Not bad, but not brilliant.

Where his recent albums have leant more towards long-form improvisation, 50 focuses on songs, with the warm drizzle of Chapman’s gnarled Yorkshire burr lending a bluff, worldly-wise character to American tableaux.

Guitarist Vieux Farka Toure here seeks to extend his Malian musical heritage beyond the country's borders, by collaborating with American musicians on several tracks--though never obscuring the native essence of his style.

Lurking behind the cosmicity, there’s usually a solid pop hook.

It’s starker and sharper than you might expect--the most pop-conscious piece is a collaboration with Robyn, “Out of the Black”--but it works well on the sinister shuffle of “Spit Three Times” and bleak jitter of “Naked”.

[The] debut album sparkles with invention and throbs with emotion.

The result should be something that feels rooted in nostalgia, but in fact these songs sound and feel as modern and innovative as they did when first released decades ago.

This is music that sounds as fun to make as it is to listen to. The energy here is thrilling, the strong rhythm section provided by former Detroit garage band The Greenhornes’ bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler. ... Help Us Stranger has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

She has pulled off the difficult trick of developing a new signature sound, without losing the personal perspective that separated her from the pack in the first place.

It’s certainly rare to hear a comeback effort that not only reflects an artist’s own best work, but stands alongside it in terms of quality, as The Next Day does.

Patti Smith's latest album, her best in a while, is held together by a spine of pieces themed around exploration.

The past typically isn’t the most comfortable place to inhabit, but Swift embodies her younger self fully, imbuing these tracks with the same immediacy and emotional heft as she did all those years ago. Country twang or not.

Moreover, Newman never sounds more quintessentially Newman than when experienced, as here, alone at the piano, with the lyrical intricacies and ironies of his songs dependent on just his laconic delivery and trenchant accompaniment for their effect.

Lindi Ortega split sessions between Nashville and Muscle Shoals. The result stretches her character in new and intriguing ways, effectively redefining Ortega as a cross between Loretta Lynn and Amy Winehouse.

Not Your Muse is an album that will lure you back time and time again, as much for its technical brilliance as any of its other qualities.

There’s so much deliciously analogue texture to cherish here – all bakelite, mahogany, coconut shells and bougainvillea, with woodwind you could drink and percussion you could tuck behind your ear. It’s 2023’s hippest release. Get up, get down, kick back to it.

Tarpaper Sky finds him relaxed and confident in his craft.

While Doyle struggles to balance his various musical elements--the opening 10 minutes is sheer drudgery--he has a nice way with layered vocal harmonies, which deserve more regular exposure.

A record with some rich layers and embellishments, but you sense that the excess of outside influence might be making up for something.

With the help of stellar producers like Cadenza (Kiko Bun), Swifta Beater (Kano, Giggs), and Nyge (Section Boyz, Yxng Bane), Tracey incorporates electronic music, rock, garage and even country on his most cohesive work to date.

A significant improvement on both Humbug and Suck It and See, suggesting they’ve found a more satisfying rapprochement with the classic rock that tends to come with the territory over there.

But it's Alex Glasgow's lament "Close the Coalhouse Door" that packs the most powerful punch, the cyclical piano like a minimalist murmur behind Becky's poignant delivery.

Now, it appears to have been reduced to simply a checklist of familiar sounds and effects, harnessed to the dullest beats imaginable, and dependent on outside collaborators for interest.

Wood is one of our finest songwriters, a brilliant exponent of the topical troubadour form, and rarely on better form than he is with None the Wiser.

There’s a strange, comforting beauty to Romano’s sombre baritone.

On her best album in years, Thea Gilmore darts back and forth between sharp, intelligent pieces on dark themes--depression, loneliness, murder--and more positive songs about love and hope.

At its best, it’s like the oddball offspring of Prince and The Left Banke, its elliptical melodies wreathed in strings and woodwind; but as ever, they sometimes can’t resist adding one more waffer-thin-mint to an already overstuffed musical pudding.

“Valid Jagger” and the Genet-referencing “Steed” are suffused with sensuous carnal urgency, while the turmoil of “Talk About It Later” is perfectly captured in the eerie, keening mellotronic strings riding its lumpy bump’n’grind.