While the album (understandably) feels fragile in spots - Furman's falsetto vocals in particular exude sensitivity - Goodbye Small head bolsters its serious subject matter with sturdy, gorgeous musical statements. [Aug 2025, p.103]

Barnes and a cast of collaborators rebuild tracks powerfully and atmospherically using free jazz, hip hop, drone, acid funk, breakbeat and ghetto house, Barnes using a mix of rapping, sprechgesang and soulful falsetto, to create a powerfully atmospheric album. [Aug 2025, p.103]

It's a metaphor for absence, loneliness and disconnection, which Harding explores via eleven songs whose retro soul feel is enhanced by Steve Hackman's lavishly elegant string arrangements. [Oct 2025, p.131]

The result is low-key and likeable. [Dec 2025, p.101]

They unleash 12 songs driven by earnest vocals, fuzz-tinged riffs and steady grooves. If there's a quibble, Selling A Vibe is often cohesive to the point of being monotonous. [Jan 2026, p.101]

They whack the volume up to 11 million, and warp familiar songs with a blend of manic posturing and slick postering. [Mar 2026, p.105]

Great stuff. [Mar 2026, p.105]

This is their finest work to date.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds release a live album recorded for the radio station in an intimate venue. It must have been something for the lucky few present, but this document doesn’t quite do the job.

A fraught album that reaches out furiously for release, forming a push-pull of pressure and release around the band’s defining attributes: Tucker’s tumultuous vocals and Brownstein’s livid guitar.

Certain tracks are closer to the power ballad moments of Skunk Anansie. Spellling's vocal skills remain impressive as ever. [Apr 2025, p.103]

With all those components in place, the results could have been properly astonishing, instead of only admirable.

In the absence of a live album, these re-recordings with a band including son-of- John Cody offer loving snapshots of Carpenter’s reckoning with his track record, here covering the years between 1974’s goofy Dark Star and 1998’s macho Vampires.

A solidly satisfying set.

The Colour In Anything is wall-to-wall longing for old flames and tales of relationships in freefall. It’s also infinitely beautiful; a meshing of gloomy piano and club-ready sounds that show Blake still can’t quite be pinned down.

Previous looks to companionship and melody as bulwarks, from Talk To Me Talk To Me’s “ecstasy of company” to Come On Home’s buoyant spritz and A World Without You’s show of constancy.

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]

They have that whole male/female duality down to a tee as well. It’s just that a few more sonic peaks and troughs wouldn’t go amiss.

Liam inhabits a range of oddball characters throughout, making it tricky to determine which are closest to his real self, but that hardly seems to matter when the results are as dreamy and diverse as this.

Night Life is enigmatic, entertaining "dark" rock which will thrill those too young to be familiar with the work of Psychedelic Furs, Sisters of Mercy or Depeche Mode. [Apr 2025, p.102]

While not an explicitly political record, Omnion is nevertheless the right one for Butler and crew to have made in 2017.

Album highlight Cumbia De Donde, featuring Spanish guitarist Amparo Sanchez, is a goofy Mariachi riot that manages to incorporate odd, cartoonish electronic elements to great effect. The flipside is their increased tendency towards clichéd, characterless attempts at straight-down-the-line MOR.

It’s a real coming of age for them as their songs, emerging from woodshedding sessions with producer Richard Swift in a studio in Rodeo, New Mexico, are spontaneous, immediate and really hit home.

Pinballing between modern fright and fervent fight, I Can Feel You... exults in the thrill of self-determined discovery.

It’s a heartfelt, human and inspired way of celebrating Haggard’s work.

Far from instant, spectral in feel and altogether dark in tone, The Bride is a challenge--although one with glorious pay-offs. Fans expecting the poppier sheen of Daniel or What’s A Girl To Do? might be disappointed, its treasures lie just beneath its surface.

On the whole Ape is a chilled listen. It’s glorious that Banhart has found this high watermark plateau so far into his career, especially when you remember he was once in danger of becoming the one-time token hippy at the party.

If the album’s remainder veers from hit to ho-hum, the Death In Vegas-ish bass pulse and deep-immersion dream-techno of Me Swimming offer clear hits of hypnotic electronica.