Drawn from a live show Anderson first staged in 2000, Amelia is a narrative of Earhart’s final adventure, split for the album’s sake into 22 short parts, but flowing together, with Anderson’s voice and violin floating above the deep swells of music made by a band including guitarist Marc Ribot; Sexmob’s drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Tony Scherr; a string quartet; and the Filharmonie Brno, under Dennis Russell Davies. [Sep 2024, p.45]

The fluttering modulations within the wordless, thrumming “AM/PM” and the panning wafts of fuzz in “Crucial Years” offer welcome variety, but much of Realistic IX feels like a diversion into territory ill-suited to the duo’s strengths. [Sep 2024, p.53]

The accompanying booklet is richly illustrated with pulpy paperbacks and other artefacts of the shadow side of hippie spirituality. In his quirky accompanying essay, curator Martin Callomon assures the listener that there’s much more where this came from, in the form of a playlist on the accursed music streaming platform Spotify – undoubtedly the most unholy thing about this entire affair. [Sep 2024, p.65]

The percussive result is a monster truck rally of low end synths stomping the shit out of some scuzzy Gun Club/X/Flesh Eaters-style Los Angeles punk trash, while a cheering section of saxophones blast and honk away on the sidelines. [Sep 2024, p.58]

As its title implies, Dark Times is a total bummer, but it’s a sumptuous bummer – warm, bluesy, funky. [Aug 2024, p.58]

Pastel and Thomson don’t attempt to (re)create the actual music made by Memorial Device; instead they piece together a suggestive collage of sounds evocative of the post-punk era and representative of wistful remembrance. The Pastels’ dreamy tendencies are well suited to this brief. [Sep 2024, p.54]

He still lacks emotional commitment as a rapper, offering weakly swaggy bars like “I’m gonna make a billie like I’m Eilish” on “Talk My Shit”. Honeyed melodic shadings like “Dadvocate” and the emo rock oriented “Lithonia” are more compelling. [Sep 2024, p.60]

This mixtape sounds more coherent than its 2012 predecessor, the shroomed-out Tumblr rap artefact King Of The Mischievous South Volume One Underground Tape 1996 . The features are bigger. [Sep 2024, p.60]

Mostly, however, these tracks stand as pure punk or pure roots, invoking the rebellious spirit of the time in a way that, remarkably, still comes across as fresh and exciting, even nowadays when everybody tends to know just about everything. [Sep 2024, p.59]

“The Seal” is busy in a different mode – it sounds like it would fit in with the jazzy shugs of Cobra And Phases era Stereolab, until Barrow’s wobbly vocal comes in, like the perpetually lachrymose Peter Jefferies given a bit of a speedy kick. [Sep 2024, p.58]

It’s the genuine connection of Bowles, Toll and McMurry that makes it all bounce, which is hardly what one might expect from a banjo fronted group. [Aug 2024, p.48]

The tracks swim in their devotional depths and become new platforms for meditation and transmission. The compositions are exquisitely suited to convey the confusion and wonder of life’s early years. [Jun 2024, p.48]

Their current music has that wobbly centre of gravity that makes it sound both proto and post-punk at once, something between the garage fog of the Nuggets era and the more art-damaged end of the 1980s hardcore spectrum. Imagine Hüsker Dü or Saccharine Trust after they had too much to dream last night. [Aug 2024, p.84]

On Jinxed By Being, both Chasny and Shackleton find a collaborative meeting point where sound complements their respective aesthetics and bodies of work, while moving them towards something thrillingly new. [Aug 2024, p.59]

Landless’s four singers Méabh Meir, Lily Power, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch spin tightly woven harmonies with crystalline precision over beds of drones. However the album is less doomy than might be expected from a Murphy-produced album – or maybe it’s just that these voices sparkle with light and life, even as they sing about encounters with death. [Aug 2024, p.52]

On Return – as on all of their albums – Fu Manchu evidently strive to maximise the impact of each riff, hook and rhythm, resulting in some decidedly funkadelic noise. [Aug 2024, p.62]

This is a complex, affecting work by Ishibashi, but listeners are advised to seek out the film to experience it in context. [Jun 2024, p.50]

Across 13 brief sketches – some only a minute or two long – the groove is paramount. A hint of Afrobeat pops up a few times, here as a sludgy crawl, there as if Tonto’s Expanding Head Band had lugged their gear down to Fela’s shrine. [Jul 2024, p.66]

It can feel as though one must push through multiple layers of cultural detritus – Linda Blair, David Cassidy, Kiss, The Brady Bunch, etc – to get to the music itself. In truth, these resonances add flavour and colour to Jeff and Steve McDonald’s exuberant power pop, assisted on this self-titled double album by drummer and producer Josh Klinghoffer.

Each track is a mini drama of yearning and patience. These are studies in building momentum, meditations on how to temporarily tap into a shared singular spirit. [Jul 2024, p.50]

Sometimes the music lingers too long in the in-between places, as though it’s not sure where it’s going. It probably doesn’t make sense for music that deals in ambivalence to be settled in itself, but some listeners may require a tiny bit more to believe in. [Jul 2024, p.50]

The power of Sumac’s work has always been in the intersection between power and precision, raw crunch driven and inch perfect percussive pummel. The same precision exists here, the same balance between onslaught and lull, the murky ambiguities surrounded by crystal clear volleys of sculpted noise. [Jul 2024, p.60]

Martin’s productions, equal parts frosted dub techno and eerie minimalism akin to the pre-orchestral Stars Of The Lid records, match Kamaru’s patient inquisitiveness. While there’s diversity here – compare the beatless slow build of opener “Differences” versus the scuffed kick and snare of “Ark” – Kamaru and Martin are resourceful with limited palettes, unearthing poignancy in subtle shifts of permutation and iteration. Music and voice forming a perfect alloy. [Jun 2024, p.52]

Grush treats us to another set of strange and beautiful bangers. [Jul 2024, p.64]

This has to be the sunniest winter record ever. .... Stuffed with sunflowers and tiny xylophones, this is sweet, joyful stuff. And then, just as you start to worry that it could all congeal into a Zach Braff score, Saunier hits you right in the weird.

We Have Dozens Of Titles is a view into a fascinating kind of processing, digesting and inventing. The results exist outside of even microgenre, flummoxing the desire to categorise at every turn. [Jun 2024, p.68]

There’s less noise here than on Not A Dream. Nueen’s production layers thick, soft synth pads with fluttering percussive elements, smudging swung tempos back into breathing soundscapes of vocal samples and sticky rolling saturation. [Jul 2024, p.54]

Though clearly labelled as demos, it’s hard not to think of this as a completed work. Cargill’s sequencing is impeccable and the material is compelling throughout. This is no mere collection of odds and sods, but a substantial release from the band that enriches their legacy. .... A reminder of what was lost. But it also feels like a gift. [Jul 2024, p.68]