On The Comeback Kid Marnie Stern has returned bolder, brighter and stranger than ever, an artist in complete command of her idiom. [Nov 2023, p.51]

Halfway through its flow, Gave In Rest reveals itself as her first sustained attempt--a successful one--at stranding listeners in a mellow darkness before taking them back outside. [Oct 2018, p.51]

The fit between Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet--whose list of previous collaborators includes Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass--is so natural it’s almost a wonder they haven’t worked together previously. [Mar 2018, p.53]

They’re on fire here and now, reassuringly within that sound world you’re familiar with but – perhaps because the album is self-produced – sounding freer, looser and more magnificent than ever. ... A band who’ve clearly lost none of their miraculous touch with their sources, who incredibly seem to have an entirely new lease of life. [Mar 2023, p.60]

Crackle and hiss are still in evidence, but the effect is toned down, and less suggestive of sonic patina than of the hostile climate of a world far removed from the languid, sun-dappled pools and rolling vistas suggested by 2005's The Campfire Headphase. [Jul 2013, p.53]

Musically, in other words, Strange Mercy delivers plenty of interest. What's not so convincing is the songwriting, specifically the lyrics. [Oct 2011, p.60]

The folk inflection and multiplicity of Gately’s vocals make the album seem ancient. Or conjured. The songs aren’t ghostly as much as they feel witnessed, imbued with a palpable presence. ... Gately has sampled and mixed in her mother’s voice with her own, as if in acceptance of the balance of life and death. This co-existence – or the yearning for it – is ingrained in this astonishing album as a freshly carved cut in a foundational wooden beam. [Mar 2020, p.48]

While admiring the album for its subtle intricacies, I keep coming back to its two most straightforward songs: the extremely fun chamber punk piece “Shark-Shark” and lead single “How We See The Light”, which manages to be both wise and wide-eyed with curiosity. [Jul 2024, p.46]

They're still worth rooting for just about but mileage -may vary. [Mar 2026, p.54]

Anjou’s transition from post-rock to power ambient now complete, Epithymía sees these musicians extrapolate into new directions masterfully, squeezing out a mesmeric minor masterpiece in the process. [Mar 2017, p.45]

async is an exceptionally beautiful record, in the way that maths is beautiful, quite free of rhetoric or ‘effects’. Its coherence of tonality and timbre gives it the feel of an imaginary soundtrack and yet each track has its own internal logic and direction which means that it never sounds like a grab-bag of musical supervisor’s cues but like a proper album of songs. [Jun 2017, p.70]

Despite her apparent striving towards sharpness and clarity, Hatis Noit avoids sterility in these pieces, all eight of which are constructed solely from her voice; while this starkness could leach the emotional impact, instead it is magnified. [Aug 2022, p.53]

Shell~Wave is as sharp and incisive as any of Surgeon’s recordings of the last 30 years. Like the best techno, while it resonates with many rhythms, it never forgets what it is or what it does best. [Jun 2025, p.60]

The intense volume and solemn pace of the music is given extra weight and dimension by Scheidt's extraordinary vocal. [Oct 2014, p.61]

RAP Music is a self conscious throwback sonically, lyrically and even visually.

Each musician adopts a groove-plus approach, adding tunes, subtracting beats and spinning tension building, counterintuitive phrases off the common path, but never tripping it up. [Dec 2022, p.60]

A series of hermetic, drifting analogue tracks sprawling over eight sides of vinyl. The occasional bizarre touches of the more conventional numbers show his techniques best. [May 2015, p.59]

It's clear that, for Shipp, The Tradition clearly goes way beyond jazz. [Jun 2011, p.54]

It’s melodic, often strikingly beautiful and consistently daring. [Jan/Feb 2025, p.98]

A set of intelligently performed rock tunes distinguished by Karen O's smart and smarting lyrics. [#232, p.74]

Of the 23 tracks, only four truly stand out. [#218, p.58]

His long awaited first album polishes up the summer sounds for a new crowd and, even if it's not visionary, his electro-pop grooves still go somewhere. [Mar 2016, p.55]

Her ability to overdub against herself, creating the illusion of live interaction, is startling and thrilling to hear. Too often, one person music has a certain sterility and airlessness, but Thackray’s work is loose and groove-oriented, shuffling with an energy that brings to mind Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah albums while singing about opening one’s third eye. [Jul 2021, p.71]

The ten tracks on Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? provide – with occasional turns towards kosmische or lounge music – some of the most pop oriented music Daniel has ever released. [Nov 2022, p.66]

A striking collection of shadowy electronic soul. [Nov 2023, p.62]

Estrella Sanchez and Amor Amezcua (daughter of Mexican rave icon Bostich) avoided the trap of a rushed debut album, and Pasar De Las Luces justifies the simmering approach, albeit too long at 64 minutes. [Mar 2018, p.58]

Post Self is an extreme, and extremely good, record, as moving as it is troubling. [Jan 2018, p.69]

Fantasy Empire stands out from run of the mill noise rock because it captures not only the ferocity of the playing, but also the fecundity of sharp and serious ideas that lesser acts cannot match. [Apr 2015, p.58]

The outcome is a typically serene and spacious deconstruction of concept and melody; a compression, or reduction of a vast palette of reference points, ideas and processes into a remarkably integrated set of movements. [May 2019, p.64]

Though Gonzalez has always been a great arranger and producer, this album demonstrates how much she has improved as a lyricist. [Sep 2021, p.56]

Propelled along by Berthling’s beefy basslines and Werliin’s clockwork precise percussive taps and beats, the fine details of the group’s sound emerge from Ambarchi’s dextrous and chameleonic guitar flourishes. [Jul 2024, p.46]

This new set sees them nailing their sound to tighter structures a little, but there’s still that delicious ill-discipline at work throughout. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Musically, it’s a perfect mix. It didn’t seem possible to top Roberts’s association with Amble Skuse and the great David McGuinness, but Völvur’s use of saxophone and fiddle, paired with Roberts’s deceptively relaxed picking, makes for a perfect, unpredictable setting. Nothing synthetic here. The word, if you want it, is syncretistic. [Sep 2021, p.57]

Orchestras must be the greatest album from a jazz composer since the glory days of Gil Evans. [Jun 2024, p.64]

Every Open Mike Eagle solo album reliably unfolds like a tear-stained indie comedydrama. Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is no exception. .... “I dropped the cellphone, and it got ran over”, he says on “OK But I’m The Phone Screen”, just one of several nice twee bops. [Aug 2025, p.62]

Their second album Vesper Sparrow explores the arrhythmic and atonal multilayered textures that underpin Ellis's soaring contemporary jazz saxophone. .... The closing "Evensong Part 4" is a celebration of disconnected, cycling, melodic instrumental chants, layered into a richly joyous texture, with a Sowetan jazz feel.

It's spiritual chamber music, mythopoetically encrusted, captivating and terrifying at the same time. [Sep 2014, p.55]

The synthetic sounds are more liquid and alive, the rhythms more nonchalantly funky, the unfolding narratives more gripping than previous work. [Dec 2012, p.64]

Demilitarize was created in the wake of near-fatal illness – latent tuberculosis triggered by a brush with Covid – and is deeply reflective and personal. [Jul 2025, p.53]

It can feel as though one must push through multiple layers of cultural detritus – Linda Blair, David Cassidy, Kiss, The Brady Bunch, etc – to get to the music itself. In truth, these resonances add flavour and colour to Jeff and Steve McDonald’s exuberant power pop, assisted on this self-titled double album by drummer and producer Josh Klinghoffer.

At some point in the future Tyler, The Creator may define his ideology and grow tedious with it; for now he remains on top form revelling in ambiguity. [Sep 2017, p.62]

The result is often similar in sound to the classic Malian groups, but much gnarlier. ... The drumming is a pummelling, clattering hailstorm of toms and snares, thrashed out at heart attack tempos. It’s all-consuming, exhilarating and fearfully hard playing, and as a truly disorienting backdrop to a virtuoso band, it pushes Tal National’s music into the realm of the unique.[Mar 2018, p.51]

The album feels both of the original vintage in its occasional psychedelic trappings and, masterfully, altogether new. But, perhaps most importantly, it richly rewards repeat listens. It’s a dense record, but not an overly busy one, and different instruments bubble to the top with each run through. [Apr 2023, p.59]

The Pyramids may not be breaking new ground here, but Afro Futuristic Dreams is arguably the best thing the reunited group have created. [Nov 2023, p.46]

The result is a predictable major label mixed bag, overburdened with string arrangements and backing vocals. Even so, it’s an enjoyable album, with standout tracks like “Outubro”, a melancholic Nascimento original with vocals by the leaders; the plaintive “Morro Velho” featuring Orquestra Ouro Preto; and “Get It By Now”, a composition with a wonderful unexpected harmonic reversal. [Nov 2024, p.65]

We get the sense that everything has changed; life goes on despite this. Her lyrics carry the same sort of dull, resigned honesty, recognised all too well by those who have experienced profound loss. [Oct 2024, p.48]

Possibly the most daring record she's ever made... [but] Medulla is not a complete success. [#247, p.53]

Spalding has always been a prodigious talent, but it's by adopting the uninhibited persona of Emily that the 31 year old singer and bassist has found a truly distinctive voice. [Jun 2016, p.56]

Shygirl represents the very best of avant leaning contemporary UK pop on this generous seven track EP without a single dull moment. [Jan 2021, p.85]

The energy is impressive and it's hard to find technical fault but the stagnation is undeniable. [May 2012, p.73]

It was recorded the same year and it is a fierce final epistle. [Aug 2017, p.52]

Eton Alive is but another visceral and impetuous take on a grim political reality. [Mar 2019, p.58]

Cabral’s vocals, typically hushed, make Mazy Fly feel like a shared secret, its own world, and it’s thrilling to enter. [Apr 2019, p.62]

Thanks to Muldrow, these compositions now bump and swing to the blues of the day. [Sep 2020, p.47]

If takes on his own catalogue feel lazy on paper, it’d need a heart of stone to resist something like 1977’s “Materialist” which in this version is probably the dubbiest and most typically Sherwood moment on here. Most importantly, perhaps, that voice has lost none of its storied opulence. [Apr 2022, p.42]

Archangel Hill is a great album. As dearly as I love her early work, there’s something about Collins’s sound here that feels just right. [Jul 2023, p.50]

There is a sense of overwhelming resignation perhaps best summed up by “Shame” with its line “and god remained silent”. On “Tape” they proclaim, “Earth keeps the most vile things displayed” , their fight redirected towards gluttonous voyeurs. The previous track “Camcorder” ends with “Let’s watch it again”. [oct 2024, p.48]

Mikael Åkerfeldt’s death growls are back, as are the intricate sextuplet grooves familiar from Ghost Reveries – but the style is also restlessly omnivorous, deftly changeable between moments of brutal death metal, bucolic folk, orchestral segues, power balladry and the head-spinning melodic complexity of 1970s progressive rock. Recently recruited drummer Waltteri Väyrynen shines throughout. [Nov 2024, p.55]

The album demonstrates control at every point, moving effortlessly between elegant restraint and a precise, brutal pummelling that sounds like a battering ram smashing through a door. [Sep 2020, p.48]

Thrilling even as it plumbs the depths of anguish. [Aug 2021, p.52]

Although this record is Rhys’s most polished to date, he does squeeze in moments of strangeness – subtle and paired down, bubbling beneath lush production and melodic arrangements. [Mar 2024, p.52]

To say the album is all over the place musically is both understatement and compliment. .... No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin is revolutionary fire music – but it’s also a celebration, a party held in honour of a man who did so much, expecting nothing in return. [Oct 2024, p.57]

You are reminded that yes, this has all been done before, but Out Hud get by with the wistful innocence of well-intentioned brainiacs. [#225, p.71]

Contrasting epic, experimental freakouts with concise chamber music, 5 is a diverse album, full of gems bleeding with icy brilliance. [#235, p.69]

There’s a beguiling modesty to tracks such as “Fire” and “4th Dimension”, while Yasiin Bey’s understated sprechgesang advising “Kids see ghosts sometimes” on the title track feels plausible, immanent, urgent. [Aug 2018, p.63]

With his best record in years, Gibbs gets a bump stock boost from Kenny Beats (03 Greedo, Key!), a former EDM DJ turned grimiest white boy rap producer since Alchemist. This is Gibbs being Gibbs. [Sep 2018, p.66]

It’s dense and esoteric, but gorgeous. [Oct 2019, p.55]

Dust floats along meditatively, and is Halo’s warmest and most familial record to date. [Jul 2017, p.52]

A captivating fourth album from the Richmond, Virginia outfit that casts a woeful eye over Trump’s America. [Jun 2019, p.56]

This decidedly literate songcraft has a range of ancestors, including Talking Heads, Sparks and David Grubbs, but three albums along, The Books are nailing down a distinctive soundworld of their own. [#254, p.54]

An air of devotion does indeed hover over this music, filtering through the stately intonation of Anima Brass and the a cappella singing of The Macadam Ensemble, as well as the quiet concentration of Malone’s own playing. Yet it emanates not from the rarefied air of religious sentiment, but from the composer’s passionate dedication to sound itself, and her respect for its potential capacity to realise, as the title of the concluding piece puts it, “The Unification Of Inner & Outer Life”. [Mar 2024, p.50]

Krlic combines a flexible approach with an impressive deftness of touch, and Excavation sees him feeling out new ways through the shadows. [Apr 2013, p.50]

The album glows white-hot with fury and energy, familiar yet fresh. [#243, p.66]

Throughout the album, multiple vocal lines with different rhythms and lyrics are frequently layered atop each other, lending to a dense, teeming maximalism. This tendency makes the moments of relative spaciousness, like the synth-laden and futuristic “Coming Back (From The Distance Between The Spaces Of Time)”, feel all the more boundless. [Oct 2018, p.49]

Where Inter Arma employ Cascadian elements and bottomheavy tonalities in order to plumb the depths of the soul, Full Of Hell express the desire to not simply ponder life’s futility but to actively resist those feelings. [Jun 2019, p.56]

It joins Titanic and Big Thief’s UFOF (members of Big Thief are present) as one of 2019’s leftfield pop gems, a record created with no detectable consciousness of a wider scene but with a bedroom-wide sense of possibility. [Jul 2019, p.52]

The magic of demos is being able to discover well known songs anew. In this form, the yearning and invitation of “Colour Me In” takes on a more literal meaning (“I am grey still on the page… Just an outline, sketchy but fine…Somehow I feel that I’m just the idea”), but is somehow even more poignant, and a reminder of how songs that began so deceptively simply would be taken into so many hearts, coloured in with countless listeners’ emotions and experiences. [Oct 2024, p.69]

This wonderful music is most certainly bleeding freely from somewhere deep inside Jenny Hval. [Nov 2016, p.58]

The musical quality is high, and it’s unusual among the saxophonist’s post-1959 studio recordings in reprising earlier compositions – he mostly featured new material. Coltrane’s rather unvarying dynamic level makes him a less effective film composer than his former employer Miles Davis, with his dramatic mastery – but Trane can’t be blamed for not fitting his music to the action, given that he had little idea what that would be. [Nov 2019, p.69]

It Is What It Is is a fitting ethos for an artist whose genre-twisting tendrils have extended themselves into the highest reaches of the pop canopy, simultaneously flexing their deep funk and jazz roots. [May 2020, p.62]

If Wilco have deliberately stepped back from the brink in recent years, the quality has been maintained, and one feels the door is always open for their return. [Jan 2015, p.80]

His concerns are serious--consumerism, race, fame, relationships--but he rarely addresses them with the craft or focus they deserve. [Sep 2013, p.66]

Body is a sound sculpture that cares less for internal time than for the cerebral pleasures of long duration. [Oct 2018, p.60]

Its 16 tracks are vignettes of memory and emotion, which see her thoughtful production informed by IDM, glitch and electronic emo. True to the album’s concept, there's a charming bedroom maximalism. .... Lovely, affecting record. [Oct 2023, p.48]

Countless Branches does nothing different, but seems to knock them all dead by virtue of its naked simplicity alone. Some of these tracks are scarcely crafted songs at all but simple musings, addressed to no one in particular, not even an inward self, just uttered over soft, slow piano chords. [Mar 2020, p.48]

While unconventional, the pairing is astute. [May 2019, p.55]

Empath is extreme in ways that extend beyond aggression or distortion. It’s melodic to the point of overload, layered to the point of obsessiveness. Conventions are disrupted in unexpected ways. ... Which is ugly to you? Which is beautiful? Townsend’s music urges both a thoughtful re-examination of these criteria and a long overdue redefinition of sonic extremity. [May 2019, p.56]

He tears apart square wave synths into sharp, staccato blocks and spreads them across Insula, twisting alien 8-bit into different melodies and frequencies. [Jul 2018, p.60]

Disturbing and delirious when it's not romantic and hilarious, the songs have a much more direct emotional appeal than the patently surrealistic Alice. [#219, p.72]

Nearly a quarter of a century after its initial release, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts remains a beautifully finished work, despite its complexity: every line and fragment in place, every surface and effect neatly separated out. [#266, p.56]

It sounds vast and brutal. An early salvo of sub three minute crunchers peak with the juddering, wounded "To Feel Something", and the galloping metal number "Make Me Forget You" is the highlight of a longer closing trio. [Mar 2026, p.60]

Progress really doesn’t come into it. Rather, each track here, particularly the bumpin’ highlights “Cosoco” and “Cara De Espojo”, can be seen simultaneously as both a refinement and amplification of everything that has made Molina’s music such a rare delight over the past decade. [Jun 2017, p.67]

The framework is so decentered there's barely a frame. That, it turns out, leaves room for the work. [Dec 2011, p.52]

Peeled back from its surrounding hype, The Sciences is a sturdy (albeit somewhat stationary) return to form. [Aug 2018, p.59]

A curious lack of urgency pervades. [Jun 2021, p.66]

A return to form. ... If anything this album is neither nervous nor holding its nerve, but powerful, solid, the work of a group who know what it is they do and how best to play to their strengths. [Apr 2018, p.64]

Lamentations is a gently devastating and cathartic listening experience. [Nov 20, p.54]

Limbs feels more emotionally erratic than its predecessor, and even more compelling for it, teetering between interiority and connection. [Apr 2022, p.45]