feb 2024, p.101]

Wall Of Eyes sounds like a band going from strength to strength. [Feb 2024, p.100]

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]