[Trombone Shorty's] allusive, crossover style is a piquant marinade that blends Crescent City jazz with blues, pop, funk, R&B, hip-hop, and rock flavours.

Everything is dispatched in pristine FM rock production that could use a little more light and shade. [Jul 2025, p.104]

The scruffy Scots have taken a more polite approach with this one, but Hutchison’s ability to touch the listener’s nerves hasn’t suffered and the result is musically uplifting; a well-crafted testament to the band’s song-writing abilities.

With the help of collaborators, showcases the full spectrum of a unique talent. [Dec 2024, p.109]

The rave presets of old will appease older fans while the more intricate synth work will satisfy more recent converts. Still, it’s the deeper tunes here that point to an intriguing future.

Robyn brings an affecting vulnerability to all the performances. Whimsicality is turned down a couple of notches and the tenderness that has always underpinned his best material shines through.

A couple of duds: No Monsters telegraphs its Lennon-esque references, while England & America is pointless dad-rock. Everything else works.

Best here are the former Free/Sharks bassist Andy Fraser uncurling his immortal taut funk on Shock Treatment and New York’s Robert Gordon crooning I Still Love You with quivering pathos.

As with Newman and Spigel’s previous output, most of it is far too restless to be dismissed as merely “ambient.”

Braver Than We Are knows its audience and plays to it perfectly.

As flawed as this album is, pop will be a finer place with AlunaGeorge’s presence.

The resultant World Wide Funk comes across as a well-drilled unit running through manoeuvres without actually going into battle.

The results occasionally come within touching distance of essential. .... Yet more often than not it resembles a New York-flavoured spin in the retro coffee table house of Zero 7 or Lamb. [Aug 2024, p.105]

When this is good, it’s properly great.

A backhanded triumph.

They don’t stretch their formula, but there’s little need when their galvanic velocity is this purposeful.

Into The Diamond Sun fully captures their kaleidoscopic vision over 11 songs bookended with the terrific The Garden (full of warped guitars, nursery rhyme harmonies and Blakian innocence) and Bear Tracks, a haunting, mesmeric sound mosiac.

Distilled and refined, they remain experimental and temperamental, faltering at times, but ready too to soar beyond National boundaries.

Unable to hold a guitar for the majority of the sessions, his progressing dementia making it difficult to remember lyrics, it is nonetheless a celebratory affair laced with surprisingly black humour.

Completing a trilogy alongside 2010’s Valleys Of Neptune and 2013’s People, Hell And Angels (both of which went Top 5 in the US), it’s clear there’s still a hunger for Hendrix’s unheard back pages. Both Sides Of The Sky is arguably the most satisfying meal of the three.

More so than anything in Harvey’s back catalogue, FOUR impresses with its purity, simplicity, accessibility and lack of pretension.

Regardless of the pretentious set-up, this is another fine record.

Headbangers will be pleased to hear that Scott Ian’s crunchy riffs and Joey Belladonna’s banshee wails are at front and centre, athough--continuing a theme that has endured since the mid-90s--truly warp-speed thrash beats are, disappointingly, largely absent here.

His ever more exaggerated diction adds an unexpectedly acrimonious character to some lyrics so that while Modern Blues is far from disagreeable musically, the words will have long-time followers speculating where he’s at.

MG fits nicely with some of those minimal wave releases, though, and DM fans will of course be in heaven.

There’s feisty attitude in abundance here but significantly, also substance and sincerity behind the rhetoric. Sensational stuff.

The blend of half-real and fake bodies, the beautiful and grotesque, sum up what makes this such a fun listen.

60s references, bloody mindedness, affairs of the heart and a whole ton of drug references make for a perfect storm. But what comes through clearest is the agelessness of the music they make.