Dig into the four-to-the-floor derangement of “Lapwing” and the post-rock inflected “First Light” to hear a band seemingly capable of doing anything, yet remaining fleetfootedly themselves throughout. [Jun 2019, p.56]

There is a genuine synergy here. Khruangbin have crafted oneiric Manding inflected backdrops as though they have found what they were looking for all along, and Touré settles into them like he’s just got home. [Dec 2022, p.67]

There's at once a sense that Venice is weightier and more purposeful than its predecessor. [#243, p.56]

His murky but upbeat productions augment this sensation, giving Skelethon a sort of B-boy gothic feel, an old school park jam recreated by Tim Burton. [Sep 2012, p.74]

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]

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]

It's the generous flow of rapt, wistful melody that makes Severant such an appealing prospect. [Nov 2011, p.72]

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]

Endure is smoother and glossier than the last album, but it’s still music that moves body and mind, inviting dirty dancing between flaming police cars. [Nov 2022, p.67]

New listeners may be drawn by these tributes, to experience something far more compelling, still flowing from the source. [Dec 2022, p.72]

What a blessed relief, given all this, that Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire and Jeff Parker, collectively, still sound wholly and unapologetically like themselves. [Nov 2025, p.60]

Swagger can be infectious and the album works as a playful, blissed out hymn to the dancefloor. [Nov 2016, p.55]

As well as these old school paeans to rock's cosmic moments, there are tracks fascinating through a percussive complexity that nods to minimalism. [Sep 2013, p.63]

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]

This is the first music that feels genuinely post-referendum. [Jan 2015, p.68]

There’s a gracefulness to Patton’s rhythms that sets her apart from other footwork producers--something deeply contemplative. [Jun 2017, p.66]

Their words are not protest or polemic, but messages from the frontline of a war that’s being waged under our noses and hidden in plain sight. And also, crucially, it completely slaps. [Jun 2022, p.44]

His final, posthumous recording isn’t exactly Norman Rockwell, but it does take The Night Tripper back to his country roots. This kind of twilight recording, with carefully staged surprises – see Johnny Cash’s sepulchral take on Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” – has become something of an industry cliche, but Dr John’s lifelong love for the music here is too well attested to seem like some kind of last minute A&R wheeze. [Oct 2022, p.41]

It's delightfully ponderous. [May 2016, p.48]

Coomes and Weiss' compact set up maintans an awkward dynamic balancing natural elegance with barbed experiment to sustain the music's flux of design and accident. [#235, p.64]

This analogy of applying interdisciplinary approaches to uncover a certain reality carries through to several aspects of the album, where a folding over of electronic and acoustic space circles in on and augments a broader understanding of sound. [Aug 2018, p.67]

He's nowhere near as agile as he once was, but that slack is picked up on a handful of collaborations with sharp young rappers like Lil Herb and Vince Staples. [Sep 2014, p.65]

These pieces exude a jazz inflected cool that's immediately intriguing. ... Dramatic and cinematic in its conclusion. [Jun 2022, p.44]

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]

“I don’t know why I’m up here”, Hval ponders amid ebullient synths on “A Ballad”. “Lay Down” envelops her voice in a fluttering of strings and muted pads as it sifts through painful memories: “By the bed in palliative care/You had bled through your jeans” . Elsewhere, “The Artist Is Absent” paraphrases Marina Abramović, transforming presence into absence while juxtaposing low key ontological devastation with banging beats. [Jun 2025, p.52]

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]

Paternoster locks in with bassist Mike Abbate and drummer Jarrett Dougherty for 34 minutes of joyous thump with no filler in sight. A tough but open-hearted and ultimately life-affirming rock record. [Apr 2023, p.64]

Having already worked with the likes of William Basinski and Herndon, remixing for Björk and Max Richter, Jlin is taking the innovative spirit of a regional Chicago born style to the institutional stage of the creative establishment. Applying that to a project with a choreographer like McGregor is an experiment in combining the best of both worlds. [Oct 2018, p.55]