The uninitiated may hear only a wonky Julian Cope at 25rpm, but somewhere on Screen Memories is the point where performance art ends and genuine mania begins. [Nov 2017, p.32]

Saicobab whip up a sonic maelstrom that's every bit as intense as the shock tactics of Boredoms' early noise recordings or the polyrhythmic psychedelia tat followed. [Dec 2017, p.30]

Discovering all this mellow gold now is akin to discovering Laurel Canyon was actually on the other side of the Pacific. [Dec 2017, p.47]

The songs are very much of their time, reflecting shifts in popular taste and featuring numerous covers. [Dec 2017, p.43]

Even if the production pores over old memories, when they fire on all cylinders the combination of their best MCs creates more than a nostalgia trip. [Dec 2017, p.33]

This is a meaty-sounding affair. [Dec 2017, p.30]

Russell was clearly fully committed to the project, with sincere lyrics and a strained, emotional vocal sustained by luscious strings. [Dec 2017, p.30]

Though the arrangements here are thinner and the longer pieces feel overstretches. [Dec 2017, p.30]

Lilies is a succinct affair, albeit one of often similarly unearthly pleasures. [Dec 2017, p.25]

The issue here is the sameness of his songs. [Dec 2017, p.25]

"Escape From New York" and "Halloween" can't top the cold desolation of the originals. ... Pretty much every one of the album's 13 tracks confirm Carpenter's skill for an eerie earworm. [Dec 2017, p.25]

Lights may be bleak, but that only makes the moments of catharsis all the more illuminating. [Dec 2017, p.22]

Fohr's extraordinarily expressive baritone--echoing Nina Simone, Nico and Scot Walker--is the centre of her songs which range far and wide compositionally. [Nov 2017, p.24]

The pair's dialogue on SpiderBeetleBee move fluidly between unison harmonics and point-counterpoint. [Nov 2017, p.32]

True, this may have benefited from the inclusion of, say, 2013's "Lucinda Byre," but the man's unerring ability to quietly lift the heart with melody as he foes in "Rumer" and "Josephine" is ultimately the more valuable sensation to hang on to. [Nov 2017, p.30]

For Mnestic Pressure, his first for Hyperdub, Gamble again draws on themes of memory and perception to inform his shapeshifting arrangements, which curdle and collapse with familiar irregularity but don't necessarily build on past achievements. [Oct 2017, p.28]

Not as generous with its outtakes as a leaked CD-R suggested Rhino's 20th-anniversary edition in 2006 would have been, the inevitable round-up of B-sides does at least--and this is a big plus--reuinite "Rubber Ring" and "Asleep" in an unbroken segue. ... The Mansfield gig is a worthwhile addition to the official catalogue, though collectors will notice six of the 19 songs played that night are not included. [Nov 2017, p.40]

An album of grungy, earnest rock that pivots from deluges of Hole-inspired chaos to more restrained, melodic fare. [Nov 2017, p.24]

The universal motifs of loss, redemption and freedom from bondage are brought home in moving, understated style. [Oct 2017, p.28]

All American Made marks both a hardening and a deepening of Price's sound. [Nov 2017, p.25]

John Lee Hooker was the most adaptable bluesmen. ... King Of The Boogie is a career-bridging overview that highlights these abundant qualities across five discs. [Nov 2017, p.50]

[The] 4CD set filleting his post-Auteurs solo works. ... Disc four features wreckage from his abandoned musical about demon landlord Nicholas van Hoogstraten. [Nov 2017, p.48]

Bowie’s Berlin is more about a state of mind, a population and its thinking than an actual place. Brian Eno and his intellectual playfulness; Robert Fripp’s alien guitar; Tony Visconti’s embrace of meaningful technology. Between them they gave Bowie the materials to build a city larger and more magnificent than anywhere you could hope to find on a map. [Nov 2017, p.44]

While there are plenty of new lyrical Bejarisms to enjoy, the packaging feels a little stale. [Nov 2017, p.26]

The tasty guitar work is undercut by Wilson's heavy-handed lead vocals and the partners' cliche-ridden lyrics. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Much of this is rather pedestrian ska with blandly topical lyrics referencing populism, social media and hashtags. However, "Remember Me" winds and grinds appealingly. [Nov 2017, p.36]

There are enough familiar motifs to keep long-time fans happy. Lyrically, it's an endlessly pleasing melting pot. [Nov 2017, p.36]

The rootsy exuberance of Lullaby giving way to a mixture of romantic longing and social commentary. [Nov 2017, p.22]

Songs such as "Heels Over Head" and "Van Gogh's Ear"--like Ben Watt backed by John Martyn's fingerpicking guitar--are digitally mutilated with glitchy effects and field recordings, while Emma Smith provides elegant flourishes on Violin and clarinet. There are also a few witty lines. [Nov 2017, p.26]

[Queens Of The Breakers] is busy without ever feeling overcrowded, its liquid acoustics following the soft contours of Brad's vocals to telling effect. [Nov 2017, p.24]

Rich and strange. [Nov 2017, p.30]

In 2017 it sounds like a revelation, not just a reminder of their glorious volatility, but also a raggedly beautiful effort that stands alongside The Replacements' best records. [Nov 2017, p.46]

An album that splendidly makes the most of a unique creative kinship, as well as a shared desire to cast light in dark places. [Nov 2017, p.18]

Much of Arise draws from the duo's [Moses Boyd and Binker Golding] spartan energy. Boyd serves a one-man Art Blakey, Sly Dunbar, Carlton Barrett and Tony Allen, swinging in a Caribbean vernacular. ... McFarlane has a pop sensibility that's unusual in the jazz world, and her songs are based around strong melodies. [Oct 2017, p.31]

It's a bravura fusion of dense-art metal/pop and strutting baroque disco. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Colors may be less anarchic than his most famous albums from the 1990s, but he emerges as a studio tinkerer who has grown more disciplined but no less eccentric. [Nov 2017, p.24]

Enjoyable solo debut. [Nov 2017, p.30]

It's All Right... functions almost like a best of. [Nov 2017, p.32]

[French Touch] feels like a soft option. Yet there's no denying the chic sophistication with she delivers stripped-down versions of hits associated with Patsy Cline, The Rolling Stones, Tammy Wynette, Lou Reed, Depeche Mode, the Clash and Abba. [Nov 2017, p.24]

The mood is pensive, walking the line between downbeat and quietly uplifting, but this is among the best set of songs Finn has written. [Nov 2017, p.26]

The Kid is a hugely satisfying example of Smith';s wholesome and harmonious vision, one that manages to enmesh the wonders of music, memory and nature via analogue synthesis with out explicit reference to the healing properties of crystals. [Nov 2017, p.38]

He injects these economic songs with a modish sense of sophistication. [Nov 2017, p.35]

1992 – 2001 does a fine job of collating their best moments from a career that spawned four albums and two EPs, as well as offering nine unreleased tracks from the hours of music they recorded in an empty bedroom that served as a regular rehearsal space.

Mondanile doesn't always have the songs to pull off the silver jacket. "Wearing A Mask" hints at band beefs past, much as "In The Hallway" does to the Real Estate mode, but these and the intricate guitar licks of "Mannequin" are the only moments where Ducktails make their fusion spark. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Significantly more wonderful than it is frightening. [Oct 2017, p.24]

Best of all, perhaps, the skill and imagination she displays in her arrangements suggest that there's a lot of scope for adventure in the future of a musician who found her groove but seems unlikely to get stuck in it. [Nov 2017, p.34]

These songs covey a visceral dread through crashing guitars and her unsettling matter-of-fact twang evokes the no-escape confinement of a volatile relationship. [Nov 2017, p.32]

Solidly crafted but with few surprises. [Nov 2017, p.28]

Tunes like Burt Bacharach's "blue On Blue" and The Young Rascals' "How Can I Be Sure" are perfect for Almond's pirouetting croon. [Oct 2017, p.23]

Bidin’ My Time draws from every corner of Hillman’s long career, mixing folk rock and country rock and bluegrass into an amiable sound, somehow both modest and ambitious.

He's wisely opted to sound as different from his father as he possibly can, swathing his alt.rock songs in haunting layers of deep electronica, although there are giveaway traces of the family DNA in the voice and in the swirling Indian motifs. [Nov 2017, p.28]

It comes across, surprisingly, as a wildstyle update of the bricolage fusions Weatherall started out exploring in the early '90s. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Big tunes. Not much heart. [Nov 2017, p.30]

Cry Cry Cry is 21st-century rock at its most delectably omnivorous. [Nov 2017, p.39]

At times the production is overly slick, but Sky Trails is a strong, sinuous piece of work. [Nov 2017, p.37]

Gathering is another collection of Dylanesque strummings, rescued as always from generic blandness by Ritter's alacrity as a lyricist and husky grin of a voice. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Que Aura sees the West Coast-based singer-songwriter embrace an '80s-infused psychedelia that occasionally mutates into a disco strut. [Nov 2017, p.36]

Talk of losing his "soul and conscience" and floundering in an ocean with no land in sight suggests deep trauma, hinted at disturbingly in songs such as "Pun" "Dark Lights" Yet there's also evidence of at least a partial re-emergence into the light on "Humbug," which sounds like the Be Gees if produced by Brian Eno. [Nov 2017, p.32]

The dissonant guitars and whirring synths land on the more accessible side of avant-garde rock, veering into sia-esque pop on tracks like "Greener Stretch," though revelling in never quite resolving its melodies. [Nov 2017, p.36]

That voice [of Marry Waterson]--sometimes sharp and slightly acrid, often warm and consoling, even when passing a dispassionate eye over the tales it tells--is the real magic here. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Bring On The Sun is a sprawling collection, encompassing everything from euphoric zither washes to jazzy beat poetry, without ever losing sight of its mood of sunny positivity. [Nov 2017, p.30]

Sun Gong is minimal in the extreme, its two sides entirely dedicated to the eerie resonance of an electronically treated gong. [Nov 2017, p.30]

Pere Ubu's punchiest effort since 1998's Pennsylvania. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Singer Joe Casey tacks flattened vocals to songs that move with a bristling crawl and occasionally explode into repressed fury. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Some songs skirt close to new age naivety, cloaked by subtle eco-critical blandishments--but Perhacs' quietly magnetic character and charm wins out, in the end. [Nov 2018, p.35]

Admittedly they hit a few soaring peaks, but none that haven't already been conquered. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Not unpleasant, but not likely to persuade the previously unpersuaded. [Nov 2017, p.39]

Transform a set of ancient griot tunes into something dramatically new. The Kronos crew seem to calibrate each piece exactly right. [Nov 2017, p.36]

It seems he's at peace with trip-hop and his legacy. However, the punky "Dark Days" with Mina Rose and a minimal take on Hole's "Doll Parts" with singer Avalon Lurks suggests he remains restless for what might be over the next smoky horizon. [Nov 2017, p.36]

The industrial-inflected sound Numan has explored since Sacrifice remains a bedrock, but "Bed Of Thorns" and "Pray For The Pain You Serve" realise the concept neatly, blending crunchy synth riffs and brooding choruses with fragments of Arabic melody. [Nov 2017, p.35]

Switchback rhythms and artfully tangled melodies make it hard to pin them down. [Nov 2017, p.35]

Southern Blood is a timeless regional soul album. [Nov 2017, p.31]

Tell The Devil is full of Biblical allusion and attendant questions of sin and atonement, the 70-year-old's conspiratorial drawl framed by low-down grooves and flinty slide-blues. [Nov 2017, p.30]

The nine-piece evoke America's open spaces in a beautiful bluster of feedback and reverb. [Nov 2017, p.28]

It packs plenty of the expected, full-throttle thrills, but there's more interesting, atypical action on winding, low-slung jam "The Sky Is A Neighborhood" and the six-minutes-plus of "Sunday Rain." [Nov 2017, p.26]

Slickness will sometimes tend to blandness here, it's true, but "Memories We Share" and "Black Rainbows" show that there's room for sugary drinks alongside LCD Soundsystem's hard liquor. [Nov 2017, p.26]

Supremely confident as it is poetically singular, it's evidence that BC's vision will see him through the long haul. [Nov 2017, p.24]

A strong set of big band compositions. [Nov 2017, p.23]

A pulsating collection of disco bangers. [Nov 2017, p.23]

Plum feels very much like a landmark in his still-fresh career. [Oct 2017, p.38]

A beautiful paradox of angsty noise and beguiling craft. [Oct 2017, p.40]

These elegant, cosmic soul-jazz excursions are a fine fit for Sumney's extraordinary voice. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Theirs is a shambolic but tuneful take on glam and punk, one in which everyone sings and spunky attitude is more important than production polish. [Aug 2017, p.38]

Their sixth album intersperses passages of barbed attack with atmosphere and nuance. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Hallelujah Anyhow may have been recorded swiftly, but the abandonment is still exquisitely detailed, as every listen to "Domino" reveal further nuance beneath the swagger. [Oct 2017, p.22]

Throughout, her lyrics betray a convincing world-weariness. [Oct 2017, p.24]

Metz, whose fusion of sludgy guitar tone, boiled-down hardcore attitude and smartly sardonic lyricism, if not quite outright throwback, certainly has the quality of a studious tribute. [Oct 2017, p.32]

What is startling is the abundance of new ideas and feeling of renewed vitality on Music For The Age Of Miracles, qualities that make the songs as compelling as any the band have recorded. [Oct 2017, p.34]

The sextet's latest displays a newfound confidence, brokering country-soul, Southern rock and R&B with some panache. [Oct 2017, p.34]

Sparer yet wholly captivating displays of psych-pop iridescence. [Oct 2017, p.37]

Vol. 2 is high-class punk trash, from the rambunctious but melodic "Jumpstarting" to the amphetamine rush of "Mr Nothing Gets Worse." [Oct 2017, p.26]

Vol 1 is reflective and rootsy, all folkish acoustic guitars, from the elegiac melancholy of "End Of The World" to the hushed vulnerability of "Rejection." [Oct 2017, p.26]

The quartet peel back the years on corrosive songs that strike a masterly balance between melody and uppity guitar noise. [Oct 2017, p.26]

[Electric Trim] features conventionally structured songs that underline his country-folk and Americana interests, while amping up the psych-pop and orchestral alt.rock. [Oct 2017, p.36]

As you would expect from a Daptone act--musicianship is uniformly excellent. [Oct 2017, p.24]

Tracks such as "Nihilist Abyss," "Fatal Gift" and "Minefield Of Memory" grapple with the "deceptive deal" of experience, while her elliptical melodies recall Elliott Smith in Figure 8 mode. [Oct 2017, p.30]

Here, the Southern rock template of Modern Blues is embellished with loops and 1970s soul stylings. The mood is up. [Oct 2017, p.40]

Lurking beneath the placid surface is an undertow, subtly stirring the songs and arrangements. [Oct 2017, p.32]