Alas, genuinely surprising moments are scarcer on much of Wallop, with rudimentary workouts outnumbering the fresher like of "$50 Million" and its super-charged Chic groove. [Oct 2019, p.23]

This engrossing hour-and-three-quarter work pursues long-form drones at the pipe organ in a way that is both hypnotic and uplifting. [Oct 2019, p.30]

The soft-rock paradigm with its classic Fleetwood Mac/Carole King references is self-limiting, but the songs are lucid and heartfelt in their graceful ruminations on the passage of time. [Sep 2019, p.34]

If this is indeed Crow's last recording, as she's speculated, this cavalcade of hotwired connections is a splendid way to cap off her career. [Oct 2019, p.27]

The pair specialise in primitive house tracks drizzled with acid, which work best when one of their male vocalists drawls sweet nothings deep in the mix. [Sep 2019, p.33]

Much of [Kasabian's] personality comes from guitarist/songwriter/producer Serge Pizzorno, and on this solo project, similar quirks stands out. [Oct 2019, p.36]

Forever Turned Around hovers in a midrange that's objectively nice, but lacks the vigour required of something memorable. [Oct 2019, p.39]

The results are exquisite. [Sep 2019, p.34]

More subdued yet equally captivating follow-up. [Oct 2019, p.24]

Notably rockier than its more pastoral predecessors and all the finer for it. [Oct 2019, p.33]

The film blurs lines between horror and ink-black comedy, and Krlic's score, texturally vast, moodily versatile and unnerving without being bombastic, moving deftly with it as one. [Oct 2019, p.29]

Guild takes a few listens to really seep in, but there are some truly hallucinatory moments here. [Oct 2019, p.39]

Furman's distinctive shrieking, poetic phrasing and postmodernist perspective prevents the work from sounding overtly derivative. It instead borrows the best qualities of its forebears, and fuses them into something new. [Sep 2019, p.22]

Modern nature is an explicitly English affair: unbluesy, unassuming and slightly uptight (in a good way). [Sep 2019, p.36]

Beyond The Door might at times nod to good-time escapism, but it also represents unsullied rock'n'roll in music's most splintered age. [Sep 2019, p.33]

Themes of mind control are sprinkled throughout the record, whose highlights include storm opener "Paradise," the semi-rapped title track, the funky "The Planet Of Straw Man" and closing song "Maria 63." [Oct 2019, p.39]

A Distant Call is full of songs that are pretty good, but it rarely stops you in your tracks. [Oct 2019, p.36]

An album that takes nothing for granted, that doesn't consider your attention a gift, that wants to impart something profound to you. Trust her. [Sep 2019, p.28]

This one feels a bit brighter, more pop, than usual, though the Stooges lift of "Some Unknown Reason" is dankly bloodied. [Sep 2019, p.24]

Arnold's voice is as rich as ever on this upbeat, triumphant return to the spotlight, crystal clear and cutting straight to the heart. [Sep 2019, p.23]

Inspired by Alfred Stieglitz's photographs of clouds, it's inevitably founded upon lengthy drones but there's subtle drama here, too. [Oct 2019, p.29]

A robust if not radically groundbreaking set of hook-laden heartland Americana with occasional detours into college indie rock. [Oct 2019, p.39]

While it lacks flashiness, the 11-song performance is both raw and cooking, reminder of the country-rock/swamp-blues power that's moved bands from The Black Keys to White Denim. [Oct 2019, p.45]

An album of rapid-fire drums, throbbing bass and colossal riffs that nod, well, headbang, back heavily to the glory days of thrash metal. [Oct 2019, p.29]

As stylistically adventurous and technologically innovative as the album is, this community of musicians ensures it remains accessible and soulful. [Oct 2019, p.24]

Savour all the strangeness, the power and the glory that fill the present. [Oct 2019, p.22]

Across the record's 12 tracks, it's never entirely clear what the group are aiming for: anthemic indie rock by numbers, more introspective songs or something heavier. [Sep 2019, p.26]

Lyrically, The Murder Capital are less direct than Idles and Fontaines, but musically they're more expansive, bringing a brooding brain-twisting gothic feel. [Sep 2019, p.30]

Their inimitable fury and drive is intact. [Sep 2019, p.18]

Alongside the general pixelated bombast, it also represents Power's most melodic work. [Sep 2019, p.23]

May be Regan's finest 35 minutes to date. [Sep 2019, p.33]

Instead of fusing elements, Korwar lets them converse, drowning blinkered British racism out. [Aug 2019, p.31]

Overall this double album offers a rich blend of ambient glow, polyrhythmic glitch and absorbing textural detail. [Sep 2019, p.27]

It's the choices of material and approach that give Jesse Dayton's Mixtape Vol 1 its considerable kick. [Sep 2019, p.24]

While these 12 songs shake no foundations, they hold their own. [Sep 2019, p.34]

Aokohio maintains that momentum [from 2017's Moh Lhean], even if it is typically scattershot, haphazard, surreal and episodic, featuring short bursts of beautiful melody, soul-searching found sounds, unsettling atmospherics and dark humour. [Sep 2019, p.37]

Cross has created something of a mesmerising mini-masterpiece. [Sep 2019, p.24]

It might not be the best Hold Steady Album, but it might be their most purely enjoyable. [Sep 2019, p.35]

Her most universal album yet. [Sep 2019, p.27

Childers is blessed with a timeless voice and an ear for the plurality of mountain music, these songs roaming between bluegrass, folk, straight-up country and R&B. [Sep 2019, p.26]

This is a broad, swaggering definition of jazz that touches on Nigerian afrobeat, Ghanaian high-life, grungy post-rock and vocal-led astral soul. Non-jazz fans might be drawn to Nerija's astonishing guitarist Shirley Tetteh. [Sep 2019, p.30]

Combined with the rich warm production, this results in a debut of largely seamless retro classic pop-rock. [Sep 2019, p.29]

Despite some pleasant enough tunes, she lacks the vocal charisma to stand out from other wannabe Rihannas, Mileys and Dua Lipas. [Aug 2019, p.29]

Handsome melodies are dispatched with nonchalant flair, while the lyrics are consistently wry, whether concerning romantic or political entanglements. [Sep 2019, p.33]

While there's plenty of laidback sheen, the collection is void of original hooks. [Sep 2019, p.24]

They're masterfully groovy and mysterious, at times malevolent, panoramas with a potency that simultaneously historical and futuristic. [Sep 2019, p.27]

First Taste is focused round the self-imposed discipline of not featuring guitars. ... In truth, the challenge barely affects Segall's shred-happy sound. [Sep 2019, p.34]

The allusive, poetic intimacy of songs and singer are enriched, while an atmospheric haze keeps the concept loose. [Sep 2019, p.34]

An album s indebted to garage as it is to pop. [Sep 2019, p.27]

Her catchy new songs find comfort and self-reliance in solitude. [Aug 2019, p.31]

A grouchier echo of that opening shot [their 1983 debut album]. [Sep 2019, p.27]

A modest triumph. [Aug 2019, p.28]

With only three of the eight songs clocking in at under five minutes, things can get a little ponderous, but clearly, our expectations are of little concern. [Aug 2019, p.29]

Unsurprisingly, the comp is most interesting in its lesser-known material found between bigger names. [Aug 2019, p.51]

Woodstock 50 is an archival feat, an exhaustive capsule melding bygone sentiments with timeless performances. [Sep 2019, p.49]

Songs like "of Lucky Hand" and "Deathwish Blue" see him shed the more chameleonic nature of last year's Full Circle Nightmare and more fully establish his own raggedly glorious sensibility. [Aug 2019, p.29]

A witty and fresh response to America's current commander-in-chief. [Sep 2019, p.34]

McMahon has the same eye for poetically absurd detail as her compatriot Courtney Barnett. [Sep 2019, p.29]

Chords is a stark, minimal listen--but one that rewards patience. [Jul 2019, p.24]

It’s an odd sort of idea: a trio paying tribute to themselves. But even if no new ground is being broken exactly, there’s a pleasure in hearing the old space cadets out on manoeuvres. The music of Apollo is meditative and benign, yet strangely inscrutable; a reminder that while you might be able to visit space, it will never be home.

A fascinating and deeply rewarding journey through the ages. [Aug 2019, p.38]

A great idea, brilliantly executed. [Sep 2019, p.37]

A certain gravitas is restored. [Sep 2019, p.46]

At first it all sounds slightly undercooked, but soon its crunched funk and sinuous synthwork, nicely judged on "Another State Of Consciousness," suggest a master grasping a new technique. [Sep 2019, p.37]

A return trip worth taking. [Sep 2019, p.29]

It's a cathartic and necessary release in these dark days of America, a riot reverberating through political resistance, social inclusion and sheer cathartic gyration. [Sep 2019, p.27]

Anima feels like a dive into an inner world, profoundly intimate and emotional even as it remains enigmatic and blurred at the edges. [Sep 2019, p.25]

Bratty autobiography still peaks though the clean and healthy Californian veneer. [Aug 2019, p.26]

Unexpected and quietly ambitious. [Aug 2019, p.32]

Thomas lurches from surrealist poetry to impressionistic short stories, like a hybrid of Captain Beefheart and Ernest Hemingway. [Jul 2019, p.33]

A little more zip wouldn't go amiss. [Aug 2019, p.36]

18 tracks--and stylistically it's disparate, but that's the point. It's a one-time postcard. An advert for uninhibited experimentation. [Aug 2019, p.25]

Sauser-Monnig's songs retain a sense of early-morning introspection that lingers. [Aug 2019, p.29]

Too engaging to be ambient, too amorphous to be melodious, Félicia Atkinson's latest continues her ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) experiments, her poetry whispered--often indistinctly--over strangely riveting electro-acoustic collages. [Aug 2019, p.26]

Purple Mountains is an excellent return to form for Berman; a worthy next chapter for a songwriter who quit, many believed, in his prime. [Aug 2019, p.30]

The emotional honesty displayed is equally effecting [as 2018's Warm]. [Jul 2019, p.37]

She summons the spirits very effectively here. ... John Parish's production of Hoop's delicate finger-picking adds to the sense of beautiful, bewitching isolation. [Aug 2019, p.31]

They've leapfrogged stasis and had what sounds like fun along the way. [Jun 2019, p.29]

Together, they've crafted a cerebral yet effortless vast and cinematic ode to love and new beginnings, one that splits the difference between shoegaze and synthpop. [Aug 2019, p.36]

It's striking to hear just how confident the trio now are, and how interwoven their playing is. [Aug 2019, p.18]

What is basically an update on the kind of blissed-out composite at which Andrew Gold used to excel. [Apr 2019, p.29]

These are ageless, thrillingly energised devotionals for our secular and fast-moving times, full of euphonious noise and the dust kicked up by their deep-dug grooves. [Aug 2019, p.27]

It's part folk-rock fantasy, part avant-pop mind trip, and all gorgeous. [Aug 2019, p.32]

An album that reveals fresh layers on every listen. [Jul 2019, p.33]

It would be unfair to expect a "Whipping Post" from Devon Allman, Duane Betts and Berry Duane Oakley on their first outing, cut live to tape in Muscle Shoals, as they seek a comparable energy, but they manage to capably shoulder the responsibility rather than sinking under it weight. [Aug 2019, p.25]

Strongly evokes a member of Foo Fighters attempting a modern Americana album, and as such is largely a punky take on the stomping arena country of Brad Paisley. [Aug 2019, p.36]

Lars Andersson and Phillip Dornauer commit themselves wholeheartedly to epic objectives. [Aug 2019, p.32]

The 64-year-old artist time-travels to her formative years, bringing unexpected twists to 10 radio hits. [Aug 2019, p.31]

Their CSNY-meets-MGMT harmonies are as sun-dappled and warming as ever. But this is also their most skillfully diverse record yet. [Aug 2019, p.35]

They're on fine form with the hammered glam-boogie of "Eagle Birds" and the absurdly good-time "Lo/Hi," but underwhelm with the mid-tempo "Walk Across The Water and QOTSA-ish "Shine A Little Light." [Aug 2019, p.26]

A 4LP limited box adds a typically transcendent live set from Ann Arbor, mixing new tracks with retooled classics: a 19-minute take on "Tutankhamun" still feels far out. [Aug 2019, p.26]

Though Return To center has its campy moments, he's removed his tongue from his cheek. [Jul 2019, p.24]

It's hard to take it quite as seriously as it seems to take itself, although there are certainly stirring moments. [Aug 2019, p.32]

Generally excellent, sporadically sublime. [Aug 2019, p.39]

Daughters mixes history, fable and philosophical thought, with vocalist Horwood switching between euphoric and mournfully reflective. [Jul 2019, p.24]

The duo's lesser songs may not stray from a familiar pocket of retro-soul, but it's a very fine pocket nonetheless. [Jul 2019, p.24]

Jambu is the best starting point, a genuinely revelatory voyage through the mythic sounds of the Amazon. [Aug 2019, p.90]

It's a(nother) set of hushed, impressionistic tracks tapping the British folk tradition, digital psychedelia, Talk Talk and Japanese death poems. [Aug 2019, p.36]