A polished version of the group’s classic style propels this concept, but their invigorating eccentricity disintegrates as the album progresses. The opening title track feels familiar, with its quintessential electric riff, but this vibrancy quickly breaks down with songs like “Reduced Guilt”, whose tense harmonies drive a constant sense of unease. The record feels rote for the band, until it reaches its enigmatic conclusion. [Sep 2020, p.49]

It builds on themes and ideas introduced earlier in a clear and discernible way. ... No Era Sólida is more organic and less definable. [Sep 2020, p.49]

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]

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

Supple openendedness of texture and the cyclic reoccurrence become one and the same as the music goes on and on – liberating words in time, rather than setting them in stone. [Sep 2020, p.46]

The freshness and spontaneity of a new collaboration shines throughout The Quickening – it ensures a fresh, unmannered feel in its tangled explorations of American landscapes and is all the more compelling for not being too perfectly polished. [Sep 2020, p.46]

A band absolutely floating free, and realising that this Throwing Muses thing is beyond all of them, beyond all of us, an almost tidal pull on the cells, forward into life. Sun Racket is an essential truth kit for a post-truth world. [Jul 2020, p.52]

A mid-1970s Tangerine Dream vibe is more apparent than on previous Noveller albums, albeit still further removed from the trappings of rock music per se, and it largely comes off as a soundtrack in waiting for a film in which a hard-up community of 19th century nomads travel slowly across an arid plain. [Aug 2020, p.64]

The selections step sufficiently far from the territory established by their own songs to generate intrigue without stretching credulity. [Jul 2020, p.64]

Heart’s Ease picks up directly from where Lodestar left off. The lightness of touch of that earlier album, the delicate and sparse instrumental backing, so unobtrusive it enables rather than dominates, and her knack of filleting songs down to their bony essence, are all elements Collins pursues further here. [Aug 2020, p.52]

There’s a luxuriant impulse at work on this second album by the London-based keyboardist and producer. The strings in particular work beautifully on the soporific funk of tunes like “1989” or “Toulouse”, suggesting a Xanaxed Roy Ayers recording for CTI in the mid-70s. Aug 2020, p.68]

It fizzles out in places – there's none of the languor of previous work nor the melancholy that collaborator Jeremy Greenspan perfected in Junior Boys – but at its best this is aural champagne, chill, crisp and delectable. [Aug 2020, p.66]

The swelling, churchy ambient post-rock of Juliana Barwick’s latest could spill over into pomposity in heavier hands, but the freshly Los Angeles based artist exudes a modest air. [Aug 2020, p.64]

He knows that being the most complete version of himself requires lifelong searching – græ never fails to feel like such a journey. [Aug 2020, p.63]

Intoxicating oddness permeates some of these slow, shimmying jams. [Aug 2020, p.59]

Exquisite acoustic compositions meet Crampton’s taste for dissonance and distortion. [Aug 2020, p.54]

Throughout the album there’s a palpable refusal to push forward a frontperson – the vocals are truly shared, so Coriky merge and blend around each other and it’s this intuitively generated mutual conciseness that’s so gorgeous to hear. [Aug 2020, p.53]

Gane forgoes the intensifying momentum found elsewhere in his work for a more conventionally cinematic arc. [Aug 2020, p.52]

Far from being some utopian unity of the opposites her work has summoned – beyond binaries – she’s still clearly experimenting and sometimes failing. [Aug 2020, p.48]

The album suffers a little from its 14 song duration. The Mael wit works best when it’s tightly presented. [Jul 2020, p.52]

It’s a strange brew, some distance from the monumental party music that has tended to characterise the duo’s three previous albums. [Jul 2020, p.50]

Where Tuttle takes a more detached standpoint he’s less successful. Perhaps attempting to mimic corporate blandness, “Cambridge Drive Shopping Centre” mixes field recording of shoppers with a dogged guitar motif to fast diminishing effect. For the most part however he keeps cynicism at bay, a welcoming guide to his kingdom of everyday beauty. [Jul 2020, p.53]

It’s a much rougher around the edges effort than 2019’s GREY Area, but it works because Simz is an alum of the pirate radio days; this is her forte. Sonically it’s a dream. [Jul 2020, p.59]

Barring the title cut’s debt to Steely Dan, the pomp is dialled down just enough on Deleted Scenes for the band to flex their fusionoid chops, adding a whole other element of kookiness to their already brow-raising style. [Jul 2020, p.56]

An exciting second album. ... Their otherworldly fetishisation of dystopian collapse is so exhilarating it’s almost tolerable. [May 2020, p.48]

The eight pieces here function as a drummer’s showcase, certainly, but Contact’s wilful limitations conceal an eclectic approach. ... Time spent immersed in Contact will reap reward. [May 2020, p.52]

An album of big hooks of which “Golden Brown” is perhaps sharpest with its promise “The boys are back in town”. [Jun 2020, p.62]

White noise is the most versatile tool in Brighton producer Alan Myson’s kit: he deploys it as a gloss on everything, to either mind-quieting effect on tracks like “Angel In Ruin” and “Oblivion Theme”, or as an anxiety accelerant as on the fuzzed out battle-pitch “Bladed Terrain” where static hisses behind stomping, crunching thwacks and arpeggios. [Jun 2020, p.60]