Holtkamp and Anderegg have arrived at a strain of wide-eyed Americana with roots in the ashen wastes of the Pennsylvania landscape. [Feb 2013, p.58]

The most interesting thing about this music isn't so much that it exists in 2013, more that there still seems to be a fundamental need for it. [Feb 2013, p.58]

Though primarily centered around Sweet's songcraft, Burnt Up on Re-Entry benefits from the judicious incorporation of primitive electronics. [Feb 2013, p.58]

The most anomalous thing about What the Brothers Sang, a collection of Everly Brothers covers, is how sincere it sounds. [Feb 2013, p.52]

The percipients' more abstract visions allow much joyful engagement with sampled, electronic and acoustic sounds. [Feb 2013, p.52]

Few among us can craft an album as seamlessly fine as Fade. [Feb 2013, p.51]

From the bottom of a spring-reverb well, Harris strums mournful, incoherent songs like "Vital" and "being Her Shadow," but intersperses them with creepy textural mood pieces. [Feb 2013, p.50]

It's another cautious portion of well-made, moderately experimental not-quite-rock. [Feb 2013, p.49]

The combination of Robert's artistry and the exemplary ensemble backing him means the album succeeds in being a renewal. [Jan 2013, p.63]

Ying & Yang, ultimately, just sounds a bit matey. [Nov 2012, p.61]

Everything about the record--the pacing, the choice of sounds--reveals a mature, careful hand. [Dec 2012, p.77]

Accelerator captures a confused, jokey arc of the duo's trajectory that hasn't aged well in the 14 years since its release. [Dec 2012, p.70]

The synthetic sounds are more liquid and alive, the rhythms more nonchalantly funky, the unfolding narratives more gripping than previous work. [Dec 2012, p.64]

Desertshore is less a report than a dramatisation, an upending of their defiantly aura-less usurping of traditional performance modes in favour of a theatricality that feels more selfconsciously like a big event than the DIY/samizdat style of old.... [The Final Report] fares a little better, though again, it's a shame XTG have framed it in the form of a report.[Dec 2012, p.69]

Alc has already produced better songs for the actual Ghostface. So it is unclear why this album--or the rapper who made it--needed to exist. [Jan 2013, p.79]

It's a rich and layered work that refuses to be easily summed up. [Jan 2013, p.69]

As stylistic cross-fertilising vanity projects by rock stars of pensionable age go, this one has bags of charm at least and is eminently listenable. [Jan 2013, p.65]

Sushi is more centred in the present, and more focused altogether. [Jan 2013, p.64

Lux is OK, while it's on. But that's all. And that's a shame. [Jan 2013, p.64]

Here, the 70s simulations, artful enough in their own way, are presented straight. The result, sadly, doesn't evoke 70s Italian Horror; it merely makes one think of already-over-familiar period and genre signifiers. [Jan 2013, p.62]

Hegarty's eco-femism finds a much better ambassador in his songs. [Oct 2012, p.58]

The beats are straighter and more polished, and a degree of shine has replaced bedroom-engineered grit. [Dec 2012, p.75]

Despite its complexity, the album is full of ravishing, soulful production and vocals--as catchy and emotionally stirring as it is subversively and intellectually thrilling. [Dec 2012, p.75]

It manages to evoke both void and overload simultaneously, and feels by turns oppressively dense and light as a feather. [Dec 2012, p.74]

As a collection, Psychedelic Pill is spotty and, at times, sleep-inducing.

These are effective dancefloor tracks that contain secret burdens o f menace or anxiety. [Dec 2012, p.68]

Sometimes the album feels more like a document of studio experiments than a collection of fully realised, narrative-driven compositions, but they remain remarkably effective at imposing similarly conflicting emotions on the listener as on Herndon's avatar.[Dec 2012, p.65]

The music is immaculately performed and produced, yet lacks the divine spark of inspiration that might elevate it above the status of demonstration reel. [Dec 2012, p.65]