Much of it goes beyond kitsch. With a favourable wind and a Rushent, Horn or Moroder at hand, some of these guys (it mostly is guys) could have made it. [Sep 2025, p.98]

While the subject matter is never less than serious, Carving The Stone can be commended for its boldness in addressing it without losing sensitivity, conveyed through Balfe's skillful lyricism. [Sep 2025, p.103]

The rhythms are as timeless as they are tight. [Nov 2025, p.103]

In the extensive sleeve notes, Gedge, with music writer Mark Beaumont, offers valuable insight into the songs that made the cut. [Nov 2025, p.98]

Their innate feel for a hit pop chorus is deployed to best effect on Dearest Amygdala and the soaring It's Chemical!. [Dec 2025, p.100]

A fun, compelling caricature of 80s heavy rock which will be enjoyed by those whose favourite version of Iron Maiden is when they really go overboard. [Dec 2025, p.101]

A solo album full pf easygoing blues, folk and rock that boasts insightful observations about aging and forging forward while navigating the modern world. [Dec 2025, p.102]

The compelling results span creepy lounge music, homebrewed pop, suicide folk, the attempted channelling of Simply Red and a lo-fi glam piece that's about as sexy as the dimmed lights scene from I'm Alan Partridge. [Dec 2025, p.101]

The result is a truly international Americana classic. [Feb 2026, p.100]

A dense, lush and melodic blend of krautrock, psych pop, art-rock, dubby soundscaping and other styles that will forever be cooler than Keanu Reeves' icetray. [Apr 2026, p.107]

This fine album is further evidence of the innovative artistry of contemporary folk-related performers. [May 2026, p.101]

Self-produced, the accompaniment is lush, woody, spatial, and rich in unexpected details. [Jun 2025, p. 101]

A savvy set oozing with all the assuredness and class one might suspect from a bunch of wisened sixty-somwting. [May 2026, p.102]

The texture of the more desolate songs, like Pegasi, the Americana-tinged Simon Says and the folky gospel of Songs Of Old is where the soul of the album seems to really reside, but when the two sides of Hoop’s talent come together, as on Unsaid, it has a magic all of its own.

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]

Returning to their core of stupid fun. [Jun 2025, p.105]

It’s an album blazing with a refulgent light that illuminates the darkness. Ultimately, it’s a cathartic celebration of life co-created by someone who’s survived a traumatic experience. More importantly, it shows how heartbreak, suffering and tragedy can be refashioned into transcendent art.

Live In Paris 2014 is a superb introduction for the uninitiated, as well as a welcome souvenir for the experienced. Warm, potent, invigorating and liberating--it’s difficult to imagine a better live band existing this side of the Sahara.

Dressed to impress. [Dec 2025, p.103]

Another career highpoint for Wagner and co.

Jammed out and demonstrating real chemistry, Time To Die is perhaps best appreciated as one piece of music and proves both atmospheric and immersive in the extreme. The band have lost none of their twisted genius in the four years since their last full-length.

Some will rhapsodise about the songs of angels, while others will feel that the most dangerous and angry superbug mutations are still found in the filthiest, most chaotic places.

It’s the longer pieces that really glisten, and they come in several forms. ... Moore’s band, it should be noted, sound increasingly powerful, growing ever groovier and more confident with each release. Their guitars may have unusual tunings, but the players are certainly in-tune with one another, mentally and musically speaking. In summary, cacophonies ahoy!

The musical palette has broadened, the lyrics sharpened. [Mar 2026, p.104]

At times it is bracing. .... But the piano ballads are often delightful. [Mar 2026, p.103]

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

With style, charm and feeling, Lekman's lush valentines to love songs revel in all they survey. [Oct 2025, p.131]

Live At The Cellar door could have been a consolidation of the year’s achievements for Neil, instead it’s proof that he couldn’t stay still.

Arguably the darkest of the Merge albums thus far, Patch the Sky is a consuming album of blazing chords, heavenly melody and personal torment. No-one does intelligent, meaningful rock like Bob Mould.

It won’t be to everyone’s tastes, but if you like your music to sound as if it could soundtrack a coming of age montage in a particularly gloomy John Hughes film, you found your gal.

Ultimately, Woods deserves the hype, though more consistency would deliver fully on her talent.

Melodically bewitching throughout, Nadler’s vocals are as nuanced and strong as Dunn’s production.

It’s a fabulous voyage that delights at every unexpected turn.

Their first live album captures Brownstein and her bandmates Corin Tucker, Janet Weiss and new touring member Katie Harkin ripping rapidly through a selection of their strongest material, the sabbatical years having drained none of their finesse or ferocity.

Home-recorded between 1989-90 at Jowe Head’s Stoke Newington flat, Beautiful Despair finds Head and TVPs mainstay Dan Treacy gamely working through a clutch of the latter’s prickly and pallid compositions.

This is very grown-up pop music; awash with the memorable hooks and lyrical dexterity we’d expect from Costello, with layer after layer of fascinating melodic conceits and themes.

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

The Navigator knows in which direction to head. Hurray indeed.

[Superchunk] crafted an album of effervescent ebullience, fusing joy and sadness with a skill that built on their two decades of existence.

Produced by Daniel Lanois and newly mixed by Glyn Johns, there’s a more soulful side to Griffin on the shuffling lament Sooner Or Later, while One More Girl veers towards the folky introspection of early Joni Mitchell.

He delivers 10 killer tracks which, defined by horns, organ and a defying-the-years-vocal-hit from Bryant, span the spirited How Do I Get There? and commanding One Ain’t Enough to the compelling A Nickel And A Nail and swooning Something About You.

Konnichiwa isn’t just the sound of young Britain, but a bar-raising example of just how creative UK music can be.

Shauf’s musical ability is impressive, tackling all but the strings, but his vocal tone, much like a bore at a party, is unwavering, Elliott Smith-esque and never with the variety you’d expect meeting 10 new individuals.

It’s all very pretty and pleasant, but whereas Smith Westerns burned with the emotions of their songs, Whitney seem rather more detached from theirs. Which, as easy-going as these 10 songs are, renders them more as temporary, unconvincing background music. It’s nice for a while, but their effects soon give way to the winds of truth and reality.

The contents, which comprise the first volume of the Lou Reed Archival Series, are of enormous cultural significance – fascinating, extraordinary, at times revelatory.

Bejar's MO remains a richly cinematic pleasure: alluring, allusive and absorbing. [May 2025, p.103]

Five albums in, These New Puritans are still finding new ways to startle and surprise. [Jun 2025, p.104]

This reissue fails to add much to entice fans other than packaging.... Anybody hoping for a dramatic discovery of a high-quality version of this long-bootlegged show [ Live At Second Fret, Philadelphia, 1970] will be disappointed; it’s hard to discern any real improvement from the frustratingly bad quality of the circulated boot.

For all the exuberant looseness of their recordings, most remain essentially song-based, skilfully produced and slyly focused.

A rare example of a collaborative album that reflects well on everybody involved.

As ever, a feeling abides of Cocker looking around him at the stuff of life – parenthood, divorce, marriage, loss, religion, class – and turning it into relatable and (yep) grown-up pop music. [Jun 2025, p.100]

Great vocals are a bit of a given here. The real treat is in discovering just how eclectic Gargoyle has turned out to be.

After the lengthy wait, at over 20 tracks and about an hour long, Wildflower doesn’t skimp on quantity even if it does resemble a pent-up outpouring of everything The Avalanches have completed (or at least legally cleared), rather than a meticulously curated collection.

There are strong post-rock and metal overtones throughout the record, but it doesn’t pigeonhole itself; the influence of minimalist music can be detected in Stetson’s playing, and the album is not short of rhythmic swagger.

The Prodigal Son is easily one of the most satisfyingly focused, complete records he’s ever made.

It’s the real deal, the meat of his canon and bearing rewards for fans old and new.

Even if stronger records would follow, the fuel that energised them is on often glorious show here. [Nov 2025, p.95]

As The Love Continues inevitably finds purchase on our tumultuous moment in its deftly summoned suggestions of sorrow and fear, resilience, and close-guarded hope.

Ultimately, The Source, offers indisputable proof that the man from Lagos is thriving in what are supposed to be his twilight years. Like a vintage bottle of Château Lafite, he just seems to improve with each passing year. Long may he continue to do so.

The quality of the songs is uniformly excellent, the performances electric and, moreso than ever, Holland’s vocals are a drawling, tightrope-walking treat as she veers between lust and heartbreak with real abandon.

The theme of loss crops up regularly in the lyrics, as well. Loss of what? You name it. Sleep. Youth. Innocence. Life. Looks. The list goes on. None of this is to say that Here We Go Crazy doesn’t still rock hard, however. [Mar 2025, p.

The duo’s drone-driven proclivities loosen these tunes from their secular shackles, freeing them from the earthly confines of time and place.

A fine testament to one of soul’s major labels, and a must-have.

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]

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]

Among the standouts are the restless Keep Going, which evokes Miles Davis' avant-funk phase; the pugnacious Panamanian Fight Song; and the mellow mindfulness of Vibrate Higher. [Jun 2026, p.90]

The erstwhile Felt and Denim frontman, the innately enigmatic Lawrence, is doing his best work right here and right now.

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]

Urgent, uncompromising, intelligent--Stick In The Wheel are the bristles on the clean broom the UK folk scene badly needs.

It’s a testament to the quality of the music on this reissue of a private press obscurity that it manages to live up to, if not transcend, its captivating backstory.

There’s not a sound out of place or misstep, just swooning narcotic allure and bad attitude throughout what will be one of the year’s major debuts.

The music is played with laidback precision, immaculately arranged and produced with a consistently warm vibe.

It makes for warm, complex but ultimately rewarding listening--the forboding swell of Songs Of The Marvels, the smartly rollicking The Angry Laughing God--and is the sound of muscles being gently but confidently flexed.

Anohni is at her very best when rawly cracking over glacial blasts of percussion.

Vocally, Williams experiments more than ever before, almost to the point of jazzy improvisation; she drawls, mutters and often leaves phrases hanging in the air, at times reminiscent of Mary Margaret O’Hara. It’s a welcome development and helps to make the album feel like her most accomplished in many years.

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]

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

The band lace all 14 tracks from Psychocandy with attitude, adrenaline and volume: their collective belligerence peaking during Never Understand and the relentless metallic KO of Inside Me.

There’s an easy charm about the whole project that lends it a robust confidence.

Even kids who don’t like rock’n’roll might find this infectious invitation hard to resist.

The Mirror radiates a collaborative spirit if curiosity, seeking - and finding - wonder and mystery in the everyday. [Mar 2025, p.103]

God’s Favourite Customer leaves the over-wrought and possibly over-thought days of Pure Comedy in its slipstream in return for something just that bit purer. True, the fun days of I Love You, Honeybear et al may be gone, but what a sacrifice if this is what we get in return.

Sublimely crafted, incredibly well-played, there are all the reference points, yet it never sounds like a composite of old glories. The intelligence, urgency and immediacy of his 32nd album are a most welcome surprise.

Tthis dark horse of a debut isn’t just vastly superior to most of the recycled indie landfill swilling around--it’s one of the most emotionally-charged guitar-based debuts to be unleashed over the past 12 months.

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

PUP’s ability to enliven a tired genre with an abundance of ideas and exuberance is a small but exceptional feat.

Futurology is a much more polished and decidedly odd record featuring some of the band’s most enjoyably gonzo work since debut Generation Terrorists, as well as their most forwardthinking music to date.

This album bristles with anger, desperation and disbelief. Hopeful resilience is occasionally brought to the fore as well, and guest backing vocalists from acts including The Magnetic Fields are on hand to help Superchunk feel less adrift and alone.

Harding’s delivery is unique, her range from the deepest velvet to the most discordant cry; her enunciation infusing every syllable with her tortured soul. ... Simply stunning.

Trixie’s bears many of the hallmarks the group would, a few years later, become celebrated for. Several hooks and melodies offer up the kind of earworms that helped establish Squeeze as one of the UK’s most dependable and radio-friendly singles bands, and there is already an astonishing maturity to Difford’s lyrics, often taking the form of poignant character studies. [Feb 2026, p.98]

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

The album's experimental second half verges perilously on sketchy, but serene motorik closer Space Station Mantra offers a finely modulated sow of its maker's tastes and instincts. [Mar 2025, p.103]

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

[The] third album's title is a funfair metaphor for life - sometimes scary, sometimes cathartic. The record stands firm in between. [Jul 2025, p.103]

His voice remains distinctive though, and like all his records, Goths is worth hearing.

Pop music at its very brightest.

Standards, therefore, is gloriously, pertinently verbose, slurping like a horse from the wellspring of inspiration.

13 glides fluently from the Russ Ballard-ish Chew Nails to the funky Crossfyre, delicious dub-pop of standout Keep Calling Me (Baby) and Beck-ish squelch funk of That's Rap. [May 2026, p.103]