While there are moments when you pine for Pete Shelley’s distinctive whine, subtle wordplay and clever vocal melodies – for variety’s sake but also straightforward nostalgia – Steve Diggle is clearly committed to maintaining the Buzzcocks’ story and pushing forward into the band’s 50th year. [Feb 2026, p.32]

Unfurls a desolate systems music that simultaneously feels a love letter to the timbres and patters of analogue synthesisers, and a paean to the post-industrial north. [Feb 2026, p.33]

Demonstrates a continued forte for hooky songs that are just as likely to draw from '80s inspirations like The Smiths and Aztec Camera as from Joyce Manor's rowdier predecessors on Epitaph. [Feb 2026, p.35]

Weitz shreds and manipulates the instrument [hurdy gurdy] so it becomes the record's distinctive voice. the nine-minute dubs "Compact Mirror/Last Names" and "Sonora" are especially spellbinding. [Feb 2026, p.33]

At times (“Matter Of Taste, “Got A New Car”), the inventiveness lands with a clunk. However, it’s a generous record, emotionally fearless and thoroughly likeable on first listen, while Perry’s voice can’t help but convince. He’s only just begun.

Power's voice is improving with age, especially confident and commanding on the closing, psych-baroque "Birds Heading South". [Feb 2026, p.33]

Producer Joe Henry keeps the atmosphere warmly intimate, like a slate-night jam session in a smokey club, which keeps the focus squarely on the interplay between the instruments and personalities. [Feb 2026, p.37]

The vibe is mid-'60s grindhouse. [Jan 2026, p.25]

Some of her finest vocals, full of wit and humour and immense loneliness. [Jan 2026, p.34]

The addictive, chant-like vocals of Whitney Johnson, AKA Matchess, combined with some satisfyingly spacious grooves, periodically aligns Desert So Green with the contemporary psych-rock swirl of Warpaint and Moon Duo. [Feb 2026, p.39]

Imaginative album. [Jan 2026, p.32]

The music is straight and soothing, a band coming together in a rootsy salve as Williams returns to a favourite theme, deliverance through music. [Feb 2026, p.24]

Producer Luke Potashnick (Paloma Faith) has collaborated in a polished sound, as Motown-style brass lifts Bailey's gritty soul shout on "Take A Step Back". [Feb 2026, p.30]

These are dark and heavy songs for dark and heavy times. [Jan 2026, p.31]

Lattimore's harp is beautifully clean, and Barwick's vocals less affected than usual. [Jan 2026, p.27]

An explicitly confessional record attempting to make sense of, and give vent to, a degree of personal turbulence. [Jan 2026, p.25]

The Cribs' wild, unfinished edge is elsewhere polished by producer Patrick Wimberly (MGMT, Solange) in a lyrically rueful but musically soaring record. [Feb 2025, p.27]

Unabashedly emphatic songs that nod to Robyn (notably on skyscraping opener "Good Intentions"), Cyndi Lauper ("Every Ounce Of Me") and Kate Bush ("Appetite"), though the settings are largely those of a US mainstream, '90s grunge-pop band. They flatten the resonance of Hollingworth's lyrics. [Feb 2026, p.35]

Its songs are as poetically heartfelt as they are acerbic. [Jan 2026, p.34]

The resulting set is intense, clamorous and deranged (often thrillingly so). [Jan 2026, p.31]

Secret Love, produced by Cate Le Bon, obliterates the thought [they would struggle to surprise a second time] entirely. [Jan 2026, p.29]

The softer edges and new accessibility only makes the fury and dread eerily heavier. [Jan 2026, p.35]

Generally her pop is as adult as her lyrics. [Feb 2026, p.29]

Your Picture is full of love, radiating Beach Boys bliss with that killer thread of melancholy, and evoking Pastor TL Barrett's choral devotionals. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

It's a shame that Night Light fails to cohere, especially since the suave, Roxy Music-like shades of Euro-disco in "Going Nowhere" and "In The Middle" suggest another route out of the stylistic quagmire of recent efforts. [Jan 2026, p.36]

A Dolby Atmos mix deepens the sound of the album and a steven Wilson makeover of a legendary 1975 live bootleg from Los Angeles is another welcome inclusion. [Review of the Year 2025, p.40]

White digs deeper into the seemingly symbiotic, drums/keyboard relationship, playing both with intuitive flair to hypnotic effect. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

An exhausting yet improbably exhilarating listen. [Jan 2026, p.31]

The set ebbs and flows, Cave alternating between charming and cajoling, vulnerable and scathing. [Jan 2026, p.24]

Stripped ac and stretched out, in Toral's hands these pieces become devotional as he zones in in on their essence. [Dec 2025, p.37]

A beautifully composed record that feels alive with texture. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

It’s a deep, melodic record, preoccupied – as you might expect from a sixty-something punk troubadour – with dreams, small kindnesses and the end of the world; all of these things feeling suddenly more prominent. [Review of the Year 2025, p.22]

Using banal sample does lead to some fairly bland passages, but Lopatin and his studio partner Nathan Salon squirrel enough unorthodox ideas into their sound design to give the likes of "Lifeworld" and "Rodl Glide" real verve. [Jan 2026, p.35]

Shifts them into a warmer, fully 3D landscape without sacrificing the songs' imposing build or the solipsistic intensity of Katie Ball's lyrics. [Jan 2026, p.34]

It's heavy R&B with a slight goth-punk vibe thanks to the pummelling rhythm section and Childish's dead pan vocals. [Jan 2026, p.31]

Love And Fortune is a reckoning with loss - of relationships, homes, a younger, more carefree version of herself - but one that does not wholly relinquish Donnelly's playful side. [Jan 2026, p.29]

This bold, moving and purposeful record proves De La remain eternal. [Jan 2026, p.29]

The resulting album is a joy. [Jan 2026, p.27]

[The new remix] is sympathetic and subtly revelatory. .... However, there is one near-unforgivable gaff: on "Hot Stiff", around 2 mins 50, just as Mick comes back after Keith's scribbling wah-wah solo, the new mix inexplicably omits the word "Hot", hitting is only with a mighty - "Stuff!" [Review of the Year, p.41]

A convincing demonstration of the group's rejuvenation and reorganisation after the departure of longtime frontman Duke Amayo. [Jan 2026, p.27]

The way Eric evokes the "shabby shires" brings to mind Ray Davies, while "Land Of The Faint At Heart" swings with the bruised energy of Springsteen (if the Boss had been raised on suburban terror and garden gnomes). [Jan 2026, p.36]

Her own material is far less raucous [than The Pogues], but the introspection is laced with dark humour and spurred on by her storytelling instincts. [Jan 2026, p.36]

These deceptively simple, acoustic songs of nature, family and love, so spritely they sometimes only narrowly escape mawkishness, could be centuries old, but sound as if they're being sung for the first time. [Review of the Year 2025, p.21]

Dove Ellis arrives fully formed on this self-produced debut. [Jan 2026, p.30]

There's a beautiful simpatico between Prochet and Danell throughout that elevates everything, and the El Michels Affair contribution points outwards, to new experiences. It's a lovely album - 30 minutes well spent. [Jan 2026, p.20]

Ireland shows the breadth as well as the depth of the scene. [Dec 2025, p.37]

Rich and immersive debut. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

There's no sign they're running out of steam. [Dec 2025, p.31]

Downey has the chops to convince as an alt.country diva if she can step beyond this pleasant ambling contentment into more trenchant and ambitious songwriting territory. [Nov 2025, p.31]

Beautiful, meditative music. .... Although it does its job cinematically speaking, this is much more than just background music. [Review of the Year, p.24]

Perhaps his knottiest - though once unravelled, its charms are hard to resist. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

While Workin' Man also marks the final studio contributions of Nelson's pianist sister Bobbie and drummer Paul English, the mood is very much celebratory. [Review of the Year 2025, p.27]

Telescoping the timeline and illustrating The Beatles' progress with new selections, delivering in an impressionistic, nouvelle vague rush. [Review of the Year 2025, p.103]

A most welcome return. [Dec 2025, p.31]

While there's room for marvellous deeper cuts such as "Goodnight Tonight", "Wild Life" and "Arrow Through Me", there's also filler like "Getting Closer" and "Call Me Back Again". In true Wings fashion, perhaps there really is something for everyone here. [Review of the Year 2025, p.45]

This ensemble, particularly the dynamic front line of Henderson and Shaw, didn't last very long, making this impeccable-sounding set of stone-cold Silver classics an even more crucial addition to the historic record. [Review of the Year 2025, p.44]

Though the variable recording quality of the later tracks can hinder their impact, the performance captured at First Ave and newly restored by engineer Beau Sorenson roars and gnashes and seethes with enough intensity to collapse the 40-year gap between then and now. [Dec 2025, p.45]

Stelmanis using her hurt as fuel for a series of sleekly designed tracks that alternate between surging, propulsive pieces of dancefloor-ready catharsis and more delicate yet still dramatic passages that emphasise the most crystalline properties of Stelmanis' voice. [Review of the Year 2025, p.21]

The new songs tend to be a little too blues-rock generic, but there's fun to be had on the self-penned "If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll". [Dec 2025, p.30]

Another satisfyingly robust effort. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

Tracks flirt with minimalism, spiky synth-pop and krautrock while creating an entirely original sonic language. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

“Trago notícias de uma nova geração,” he sings reassuringly, “Com certeza o mundo é bom” (“I bring the next generation’s news / That the world is surely good”). The music on Pequena Vertigem De Amor is so wonderfully seductive, so convincingly utopian, that you almost believe him. [Dec 2025, p.32]

They may not go out with a bang on this occasion, but Cheap trick's capacity to surprise prevails. [Dec 2025, p.28]

Often sounds like a man having his most wretched suspicions of the human conditions confirmed, especially on the self-explanatory " The Body Keep The Score" and "I Keep On Coming Back For More". However, his signature bleary wit remains radiant, especially on "Rita Wrote A Letter". [Review of the Year 2025, p.26]

Her most wide-ranging LP, Iconoclasts is also her most unwieldy, but she finds no small catharsis in letting the music overwhelm. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

Too much here feels diaphanous and directionless. [Review of the Year 2025, p.29]

Glacial electronic-first compositions like "Vessel" ape the atmospheric intensity of Julia Holter, but even in her exile, Ballentine finds something pretty to latch onto in every song. [Review of the Year 2025, p.28]

After a strong start, though, her sixth album sags in the middle with a run of ho-hum numbers, until Welch summons the elements again with the orchestral flourish of "You Can't Have It All". [Review of the Year 2025, p.24]

Incorporates orchestral flourishes and ambitious compositions into a full-bodied, emotionally bruising documents of divorce, betrayal, new love and self-discovery. [Review of the Year 2025, p.23]

Both Crutchfield sisters sound more comfortable in their own skin, more confident in their lyrics and vocals, as though bringing all those years apart to bear on the sessions. [Review of the Year 2025, p.20]

Back to their homespun, unforced, relatably human roots. [Dec 2025, p.37]

As disaster mounts for these ill-prepared moderns, the soft '70s New Orleans brass of "Through This Night" is among the musical balms. [Dec 2025, p.33]

Asha Lorenz's dreamy, deceptively casual vocals soften the sharp edges throughout and help foster an overall coherence even amid Cosplay's outbreaks of giddy chaos. [Dec 2025, p.36]

The shape and personality of a song are everything, and Elkington's arrangements serve these tracks superbly. [Dec 2025, p.26]

The drowsy pacing and solemn tone drag at times, but these slow-burn ballads from a lo-fi Lynchian netherworld are most achingly beautiful. [Dec 2025, p.37]

A Bridge To Far finds Midlake refining what they do best. [Dec 2025, p.30]

Cook puts Staples right at the front of the mix, accentuating her voice to the point where it's like she's whispering in the listener's ear. [Dec 2025, p.37]

It's a remarkably textural and atmospheric record. [Nov 2025, p.28]

Pedigo is often plugged in, his nimble fingerpicking surfing waves of sludge guitar. But there are moments of unlikely beauty too. [Nov 2025, p.31]

Sometimes ethereal and meditative, and at others blowing his sax and flute with an intensity that belies his seniority. [Nov 2025, p.33]

Thrills and dazzlement abound. [Dec 2025, p.33]

Snider's self-effacing charm radiant through the murk of "Stoner Yodel #2", the Chris Robinson co0write "While We Still Have A Chance" and the closing "The Temptation To Exist". [Dec 2025, p.36]

Chrissie Hynde's worldly ache elevates any lyric, here drawing worthy partners for a set of duets. Spare arrangements coloured by organ and pedal steel mid-tempo, statically framing the singers. [Dec 2025, p.31]

This is a wonderful, creative fusion of pop, electronica and more experimental styles. [Dec 2025, p.37]

The band's range has expanded impressively from their debut. .... Again is the confident fulfilment of the promise of Lush Life, from a band with the spirit and the songs to match their work ethic. [Dec 2025, p.22]

There's no cathartic yelling, but feelings are certainly to the fore in eight tracks that features violin, clarinet, lap steel and piano, with a guest spot (on "Just") from ambient psychedelicist M Sage. [Dec 2025, p.36]

There are highlights galore. .... A shiver goes through you when Dylan opens his November 1963 Carnegie Hall concert with the public debut of “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Imagine hearing that for the first time. The entire show plays out over Discs 7 and 8. The setlist is incredible, his performance impeccable. [Dec 2025, p.38]

They can still surprise, too, with tinges of organ psychedelia, anxious time-signatures and, on the sweet acoustic reverie of "Salt Water", evocative found sounds. [Dec 2025, p.29]

The sound overall mostly evokes the primordial, punky, pre-grunge Lemonheads, leavened now as then by Dando's insuppressible pop sense. [Dec 2025, p.33]

The hightlight is the 14-minute, exploratory "Heat Sink", as the pair size up and seduce each other like a pair of tropical birds in an elaborate courtship dance. [Oct 2025, p.31]

The greatest pleasure of its four eloquent tracks comes from the way the duo hint at narrative, delicately suturing disparate sounds to build a complex electro-acoustic suite. [Oct 2025, p.29]

it's not just a band getting back together after nearly a decade apart, but a band reaffirming the ideals that animated them in the first place. [Nov 2025, p.29]

The remastered Nebraska album and Springsteen’s stately live performance – accompanied by Dylan sideman Larry Campbell and his own Charlie Giordano – complete the story, but the magic comes with the first two discs. They reveal that Nebraska would have been an incredible album if the electric versions of “Atlantic City”, “Johnny 99” and “Downbound Train” were included, but it wouldn’t be Nebraska. [Dec 2025, p.42]

A bold and vibrant tableau of pulsing beats over which Hamdan's serpentine voice coils and caresses. [Oct 2025, p.28]

Cheap bubblegum keyboards sound even more archaic in a present the embattled singer knows all too well. .... Beach Boys harmonies brighten "Electric Rock And Roll", and the '70s dream-time of Mike Post themes and lost childhood comfort is caught in "Glorious Chorus." [Dec 2025, p.36]

Ashcroft's ornery, sometimes conspiratorial resentment of authority and spiritually minded uplift feel of the moment. [Nov 2025, 28]

This south London trio are fine-tuning their battling-for-attention combination of three voices and elegantly scruffy indie-rock. [Dec 2025, p.29]

A curious hybrid. Side One is a series of haunting instrumentals. .... Side Two sees his chamber jazz outfit provide delicate accompaniment for assorted vocalists. [Nov 2025, p.36]