It contains some of the band’s most ambitious and thought-provoking songs.

Citizen Zombie is more disciplined and linear than its epochal predecessors, yet it also reveals that its creators remain a force to be reckoned with.

Your Favorite Toy is more a reaffirmation of the joys of rock'n'roll as an outlet for catharsis. [Jun 2026, p.101]

Gorgeously sepulchral pieces such as Beste Freunde and Glasterlenspiel are perfectly suited to the church where they were recorded as longer improvisations to be edited down, suspending time as they hang in hauntingly contemplative reverie, which is still breaking boundaries. But, in a perfect world, it might even mark Roedelius’ commercial breakthrough.

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]

There's a decent hardcore punk song, Two Fists. Elsewhere, there's too much mid-tempo chug to make this album fully adrenalised. [Jul 2024, p.105]

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]

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]

Oberst's lyrical palette bulges with literary references, Elon Musk critiques and confessional plaints, while spectral Chan Marshall duet All Threes hits a note of welcome restraint. [Dec 2024, p.106]

Tracks like the clipped, infectious Zombie Love and strutting, preening Cool People show that their ability to write catchy hooks with a sharp edge remains undimmed. [Dec 2024, p.108]

There's a certain amount of aggression here - see Purge, an homage to the horror film series - but otherwise Merciless is largely a toetapper rather than a headbanger. [Jan 2025, p.102]

The album teems with very well constructed, uncomplicated, what-it-says-on-the-tin indie, with the runaway, synth-led, The Strokes-y Like You Did Before a highlight. [Feb 2025, p.103]

The album doesn’t stray far from the pop template established by early single Chinatown; only now there’s a more self-assured swagger, backed with clear and confident production.

Command Your Weather is like a 40-minute bear hug from a band that peddle heaviness with heart and soul. Hurry up and get yours.

While you couldn’t say Inside The Rose goes beyond the furthest reaches of moments such as V (Island Song), from its predecessor, neither does it play things safe. Newcomers may feel that elements of Kate Bush circa Hounds Of Love or Hansa Studios-era Depeche Mode provide reference points, yet nevertheless, a track such as Beyond Black Suns is nothing but pure TNP: overlapping motifs, doom-laden beats, interweaving vocal lines and a song that resolves nothing, but does so with the utmost confidence.

It’s a bracing listen then, and one that forces you to suspend belief as it whips past. But just as with each and every White Denim record, it’s wholly rewarding, repaying repeated listens, letting you check off things you hadn’t heard in it before.

There’s no denying that he’s operating in a vastly oversubscribed field, but Rosewood Almanac delivers in an economical 34 minutes as vividly and as seductively as any other 21st century confessional singer-songwriter you care to mention.

It never feels quite enough to warrant the repeated listens that any one of Malkmus’ other solo records deserve, which feels something of a travesty.

While this 12-track set clearly comes from a Hoxton state of mind, there’s a liberated imagination running riot here.

Containing 10 songs and with a running time of 30 minutes, it’s tantalisingly brief but never short of quality.

At times, this record can come across as little more than a variation on one of those CDs of new age music designed for meditation and spiritual well-being--Marim, for example, is a collage of pan-pipe-like sounds and water noises, and Omar could feasily belong to the type of compilation called Rainforest Colours--but there are some treats here.

Well worth the extended wait.

Throughout, they’ve remained a surprising and, more importantly, single-minded unit.

His high, husky voice recounts tales of hope and desperation over immaculate production that combines the staples of guitar, bass and drums with restrained washes of strings--about as far from the stifling, mainstream Nashville Sound as imaginable.

If at times Silver Eye is easy to admire yet difficult to love, you are never that far from a tremendous hook or captivating vocal.

Strutting arrogance is his game, and it’s sometimes an uneasy mix with the ghosts of those whose spirit he aims to evoke.

It has all the majesty one expects from the contributors, and all the ingredients that one expects to result in its pieces being used for indie film soundtracks and the like.

It’s never quite clear whether the album is an arch exercise throughout which Berry keeps an unimaginably straight face, or if any comic leanings are the fault of the listener, projecting “funny” on to what is a wholly accomplished work.