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]