Susanna is backed by a quintet of musicians who move in perfect harmony with her slowly uncoiling vocal. Shifting between jazz, orchestral and synthesized sounds, her approach to the time-honoured love song format is a much needed breath of fresh air. [Oct 2024, p.62]

Xiu Xiu’s music compels you to empathise even if you cannot fully relate to it. The poignant, pulsing curves of “Piña, Coconut & Cherry” bring this perspective into focus: “You must love me, love me, love me, you are mine, this is mine”. [Oct 2024, p.60]

Born Horses feels like a logical progression, the band’s luscious drift and bittersweet arrangements blossoming into widescreen vignettes of love, loss and revelation, but delivered with a poise and scale previously unseen. [oct 2024, p.58]

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]

This playfulness – which tends to be overshadowed by Hendricks’s LOUD persona – continues to be one of the most rewarding aspects of listening to a JPEGMAFIA album. [Oct 2024, p.53]

Undoubtedly Revelator will be lapped up by Elucid aficionados, but equally this may be the album that compels the wider world to pay attention. [Oct 2024, p.52]

Strange and seductive. [Oct 2024, p.48]

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]

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]

Wynn’s solo album Make It Right is a more comfortable listen than much made by The Dream Syndicate since their 2012 reformation. [Nov 2024, p.62]

If it undeniably looks into a past long before any of the members were born, the actual results provide more welcome context, using the music of the 1960s to create a sound which, in toto, didn’t actually exist during that decade. [Nov 2024, p.62]

In spite of the album’s inconsistency, it ends on a high note with the sugary Eurotrance tropes and ear-popping lushness of “Love Me Off Earth”, where guest vocals from New York based vocalist Doss convey an otherworldly melancholic euphoria before being pitch-bent into the stratosphere. [Nov 2024, p.60]

A few tracks don’t work, like “Murdergram Deux” where he fast raps alongside Eminem in a staccato bore. While LL can still flow, he doesn’t find pockets of rhythm with the same ease he once did. But there is magic. [Nov 2024, p.56]

The album is a well-sequenced 50 minute statement that you can nod your head or trance out to. [Nov 2024, p.48]

Bleed feels more constructed than played, a diorama of dissolving shapes spread out in time. But the piece’s patient evolution and implied but ever-present rhythm all confirm that this is Necks music. [Nov 2024, p.55]

The songs that Kramer left behind, however, turn out to be wholly life affirming and full of energy – and what seems at first like a tagged solo project reveals itself to be informed by an intimate understanding of the values that MC5 stood for, with Kramer fanning the embers of the group to keep the Motor City spirit burning. [Nov 2024, p.53]

The Hard Quartet manage to create a collection of tight, fun songs that feel at once old-timey and modern. [Oct 2024, p.52]

With 16 short compositions across 40 minutes of running time, many of these pieces feel sketchy and structurally underdeveloped. Yet, there is a pleasing rawness to Bowness’s DIY production, which skews towards electronic pop, flavoured with post-punk and industrial. Bowness’s honeyed voice brings a measure of vulnerable gravitas. [Nov 24, p.55]

The music they make is as quirky, infectious and amusing as the theme that powers it along, and Memorial Waterslides turns out to be a work of inspired joy. [Oct 2024, p.62]

As hinted at by the title of its opening piece “Cliffwalk” the album’s forays into new sound worlds suggest Williams is poised on the edge of a fresh chapter, testing newfound powers. [Nov 2024, p.

It belongs on the shelf alongside Pestilence’s Testimony Of The Ancients and Spheres, The Orb’s UFOrb and Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. It’s a goddamn masterpiece. [Nov 2024, p.49]

The title of “Raindrops Cast In Lead” offers a brutal, evocative image, but any horror it tries to convey seems to get waylaid somewhere down the line by a cheery motorik chug. NO TITLE’s music matches the blunt force of its name when it makes room for discomfort. On “Broken Spires At Dead Kapital” strings play the broken fragments of a melody over guttural bass drones and the effect is genuinely unsettling. [Nov 2024, p.52]

The opening track and first single “Hide & Seek” is built around a hard charging, hooky punk riff that sounds more like The Offspring than the Lizard of old. Yow’s vocals, higher in the mix than they used to be, have a nasal, sneering quality that’s more actorly than unhinged. [Sep 2024, p.50]

White Roses, My God picks up where Low’s 2018 album Double Negative left off with “Disarray” – but the feel here is markedly different. The music is lighter, faster and more urgent, simultaneously terrified and joyous. [Oct 2024, p.60]

Orchestra Hits is the truest iteration of Rice and Schrader’s aesthetic to date. By polishing these songs, buffing them to relative shininess and adding serrated electronics, their emotive impact and melodic drama are greatly magnified. [Oct 2024, p.60]

Viewfinder may end on a questioning note, but its music is warm and expansive, the sound of an inspired composer coming into the light. [Oct 2024, p.49]

This follow-up feels thought-out and ambitious. She knows where she wants to be. [Oct 2024, p.66]

At times, as on “For Stars Of The Air”, they sound like an electronic post-punk project a la The Soft Moon. At others, they become the band in a spaghetti western saloon, soundtracking impending demise on “Last Resort Of The Gambling Man” with sun-drenched rock moves. [Oct 2024, p.52]