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]