Not a game-changer, but a solid mid-career statement from a true original. [Mar 2020, p.37]

Demonstrate[s] the multifaceted yet coherent place Scott has arrived at as a songwriter. [Mar 2020, p.37]

There's a strong senes of '76 punk to All in God Time, more precisely bands like the Damned and Dead Boys. [Mar 2020, p.27]

This is a tremendous album. [Mar 2020, p.22]

Laudably, unfussy. [Feb 2020, p.35]

More than witty and vivacious enough to satisfy anyone who's stuck with the saga thus far. [Mar 2020, p.35]

Revisits the kind of understated, politically slanted synth-pop that defined the Minnesota band's last two Trump-haunted albums. Nut Leaneagh also digs deeper on more hopeful, personal ruminations. [Mar 2020, p.35]

A dozen young singers from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, Algeria and beyond [lend] a youthfully purposive and fearless energy to songs about misogyny, sexual identity, force marriage and FGM. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Football Money packs a melodic punch. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Much of Deleter occupies latter-day Primal Scream/David Holmes territory, the kind of pleasantly anonymous groove-driven middle ground that wavers non-committally between inchoate anger and fuzzy euphoria. [Mar 2020, p.29]

Irresistible examples of Bejar's blend of soft rock, dream-pop and more idiosyncratic elements. [Mar 2020, p.27]

Trail Of Dead have always made music to get lost in and this one's a maze. [Mar 2020, p.23]

Soft keyboard lines wow and flutter tastefully. [Feb 2020, p.28]

Retro-futurism at its best. [Feb 2020, p.35]

A remarkably evolved variety of break-up album, one whose match of melodicism and bruised romanticism makes it somehow suggestive of Lou Reed's Berlin as rewritten by Paul Simon. [Feb 2020, p.33]

The group's ninth album feels low-down and dirty. [Feb 2020, p.25]

The trio are faithful to their ancient source material, while adding spacious arrangements, harmony choruses and subtle embellishments that amplify the songs' emotional punch. [Feb 2020, p.25]

Mind Hive follows a more varied set of strategies that yield both the dreamy haze of "Unrepentant" and the punishing grind of the eight-minute "Hung." [Feb 2020, p.35]

The scatterings of Muscle Shoals-y horns aren't particularly muscular, but they don't need to be to let the class of these '70s-style soul-pop songs glow. [Feb 2020, p.23]

Their last LP, 2014's Gamel, was their best for yonks and Nijimusi maintains that strong form. [Feb 2020, p.26]

Debris is an astonishing debut, not just for the power of the songs, but for the journey that they trace. [Feb 2020, p.34]

Call it a quiet protest against reality: a one-woman bed in. One way and another, it works like a dream. [Feb 2020, p.18]

This fifth album immediately feels well adjusted and familiar. [Feb 2020, p.25]

Swedish pop producer Patrik Berger brings a new clarity to Boman's work without disturbing the delicacy of her performance. [Feb 2020, p.25]

The mournful pedal steel, keening harmonies and thumping analogue rhythms that ornament the deeply introspective songs of Marigold transform what would be a slog of emo self-absorption in less nimble hands into a vibrantly empathetic experience. [Feb 2020, p.30]

It's a warmer interpretation of Fay's celebration of and concern for the state of the world than on 2015's icier Who IS The Sender? [Feb 2020, p.22]

[King] brings innate soulfulness to his performances on El Dorado. Each song has a distinct stylistic antecedent. [Feb 2020, p.29]

Mostly fine results. [Feb 2020, p.25]

Craven Faults transcend obvious reference points. There is real craft here. [Jan 2020, p.30]

Savior is a commanding narrator of heartache and revenge, singing of blood and tears over piano and reverb-drenched guitar, demonstrating a star quality that belies her 24 years. [Feb 2020, p.33]

The mini-album finds this talented duo running in place. [Feb 2020, p.30]

Much more inconsistent and rather less immediate [than 2017's Dear]. [Feb 2020, p.25]

While rarely adventurous or surprising, is reassuringly familiar. [Feb 2020, p.27]

Rather than act like temporary caretakers tiptoeing around WWI's vast, eternally resonant themes, Field Music have sensibly moved in and made them their own. Not a memorial, then, so much as a remix of history. [Feb 2020, p.24]

From the ominous beatless fog of recent tracks "State Forest" and "Beachfires"-the compilation is sequenced for flow, rather than chronologically-emerge some unexpected shapes. [Feb 2020, p.43]

A double LP by name, but distant cousins rather than telepathic twins. [Feb 2020, p.33]

Replete with the sort of shimmering, hypnagogic textures that characterises his solo work. [Feb 2020, p.30]

This, bara clutch of mellow moments, has unclouded ambitions to pack the dancefloor. [Feb 2020, p.27]

Some of his most seductive melodies to date. [Jan 2020, p.28]

However minor these 45s may have seemed at the time, together they constitute a major discovery for any soul fan regardless of his or her denomination (or utter lack thereof). [Oct 2019, p.50]

Every song here has its merits; there isn't a dud among them. [Oct 2019, p.40]

Though still meditative, they're now more dynamic. [Jan 2020, p.24]

It doesn't always hit the mark, but it's terrific fun while it lasts. [Jan 2020, p.30]

Well-crafted compositions. [Jan 2019, p.31]

Bold. ... But Ism is finest when at its funkiest. [Jan 2020, p.28]

Wet Tuna really find their sound in the spacier moments. [Nov 2019, p.33]

This anthology perfectly encapsulates The Go-Betweens' irresistible, evergreen and still expanding appeal. [Jan 2020, p.34]

It's sometimes more about the journey than the getting there, and the contents of this latest Bowie box help document many of the steps. ... The 1969 Space Oddity record remains more than its title track, the tender love songs particularly strong. It's a hippie record of social observation and heavy inner trips, Bowie's wit and tenderness rendering it a cut above. [Dec 2019, p.41]

They still sound unique today. [Jan 2019, p.41]

Some of them meet him in his world, while others drag him into theirs. ... A third way to approach these songs: Fiona Apple and Robbie Fulks manage to pretend that their world is Mose's. [Jan 2020, p.24]

It's a mix that captures the zeitgeist appetite for the melding of jazz, R&B and electronic sounds while also celebrating the path that led there. [Jan 2020, p.31]

Revitalising his finest work with unlikely guests performing unlikely roles. [Jan 2020, p.31]

The live setting and frontman Joe Talbot's inter-song exhortations heighten the feeling of being sucked into communal catharsis. [Jan 2020, p.26]

Unfussy yet poetic. [Aug 2019, p.31]

An intense and dizzying work. [Jan 2020, p.26]

Every song here is a miniature gem of its kind. [Nov 2019, p.22]

[Rainford] was haled as a return to form, and Heavy Rain--an album of re-versions helmed by Sherwood accompanied by a suite of guests--feels similarly vital. [Jan 2020, p.28]

A mutant strain of noisy funk, hip-hop, subversive art punk and dirty disco. [Dec 2019, p.35]

Poet Joshua Idehen adds desperate, apocalyptic testimony to the opening of "All That Matters Is The Moments," while "The Lifeforce Part I" and "II" gradually dial up the intensity, Hutchings blowing with dervish energy as drums and synth lock into a spiraling groove. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Shlon is in some senses a return to his roots, combining the lush Arabic romance poetry of collaborator Moussa al Mardoud with Hasan Alo's techno arrangements. [Jan 2020, p.28]

It's his terrific wordplay--sharp, funny, poignant and much more--that really dazzles. [Dec 2019, p.29]

These are quite logical, tuneful explorations. [Dec 2019, p.32]

Sounds great, but a little superfluous. [Jan 2020, p.28]

An intriguingly diverse "double" (well, 53 minutes) album. [Jan 2019, p.25]

It brings together the many facets of Sudan Archives--religious and sensual, independent and codependent, tender and menacing--in a way that feels very deliberate, particularly when you learn that the final tracklisting was whittled down from around 60 potential songs. [Dec 2019, p.28]

Another graceful tug-of-war between sentimental melody and muscular noise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

The resulting album is a thing of gossamer beauty. [Dec 2019, p.25]

Lovely stuff. [Dec 2019, p.29]

It's spellbinding, shiver-down-the-spine stuff, and enough to have any self-respecting Quadropheniac dusting down their scooter for one last run down to Brighton. ... Their best since Quadrophenia, then. [Dec 2019, p.22]

Hyperspace never feels over calculated or overdressed. Instead, it's the work of an artist who sounds fully re-engaged. [Jan 2020, p.20]

Thanks For The Dance has the intimacy that characterised Songs Of Leonard Cohen and Songs From A Room half a century ago, only rarely making the listener conscious of the resources at Adam Cohen's command. [Jan 2020, p.14]

Striking enough on their own merits, free of embellishments, all the more powerful for the immediacy of the moment. Simplicity is the key here. [Jan 2020, p.26]

Appealing collection of African folk songs played on curiously tuned guitars and percussion fashioned from farm implements by a trio of survivors from Rwanda's ruinous genocide. [Dec 2019, p.27]

This 50th anniversary reissue of their faultless second LP still digs deep to find six unreleased studio cuts. [Jan 2020, p.39]

Some will prefer the stripped-back, elemental performances that are compiled on the extra disc, and they are certainly magnificent recordings in their own right. But part of No Other's magic is its ambition. [Dec 2019, p.36]

Wood is in his element, delivering needle sharp licks and belting the classic, while a passing Imelda May adds some serious sizzle to "We Wee Hours." [Dec 2019, p.35]

Largely recorded over six fays in Paris, it adds test-card breeziness to the bleakness of "The Amputees," and delivers a gorgeous rumination on shattered love in "Carousel." [Dec 2019, p.32]

Ultimately it's all a matter of taste, but fans will lap this up. [Jan 2020, p.31]

As the strident piano ballads and flatly aggressive production pound on, though, it's more AGT than Kanye. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Even without the dramatic backstory, heart-tugging earworms like "All Thing New" and "Purifier" work on their own terms as healing meditations. [Jan 2020, p.23]

Disturbing, but also enthralling. [Jan 2020, p.23]

What might feel somewhat reheated is saved thanks to Dal Forno's poise. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Drawing on a palette of classic Beatles/Queen influences via plenty of heavy metal sturm und drang. [Jan 2020, p.25]

Though not as viscerally crushing as A Crow Looked At Me, Lost Wisdom Pt 2 is as plainly poetic. [Jan 2020, p.27]

Simple folk arrangements foregrounding Moorer's richly emotive voice. [Jan 2020, p.27]

Grace Potter returns to her stylistic comfort zone with Daylight. [Jan 2020, p.28]

If its pace is funeral, though, its mood is elevating. [Jan 2020, p.31]

Approached with an open mind, it becomes a compelling blend of ambience, minimalism, poetry and devotion. [Dec 2019, p.32]

Her reinterpretations restore some of the post-punk edge to a band long overshadowed by its frontman's solo hubris. [Dec 2019, p.29]

The greatest compliment it can be paid is that it sounds like no time at all separates it from its predecessor. It's a(nother) fine album of gently joyous country songs. [Dec 2019, p.25]

Proceeds with the unhurried observational vividness of extended takes in a Richard Linklater film. [Dec 2019, p.35]

Their fourth LP together sees them ditch the punky uptempo tracks and instead wallow in mournful, funereal meditations that don't leave White with much to do. [Dec 2019, p.35]

The result is a heady debut album. [Dec 2019, p.27]

A Son tilts slightly more towards conventional song structure, minimising electronics in favour of (mostly) acoustic guitars. [Dec 2019, p.30]

Impressively inventive and diverse material. [Dec 2019, p.35]

Splendid. ... All the crafty hooks, Haim-worthy vocal harmonies, sumptuous layers of synths and unabashedly prefab beats belie the poignant nature of Girl Ray's odes to post-millennial love and longing. [Dec 2019, p.26]

This anniversary reissue is less concerned about the album as it is and more curious about how it might have sounded. ... Arguably the most revealing aspect of this reissue is Scott Litt's bold remix of Monster. [Dec 2019, p.40]