The music simultaneously remains as era-defining, self-effacing, future-thinking and retro as it ever did.

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

There are some familiarly sunny pop moments on here, including Hearts Are For Breaking, which trundles along like a Deborah Harry solo single, and the rather nice Take The Silver, a nu-folk single in the making, featuring The Rails and including a brilliant three-part vocal chorus.

Feels Like A New Morning is an apt title, because verve and a freshly recovered confidence seep from the Blow Monkeys’ eighth studio set.

Their best--and most radical-sounding--LP to date.

Pritchard is at his self-deprecatory best on the witty but barbed break-up song Yeah Yeah Girl, while producer/guitarist Tim Bradshaw deserves credit for so fearlessly jettisoning the indie comfort blanket on the stylish, Chris Isaak-esque noir of Posters.

The ways in which Overjoyed thrill are as endless as the band are absurd and implausible. Overjoyed is literally amazing.

The gamut of textures and patterns he produces might be surprising, even off-putting, unless you’ve heard Bourne’s treatments of piano and cello on his beguiling debut studio effort, 2011’s Montauk Variations.

The sound overall holds the germ of the sort of ominous, steady-paced material that goes over well in stadium support slots.

All the members’ parent groups are associated with dramatic music, but arguably in quite different styles, and the first few numbers are what you’d expect Editors to produce if they got hold of previous collaborator Goswell and placed her inappropriately high in the mix.

There’s an intriguing mix of self-penned tunes (Something Familiar with its country-soul undertones), cool covers (Jackson C Frank’s Milk & Honey), and historic reinventions, from lute ballad to World War One elegy.

A fitting tribute and a welcome opportunity to hear Miller’s unreleased songs and performances.

It’s in the contrasts between the overtly camp, the most extreme squelch, and the space afforded to the smoother jams that Mr Dynamite really excels. It’s a success because the vocals, possibly the most blatant things here, are not what remain buzzing in your head after repeated listens. More indelible is the mood, the ambience even.

Founder guitarist Pye Hastings and long-serving multi-instrumentalist Geoff Richardson lead a new line-up through 10 tracks that tick many boxes without threatening the iconic status of 70s classics such as In The Land Of Grey And Pink.

It's a beautiful, soothing record. [Sep 2024, p.133]

With the hollering title track even lamenting astronomical energy bills, it seems Warmduscher have fuel left in the tank yet. [Dec 2024, p.109]

Theirs is a sometimes hazy, sometimes pristine blend of guitars and harmonies which respects the succour of story-telling and implies empowerment without heavy-handedness. [May 2025, p.105]

Miran deep dives into ambient territory. [Feb 2026, p.102]

Allow Embraced For A Second As We Die to wash over you and it's superior AOR. .... Given time though, Bergman's melodies and phrasing come to fore, revealing the strength of her writing. [Mar 2026, p.102]

These 11 tracks attack from a more humanistic point of view, rather than a didactic one, especially on The Information, an emphatic antidote to this awful AI-addled age, the highly-charged Organoid and the gorgeously dreamy Can't Lose. [Apr 2026, p.106]

Most of the album is sterling work, with the bass alternately throbbing and growling and the beats crisp and sometimes technoid. The pair’s global influences add extra spice, only meandering into average territory on an ambient dub breather at the halfway point.

Hypercaffium Spazzin is a great collection of their trademark short and snappy songs.

The feel is desolate, doomed and desperate combining their hallowed 60s Texan psych with 80s and 90s influences. If not instant, it’s a grower.

The predictability of Alone In The Universe is its strongest suit, these are all cast-iron songs that will sit on an ELO retrospective beamed down from that spaceship in 10538 and nobody would imagine they were released 40 years after their golden age.

In attempting to circumvent the human mind, Everything Everything have found their heart, and made their finest album yet.

Though not as earth-shattering as their live shows, it’s a short, sharp shock nonetheless.

Lead single Feel So Great doses up on the psych medicine and, with many a song culminating in a wig-out, Natural Facts boasts a grubby sheen that Cosmic Cash was missing.

Ghost Parade and the sustained swell of Giant (which comes on like a less glacial take on Zeit-era Tangerine Dream) are frustratingly low-watt affairs, while Wray--featuring atonal viola from Mr Bungle/Bill Frisell collaborator Eyvind Kang--resembles the abstract strokes of Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock rather than doom-laden trailblazers such as Earth or The Melvins.