Punk-rock and post-punk templates are smashed as needed by guitarist Mark Bowen and co-producer Kenny Beats. [Dec 2021, p.29]

While its New Age themes may dissuade some, Hopkins affirms his genius for fashioning unparalleled landscapes from sound. [Dec 2021, p.28]

An all-instrumental set of improvised studio performances as lyrical and soulful as they are virtuosic and energised. [Nov 2021, p.25]

Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is soaked in a peculiar English melancholy. ... Best of all is the closer “Particles”, one of Albarn’s finest melodies, a woozy, drumless ballad based around a pretty Wurlitzer electric piano riff and a creepy electronic drone that gives the song a hymn-like quality. [Dec 2021, p.22]

While some results can feel incomplete, it's riveting to hear the structures Allen creates even for Wasser's most sinuous compositions, the elastic almost-funk of "enter The Dragon" being the strongest evidence of this collaboration's viability. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Worth waiting for, waiting for. [Dec 2021, p.23]

You Get It All shows no dip in quality. [Nov 2021, p.26]

Mann's striking vocals, empathetic and emotional, weave through anxiety and depression, crisis and loss. Melodic arrangements abound. [Dec 2021, p.29]

The frontman and his septet sculpt grooves and hooks that immediately grab hold. [Dec 2021, p.33]

Extra disc Kid Amnesiae mostly puts a fresh spin on pre-existing material, with just a handful of previously unheard compositions. Hearing them again two decade later, the shock of the new has faded, but the sonic richness and meticulous attention to detail endures. Behind the fizz and crunch and crackle lies a surprisingly lush, soulful beauty. [Dec 2021, p.40]

Bovell's take doesn't suggest new approaches, so much as reinforce and highlight what was already there. [Dec 2021, p.45]

The lasting impression is of a record whose most tangible identity is that of a band on the verge of change contemplating their own back pages. [Dec 2021, p.47]

As with her best material, it's an album to lip-synch for your life to. [Oct 2021, p.31]

On this generous and kaleidoscopic soul album, Harding holds nothing back. [Dec 2021, p.30]

While themes of race and gender are woven into this richly sensual second, notably the defiant spoken-word piece “Changes”, they do not define her kaleidoscopic work overall. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Sweeping strings and sparse piano merge deftly with Jordan’s melancholic voice on “Light Blue”, while the fingerpicked “c. et al.” is bare-bones heartache wrapped up in tender beauty. [Dec 2021, p.33]

A lyrical treasure trove, but the biggest surprise of the self-produced album is the richness of the sound. Nadler’s usual sparse, gothic folk style is emboldened by well-chosen collaborators from Simon Raymonde to Emma Ruth Rundle. [Dec 2021, p.31]

He's honest about uncertainties both personal and political. [Nov 2021, p.25]

His second album is a rich, meaty fusion of jazz, grime, hip-hop, dancehall and reggae. [Dec 2021, p.26]

A heavily disguised break-up album, which secretes its sorrow beneath waves of gushing pop. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Giske spins the likes of “Cruising” and “Void” into bold extended pieces that are gripping in their poignancy and intensity. [Dec 2021, p.27]

I Don't Live Here Anymore delivers even more of their characteristic questing wallop. [Nov 2021, p.22]

Their second studio album of 2021 has its own idiosyncratic mood board: mariachi horns on “The Bell Gets Out Of The Way”, a string section on “High In The Rain”, unsettling séance speak on “Razor Bug”. Triumphant closer “My (Limited) Engagement”, meanwhile, sounds like (yet another) outsider art tour de force for the primary school-turned-lo-fi visionary. Never indifferent, never quite the same. [Dec 2021, p.27]

Shouty Japanese pop-punk quartet Chai guest on wonderfully bleepy “More Joy!”, Giorgio Moroder assists with the thrilling digital disco of “Beautiful Lies”, Bowie’s pianist Mike Garson guests on the elegant ballad “Falling”, while producer Erol Alkan adds a dancefloor-friendly sheen to proceedings. [Dec 2021, p.27]

This is still music with a lot of virtuosity, and a great many notes, but it and its players are living its adaptability, as the evidence reveals all we have previously believed this composition to be, a confluence of free improvisation and what later became “spiritual jazz”. [Dec 2021, p.43]

The faithful arrangements deprive the collection of any real edge – "Elle Et Moi" should be sexier – but this is not the place for surprises. [Dec 2021, p.25]

He tells a sad story but one enlivened by his skills as a guitarist, his expressiveness as a singer and his insights as a lyricist. ... Every song has at least one line that will stop you in your tracks, some songs two or three. [Nov 2021, p.18]

It's Fohr's stunning vocal that drives the album. [Nov 2021, p.27]

The retro-futurist fun peaks with the bopping space-disco of the title track and the irresistible "Refractions (In The Rain)," while loungey sax and self-help guides to meditation smooth "On The Other Side..."'s journey to the stars. [Nov 2021, p.27]

Harris makes the most of the means available to her and allows her songs to land the way they need to land. [Nov 2021, p.34]

Tim Showalter has channelled his grief after losing loved ones and the agony he endured getting straight into a set of nakedly emotional songs, while producer Kevin Ratterman has erected a reverberant wall of sound to match the scale of his outpourings. [Dec 2021, p.35]

Texis sounds like a band having more fun than they have had in years. [Dec 2021, p.33

These are recorded almost as demos, in a more intimate and lo-fi way than usual, bringing him even closer in sound as well as spirit to the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Ron Sexsmith. [Dec 2021, p.33]

The sinister slow-burn of "Application Apparatus" and Tom Tom Club-worthy quirk of "Trullo" are further indications of their rude state of health. [Dec 2021, p.31]

Unpredictability is its greatest asset. [Dec 2021, p.31]

A captivating set, aided by a full band that shift is between artful, countryish ballads ("Simple," "Ride") and cabin-fever rockers ("Face," the abstract "Gem"). [Dec 2021, p.27]

Their most collaborative but also most pointedly personal, reckoning with loss, queerness and self-actualisation through music that is as adventurous as it is immediate. [Dec 2021, p.27]

Despite Chris Martin's underdeveloped lyrics – "Be an anthem for your times" at least explains his motivation – there's something reassuring in their ham-fisted urge to bring people together. ... Glam-stomper "People Of The Pride" or well-meaning power ballad "Let Somebody Go," and instrumentals harking back to earlier Eno adventures offer pleasant reprieves. [Dec 2021, p.25]

A rum selection of Zoom collaborations with everyone from Dua Lipa to Lil Nas X, that old keenness is still there, though only on "It's a Sin," his Brits team-up with Olly Alexander. [Dec 2021, p.29]

With each track the listener sinks deeper into their world, and though the punchier rap numbers like "B£E" cut through, these scruffily celestial miniatures add up to present a compelling picture. [Dec 2021, p.33]

They waltz from space-jazz ("In Cucina") to disco-dub ("Phase One Million") and library scat-funk ("Tub Erupt"), the whole thing tied together by Cathy Lucas's dusky delivery. [Dec 2021, p.35]

“Move”, featuring Thomas, is a thrilling mix of swaggering pop hooks and sweltering Latin grooves and the album’s undoubted highlight. Yet, elsewhere, you can’t help wondering if Santana’s fluid guitar playing really needs “help” from such a ragbag of heavy friends. [Dec 2021, p.33]

It's a slightly exhausting but often thrilling sonic voyage. [Nov 2021, p.32]

It's still deeply strange. ... Crucial to its success is its keen rhythmic sense. [Oct 2021, p.25]

Two years on, her sound is equally ambitious but more committed: here are modern, maximalist pop songs with top notes of R&B, Trap and Afrobeat, plus experimental detailing. As ever, Taylor's lyrics convince. [Nov 2021, p.32]

Frequently thrilling, and its pilfering from America's classic rock catalogue - including The Allman Brothers, The Doobie Brothers, Creedence clearwater Revival, The Band and Crazy Horse - is affectionate and celebratory. [Nov 2021, p.33]

Some songs are mere fragments and there's an early version of standalone single "U.S. Mail" in place of Sundowner's stunner "Jamie," but this is otherwise a beautiful and raw selection still bearing the scars and charms of creative birth. [Oct 2021, p.29]

Thorpe achieves a balance of high-shine electro-pop, gauzy ambient flow and jazzier acoustic elements that couldn't be more attuned to his formidable skillset. [Nov 2021, p.35]

Smart stylistic detours mask something a little deeper. [Oct 2021, p.24]

if Shannon Lay's solo expression has been a steady blooming across three albums, Geist represents its full-blown folkish splendour. [Nov 2021, p.29]

There's plenty here to startle, to catch you looking. ... It's consummate.[Nov 2021, p.32]

As peculiar as "The Doll" and "Blue Tits" are, at heart this is thrilling, possibly visionary pop. [Nov 2021, p.25]

Blake's fragmented post-dubstep has always had an air of bleak melancholy, but nothing he's done has been quite as self-consciously miserable as this. [Nov 2021, p.25]

The Dharma Wheel channels the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Crazy Horse and more in its generous spirit. [Nov 2021, p.29]

An all-instrumental set of improvised studio performances as lyrical and soulful as they are virtuosic and energised. [Nov 2021, p.25]

After reaching for Bowie-esque grandeur on the opening "Song For Agnes," they lock into an INXS-style chromium-funk groove on "America's Cup" and reimagine The Clash as a synth-punk band on the speed-burner "Human Touch." [Nov 2021, p.32]

Carnegie Hall has its own distinctive vibe, with the songwriter coming to terms in real time with his burgeoning, sometimes over-enthusiastic fanbase. [Nov 2021, p.49]

While these sonic smudges sometimes feels scrappy, there are sublime interludes here too. [Nov 2021, p.35]

CDs 3 and 4 offer Infidels tracks blessedly stripped of producer Mark Knopfler's digital trickery and overdubs. ... With deft elimination of Arthur Baker's era-specific production effects, "I Remember You" becomes a ravishing thing, the gospel lilt of "Emotionally Yours" a gorgeous highlight. [Nov 2021, p.40]

His sixth solo album has some decent uptempo moments. ... Less compelling are the albums world-weary ballads, but one old downtempo number, "Foreign Sand," benefits from a stripped-back acoustic treatment. [Nov 2021, p.35]

The songs are introspective, reflective and fretful. ... It's best moments are its quieter ones. [Nov 2021, p.26]

With her voice sounding more like a cross between Nico and Patti Smith than ever, she laments division and bigotry on songs such as "Queasy" and "Overblown," while musically she spans pedal-steel-laden country rock, punk menace and string-driven Velvets drones. [Oct 2021, p.35]

The stripped-back production adds a sense of immediacy and places focus on the fine vocals of hall and Golding, plus guest vocalist Hannah Hu. [Oct 2021, p.33]

The tracks range from the wiry and infectious to the outright transcendental, while some of the vocal effects evoke the sound of those early krautrock pioneer. [Oct 2021, p.31]

The result is a delightful mix of new-wave-influenced pop and synth-laden Eno-style instrumentals. [Nov 2021, p.30]

Woodland concepts aside, the band are most arresting when knocking out groove-locked rhythms with bursts of spluttering electronics. [Oct 2021, p.33]

Their shimmering, somnolent ambience is irrefutably palliative. [Oct 2021, p.25]

It's another perfectly good Ty Segall album, full of perfectly good Ty Segall songs. [Nov 2021, p.32]

It's when the band marry this discordance with melody that they really shine. [Nov 2021, p.35]

The duo take their movie-fuelled visions in directions that are continually surprising. [Nov 2021, p.35]

It begins with Michael Stipe's stunning interpretation of "Sunday Morning." ... The tracks that fly highest here are in fact the least faithful, more subversive. [Oct 2021, p.22]

Levy's lo-fi sonic palette and dreamy, speak-sung vocals hint at intimacy, her creative use of sound effects and electronics the mark of an archivist. [Oct 2021, p.29]

It still possesses a certain screwball charm, particularly the curdled croon of "I Don't Mind The Wait," but too often sounds like smug pastiche. [Nov 2021, p.30]

Musgraves' superpower is her ability to convey complex emotions via concise phrasing, which means quieter songs such as "Good Wife" and "If This Was A Movie" hit especially hard. [Nov 2021, p.30]

Local Valley is positive, engaged, almost rousing. [Oct 2021, p.32]

Invigorating results. [Oct 2021, p.27]

He uses digital means to deepen, layer, smear, distend and otherwise tweak the emotive piano figures that remain discernable. ... As is often the case for Tiersen's music, the effect is mesmerising. [Oct 2021, p.35]

Self-reflection is twinned with a rueful survey of the current state of the nation. [Oct 2021, p.25]

It also might be the best album this consistently weird and interesting bunch have made. [Oct 2021, p.27]

Stasis Taylor enriches with resonant atmosphere. [Oct 2021, p.33]

Atmospheric soundscapes. ... Awash with an adventurousness some might find surprising in a 71-year-old. [Oct 2021, p.25]

Black Encyclopedia... is less abrasive but no less urgently meaningful [than 2016's Fetish Bones], a fusion of experimental hip-hop, soul, poetry and jazz-etched beatscapes that ebbs and flows around the concept of an Afrofuturist universe. [Oct 2021, p.29]

She immerses listeners in the remarkably wide range of textures and timbres she explores on chamber organ, Mellotron, oboe and other instruments rarely combined in such fashion since prog's golden era. [Oct 2021, p.27]

Though occasionally guilty of easy-listening tastefulness, the Haikus rarely sound less than gorgeous. [Oct 2021, p.28]

fter the snarling insensitivity that once defined The Stranglers, it’s reflective and poignant. Even if you strip away the late touches acknowledging Greenfield’s loss, the mood is suddenly grave and inevitably valedictory. [Oct 2021, p.20]

The real revelation here is 25-year old James Francies, who plays Jimmy Smith-style Hammond on "Timeline," heavy rock organ on the Hendrix-inspired "Lodger" and mischievous Monk-style piano on a version of Ornette Coleman's "Turnaround." [Oct 2021, p.29]

I've Been Trying to Tell You is immediate and soulful. [Oct 2021, p.26]

K Bay probes the Richmond, VA-based artist's teeming psyche while advancing his anything-does record-making style. [Oct 2021, p.34]

The Sniffers sometimes sound limited by their studiously low-brow, lo-fi aesthetic. Even so, Comfort To Me offers a mostly exhilarating mix of headbanging riffs, profane wit and gutter-punk attitude. [Oct 2021, p.24]

It is easy to make music that is difficult and it is easy to make music that is beautiful. But it is quite the trick to be both at the same time, and on Hey What, Low mark themselves out as masters of the art. [Oct 2021, p.16]

Diaz deftly carries the torch, fusing stripped-down, bleeding-heart acoustic meditations with bursts of fiery instrumentation, her glossy voice at once tender and insistent, rhythmically narrating her loveworn journey with precise, clever turns of phrase. [Sep 2021, p.27]

It's a set as vast as it is remarkable. [Sep 2021, p.36]

It's clear we're in for an introspective ride, though the more major-key, upbeat nature of many of the record's arrangements belie these melancholy undertones. [Oct 2021, p.29]

An even more ambitious conceptual album that finds her sharing her insecurities, praising her heroes and going on a fairytale voyage over 19 tracks. [Oct 2021, p.30]

The body of the album is given over to gorgeous, baroque instrumentals. ... But there is variety here. [Sep 2021, p.24]

Her fourth album's dramatically sparser, its unconventional structures recalling Julia Holter. ... She's most compelling on "This Time," whose haunted spaces are gradually filled with flickering keyboards and ebow guitar. [Oct 2021, p.31]

Brilliantly realised. [Oct 2021, p.31]

His brightest and most vivid record. ... Here he finds new dimensions, rethinking his phrasing, tone and cadence. [Sep 2021, p.16]