Where Shine New Lights doesn't radically deviate from TJO's design concept, but it does favour a more minimal feng shui. [Feb 2014, p.51]

Rival Dealer constitutes Burial's boldest statement to date. [Feb 2014, p.44]

As it is, Have Fun With God is never less than listenable but seldom more than vaguely pleasant. [Feb 2014, p.44]

Ghettoville feels dead, finished, hopeless. If this is, as the publicity hints, an end to the Actress project, then it is a dramatic one. [Feb 2014, p.44]

If music is ever really going to change the world, it's going to need more vigour and vitality than this. [Jan 2014, p.66]

Grassed Inn is both beautifully stupid, and much, much smarter than you think. [Jan 2014, p.63]

Live From KCRW suffers from the stilted atmosphere that plagues most live radio sessions, with the audience, Cave and his Bad Seeds all on their best behavior. [Jan 2014, p.59]

Music for Shut-Ins is valuable for the manner in which it acknowledges the true masters while still allowing room for non-canonical influences, expanding rather than replacing or limiting possibilities. [Jan 2014, p.64]

The first part of this milary-concrete triptych is mostly vague interference and Radiophonic Workshop-style wibbling about that towards the end, has developed into discomforting BBC Ceefax music. The middle section is sonically richer... Part three is illbient comedown. [Jun 2013, p.51]

Much of the music here is a return to past form, and a move away from the more polished recent albums. [Dec 2013, p.58]

The thrill of Fetch is in its precision, its Bachian joy in maths. [Dec 2013, p.54]

DeGraw's skill for mixing and matching swatches of sound is unparalleled, but without context it becomes much like choosing colours for your living room. [Dec 2013, p.48]

At nearly two hours long, it can get claustrophobic and anti-exuberant out of these tunes' native club element.... Nonetheless, there's an undeniable freshness.

It's one earthquake/windstorm after another for an hour, possibly the group's best release since 2009's Bag It! [Nov 2013, p.55]

When the beats are sparse he shines, but the album bloats in its middle with too many R&B assisted dramatic gestures and not enough dead eyed and cracked crack music. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Drake has certainly mastered the art of making Drake records. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Meek is doing the one thing he does well and nothing else. [Nov 2013, p.66]

This strained affair makes the party rocking simplicity of 2 Chainz or even LMFAO look absolutely artful. Brown's too smart to make music this dumb effectively. [Nov 2013, p.66]

[He] sticks to the basic formula: modernizations of the sort of proto-trap Memphis riot music that defined his early career... but never transcendent. [Nov 2013, p.66]

2 Chainz moves around the sort of eclectic brat selection that Lil Wayne was devouring in the mid-2000s. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Effervescent retro fun with a core of righteousness. [Nov 2013, p.66]

One can absorb the enthusiasm while feeling somewhat repulsed by the taste. On occasion, it works. [Nov 2013, p.65]

The Pyrrhic pleasures of their Confield-era tracks00all those advanced-topology rhythmic angles--remain in the first half of "tac Lacora," sharpened by being somewhat tamed, pushed into the pulsing exhilaration of the second half. [Nov 2013, p.65]

Although there are still psych-rock moments that recall the strident moves of Quicksilver Messenger Service or Spirit, it's a darker and more straightforward album than 2012's Between The Times And The Tides. [Nov 2013, p.63]

Even when he's calling all the shots and playing most of the instruments himself, Turner seems to stay in the background. For the most part, his strategy works. [Nov 2013, p.62]

Even more than on past outings, Kirby seems drawn to a sense of disconnect, refusing to let the elements of each track interact with one another. Yet Dead Empires is also rich with experiments and surprises. [Nov 2013, p.60]

Surrender To The Fantasy showcases the latest stage yet of their oddly trad transformation, the unkempt electric savagery of their past domesticated to the point of extinction. [Nov 2013, p.56]

While I'm A Dreamer looks back the best part of a century, sepia cover photo and all, it never simply lapses into pastiche. [Nov 2013, p.54]