Inexorable forward movement is shadowed by existential dread. [Jul 2018, p.30]

No one seems to know quite how he does it, but Donovan keeps going, quietly, from strength to strength. [Jun 2018, p.27]

The conventional sound palette leads to a number of fragrant compositions, which will do Actress' cold, hard image no good at all. [Jul 2018, p.23]

There's an inherent creepiness in his frequently audacious work that makes it hard to connect with on an emotional level. [Jul 2018, p.33]

It's warm and weird, but suddenly no stranger than the world around it. [Jul 2018, p.32]

On paper this should be a mess; on record it's a thrillingly chaotic sonic voyage. [Jun 2018, p.27]

Rose said she wanted to make an album that reflects the oscillating extremes of her personality--Loner is that and much more. [Jul 2018, p.34]

Automator's cinematic drama provides a stirring backdrop for the Doctor's prolix self-celebration, the ribald "Polka Dots," sinister "Power Of The World" and woozy "Flying Waterbed." [Jul 2018, p.27]

The death of beloved bandmate Carey Lander in 2015 seems to have inspired the freshest, blithest song's [Tracyanne Campbell's] written. [Jul 2018, p.34]

While Prass's gossamer tone is still light and distinctive. The moods, textures and themes, however, have evolved. [Jul 2018, p.35]

Her mother had died, but she had also found love. Musically, she's equally diverse. Mostly, there is the voice, a swooping instrument that swirls and eddies beneath sparse folk rhythms. [Jul 2018, p.24]

This set borrows from those same Nebraska recording sessions [of 2017's Tomorrow Forever] with nary a weakling to show. Pounding rock'n'roll colludes with lethal hooks, while jangly guitars and soulful harmonies mesh with ethereal melodies. [Jul 2018, p.34]

Horse Feathers have found their way to a much richer, more confident sound, marrying Southern soul grooves and rough-hewn Americana to Paul Simon eloquence. [Jul 2018, p.28]

This hypnotic blend of R&B-pop, luminous chillwave and whacked-out funk has its own piquancy. [Jul 2018, p.37]

The frenzied, immersive and hard-charged psych the band has explored previously gives way to an album that is woozy, melodic and reflective. [Jul 2018, p.37]

Simultaneously stupid and very smart. [Jul 2018, p.30]

The musical backing is politer than the lyrics, but it can't altogether blunt the boldness of their discourse. [Jul 2018, p.30]

Despite flashes of intense beauty, the going is heavy. [Jul 2018, p.30]

Though the stadium-EDM elements of "Miracle" are an unwelcome addition and there's a slight clash between two brands of brooding, when Matt Berninger guests on "My Enemy," Chvrches excel at an electro-pop simulacrum that's actually more craftily structured than most of their favourite records of 1982. [Jul 2018, p.26]

With an empathetic band featuring strings, keys and pedal steel, Castle alternative;y pulls the songs into focus with her clear, honeyed voice and lets it drift free inside them. [Jul 2018, p.24]

As ever, Case finds room for expansive manoeuvres in the gap between her lusty, orthodox pop choruses and droll, deadpan voice. Still a singer-songwriter like no other. [Jul 2018, p.24]

When it's glorious, it really is glorious. [Jul 2018, p.18]

Modern Studies' Emily Scott, Rob St John and their cohorts once again supplement their brackish folk with tape loops, harmonium, a Mellotron and more to create songs both ancient and modern. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Like a long walk in the woods, it's richly and deeply transporting. [Jun 2018, p.35]

It's far more restrained, foreboding and ultimately effective. [Jun 2018, p.27]

The predominantly instrumental Hundred Of Days is a more expansive affair than 2016's At The Dam. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Haines' mean-spirited gifts abide, but Airfix cannot mend a broken spirit. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Like The Siren’s Song itself, it feels both ageless and beguiling, a classic record for this or any other time.

The bruising "Madder" betrays the influence of Scott Walker producer Peter Walsh, but there are flickers of respite, notably "The Bomb," which tethers its emotional unravelling to a lovely piano figure. [Jun 2018, p.24]

There's an appealing American cynicism lurking beneath their enchanting '60s doo-wop-indebted sound. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Magpies, for sure--but rather brilliant ones. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Nelson's voice has lost none of its wry warmth, his fretboard fingers little of their astonishing agility. And the songs here are terrific. [Jun 2018, p.33]

Sultry, compelling and ever so slightly spooked, Cosmic Wink flickers and flashes like a series of time-lapse landscape photographs, but the place it documents is the heart. [Jun 2018, p.36]

The album could sometimes benefit from a shift in pace from its often locked-in, mid-tempo state. [Jun 2018, p.35]

Deafman Glance picks up the thread he's laid down with the stronger songs on Golden Sings That Have Been Sung. [Jun 2018, p.34]

Despite ts sometimes laidback nature, Sparkle Hard also bristles with an energy that proves he's got a place in the present, and a new accessibility that compromises none of his eccentricities. [Jun 2018, p.18]

It's droll, evocative and occasionally moving. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Girly-Sound to Guyville is something much more revealing than an anniversary commemoration. It's a document of an artist finding and raising er voice: a souvenir from an era that questions long-held assumptions about the sex and the business of rock'n'roll. [Jun 2018, p.38]

The parade of fretboard styles Cooder brings to the album is masterly. [Jun 2018, p.22]

Any Day is their sharpest set of songs to date, but Sam Prekop's languid melodies still prove defiantly elusive. [Jun 2018, p.35]

Here they sound truly alive, impassioned and buoyant on their finest LP to date. [Jun 2018, p.33]

It may sound like a gimmicky stunt but it produces mostly beautiful results. [Jun 2018, p.30]

It's more of a subtle restyling than a full-on reincarnation, the soft-edged weightlessness, sumptuous tones and gauzy vocals still instantly recognisable. [Jun 2018, p.24]

It feels as if she now trusts the power of her music to imbue even cliche with emotional power. [Jun 2018, p.29]

[Graves reinvents] himself as wistful purveyor of psych dream pop. It happens to suit him. [Jun 2018, p.27]

Harrowing subject matter, and yet these raw confessionals have a stark, compelling beauty that ultimately feels bravely defiant. [Jun 2018, p.37]

Low-key but engrossing, Tranquility Base is a slow-burner, self-doubting but pushing ever onwards. It's a brave new step, even if it can be a little one-paced, and a little withholding. [Jun 2018, p.25]

[An] impressive solo debut. Largely focused on synths, it still leans on hypnotic, motorik rhythm, if more reflective than her band. [Jun 2018, p.37]

Just as it's a struggle to name parallels beyond Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, it's equallly difficult to imagine why anybody would want to. [Jun 2018, p.24]

It sounds, to its considerable credit, very much like the record that might have followed. [Jun 2018, p.24]

It sometimes feels a little pedestrian, though Jurado excels when upping the pace. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Even if the landscape is occasionally a little too pleasant, the overall trip is well worth taking. [Jun 2018, p.32]

The band's newfound eagerness for moodier tempos and treatments allows frontman Elias Bender Ronnenfelt to dig deeper into his Gun Club fetish on "under The sun" and make like he's stumbling out of a Kurt Weill musical on "Showtime," a stunning piece of punked-up cabaret. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Conquistador plays out against a cavalcade of dark, intense, downward thrusts that linger and fold back on themselves, each time getting slightly deeper and more daunting. [Jun 2018, p.24]

The deep, pulled-back grooves of Critical Equation reveal the harnessed intensity of the songs and performances so deliberately that their myriad pleasures and embedded hooks will sneak up on you. [Jun 2018, p.27]

Though his jazz instincts can still send him into incantatory live orbit, all he wants here are the boyhood comforts of his early record collection. His voice remains admirably supple, though. [Jun 2018, p.33]

Liz Harris's 10th album continues her slow ascent out of the appealingly murky haze of her early releases towards structured, if still frail, songwriting. [Jun 2018, p.28]

In every respect, the performance captured here is as raw and un-redacted as the original record. ... What times. [Jun 2018, p.42]

Eleanor Friedberger is rejuvenated on fourth solo album Rebound. [Jun 2018, p.27]

This is a pretty exhausted soundworld. [Jun 2018, p.37]

If Sheff's still finding the best way to speak this newly direct, loving language, its naked conviction is touchingly plain. [Jun 2018, p.33]

The ramshackle, campfire vibe is endearing, bu this is neither a fully immersive experience like Dead Man or a third LP with POTR. [Jun 2018, p.36]

Though some of its textures could do with a little more edge, the result is undeniably poignant, with HArdy's voice elegant and expressive as ever. [Jun 2018, p.28]

There's nothing in here not to love. [Jun 2018, p.30]

What lingers longest on this remarkable record is an uplifting sense of resilience. [Jun 2018, p.26]

Vide Noir unspools with cinematic seamlessness, as quicksilver psychedelic buffers bridge its 12 tracks, which shift between folk, country and heartland rock. [Jun 2018, p.30]

Wells favours minimal lyrics and skeletal, looping arrangements that an feel overly austere, but the improvised viola scraps and sampled splash of New Orleans jazz on "A Quiet Life" show an evolution towards Matthew Herbert territory. [May 2018, p.30]

This 15-track album is daft, sprawling, naive and full of contradictions--but rarely less than entertaining. [Jun 2018, p.37]

The results has to be the blandest record in which either Sting or Shaggy has ever been involved. The lyrics are beyond banal. [Jun 2018, p.34]

Its distinctive musicianship leads to some powerful moments. [Jun 2018, p.35]

The results are almost too intimate to bear. [Jun 2018, p.33]

The Other sees the slacker goofball King Tuff reborn as a spiritual thinker, albeit one with an excellent groove. [Jun 2018, p.30]

An extraordinary instrumental album full of hypnotic rhythms and minimalist melodies that are both stunningly beautiful and at times oddly unsettling. [Jun 2018, p.28]

A bold, brisk, rather beautiful zip through multiple pop genres. [Jun 2018, p.26]

Pedal steel and fiddle waltz around a crystal-clear baritone on a succession of laments to hillbilly heartbreak that ooze class from every pore. [Jun 2018, p.28]

Sometimes this nomadic approach produces some sublime pop, but more often the results are erratic--odd even--but never dull. [May 2018, p.33]

Hippo Lite feels like Le Bon and Presley's own little musical microclimate. You don't have to know exactly what they're on about to recognise that it's something special. [May 2018, p.25]

With Dave Cobb's production reinforcing their boisterous dynamism, Volunteer surveys the sacrifices Old Crow make for their music, the camaraderie of the bandmates and heroes at the expense of the stability of family and home. [May 2018, p.29]

Weirdly, it sounds like a modern-day Alice Cooper album.[May 2018, p.35]

He's been inspired by the Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout, but in truth the synthetic textures and drum machines bring to mind a more downbeat Bruce Hornsby. [May 2018, p.33]

Their playing and singing has laser-sharp focus, while still allowing the songs and their rich, raw melodies the space to breathe. [May 2018, p.35]

Tortoise's John McEntire, producing, keep the whole rhapsodic jam on an even keel. [May 2018, p.30]

Their dogged adherence to the Southern rock template remains at once a strength and an intermittently frustrating weakness. On the upside, the Atlanta group do what they do with devoted attention to detail, and the correct balance of sincerity and swagger. [May 2018, p.24]

It's not all straight A's, but that hardly seems the point. This feels like a necessary act of burning and rebuilding. [May 2018, p.33]

It is the weirder, wilder, experimental material that makes this a significant new career benchmark for the German duo, their boldest and possibly best album so far. [May 2018, p.32]

The songs here are lean, supple, confident. [May 2018, p.18]

Like the stormy contents of 2015's Transfixiation, songs like "Never Coming Back" have no lack of velocity and ferocity, though APTBS often fall between two poles, being not quite able to deliver memorable songs yet unwilling to let the music dissolve into purer forms if turbulence. [May 2018, p.23]

The distinction between their sensibilities remain strikingly apparent. [May 2018, p.33]

Laughing in the face of mortality is a preoccupation, from the honky-tonk close "When I Get To Heaven" and "God Only Knows", but Prine's playful wit is best captured in "Egg & Daughter Nite, London Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)." [May 2018, p.33]

A satisfying whole that demonstrates Taylor's mastery of his peculiar strain of zonked late-night soul. [May 2018, p.35]

Shook might not possess the vocal range of kindred spirits Lydia Loveless or Nikki Lane, but she clearly a force to be counted. [May 2018, p.26]

A batch of songs that snap and snarl in all the right places. [May 2018, p.27]

Roberts continues to mine the traditional songbook, the sound is dominated by McGuinness' keyboards. Composer Amble Skuse adds squirts of electronica, bringing understated ambience to these brutal old songs. [Apr 2018, p.32]

Best are tunes that showcase Cash's plainspoken lyricism and mould his musing into fully formed songs. [May 2018, p. 37]

Impressive stuff. [May 2018, p.30]

While "Symmetry" and "Say Hello" seem destined for pole positions on motivational playlists, such displays of ebullience are well balanced with evidence of Wye Oak's more melancholy side. [May 2018, p.37]

Neither the songs nor their delivery are perfect, but that's perhaps the point. [May 2018, p.30]

Conceived to celebrate the band's 20th anniversary and features everybody who has ever recorded with the band, which basically means they called in a bunch of old drummers to thump out a backing rhythm for Jason Simon and Steve Kille's incessant groove, snarl and swing on choice tracks like "Here With The Hawk" and "Nobody Home." [May 2018, p.27]