It benefits from listening in stillness rather than on a speedy walk. [Oct 2025, p.132]

Byrne isn’t on fire here: while the songs do sometimes deal with biggish issues with elan, the music’s just too merry, too jovial. Of course, that contrast is deliberate, but – perhaps it’s the times we live in – it feels pat in context, even glib. [Oct 2025, p.132]

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 overarching sentiment of the album - that development isn't linear, and healing is often cyclical. [Oct 2025, p.130]

The Beaches get their points across by grafting moody alt-rock textures - looking at you, The Smiths-esque Dirty Laundry and Cure-reminiscent Sorry For Your Loss - with explosive chorus hooks. [Oct 2025, p.130]

To the end, Saint Etienne have never faltered on their mission statement. Magic is here. Believe. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Los Angeles and Double Infinity evoke the stream of consciousness brilliance of R.E.M.'s E-Bow The Letter, while Happy With You finds blissed-out rapture in repetition, All Night All Day is the lusty country song of the year and No Fear achieved Zen enlightenment in dub. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Improbably, they've pulled off the rarest of feats: a middle-aged rock band who remain interesting and invigorated, going from strength to strength. [Sep 2025, p.101]

As with previous albums, the musicianship is impeccable, but Cooper's vocals often fell too polite, the guitars bloodless. [Sep 2025, p.105]

A little more variety in tone would allow the album's heavier tracks to hit harder, but if it's high-quality heavy rock you're after, Beth has delivered it consistently. [Sep 2025, p.103]

The Irish singer's third album smartly juxtaposes the traditional and the modern. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Give or take a couple diversions (Bad Call, Legalize Living) into stomping 70s glam, the Swedes deliver the usual hi-jinks with the remorselessness of an overwound clockwork toy. [Sep 2025, p.103]

A record which explodes Yorkston's typically understated, open-hearted songwriting with a fierce emotional interplay between the three voices at work here. [Sep 2025, p.105]

What’s most remarkable about Revival revisited is perhaps not the attention to detail of the arrangements, nor the determination to recapture every last fuzz, thrum, reverb and flourish heard on the first studio versions. Anyone listening to Fogerty’s testifying rasps on Have You Ever Seen The Rain? or Bad Moon Rising 50-plus years ago, might have expected him to have roared himself mute by now. But no, the power and presence of the voice haven’t weakened in the slightest. [Sep 2025, p.104]

The melodies may be a little more complex, but only rarely does Guitar sound as beguiling as 2023's Five Easy Hot Dogs. [Sep 2025, p.103]

An album of layered, witty and fully felt elisions. [Sep 2025, p.105]

These reinventions work best when Campbell's invention pushes Allison's gorgeous voice to the fore. [Sep 2025, p.103]

It sounds immaculately like now and yesterday all at once. [Aug 2025, p.103]

While the subject matter is never less than serious, Carving The Stone can be commended for its boldness in addressing it without losing sensitivity, conveyed through Balfe's skillful lyricism. [Sep 2025, p.103]

Her eighth and arguably most satisfying musical adventure to date. [Sep 2025, p.92]

On early takes of I'm Not In Love (slathered in squelch) and Found A Job (crowded with delay effects) you hear how judicious restraint and the fastidious dispositions of all involved would make the final songs, like the words Byrne brings to them, seem somehow both precise and spontaneous at the same time. [Sep 2025, p.95]

Much of it goes beyond kitsch. With a favourable wind and a Rushent, Horn or Moroder at hand, some of these guys (it mostly is guys) could have made it. [Sep 2025, p.98]

A worthy addition to the Kuti legacy. [Sep 2025, p.104]

Although a couple songs don't fully capture Neale's compositional skills, the closing track There From Here is a tremendous highlight. [Sep 2025, p.105]

Panic Shack are the antidote to sad-sack girl singers: they make being a young woman sound absolutely brilliant. [Sep 2025, p.105[

It's a gorgeous, reflective, surprising listen. [Sep 2025, p.105]

Perhaps surprising in its straightforwardness, although the sound of him warbling and MCing through swatches of distortions all over these more amenable tracks was always likely to be incomparable. [Sep 2025, p.105]

A sublime soundtrack for summer nights. [Sep 2025, p.104]