This lovingly compiled box is the perfect place for anyone curious about The Staple Singers' remarkable 50-year career to get acquainted. [Feb 2020, p.46]

Mixes magic and sci-fi, beauty and horror. [Mar 2020, p.35]

There's another clutch of great Real Estate songs on this gentle delight, and some clues as to where the group could go next, if they chose to really stretch out and see what else their songs could do. [Apr 2020, p.34]

Mostly it's ambient background music in search of a movie, but standout moments include the sinister Marricone guitars on "The Prairie" and the distorted tablas and minimalistic vibraphones on "Damascene Slap." [Mar 2020, p.33]

Dare's songwriting feels to be improving, even as he pares his music to the bare essentials. [Mar 2020, p.26]

Suggest the euphoria of whooshing through infinite space past astral displays of imagined beauty via a blend of disco funk, dream pop, electronic exotica and '70s highlife. [Apr 2020, p.33]

An enticing hint at other directions that Landreth could go in. [Mar 2020, p.30]

I kept wishing I'd been there that night, 45 years ago. [Mar 2020, p.42]

Lyrically, the rose-tinted specs are off but sonically it has a romantic, decidedly retro bent, with reverb and (fine) vocal harmonies wrapped around songs that recall Shangri-Las, a stripped-back Lush and a less morose Cowboy Junkies. [Mar 2020, p.33]

Sparse and otherworldly, yet powerful and dynamic. [Mar 2020, p.24]

12 luminous and inventive songs. [Mar 2020, p.36]

While the Joe Pizzulo-fronted "Love came Between Us" may sound like it once soundtracked an '80s romcom, that somehow adds to its retro charm. [Apr 2020, p.33]

Alongside warm, grunge-pop songs sit the reverb-and-ambient-noise bath that is "Night Swimming," the tripped-out psych folk of "Lucy" and hugely poignant epic" Yellow Is The Color Of Her Eyes." [Apr 2020, p.35]

Companion Rises is unmistakably Chasney's journey, and it's wonderful to come along for the ride. [Mar 2020, p.34]

Good-natured album. [Apr 2020, p.35]

Smart and slick but vulnerable too, it's the point where Blonde On Blonde meets Voulez-Vous. [Apr 2020, p.33]

Nothing is forced and no sound is extraneous on this desert-dry, whisper-close 12-song set. [Apr 2020, p.30]

It can sometimes feel like a band trying on a variety of hats, although the songs themselves generally ring true, anthemic and delivered with a fistful of grit. [Apr 2020, p.30]

Lush as it sometimes is, too often disappears into an indecipherable cloud of smoke. [Apr 2020, p.30]

He thrives in intimate surroundings, furnishing these songs with discreet and sometimes adventurous embellishments - drum machine, say - that enhance his message, rather than detract from it. [Apr 2020, p.26]

As always, her lyrics are unambiguous - too on-the-nose for some - but there's an admirable unfussiness to it all. [Apr 2020, p.23]

Succeeds in painting atmospheric images, with elliptical poetry set against dreamy FX-laden guitars, twinkly pianos and jagged beats. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Dulli remains a restless and unpredictable frontman, constantly distorting his voice from a soaring falsetto into a bellowing bass, as though he's just getting started. [Mar 2020, p.27]

Crafting a sound that is brash in its bigness, massive in its attack. [Mar 2020, p.29]

Ranaldo's spoken-word ambles can feel a bit precious, and at times the material doesn't cohere--a natural risk with experimentations. But when it falls together, it's beguiling. [Mar 2020, p.35]

This Yorkshire quartet's debut deserves similar acclaim to Shame, Idles, Fontaines DC and their ilk. [Mar 2020, p.33]

It's hugely impressive and would certainly suit a fully dramatised staging. [Mar 2020, p.30]

Moore's delicately stylish piano lines and Liz Fraser-style vocal hiccups combine seductively. [Mar 2020, p.37]

An intoxicating blend of surf-rock guitar and the blusterous post-rock drama of forefathers such as Lift To Experience; a bewitching blend that makes death's ominous presence feel that much closer. [Mar 2020, p.25]

The album isn't presented in chronological order, which makes it harder to discern changes in style and lineup, but does demonstrate the consistency of Wheeler's writing over a long period of time. [Mar 2020, p.43]

It's a rare thrill to come across a time capsule like Dancing Mogadishu, , particularly when its contents appeals to funk connoisseurs and cultural anthropologists as much as the casual listener. Feb 2020, p.48]

This is not pastiche or revival - this is jazz created in a distinctly London accent; the sounds you hear in cars and minicabs, the fractured beats you hear pouring out of teenagers' phones - refracted through the prism of jazz. [Mar 2020, p.28]

It's one for the lonesome and broken-hearted, a great excuse to shut out the world and have a good cry. [Mar 2020, p.35]

Though not as daring as the Pole's free-jazz output, this gilded modular synthesis is a safe and satisfying listen that pushes him into another realm. [Mar 2020, p.37]

He has risen to the occasion with an album full of the necessary girth and scope, which doesn't succumb to the forces of inertia. [Mar 2020, p.18]

Fu Chronicles is further proof that Antibalas is the best Afrobeat group in the West. [Mar 2020, p.23]

Half Moon Light's much-needed manifesto of hopefulness comes with the addition of uplifting lyrics further designed to keep up our spirits on dark days. [Mar 2020, p.30]

The result is akin to Super Furry Animals making progressive post-punk. The sense of charm and idiosyncrasy is plentiful across the rest of the album too. [Mar 2020, p.29]

A taut, lean 30-minute manifesto of a record which contains some of their most tuneful, groove-oriented songs yet. [Mar 2020, p.32]

Besides being vivid demonstrations of her versatility, the girl-group pop of "Hey World," the country-gospel of "The Heart Of It All" and the delicate chamber-folk of "Just for Today" all provide very good reasons to welcome her back. [Mar 2020, p.26]

Literate, idiosyncratic power pop, ploughed from a furrow between Fountains of Wayne and The Posies. [Mar 2020, p.33]

Feels like a decisive clean break. [Mar 2020, p.30]

There's always a glimpse of the human in Popp's music, an organic feel that gives a sense of a hand at the controls. [Mar 2020, p.33]

They sound as Zappa seldom does: not over-thinking it, and guilelessly lost in the moment and in the exuberant joy of the playing. [Feb 2020, p.40]

Field recordings and ghostly cello further underline "Ghosts of Blaker Dyke"'s poignancy, recalling David Sylvian's instrumentals on Gone To Earth. [Mar 2020, p.29]

Call it an expansion rather than a reinvention--but it's a dramatic and rather dazzling one. [Mar 2020, p.27]

As a whole, West of Eden is extravagant and ridiculous, but it embraces its own erraticism. [Mar 2020, p.29]

Opening up the album to new ideas and interpretations without obscuring the man himself. [Mar 2020, p.35]

Karen's spectral, childlike voice sounds like it's been beamed in from a haunted 19th-century log cabin. [Feb 2020, p.29]

It's an album that delights, challenges and provokes, while reimagining old folk traditions. [Feb 2020, p.35]

Unorthodox methods prove highly persuasive. [Mar 2020, p.27]

Fuses the hormonal aggression that put Green Day on the map with punched-up modern-day production courtesy of Butch Walker and a razor-sharp mix by Tchad Blake. [Mar 2020, p.29]

Fearless seldom surprises--he's been doing this kind of thing long enough to know what works--but is quality is consistent. [Dec 2019, p.26]

Britfolk's most adventurous neo-traditionalist takes the surprise quotient to new heights on this conceptual set. [Feb 2020, p.30]

A real joy, though it bears an inevitable sadness. [Feb 2020, p.25]

By facing up to their demons, they've recaptured what made them special. [Mar 2020, p.37]

If you like your pop super-sweet and synthy, fill your boots. [Mar 2020, p.25]

Evokes Watt's early mentor Robert Wyatt at his most enthralling and adventurous. [Mar 2020, p.37]

A giddy psychedelic opera performed with Wayne Coyne-levels of beaming optimism. [Mar 2020, p.27]

There's a sublimely soulful central vocal melody underpinning songs such as "Papa," "VanP" and "Differently," as patchworks of vocal loops create bewitching organic grooves. The showtune jazz and circus-y, Tom Waits-ish vibes elsewhere are also highly intriguing. [Feb 2020, p.23]

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]