Green commandeers her forces, keeps things simple, and makes irresistibly confident and sharp guitar pop. Addictive. [Aug 2021, p.65]

Whether K Bay is progressive rock or not, White hooks you in with his big warm voice and big tunes, and then goes weird on you in such a strong way that he can’t really be asked to leave. [Aug 2021, p.55]

Just as Double Negative offered a catharsis of the confusion and despair that many felt in 2018, as a whole HEY WHAT promises hurt and healing in equal measure, its abrasive textures the companion to undeniable warmth, tenderness and optimism. [Sep 2021, p.57]

For their fifth album The Witness, Montreal group Suuns pick their way through new songs that on the surface sound sparse but are actually thickets of sonic invention. [Sep 2021, p.62]

There’s far more US punk in this music (you’re often reminded of The Descendents and The Dictators) than UK punk and, considering we live in the age of Bob Vylan, much of the album sounds too retrograde. I would have loved more of the angriness, and some quality control on the inherent defeatism/smirk of band name and album title. [Aug 2021, p.65]

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

It’s rich fare and authentically live-sounding. [Sep 2021, p.50]

Though it’s no concept album, eight of the 12 tracks address either social issues or spiritual solutions. There’s the odd Prince bit of obscure esoterica but mostly it’s direct and effective. ... Welcome 2 America is vital enough to render such matters moot. it’s the sound of Prince truly not giving a damn and that should be edge enough for anybody. [Sep 2021, p.70]

It’s up there with their debut as an introduction to the Goat sound – a sound that seems even more pertinent and gloriously openended the further we’ve come from its first explosion. [Sep 2021, p.68]

What’s striking about this album, produced by Kenny Beats, is how all of its fear and anxiety are turned inwards. Sure, there’s storytelling, such as “Lakewood Mall”, in which Tyson narrates an instance where Staples evaded violence to end on homespun wisdom and a call to free Pac Slimm. But the psychic stress here is all-encompassing, preceding the threat and resulting in claustrophobia. [Sep 2021, p.64]

Gojira once again let loose their own brand of fury on the world. Fortitude is a tightly executed example of the way their songs are propelled as anthems – emblazoned metallic sound banners flapping loudly in the gale they have summoned up. [Sep 2021, p.62]

Colors II is musically all over the shop, offering an experience that’s akin to being on a sonic rollercoaster that’s scarily still under construction. But for all that it’s still one hell of a ride! [Sep 2021, p.62]

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]

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]

The album encompasses a wide range of moods. [Sep 2021, p.55]

The recording and mixing is impeccable, with each instrument distinctly isolated, enabling the tracks to take on lively 3D forms. This does result in a striking directness, but the tightly wrapped sound sometimes feels like it’s in battle with the naturally inventive playing of the trio. [Sep 2021, p.56]

Septet is beautifully appointed make-out music, redolent of Adrian Younge, Miles Davis’s 1980s re-emergence and late 70s pre-electro Herbie Hancock. [Sep 2021, p.54]

In classic Simz style the journey’s more fulfilling a little further down the rabbit hole. ... But ultimately it’s hard to escape the comedy of such grand ambition also spawning the corniest voiceover since Prince invited Kirstie Alley to vandalise his symbolically titled 1992 album, and a cringe so intense it threatens to undermine everything.

There have been so many reissued and remastered releases throughout The Beach Boys’ career that even the most dedicated completist might grow weary at the prospect of another. However, the tracking sessions on the third and fourth discs, and the alternate versions and rarities on the fifth, are significant additions to the band’s officially released discography. [Sep 2021, p.69]

While Gunn gets in some liquid licks, they’re brief asides, never trips that’ll take you somewhere on their own, and they’re often folded into gleaming layers of keyboards and harp. While the drums occupy considerable sonic space, they are frustratingly unemphatic. ... He has never sung better. However, every time he solos, one wishes he’d keep going a bit longer. Here’s hoping that Gunn can figure out how to showcase his voice without doing so at the expense of his instrumental gifts. [Sep 2021, p.52]

Fire is frequently scorching. [Sep 2021, p.50]

In spite of these brief missteps, Change is a welcome return, revealing the multifaceted artistry of a previously enigmatic performer. [Sep 2021, p.48]

With each successive listen, more detail – in the organ arrangements, the vocal compositions and their harmonic interplay – is revealed. [Aug 2021, p.72]

A strong addition to Tyler’s catalogue and a good intergenerational connection for the fans. [Aug 2021, p.69]

For the most part this album is unadulterated joy, and even in the instances where things feel a little more serious, it’s still entertaining as hell. [Aug 2021, p.69]

Check the weird Groundhogs/Faith No More grooves of “Cosmic Pessimism” and the Scorpions-like pomposity of “Garden Of Cyrus” – but gratifyingly is usually overwhelmed by typical ATG churning riffery and aggroladen lyrical carnage. [Aug 2021, p.65]

With co-producer Andrew Lappin and an army of 20 musicians who contributed to various tracks in tow, she has produced a record that flexes its knowing complexity and retains a sense of experimental pop curiosity throughout. [Aug 2021, p.59]

Many of Mike’s verses lost me, but when it clicks, and you can follow a thought through a few mutating bars, the effect is astonishing. [Aug 2021, p.58]

Banned is brimming with great ideas and fascinating sound – moments of gorgeous melodicism and soulful playing, all dressed in vivid sonic poetry. Lightman and Jarvis’s voices blend, stack and play off each other beautifully. [Aug 2021, p.58]

Their second album offers something new and exciting. Their music is intricate and complex but also intense and fierce with bold, contrasting sections. [Aug 2021, p.55]

The highlights are many, making the hour of its running time pass effortlessly. [Jul 2021, p.70]

It’s an impressive whole, even if a few of the individual parts don’t hold up to scrutiny. [Jul 2021, p.70]

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]

When he’s not waxing heroic, Chasny gets in touch with his most spaceward impulses. [Jul 2021, p.64]

The entirely instrumental Deep Fried Grandeur is too cohesive to be a mere jam, and even though Walker’s bandmates – drummer Frank Rosaly, bassist Andrew Scott Young, and guitarist Brian Sulpizio – are skilled improvisors, the performance remains centred by rock pulses throughout. [Mar 2021, p.60]

Where the previous two explore themes around rebirth and grief, Trappes’s vocal fills Penelope Three full of redemption and hope. On “Red Yellow”, synth lines swoop and sink despondently into the mix, but Trappes’s vocal is ascendant and bold. In places, this ability to draw striking emotional clout from delicate shoegaze-y soundscapes recalls Sophia Liozou’s 2020 album Untold. [Jul 2021, p.69]

The record’s surfaces are highly polished and glisten with a near futurist glow that’s only occasionally interrupted by percussion, most affecting when those pristine surfaces recede to emphasise the melodic lines that dance over them. “Vanity” lets ominous synths rumble while ornate electronics flourish above while the reverberating motif of “Tasakuba” is potent with longing and desire. [Jul 2021, p.69]

There is a distinct lack of filler (as usual) but the best of the 11 songs is “Dead Weight”, which adopts a sideways crawl like a hermit crab in hobnail boots as our anti-hero tears herself to pieces and hurls them at the feet of an admirer. [Jul 2021, p.67]

Dirty and invigorating? Yes. [Jul 2021, p.67]

It’s not often that an album comes along that feels this loaded with transformative potential. [Jul 2021, p.66]

Return To Solaris is a fearsome ride, sublime in the most complete sense of the word. [Jul 2021, p.60]

While some tracks here showcase his incredible touch, others are straightforward hiphop loops that might have been built using a Tony Allen sample kit, and the album as a whole lacks conceptual or thematic unity. [Jul 2021, p.60]

The music is a fluid mix of acoustic instruments and studio slickness, all recorded under lockdown conditions but mixed seamlessly, and while the lyrics are earnest, the songs are joyous, not sombre. [Jul 2021, p.60]

As with For You And I, the awkwardness of these beats seems dictated less by technical nuance and more by the idiosyncratic rhythms of the human body. ... Even more so than its predecessor, the album is maybe most striking when this idiosyncrasy explicitly reflects James’s lived experience as a Londoner, channelling the steppy rhythms of the hardcore continuum. [Jul 2021, p.60

Most of the songs here work in pairs, or groups of three, as if Elfman couldn’t decide where to finish an idea and instead offers a few variations on a theme, diluting the punch of each individual track. ... The best tracks here are the ones where Elfman acknowledges his own limits and fears, without hedging or flippancy. [Jul 2021, p.59]

The music develops through collective improvisation, but it’s supremely focused and tight. These formal qualities are combined with a keen political edge. [Jul 2021, p.58]

A box set containing their first two LPs plus demos and live tracks, provides some help in cleansing the palette while providing context for the evolution of their massively cribbed style. [Jun 2021, p.67]

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

At her best she lives up to the statement of intent on “This Sound” where her style is pitched as physical, literal but metaphysical, mystical and medicinal. ... But by the time she implores us to “do yourself a favour and eat some shrooms”, she sounds dangerously like just another hippy with too much faith in her medicine. [Jun 2021, p.

The album progresses through tastefully understated melancholy and rage to a clutch of pop songs whose assured emo posturing melts into cries for salvation so exquisite they’re undeniable. [Jun 2021, p.64]

Where French multi-instrumentalist Cécile Schott gained attention with her reinvention of the viola da gamba as a rhythmic instrument on 2015’s enchanting Captain Of None, this album is more ambient and interior. [Jun 2021, p.63]

The trio crowbar open new fissures in metal’s ever-shifting tectonic plates with five astonishingly powerful songs, each imbued with its own magic and mystery. [Jun 2021, p.54]

The brasher moments of Afrique Victime are at least as worthwhile, Moctar having assembled a crack band. ... If this guy only really has two main modes – flamboyant electric blues and downhome, tricksy folk-rock – he can scorch in both, making complaints churlish. [Jun 2021, p.53]

It is the slick heat of Gibbons’s liquid guitar groove, tempered by the equally blistering yet mysterious cool of his desert surroundings, that makes Hardware a deeper listening experience than initially expected. [Jun 2021, p.52]

Good as the present iteration of The Chills is – featuring Erica Scally on guitar, keyboards, violin, Oli Wilson on keys, Callum Hampton on bass and Todd Knudson on drums – it’s Phillipps’s darkly catchy writing that dominates this seventh studio record from the band. He has a synoptic vision that takes in everything from fake news to cargo cults. An essential contemporary voice. [Jun 2021, p.48]

For music as heavy as this, the performances and production are impressively agile and light on their feet. Ultrapop is clear-eyed and enraged, pristine and pulsing with adrenaline. [Jun 2021, p.46]

An album as complex as this encourages listeners to reflect on themselves. [May 2021, p.46]

An unpretentious work of Romanticism - that holds space for the infinite experience imbued in a poem, a song, or a voice. [May 2021, p.55]

When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. [Apr 2021]

The ten tracks are built on foundations of looped percussion and tight bass sequences, usually based around short, sharp and undeclarative sounds – synthetic rimshots and damped hi-hats rather than snares or kicks. While this can run into staid territory, as on the triphop shuffle of “One Two”, for the most part its subdued hardness accents the drift of Milton’s vocals. His delivery often overwhelms the matter of his lyrics in the best way. [Apr 2021, p.54]

The result is a kind of lo-fi dream music, sea-changed and composite, with whisper-core mbalax drifting in and out focus between vaporous synth washes, low-key beat programming, spoken teachings and lilting song. [Feb 2021, p.61]

Carti’s voice here sounds rough and occasionally hoarse. His famed knack for repeating phrases ad infinitum seems to lead into cul-de-sacs, and the rumbling PC beats don’t float as easily as his earlier work. But there’s plenty to appreciate on Whole Lotta Red. [Feb 2021, p.61]

There may only be nine tracks here, but it’s like there are worlds upon worlds to explore; Strom had a knack for making every note feel special. [Feb 2021, p.55]

Across these tracks, the searching spirit of Virginia Wing is often challenged, its questions far from being answered – but the album feels more true to life because of it. [Feb 2021, p.56]

McCartney’s infamous whimsy tempered by his refreshed penchant for odd sonic detail (the spectral guitar tangles that trail through “Find My Way” for instance) and an aged voice whose natural erosion is more feature than fault. [Feb 2021, p.58]

Audet’s obfuscatory impulses only make the album more compelling. [Feb 2021, p.58]

Altın Gün’s unwavering commitment to Turkish psychedelic rock receives a glossy refurbishment here. [Feb 2021, p.60]

It’s powerful music for open roads and endless dreaming; once it’s turned on, time is suspended by the limitless layers of unbridled, electric sound. [Feb 2021, p.54]

The speech modelling software used to articulate the narrative generates a somewhat grittier, odder voice than your average online speech synthesizer, but that doesn’t keep the album’s expository moments from being momentum killers. The passages where artificial voice gets fed into some typically squelchy MOM electro beats are considerably more fun to listen to. [Feb 2021, p.52]

These days, addressing race and gender in doom metal is considered extreme in itself; with Gas Lit, the duo demonstrate that extremity is not just found through deftly executed blastbeats and downtuned riffs, but within the decision to create music that defies categorisation. [Feb 2021, p.46]

The aforementioned “Carpathian Darkness” is an archetype for the album as a whole, thoroughly captivating despite (or because) of its familiarity. [Feb 2021, p.46]

Compact but effective EP release. “Mandrill” buzzes with metallic heft and 8-bit zips; “Capuchin” breaks into a melody that practically bounces. Gore is obviously having fun here. [Mar 2021, p.63]

Isles offers multiple reboots of the “Glue” formula: chunky broken beats, keening voices in many languages, and duvet-warm basslines, as on lead singles “Atlas” and “Apricots”; the latter is based around a clip of the much sampled Bulgarian State Television choir. Guest vocalist Clara La San adds a femme-pop twist to “Saku” and a tight electro jam called “X” which is the best of the bunch. [Mar 2021, p.61]

Pick A Day To Die pieces together Sunburned fragments dating back to the late 2000s, resulting in an endearing zigzag of moods. [Mar 2021, p.58]

Sound Ancestors is a masterpiece. The 16 pieces not only expand the conversation around the art of sampling, but also further hiphop’s ability to grow as a collaborative Black artform. [Mar 2021, p.54]

On “Pure GreyCircle” Malliagh intensifies the mixture, introducing slabs of bass tone that flex and squeeze against elusive beats. There’s some weird subject matter, too; across polished surfaces and sharp corners, tracks such as “Sylph Fossil” and “Zones U Can’t See” smuggle cosmic lyrics inside voices that whisper or glide, always diving below the mix or spinning above. [Apr 2021, p.66]

The presence of these co-conspirators empowers the songs, but some of the duets are more straightforwardly fun. [Apr 2021, p.64]

Tomahawk – a band that have very much prided themselves on their messiness and incoherency – have made perhaps their most cogent record yet. [Apr 2021, p.64]

A seductive and persuasive look at the lives and human struggles those in power would rather you ignored and disdained. Get connected. [Apr 2021, p.62]

The material on the album is a constellation of soft and fragile connections between intangible forms of rock. ... Juana Molina moves “Al Sur” with propulsive singing and electronic rhythms, making the song her own before “Into Love Again” brings this lovely album full circle with a Yann Tiersenlike folk ballad. [Apr 2021, p.60]

Legacy + is a unique intergenerational conversation on wax. Both halves are set in Afrobeat, while one sticks more to the tradition than the other, and the contrast is beautiful to hear. [Apr 2021, p.58]

Promises doesn’t always come across like a true meeting of equals. Laswell used the saxophonist as a plug-in element in the late 90s, Michael Mantler’s Jazz Composer’s Orchestra did the same on 1968’s Communications, and there’s a bit of that feel here. A player with as unique and instantly recognisable a voice as Sanders always risks becoming a gimmick, but his performance here is stunningly beautiful, and the album would be unimaginable without him. [Apr 2021, p.57]

Boiling down the complexities and contradictions of the countryside to a succession of stiff choral hymns, a chance to understand and connect is lost. [Apr 2021, p.55]

The combination of simple but taut musicality and literate lyricism is a winning one. [Apr 2021, p.54]

The sound sources themselves are not of intrinsic importance – it’s what the musicians do with them that matters – but in opening up these questions, these wonderings, Under~Between does much to create its imaginative worlds. [Apr 2021, p.51]

Song Of Co-Aklan is a more than welcome return from a puckish master of social observation and surreal manifesto: “Let’s Flood The Fairground” indeed. It isn’t a consoling album and its humour is biting at best, but as a way of getting through a bruised and confused new spring, it’s the perfect companion. [Apr 2021, p.52]

Fading out, they leave the impression of an album too ambitious for its own good, but offering moments of real awe. [Apr 2021, p.52]

A remarkable turn in the road for a remarkable composer. [Mar 2021, p.55]

Recorded during a post-tour chill, the album writes a caustic, often dejected and cynical travelogue. ... Meanwhile, subtle slivers of sarcasm and dry humour punch through this acerbic sound. They find their way in bass-led, sumptuous lounge sludge on “Smoker’s Piece”, assess the “Current Situation” with screeching dissonance and pained shrieks and bemoan the grey daily life on the closing “Every Thing, Every Day”. [Apr 2021, p.54]

UK rap’s first masterpiece of 2021. [Apr 2020, p.56]

Vol 3 finds Sean C at the helm, resulting in a batch which sounds clunky at times, but works perfectly at others. [Dec 2020, p.66]

This second post-resurrection outing from the New York City noise rockers is an odd one, with two halves that could belong to different bands. The first part features new and rerecorded songs, like the siren led, lockdown inspired “In A Perfect World” – solid romps that become victims of circumstance. ... The first of the late 1980s Peel Session tracks bursts with rebellious energy, generated by a nervous interplay of guitars and rhythms and Thalia Zedek’s incendiary delivery.

Prince didn’t put a foot wrong in his golden era, right down to what was left in the vault. [Jan 2021, p.94]

This miscellanea contains premonitions of Pylon’s future greatness and fills in the gaps of a catalogue overdue for reassessment. [Jan 2021, p.94]

Uniquely for Martin’s music, In Blue isn’t dominated by its low end – it’s the precise absence of warmth, the way Chen’s heavily echoed vocals swim in among the grainy textures and hypnotically simple melodies (so much of this recalls the dankest 1990s hiphop in vibe and directness), that makes the set so compelling, a perfect soundtrack to derailment and decay. [Jan 2021, p.70]

There’s a silliness and lightness to CEL that is often charming, but can stray into tweeness, and its lack of a deeper pull doesn’t necessarily warrant repeat listens. An interesting conceptual exercise but unlike a lot of the krautrock it is reminiscent of, nothing to stir the heart or body. [May 2020, p.50]

Guerilla builds upon constant percussive propulsions, creating a frenzy that doesn’t overbear with political weight and favours a sense of catharsis even through the darkest moments of Angola’s history. [May 2020, p.56]

Stripping Yonkers’s tunes of any of these traits, Dwyer makes them over into larger than life anthems and the results are pretty damned splendid. [Oct 2020, p.59]