Bittersweet melancholy is rarely more refined. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Some thoroughly arresting moments that fall midway between Justin Vernon and Scott Walker. [Nov 2022, p.26]

They're not best known for melodicism, but in a funny way the slow-blooming compositions here are full of charming, playful melody, detailed in exotic colours. [Nov 2022, p.25]

It’s rarely coherent and not always pretty, but the most effective therapy rarely is. [Oct 2022, p.26]

TV Priest remain wedded to a very contemporary wading-through-treacle post-punk feel but at times add a little space to the music rather than surrendering to claustrophobia. [Nov 2022, p.38]

Auto-Tuned electro-soul, reggae-lite rhythms and deceptively political lyrics are key motifs here, although Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs lends some grungey thrust to "Fall First." [Nov 2022, p.36]

The album come out riffing, with a packed list of guest guitarists. ... Ozzy sounds world-weary, sometimes a bit knackered. [Nov 2022, p.35]

This recurring tendency to grandiosity is especially frustrating given that less is generally more throughout the album. [Nov 2022, p.35]

People Helping People is evenly split between eerie, washed-out rumblings and more frenzied outbursts of Sonic Youth-ful skronk and motorik madness. [Oct 2022, p.33]

Infectious, silly and even a little dangerous again. Through it all — even on the two quieter tracks, which stick outa little awkwardly among the Killing Joke fuzz — Brett Anderson is the consummate guide, vocally at his peak. [Oct 2022, p.34]

There’s a seam of pop here that his parent band largely lacked, which fills moments like “You Remind Me” with a warm flush of romance. [Oct 2022, p.29]

It captures the core of what Jones does. His compositions are always assured, and his playing is never overwrought. [Jul 2022, p.29]

“Savage” and “Maps” could be John Foxx’s Ultravox remixed by Larry Levan, the songs’ harder synth and post-punk textures continually softened by Polar’s emotive vocals and Geist’s love of warm, soulful grooves. [Sep 2022, p.23]

The mood of Expert In A Dying Field is yearning and reflective, as Stokes picks over the bones of relationships on mournful janglers like “Your Side”, punky rocker “Silence Is Golden”, the shimmering “Best Left” and terrific closer “2am”. [Oct 2022, p.25]

Gibbard's freighted eloquence gives Asphalt Meadows its unsettling immediacy. [Oct 2022, p.26]

The seemingly simple yet thoroughly conceptualised material here, all held within specific harmonic language, is beautifully realised. [Oct 2022, p.26]

An ear for arrangement detail — be it fuzzy synths or rustic washboard-like percussion — lifts often simple, acoustic-led songs into enduringly captivating territory. [Oct 2022, p.36]

Pandemic restrictions demanded some creative rethinking for these seven tracks. ... Guitars are still central, however, whipping the Chameleons-like “Ricochet” along and performing as bedrock melodic clanging for the six-minute, Sisters-adjacent closer, “Tearing Up The Grass”. [Oct 2022, p.33]

[Greg Dulli has] pulled the Whigs back into (sharp) focus. ... Closer “In Flames” is a welcome reminder that few can match the Whigs in the slow-burn desperation stakes. [Oct 2022, p.23]

He describes the album as a “coming of age” project, and at 59 it’s evident he’s still processing the past. [Oct 2022, p.31]

There’s something about the funky syncopation between the two and their slightly punky sensibility that elevates GA-20 way above so many dreary blues revivalists. [Oct 2022, p.29]

This fully formed debut is incontestable evidence of an important new act. [Sep 2022, p.30]

Natural Brown Prom Queen revels in ear-catching beats and hooks while still maintaining Parks’ mile-a-minute rate of musical ideas. [Oct 2022, p.34]

Album highlight “Understood” sounds particularly Young-like here too, but elsewhere Martsch sounds confident in his own skin, merging interlocking layered guitars, subtle melodic touches and licks that veer from crunchy to blissed out. [Oct 2022, p.26]

Together they make smart but unstudied pop music, as invigoratingly weird as it is instantly winning, stuffed with gleefully incompatible styles and with a broad emotional range. [Oct 2022, p.31]

Her flow has a bratty edge and unhurried, authoritative core, capable of Philly soul sweetness on “Lo Rain”, or riding low, squelching beats on “IDGAF”. ... Meanwhile, “Let Me Be Great” isa pan-African firework display celebrating her rooted rebirth. [Oct 2022, p.34]

The xx duo eagerly depart from the templates that have served their band so well, thereby imparting Hideous Bastard with a spontaneity that complements the courage and candour in the lyrics. [Oct 2022, p.34]

Worth the price alone is the inclusion of their peerless ’97 Nurse With Wound collaboration “Simple Headphone Mind”/“Trippin’ With The Birds”, half an hour of sublime Neu!-sozzled psych as Steven Stapleton caresses the ’lab’s “Long Hair Of Death”. [Oct 2022, p.48]

Opener “Globe” is a bubblegum headrush: giddy, kinetic, punctuated by smile-inducing cries of “you got this”; “Champagne”, with its shared bassline, a bittersweet mirror image. The skittish “TV Flicker”, inspired by a sudden family bereavement, breaks the mould somewhat, adding range to the mix. [Oct 2022, p.33]

"Living Torch I" is gentle and organic, a hypnotic four-note refrain offering some of the spiritual uplift of her organ work. The shorter "Living Torch II" presents something like the same ingredients, but strafes them with electronic attack. [Oct 2022, p.33]

Art Moore conjure up some compelling scenes on their debut. [Oct 2022, p.25]

There’s a strong Big Thief vibe to tracks like "Lot's Wife" and "Silsbee" - named after the small town where the album was recorded - but Why Bonnie have a more traditional concept of melody, best expressed on the excellent "Sharp Town". [Oct 2022, p.36]

Although his dabblings in bluegrass pastiche are less convincing elsewhere, it’s all shot through with characteristic, likeable idiosyncrasy. [Oct 2022, p.36]

If the reggae-metal of "I'm Insecure" is a little club-footed, the charisma of her delivery still wins through. [Oct 2022, p.31]

Her candid, self-interrogating lyrics and glassy, soulful voice take centrestage. [Oct 2022, p.29]

Tracks such as "My Name is Blank" capture the album's essence - a middle ground between metal and punk - on a record that barely lets up for a single second. [Oct 2022, p.25]

Beyoncé's seventh solo album is a flawlessly structured feast. [Oct 2022, p.25]

The likes of “Casting A Spell” and “You May Leave But This Will Bring You Back” reassure that Burnett’s formidable facility for waspish wordplay remains intact. [Oct 2022, p.26]

A tightly visionary work addressing the isolation and mutilation of World War I soldiers; if it’s unforgiving and unflinching in focus, that’s needed, to give voice to such suffering. [Oct 2022, p.29]

Muse are so bursting with energy and ideas, even their joke songs are stadium-sized barnstormers. [Oct 2022, p.33]

The core sound is instrumental motorik rock with sweet licks. [Sep 2022, p.24]

These sketches give a sense of how Reed’s songs would be finessed. The less familiar tunes reverse the telescope, throwing the focus on the way Reed bullworked his writing muscles, toying with novelty and genre. ... What these early sketches show is that by combining novelty and song craft with the soul of a poet, Reed could reach higher. [Sep 2022, p.42]

Treading familiar terrain on a succession of tracks that adhere to his comfort zone of mannered electro-pop. [Sep 2022, p.29]

Evocative of Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman at their most extroverted, McKenzie’s songs provide great warmth, too. [Sep 2022, p.28]

The default setting is dancefloor hedonism with an air of wistful nostalgia. Best of all are the two Bernard Butler co-writes, “Glitter Ball” and “Home”, which sound like Saint Etienne at their most ecstatic. [Sep 2022, p.21]

There’s certainly an abundance of good ideas – often several within the course of one song, with hooks emerging from the fog before dissolving as quickly as they came – but the band seem to work through them in perfect harmony, on the way to even greater things. ... Their best album.

Young Blood is far darker than 2020’s soulful El Dorado. “Blood On The Tracks”, which chugs along behind a swampy, cowbell-accented groove, provides relief from the monolithic heaviness, which becomes enervating on the generic “Hard Working Man”. [Sep 2022, p.26]

Dylan Hadley and Cole Berliner’s songs are fragmentary and unpredictable, their springy guitars and elliptical vocals sometimes coalescing into sparkling hooks, at other times deliberately abstruse; think the quirky post-punk of The Raincoats, or a country-folk Deerhoof. [Sep 2022, p.26]

The bonus material proves just as revelatory as the remastered albums, as Against The Odds doubles as a shadow history of the city’s creative heyday. [Sep 2022, p.39]

However nonlinear her compositions, they’re bright, full of wonder and have a pop sensibility, recalling Four Tet, Deakin and Suzanne Ciani. [Sep 2022, p.30]

The songwriter’s takes on treacherous relationships come with a Vampire Weekend-ish talent for a multi-part melody and Phoebe Bridgers’ ear for pertinent one-liners, the stately “Underwater”, “Move Me”, the title track and bedsit-ABBA kiss-off “Cold” all deep, powerful, overwhelming. [Sep 2022, p.23]

A revitalised rock’n’roll soundtrack for a push towards the brightening of the light. [Sep 2022, p.33]

As a lyricist, she remains the understatement queen, “Let’s keep all our doctor’s appointments” from “Be Careful With Yourself” perhaps one of the most superbly subtle statements of devotion in recorded song. Nobody underdoes it better. [Sep 2022, p.26]

Whatever meanings are to be gleaned here, Bleed Out still rates as one of the band’s hardest-rocking outings. [Sep 2022, p.28]

Lifetime Achievement embraces the folksier elements of his sound, paring the music down to guitar, banjo, occasionally a harmonica and even more occasionally a full band. [Sep 2022, p.22[

The brutal realism Greil Marcus heard in X’s debut Los Angeles remains in John Doe’s solo incarnation as hard-bitten Americana troubadour, here offering 1890s tales of spartan hardship, his songs’ killers and victims chased across the South by poverty and guilt. [Jun 2022, p.26]

Lyrical malaise is matched, as ever, by immaculately crafted electronic pop music that veers just as much into joy, elation and euphoria as it does melancholic introspection. [Sep 2022, p.24]

Pinning this endlessly complex songwriter’s work down to a single tagline or meaning is unwise. His songs are not always easy, they’re not always straightforward, but 10 albums in, they’re mounting up to create one of the most impressive bodies of work of the century so far. [Sep 2022, p.16]

Longer songs are punctuated by studio chatter, voicemails, birdsong and other ambient sounds, lending the whole project an artfully informal intimacy. [Sep 2022, p.32]

Whenever he [frontman Jeremy Gaudet] does lose his footing, the band’s imaginative take on mid-2000s indie rock – all churning guitars and zigzagging synths – steadies this Chopper. [Sep 2022, p.26]

A revolutionary step in the band’s catalogue this is not, but the sound of Dwyer and co having a lot of fun in his basement radiates throughout, as does the band’s seamless knack for tapping into any strand of punk they turn their hand to. [Sep 2022, p.28]

Cheat Codes finds Danger Mouse rolling with a new lyrical foil and this one feels like it could run and run. [Sep 2022, p.22]

Lennox and Kember create breezy sonic collages of sunshine melody, fluidly chugging rhythms and fizzing analogue synths without succumbing to full retro-jukebox pastiche. [Sep 2022, p.29]

The album is more of a celebration than a wake, thanks to the Promise Of The Real’s youthful exuberance and Young’s own ageless spirit. [Sep 2022, p.32]

On a musical level, Lynn imparts these songs with an unhurried grace. And while there’s an agreeable twang to “Black River” and folk-country steel on “In A Moment”, synths form the album’s bedrock.

A mood of high seriousness pervades, but Spirit Exit’s blend of spirituality and futurism is often transfixing. [Aug 2022, p.25]

His spacious and captivating 2020 LP Alexandra felt like a breakthrough in this respect; Fleeting Adventure is even better.

Going Places is a felicitous reversion to type, full of mature and nuanced songcraft. [Sep 2022, p.30]

What makes Friendship different, though, are Wriggins’ striking songs, minted in the sort of conversational poetry at which Lucinda Williams excels. [Aug 2022, p.26]

There’s a palpable sense of world-weariness in his vocals and in the band’s fuzzy hooks, which makes everything sound both precarious and oddly poignant. [Aug 2022, p.25]

A bold re-statement of artistic identity. [Sep 2022, p.25]

A tantalising exploration of modern-day kosmische. Seemingly liberated by technology, these two fiftysomething blokes conjure the kind of utopian panoplies dreamt up by Harald Grosskopf and Neu! on the 24-minute “A Yellow Robe”, a swirling, burbling journey that also nods to recent experiments by Roman Flügel and Peder Mannerfelt. [Sep 2022, p.27]

Where earlier material flowed freely, here his fiddly funk and plastic grooves contrive a kind of new-age electro that at times is suave and smooth but rarely settles into anything satisfying; as much as they exude a sense of wellness. [Aug 2022, p.23]

A brace of Nick Lowe-penned Brinsley Schwarz tracks (“Surrender To The Rhythm”, “Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love”) are forensically faithful to the originals, but the older men bring an oaky maturity to Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” that likely eluded their younger selves. [Sep 2022, p.30]

Steve Shelley and Lee Ranaldo were impressed enough to pitch in, helping form a warmly familiar yet still sometimes thrilling debut album. [Sep 2022, p.24]

Ayewa always makes ambitious albums, but Jazz Codes feels like her richest yet, her Lemonade, her To Pimp A Butterfly. [Sep 2022, p.28]

These empathetic tales teem with life. [Sep 2022, p.32]

“Build A Fire”, too, is an air-punching anthem, though Torquil Campbell prefers lighter-waving on “To Feel What They Feel”, which, like “If I Never See London Again”, turns to polished ’80s production techniques. They can’t shake their melancholy, however. [Sep 2022, p.32]

Dawes have never sounded more musically sophisticated. [Sep 2022, p.23]

This carefully recorded and intimate performance captures their cool command of Texas rock'n'roll better than most. [Sep 2022, p.32]

“Hello, Hi” is one of Ty’s most lean and focused albums to date. But the closer you get, the more you spot its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down in the dumps and head-over-heels in love: here is Ty Segall in all his wonderful contradictions. [Aug 2022, p.18]

The Sadies’ nebulous country-rock moves through glistening psychedelia (“Message To Belial”), gorgeous string ballads (“All The Good”) and fierce garage fuzz (“Ginger Moon”). [Aug 2022, p.31]

[A] set of lean, characteristically nuanced, folk-edged songs. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Moonshine is a set piece, but “Greenway”, a nudge at The Beatles’ “Because” with rippling keys and cicadas, and the baffled starburst that is “With You” stand out. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Though their drive to fill all available space causes some songs to grow diff use, their vision coheres on “Taken By The Hand”, a suitably audacious fusion of ferocious post-hardcore and anthemic Southern rock. [Aug 2022, p.23]

The basic formula may be familiar, but Mallinder’s ear for fresh noises and slippery grooves remains as sharp as ever. [Aug 2022, p.29]

This push-pull between melody and twisting beats, veering back and forth between dark and joyous moments, is the crux of this excellent album, one that glides snappily between acid electro, synth-washed indie, crunchy pop and dance-floor rippers. [Aug 2022, p.36]

Purim blends new material with rebooted old favorites here, applying her lush liquid harmonies and dazzling six-octave vocal acrobatics to voluptuous bossa nova reveries. [May 2022, p.32]

Narcissistic (“Black Hole Baby”, a montage of radio praise and day-in-the-life mission statement), earnest (“crushed.zip”, an anxiety-fuelled showcase for singer Orono’s sugary-sad voice) and deeply weird. [Aug 2022, p.33]

Dan Hyndman supplies a reliably cryptic stream of absurdist prattle, though his decision to stick with largely adlibbed lyrics robs Down Tools of some of the force and focus of last year’s excellent Lines Redacted. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Its eloquent yet unfussy nature and thoughtful arrangements are clear affirmation. [Aug 2022, p.33]

There are rowdy barn-raisers, but also melodic, meditative grooves and strange, insidious songs. It’s an album of almost fragile beauty, intense loneliness and raging storms. Not for the last time, Crazy Horse took Neil Young somewhere he wasn’t expecting. It’s just a shame it’s taken us so long to get there too.

They’ve managed to make tonal inconsistencies feel like an actual consistency, rather than being a jarring and detracting experience. They’ve wrangled chaos into submission, and currently sound like no other band out there. [Aug 2022, p.34]

Pearson’s clear knack for melodic songcraft is plentiful, across the breezy “Talk Over Town” or the sugary indie-pop of “Alligator”, resulting in an album that nails introspective songwriting just as seamlessly as it does infectious pop. [Aug 2022, p.31]

Full of hits and misses as it sways back and forth between indie and electro, never quite finding its feet. [Aug 2022, p.30]

There are no giant leaps here, it’s very much Interpol as you know them, but there’s plenty of micro evolutions, impressive production and subtle tweaks to make this a welcome addition to their catalogue. [Aug 2022, p.28]

The effect is kaleidoscopic, as the music constantly moves and morphs to reveal new shapes, colours and meanings. [Jul 2022, p.31]

Bock’s solo work takes a subtler but no less arresting approach, weaving in melodic passages for strings, organ and woodwind and rhythmic calls to her Brazilian heritage in ways that only fully reveal themselves with repeated listens. [Aug 2022, p.25]