A most welcome return. [Aug 2021, p.23]

There is less than usual here of the breezy country usually associated with his name. More characteristic of Triage are “Something Has To Change” and “Transient Global Amnesia Blues” – fretful, semi-spoken jeremiads set to brooding backdrops. Crowell has the wit and the gravitas to land these, however. [Sep 2021, p.27]

Wonderfully eclectic and strangely uplifting. [Aug 2021, p.31]

Any spiritual ecstasy on offer here appears to be of a more private kind, although no doubt offering a glimpse of the divine to believers. On other listeners, particularly those unfamiliar with Sanskrit and either ignorant or dismissive of the belief system of which these songs are an expression, its effects will be less certain. But the longer you listen, the more you’re drawn in and the less aesthetically confining the music’s self-imposed restraints seem. [Aug 2021, p.36]

Some of the best moments here are twitchy funk miniatures, driven by tuba basslines, distorted Fender Rhodes riffs and chant-based vocals, which leave you wanting more. [Aug 2021, p.35]

While Downhill From Everywhere climaxes with the ham-fisted “Until Justice Is Real”, the 72-year-old singer-songwriter has otherwise managed to thread the needle by embedding his compassion in consummate craftsmanship. [Aug 2021, p.24]

Aambles beyond his band’s already wide palette to embrace ’70s rock and pop flourishes. Squelchy sequencers and double racked guitars add drama to “One-Way Conversation”, while handclaps and a fuzzy synth bolster the details in the verses of “Almost Home.” [Jul 2021, p.31]

The LP's muscular hooks and unpretentious formalism provide Dylan with the ideal setting for his assured wordplay and signature stoicism. [Aug 2021, p.35]

The Flatlanders exude joy here. [Aug 2021, p.23]

Massed cymbals’ shivering traceries and guitar glints adorn the drones, as sonic quantity bolsters quality, the ritualistic glide of Indian and kosmische influences roiling with stray, fuzzed-up incident, in an inspired meeting. [Apr 2021, p.37]

This is raucous, relentless fun; in Parton’s own words, a musical “life raft” for shitty times. [Aug 2021, p.28]

Flitting between Black Sab homages such as “Busted Room” and the Zep-esque quasi-Middle Eastern “Recessinater”, and shorter rockers such as the Stooges-like “Front Street” and “BFIOU”, which opens with the riff from the Beasties’ “Sabotage” before exploring even scuzzier directions. [Jul 2021, p.24]

“Concrete Tunnels” and “Hari” communicate the cold isolationism of deep space. But deeper in, the album deftly channels the film’s themes of memory and consciousness, with “In Love With A Ghost” achieving a kind of terrible beauty. [Aug 2021, p.29]

The most emotionally mature and fully realised work Gillespie has delivered in years, laying grainy, soulful, impassioned vocals over sumptuously old-school chansons clothed in vintage orchestral country-rock arrangements. [Aug 2021, p.27]

An album heavy on immersive ambience. However, as the title suggests, there’s plenty of static to be found too – along with touches of deconstructed techno. [Aug 2021, p.24]

The results are spectacular ... Its thematic concerns – memory, transformation and lost innocence – prove a perfect complement too. [Jul 2021, p.30]

Whether observing modern Manson cults gathering “silent as a snowdrift in the hills, or delivering a sunrise eulogy bearing David Berman away, Darnielle’s sympathy never fails. [Aug 2021, p.31]

The Turning Wheel has the feel of a big reveal. Her voice, as dramatic and flamboyant as a young Kate Bush, now pirouettes amid a backdrop of warm brass and orchestral funk supplied by an extended cast of players. [Jul 2021, p.34]

I Know I’m Funny Haha is her most seamless melding of urban country, warm ’70s soul, gutsy classic rock and introspective indie-pop, as she settles easily into the cracks between categories. ... I Know I'm Funny Haha could only been made by no-one else but Faye Webster. [Jul 2021, p.16]

It’s an album packed with leftfield ideas and off-kilter lyrical narratives seemingly fashioned in fever dreams. [Aug 2021, p.24]

Although the album was written and recorded at a time of severe international strife, Taylor maintains an aura of studied and reassuring calm on “It Will If We Let It”, “Glory Strums” and outstanding closer “Sanctuary”. [Jul 2021, p.27]

I Be Trying sounds as stark and untamed as a field recording, belying the perfectionism with which it was made. [Aug 2021, p.24]

The title is Williams’ name for the world in which her music is set and it’s one where disaster looms large – dark, evocative and minor-key rich; menacing live drums and corkscrew bass hanging heavy in the atmosphere. [Aug 2021, p.33]

Rose City Band’s third album maintains those impeccable vibes of lush country charm, with Earth Trip offering a series of beautiful moments. [Jul 2021, p.33]

Those in thrall to Modest Mouse’s well-honed blend of ramshackle punk-folk and predilection for dispensing off-grid wisdom will find much favour with the latest addition to their canon. [Aug 2021, p.31]

If Grant’s recent output veered toward the unnecessarily quirky, this new record restores focus. It’s as unsettling as 2013’s Pale Green Ghosts and – in its own way – as alert to the shoddy stitching in the stars and stripes as Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys, Phil Ochs’ Rehearsals For Retirement or the queercore of Dicks and MDC. [Jul 2021, p.20]

Home Video is Dacus at her most autobiographical and lyrically direct. [Jul 2021, p.28]

Prove as unflinchingly human as Hammill's own work.[May 2021, p.27]

Blue Weekend is a collection of songs that immediately dazzle, with a relentless array of strong hooks, nestled within a sea of diverse sonic colours. [Aug 2021, p.35]

If Shirushi’s relentless momentum can leave you breathless, it batters its way into real, mutant rock’n’roll thrills. [Aug 2021, p.35]

Path Of Wellness proves Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein haven’t forgotten the empowering, life-giving qualities of rock’n’roll fun. Sleater-Kinney are turning their reunion years into a reaffirmation of the importance of support and solidarity on a private, personal level. [Aug 2021, p.30]

The results are weirdly and pleasingly dislocated. [Aug 2021, p.29]

Purists who flinched when Tame Impala began to morph into a hairier Da¢ Punk may be similarly nonplussed by the sextet’s turn toward blissed-out dance-rock, but everyone else will have a lot of fun. [Aug 2021, p.28]

It’s a wonderfully tactile set, pared back to just fingerpicked guitar and voices, their verité approach welcoming informal chatter and ambient sounds of the surrounding high desert. [Aug 2021, p.28]

The whole thing whispers and swirls with ease, cradling the ears before and after the title track shocks the listener with a pulsating instrumental transmission seemingly beamed from the depths of outer space. [Aug 2021, p.27]

Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ricky Medlocke co-writes one song, and most others sound like someone from Skynyrd did. But the best tracks, counterintuitively, are those furthest from Blackberry Smoke’s trademark boogie. [Aug 2021, p.24]

Nothing feels remotely ‘phoned-in’ here. [Aug 2021, p.28]

A notably confident-sounding record. [Aug 2021, p.23]

It’s a story as old as Pet Sounds, but one that bears repeated re-telling. [Jul 2021, p.31]

Peace Or Love is their most cohesive album yet. While it’s not a world away from their previous work, the mood is noticeably more stripped-down and melancholic. ... Kings Of Convenience seem to have discovered the purest essence of the music they create. [Aug 2021, p.26]

Ultimately it’s this balancing between considered atmospheres and rattling noise that gives Present Tense such a sharp bite. [Jun 2021, p.25]

These compact compositions inevitably risk straying into noodling self-indulgence at times. But in general, inspiration trumps masturbation. [Aug 2021, p.33]

Seven songs in 19 minutes feel like a tidy introduction to this contemplative Californian. [Aug 2021, p.21]

This is second-tier Sabbath, arriving at the waning of their imperial phase. But that’s still a formidable prospect. ... Also included is a mostly unheard North American show from 1975 that proves the band were still bringing the goods live, especially on a surging “Children Of The Grave”. [Jul 2021, p.41]

A collection of great intimacy and tenderness, inspired in part by the loss of her father. This is rich, melodic folk. [Jul 2021, p.27]

It's a long, convoluted, tiresome listen. [Jul 2021, p.25]

It’s a big, bolshy set, slightly dated by its industrial-rock dynamics, but there’s no denying the Depeche Mode-ish “Godhead” or (especially) the giallo-ish critique that is “A Woman Destroyed”. [Jul 2021, p.27]

The bulk of the material comes from Crosby, Nash and especially Stills. These include early versions of several tracks that would soon appear on the trio’s own solo albums. ... There are more Stills rarities – “Same Old Song”, “Right On Rock’N’Roll” – and the musician accounts for seven of the eleven songs on the outtakes CD, making this something of a Stills mother lode. Added to these are several completed CSN tracks, complete with the harmonies that brought them together in the first place.

Indispensable, but that’s no surprise.

Clearly, the source material is strong, but there’s also an emotional unity of purpose that works in the covers’ favour. [Jun 2021, p.33]

On Hardware and elsewhere in his solo career, there remains little doubt about what he does best. [Jul 2021, p.32]

Often feels more afterthought than addition. On form, however, few write or sing human frailty with Neil Finn’s poise. [Jul 2021, p.25]

Inventively produced by Jacknife Lee, All The Colours Of You is a winning synthesis of James’ anthemic tendencies and their more instinctive weirdness. [Jul 2021, p.27]

It’s an album that’s constantly shifting, almost restless at times, yet it also remains poised and coherent. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Songs like “Spanish Steps” and the title track recall the lo-fi sound of her critically lauded ’90s albums, while “Ba Ba Ba” and “Good Side” embrace the polish of her critically denounced 2000s albums. [Jul 2021, p.33]

More often wispy and whispery in her earlier work, her voice assumes new strength and vividness here as Trappes dives deep into torch-song mode for “Red Yellow” and multitracks herself into a celestial choir for “Blood Moon”. [Jul 2021, p.34]

These are smart, confident and mostly fine-boned songs, though epic closer “Posing For Cars” leans on a lachrymose, slow-mo, alt.rock guitar passage. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Against hard-edged rhythms – Danielle Haim’s clattering drumming enlivens “These Kids We Knew” – and Solomon’s wordless reveries, Rostam sings in a creamy tenor tailormade for sharing the intimate feelings of his lyrics. [Jul 2021, p.33]

Familiar, but still freaky. [Jul 2021, p.34]

Divided into meditation, lamentation, revelation, celebration, incantation, it is by turns curious, brittle, exquisite, and surely among the most accomplished and beautiful records of Stevens’ career. [Jul 2021, p.34]

The songs are often guilty of bloated bombast, but Numan retains an impressive command of cinematic melodrama and richly layered sonic detail. [Jul 2021, p.33]

Marten’s stripped-back early work drew comparisons to Lucy Rose and Nick Drake, and while her voice is as gentle as ever, a wider sonic palette adds both brightness and depth. [Jul 2021, p.31]

Kurt Wagner’s appetite for change hasn’t dwindled, and Lambchop’s succinct 16th is, thanks to his MIDI piano experiments, particularly tempting. [Jul 2021, p.30]

From the hypnotic opener “Kasai Munene” to the upbeat closer “Allstars All Around” with its spiralling soukous guitars, this is celebratory music-making at its most joyously instinctual. [Jul 2021, p.27]

The people in these songs are losing their listeners, memory or love, suffering partial erasures. And yet this melodic music holds them close with familial warmth. [Jul 2021, p.27]

Fellow Pretender James Walbourne provides deft guitar and keyboard accompaniment, but it’s the personality and allure of a distinctive voice that keeps you in the parlour. [Jul 2021, p.27]

“The Shame Of Love”, “Splinter” and “Mouthful Of Blood” successfully concealing Black Flag-worthy spleen behind a comforting veneer of distorted guitars, sunny Mellotron and Carpenters-compatible melodies. [Jul 2021, p.27]

It's a warm and slightly rickety set, with folk-ish elements and faint echoes of Sentridoh. [Jul 2021, p.23]

Here she uses soft synths to emulate an organ, lute and pipes, which combine on the likes of “Vanity” and “Qasmuna (Dreaming)” to cast an alluring spell, evoking the likes of vintage Boards Of Canada and Catarina Barbieri’s superb Ecstatic Computation. [Jul 2021, p.21]

At 68, Hiatt is producing some of the best work of his career, mapping his inner life with an eloquence that most can only aspire to. [Jun 2021, p.24]

When it’s good, she nails squiggly G-funk (“Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”, “Action Groove”) and late-night power-cruising (“Ghostride 21716”). But with no real focus, the whole thing tends to drag. [Jul 2021,p.31]

72 minutes of creeping contemplation and subdued drama. [Jul 2021, p.31]

Not all essential but a generally rich and respectable package. [Jul 2021, p.43]

The new takes largely work well, underscoring the compositional strength of the original songs. [Jul 2021, p.31]

What soon unfolds proves to be a profound evolution via the almost operatic crescendo that follows. Over the remaining five tracks, improvisational noise-rock gives way to more considered and structured songwriting, lush melodies and singer Geordie Greep’s new vocal style – which he croons with stirring tenderness. ... There’s not a single predictable second to be found on Cavalcade. [Jun 2021, p.23]

The band hits an altogether richer seam on the Fleet Foxes-like “Mine Forever” and the vast sweep of the string-laden title track, rooted in the lost highway myth but sounding more akin to classic Walker Brothers. [Jul 2021, p.30]

Composed for the 10-strong Montreal modern dance troupe Animals Of Distinction, in ways it conforms to the template of Canadian post-rock – extended instrumentals characterised by gradual builds and ecstatic climaxes. But “Scanner” and “Grid-Wall” explore a sleek, synthetic sound palette, all glitching electronics and halogen synths. [Jun 2021, p.25]

They immediately settle back into a familiar dynamic on the aptly titled opener “Let’s Do It Again”, with the band providing a lively and sympathetic soundtrack to Cartwright’s tale of loneliness and longing. They’ve learned more than a few new tricks over the years, as evidenced on the lovely psychedelic chamber-pop saga “Just Say When”, a duet with Coco Hames. [Jun 2021, p.31]

Here are nine songs that confidently mix Station To Station piano, Beach Boys harmonies, Kosmische guitar and even free jazz. [Jun 2021, p.31]

You could say this kind of record - produced by Dan Auerbach, who's also on guitar duty, for his own label - that plays to a revered, even fetishised aesthetic. ... With a band of experienced session hands. ... [Finley's] mastery is proven. [Jun 2021, p.25]

This is a rich listen, strengthened by Galanin's burning focus on critical issues. [Jun 2021, p.33]

A 75-minute intuitively guided rhythmic meditation, all five musicians playing from deep inside the music. [May 2021, p.30]

An exhilarating band set that mixes electric and acoustic instrumentation, it’s at once fiercely modern and as ancient as the Niger river. [Jun 2021, p.22]

A worthy addition to a glorious canon. [Jun 2021, p.24]

There's not a moment on this album when the session players intrude on the song or on White's vocal. ... It makes you forget, if only for a few minutes, that he wasn't actually in the studio with them. Instead, they simply let him tell his stories. [Jun 2021, p.26]

A remarkable act of spiritual resilience. [Jun 2021, p.23]

The Blue Elephant is a sonic odyssey. [Jun 2021, p.23]

In a still-uncertain climate, its emotional honesty and crystalline truths are a gift.[Jun 2021, p.32]

Some of the guest vocalists on this LP approach this level of militancy but, in places Black To The future is also poppier and dancefloor friendly than anything Hutchinson has ever released. [Jun 2021, p.30]

You can't turn the clock back, of course, but in "Sad Days And Lonely Nights" you completely understand how the simple groove and ringing of the strings might act as a revivifying tonic. [Jun 2021, p.23]

A glistening second album that lands somewhere between the empyrean vision of Broadcast and the starry-eyed pulsating of Tame Impala. [Jun 2021, p.25]

Something that scratches the same itch that first propelled him and his audience into a record shop. ... To keep that hunger alive, you need to feed it with new inspiration. What you hear on Fat Pop is the reciprocation of that care. [Jun 2021, p.16]

Listening to Daddy's Home brings a sense of exhalation, a filling out, an openness, that is as unexpected as it is wonderful. [Jun 2021, p.20]

His most visceral album in years. [Jun 2021, p.28]

At times it bewilders. ... But Pulse Of Defiance has a lushness of texture that makes the compositional knottiness slide down easier. [Apr 2021, p.29]

The big swings taken here serve them just as well as the coiled intensity of their first releases. [Jun 2021, p.27]

It's the sonic equivalent of a Douglas Gordon video installation. [Jun 2021, p.27]

It's unsurprisingly a multicultural, extravagantly arranged collection. [May 2021, p.32]