It's evolution not revolution, putting its author's sound deeper into her own context. [Aug 2020, p.32]

A starting point for rich exploration of the variety of American popular music by a veteran who has previously tried most of them on for size. [Aug 2020, p.37]

XOXO is, astonishingly and hearteningly, the sound of a group still finding new ways to be themselves. [Aug 2020, p.24]

While The Streets' five LPs each had a distinct narrative, this is different - skittish investigations into the expanded and exciting taste of a now fortysomething workaholic. [Aug 2020, p.36]

Her fourth album proves that she can apply those [AI techniques from her Circumstance Synthesis EP] to more structured, dynamic songs in a way that's instantly enthralling. [Aug 2020, p.27]

DMA's showcase their ever-evolving chops as they continue to appropriate the sounds of '90s/early Y2K bands such as Oasis, Stone Roses and Doves. [Aug 2020, p.29]

A spectacular return to the tower of song and the game he plays best. Brimming with memorable melodies, swooning arrangements and smart lyrics dreamily sung. [Aug 2020, p.39]

Ultimately, it's an album rooted in the constant collision of rock and pop. [Aug 2020, p.27]

The lyrics are shorn of detail. Hearts are dented, if not entirely smashed, but the emotional core of the songs are harder to locate, because the tropes of country songwriting ave been traded for something less defined. There's a restless energy. ... There's a refreshing purity, too. [Aug 2020, p.31]

The tranquility is transporting and when it ends abruptly after just 34 minutes, the only option is to play it again. [Jul 2020, p.39]

While Williams can operate at either extreme of the spectrum, the softer likes of "Dirt" - a haunting duet with Tom Fleming of Wild Beasts and One True Pairing - suggest where her true forte lies. [Aug 2020, p.39]

This is a strong debut throughout. [Aug 2020, p.27]

Some tracks lean too far towards tastefully decaffeinated worldbeat. But there are soulful depths and deliciously supple rhythms too. [Aug 2020, p.33]

Suffused with optimism and defiance. [Aug 2020, p.34]

Album number nine sees them dipping into some slightly experimental territory. ... But they're at their best in slightly melancholic territory. [Apr 2020, p.33]

Astatke is still a virtuoso but it's mostly BJE who take the lead. [Aug 2020, p.25]

A wide-ranging, guest-heavy collection that keeps one foot rooted in grimy, shuddering, low-end sonics while exploring multiple alternative avenues. [Aug 2020, p.34]

Hard-swinging tales of misadventure. [Jun 2020, p.34]

A New Found Relaxation promises much but never fully delivers. [Aug 2020, p.33]

The Vacant Lots might be cool but they still like to boogie. [Aug 2020, p.39]

Retains the fullness and amiability of his richest work. [Aug 2020, p.33]

Even when they're singing about the horrors of nuclear holocaust -- as they do on the Hendrix-ish "Mushroom Bomb" -- they can't help but sound quite addictively cheerful. [Aug 2020, p.27]

It's bolshy, uncompromising and demands to be played on repeat. [Aug 2020, p.36]

Mordechai is a great record, made by deep listeners who believe that discerning taste does not equate to snobbishness, Through it, we're reminded that good music is for everyone. [Aug 2020, p.20]

The results are successfully restorative, sometimes recalling The Album Leaf's 2000s Sigur Ros collaborations. [Aug 2020, p.33]

If Deleted Scenes feels somewhat anachronistic, it doesn't blunt the quality of the songs within. [Jun 2020, p.37]

Often audacious, occasionally unpalatable. [Jun 2020, p.25]

Delicately powerful stuff. [Aug 2020, p.27]

Crackles with a wisecracking energy. [Aug 2020, p.36]

While the dubbed-out "see You When I Want to" nods to ESG, Gentle Grip too often feels more like a limp handshake. [Aug 2020, p.36]

It has the desperate, desolate sound of one that needed to be written. [Aug 2020, p.27]

The net result is unexpectedly charming. [Aug 2020, p.30]

We find all sorts of intriguing experiments. [Aug 2020, p.30]

There are some points where it skirts tweeness, and Wilkinson's voice is a little too airbrushed, but there's pleasure aplenty here. [Aug 2020, p.27]

Bryant spins vocal somersaults over a deliciously slow-burning, spartan accompaniment, while several Memphis veterans add some Allman-style rock wigouts. [Jun 2020, p.27]

A deservedly confident album. [Aug 2020, p.28]

The 2020 material is curiouser sill, a body of elegant guitar pop as abstruse as it is seductive. They've still got it. [Aug 2020, p.39]

The music is cinematic in scope, offering Armageddon and salvation in turn. [May 2020, p.25]

It creates more cohesion than on previous Chicano Batman albums, but it also has the consequence of watering down the band's dynamic aesthetic. [Jul 2020, p.29]

There's not a weak moment to be found. [Jul 2020, p.34]

There is much to love about this new, more earthen mode. [Jul 2020, p.30]

The music is bewitching enough to seduce even those with the severest crystal allergy. [Jun 2020, p.36]

Hearing these instantaneous, improvised rituals makes the world feel a little less huge. [Jun 2020, p.29]

Most crucial is a penchant for '60s chanson's soft-focus harmonies and production values. [Jul 2020, p.30]

She manages to make her chosen instrument sound like just about everything it isn't, yet the sense of sonic cohesion and unique identity she possesses never dwindles. [Jul 2020, p.33]

On Sunset demonstrates that complacency remains his greatest fear and most powerful muse. [Jul 2020, p.24]

Though it lacks the ingenuity of Holiday, the palpable tenderness of Get Lost or the rigour of 69 Love Songs, it does satisfy a need. [Jun 2020, p.36]

There's certainly a highly evocative quality to the stoned, sun-dappled soul found here. [May 2020, p.25]

They manage to retain the gravel in their throat while subtly expanding their sound on this fifth album. [Jun 2020, p.33]

There's a greater diversity of moods, tempos and instruments, supporting a more experimental mindset. [Jul 2020, p.27]

Pick Me Up Off The Floor hangs together wonderfully. [Jun 2020, p.33]

Cunningham and Stewart also know how to write a killer pop melody. [Jul 2020, p.33]

This is by some way their most fully developed and experimental set to date. [Jul 2020, p.30]

The Idiot and Lust For Life still mostly sound thrillingly bold. ... Sadly, the bonus disc of outtakes and rare tracks is thin. ... Substantial live discs. [Jul 2020, p.51]

This time the material is vivid and freakier. [Jul 2020, p.30]

Strikes a deft balance between hooks'n'riffs and meditative drifts. [Jul 2020, p.33]

He has clearly been galvanised creatively. What an excellent record. [Jul 2020, p.37]

The results are terrific; which is odd. in a way, given the stark simplicity of Johnston's songwriting and BTS's reputation for angular and faceted. [May 2020, p.25]

There are rich pickings here. [Jul 2020, p.39]

It's romantic, it's exhilarating. [Jul 2020, p.26]

It'll be nice on a Netflix drama, but removes much of the tension between ambition and accomplishment in which melancholy indie rock traditionally thrives. [Jul 2020, p.30]

Head Above The Water is a triumph of sensitivity, as Power's exquisite voice gives shape and contour to folk-centric songs that assimilates elements of country, jazz and experimental drone. [Jul 2020, p.33]

The Nashville-based songwriter's toughness and tenacity soars through her brand of showstopper 1970s country. [Jul 2020, p.39]

A lachrymose collection of Elvis Costello-rootsy, mid-Atlantic songs expertly constructed but running rather low on stardust. [Jul 2020, p.36]

The Gallic tendency to prettify everything into anodyne melodic gloop occasionally jars. [Jun 2020, p.38]

Clear-eyed, warm and stylish. [Jul 2020, p.20]

It's a wild ride and brilliantly sequenced. [Jul 2020, p.30]

As irresistibly loopy and buoyantly Beefheartian as anything in Deerhoof's formidable back catalogue. [Jul 2020, p.29]

Not a disaster = almost a triumph. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Weird and sporadically wonderful. [Jul 2020, p.39]

Layered vocal effects and unexpected rhythms on tracks like "Messenger" and "Loud" reward repeated listens, while the pounding, jagged drums of "Caged Sleep" and blissed-out fuzz-pop of "Wheel" offer immediate satisfaction. [Jul 2020, p.39]

The result is park reckoning and part explosive joy, as the band lean further into the hip-hop side of their influences. [Jul 2020, p.36]

Smith habitually flows everything together, creating glowing and serene canvases of sound with her own gentle and expressive voice hymning at the centre. [Jul 2020, p.34]

These delectable hookfests metaphorically parallel Hadreas's move from the gloom of his Seattle hometown to his new base in sunswept L.A. [Jul 2020, p.33]

While her low-slung, downtempo default doesn't always hit the mark, though, she dissects every lyrical twist of hope and disgust on a fine version of Neil Yong's "On The Beach." [Jul 2020, p.30]

The top line melodies don't always cut that deep, but with such intriguing decoration, we're still enchanted. [Jul 2020, p.29]

His workmanship persists. Forever on the skids, but still upright. [Jul 2020, p.27]

Fetch The Bolt Cutters is mostly the soundtrack of liberation, not recrimination, with Apple's piano keys, battering on the walls and barking dogs as its percussive, beating heart. [Jul 2020, p.27]

It's unwieldy, cheesy, overlong, confusing and, just occasionally, inspired. [Jul 2020, p.25]

Untamed talent still. [Jun 2020, p.37]

Strange To Explain might be about dreaming and escape but it's also about their limitations, our need for hoke and the importance of other people. [Jun 2020, p.31]

For all that Ghosts Of West Virginia is a serious work contemplating a serious subject, there are moments where Earle sounds like he's having more fun than any time since The Mountain. [Jun 2020, p.32]

Comes awfully close to the masterwork he so clearly gunning to make. [Jun 2020, p.38]

A typically assured piece of work. [Jun 2020, p.30]

Filled to the brim with usual abundance of trademark lyrical zingers, tenacious earworm melodies and stylistic zigzags. [Jun 2020, p.26]

At first the music seems hermetically sealed; only with repeated listens - and an emphatic twist of the knob - do the subtle splendours burst out of the aural chrysalis containing them and take flight. [Jun 2020, p.34]

The woozy, lovely songs on their third album now have an unexpected urgency. [Jun 2020, p.34]

Though the more rhythmic nature of tracks like "Oblivion Theme" prevent the album from dissolving into ambient haze, the deep bass rumbles and rich textures provide plenty of pillowy comforts for other weary listeners. [Jun 2020, p.30]

The instrumental interludes full of hypnotic loops and Mellotrons are intriguing enough, but the meat lies in the lushly layered art-pop songs. [Jun 2020, p.30]

If the dark intensity leans close to self-parody at times, there are enough musical surprises to bring some light to Lanegan's darkness. [Jun 2020, p.33]

It's his best yet. [Jun 2020, p.38]

No shortage of flamboyant tunes. [Jun 2020, p.27]

Ejimiwe has made a record filled with quiet bubbling tension yet also leaves room for lightness, offering a glimmer of hope amid the brooding dread. [Jun 2020, p.29]

The sheer depth of ideas is impressive, but the result is exhausting. [Jun 2020, p.33]

The songwriter digs into the sound of his intense inner voice here. [Jun 2020, p.33]

He and the band skillfully avoid any notion of contrivance, instead bending these vintage styles to persuasive effect. [May 2020, p.28]

Lynne's rawest, most intimately person album since I Am Shelby Lynne broke with her country roots 20 years ago. [Jun 2020, p.34]

The results move their sound on significantly. The radical honesty of the lyrics is key. [Jun 2020, p.29]