2013's Delta Machine saw Ben Hiller help them access their mid-life pain in dark post-dubstep. This stint with James Ford, though, has effected a more overt compromise. [Apr 2017, p.26]

His wavering voice embraces sun-kissed pop on "Always The Right Time," twilight noir on "Leaving California"--and most emotions in between. [Mar 2017, p.28]

The guitars sound grittier, the vocals bolder, the tempos just a bit faster, and her range much broader. [Mar 2017, p.35]

An impressive deepening of Marling's explorations, and a timely testament to change as a positive force. [Apr 2017, p.24]

The overall effect feels arch and a little insubstantial, James Bagshaw's airy vocals adding tot he sense of impermanence. They're best at their most direct. [Apr 2017, p.39]

A vivid storyteller, June approaches traditional music with a similar mix of irreverence and affection. [Apr 2017, p.30]

It's a subtler and darker sibling to The Sophtware Slump or Just Like The Fambly Cat. [Apr 2017, p.30]

His poignant, classically arranged pieces sit surprisingly well alongside more electronic compositions. [Apr 2017, p.37]

Reid's follow-up to 2015's gorgeous debut, Listen To Formation, Look For The Signs, is no less bewitching. [Apr 2017, p.37]

Hyperactively wordy and exquisitely tuneful. [Apr 2017, p.39]

Its cut-and-paste of totalitarian rhythms, shredded human voices and celestial melodies something like an Aphex Twin remix of Hieronymus Bosch. [Apr 2017, p.25]

Feels like the work of a man who's finally found his calling. [Apr 2017, p.28]

A set which is at times whimsical, and frequently dark--sometimes managing to combine these sensations. [Apr 2017, p.39]

Stream-of-consciousness ranting has helped Sleaford Mods develop songwriting which is doubtful, while retaining its intensity. [Apr 2017, p.31]

It's business as usual for The Godfathers. [Mar 2017, p.30]

It would have been much more satisfying had she and Cannon stuck with the style of the songs that bookend the album. [Apr 2017, p.32]

The album's palette feels broad, with electronics switching from twinkling and melodic to antagonistic industrial clangs. [Apr 2017, p.40]

[A] remarkably wise and timely album. [Mar 2017, p.18]

Moments like "Apparent Lushness" are where An Act OF Love becomes a headphones record par excellence. [Mar 2017, p.26]

She embeds her anxious, self-flagellating lyrics in jaunty settings that dynamically replicate garage rock, girl-group pop and doo-wop. [Mar 2017, p.30]

Their 10th studio album might be their best of the new century: 11 songs capturing the reckless dynamic that made these Texans alt.country heroes in the 10th century. [Mar 2017, p.37]

The six tracks are minimalist to the point of vanishing, crafted from gently shimmering electric guitars and murmuring keyboards, while Silberman's soft, high voice, polished like fine silver, delivers a series of quietly emotive haikus. [Mar 2017, p.39]

The jangly, offbeat "Ambulance Chaser" and the pretty, Radiohead-ish acoustic number "Loose Ends" both suggest that Ounsworth has retained some of his old band's arena-filling way with melody. [Apr 2017, p.26]

They recreate the mood and spirit of seriously wiggy space-prog excavations. [Apr 2017, p.35]

Splic[es] savage wit and cynicism with hopefulness. [Apr 2017, p.28]

If art is love, and love is art, then this hyper-stylised, characteristically idiosyncratic break-up album, in the end makes a perfect kind of sense. [Mar 2017, p.36]

The tunes seem to have lost a little of their punch, producer Ken Coomer setting Milia's pale voice against folk-pop arrangements that often feel strangely bloodless. [Mar 2017, p.30]

Savage Times inevitably captures the tenor of its times as the Left Coast watched America turn rightward. [Mar 2017, p.26]

Like Lubomry Melnyk's, Moore's rapid piano-playing creates an appealing haze on "Starwood Choker" and "Form Takes," while his companions augment this with similarly opaque washes of tape delay, spectral drones, bass and woodwind. [Mar 2017, p.25]

Seldom can nostalgia have sounded so fresh on songs such as "Downhearted," "Try" and the exquisite slow burn of the title track. [Mar 2017, p.25]

Wilderness is a logical step for the group, honing their aesthetic, and finding intimate rapture in the peak moments of their carefully crafted songs. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Highway Queen feels like the kind of record that should bump Lane to another level. [Mar 2017, p.28]

The intensity builds so subtly that it's hard to pinpoint when the easygoing chord changes give way to droning menace, but by the time they hit the nine-minute-plus closing reprise of "In Between," the pastoral vibe has been transformed into squalling white noise. [Mar 2017, p.30]

This psych soundworld demands full sensory immersion, but once inside there's much to enjoy. [Mar 2017, p.32]

A former architect, his second album pursues a funky, abstracted techno that, much like the music of his former label boss Actress, has a distinctly London grit. [Mar 2017, p.35]

It's a testament of the savvy of darcy and his producers Ross Gillard and Amy Fort that the new album's experimental passages are very much cut from the same cloth as more obvious crowd-pleasers like "You Felt Comfort," which shares the drive and jangle of "Tall Glass Of Water," and "Saint Germain," a dreamy haze of a song that demonstrates Darcy's gift for melody, absurd turns of phase and more pointed expressions of inner turmoil. [Mar 2017, p.38]

The gentlest Six Organ's outing since 2005's School of The Flower, if not for the menacing rumblings in "Taken By Ascent." Even so, it's more vivid proof of Chasny's ability to create transcendental music free of psych cliches. [Mar 2017, p.39]

It may just be the most satisfying record he's made since the group's stellar 1995 debut. [Mar 2017, p.24]

Khouri acknowledges 1980s dreampop as a seminal influence, and perfumed traces of Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star and Cocteau Twins sweeten The Salted Air in almost every breath. [Feb 2017, p.30]

Plodding covers of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" are gratuitously dull and, somewhat revealingly, the most rewarding tracks are probably Runga's two original compositions, seemingly appended as an after-thought. [Feb 2017, p.27]

Its four sides teem with microbial incident, particularly in the dense thicket of percussion from Tony Buck that undergrids the album. [Mar 2017, p.35]

Reverse captures Pinhas in turbulent and psychedelic mood. [Feb 2017, p.35]

An odd mix, maybe, but a believable one. [Mar 2017, p.31]

Memories Are Now is built on stacked voices, sparse rhythm and twisted folk shapes, but the execution varies pleasingly. [Mar 2017, p.32]

Vermont is a project now--but the outcome is similarly minimal and beatific, with each of its 12 tracks shaded with only the most essential detail. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Northern Passages is just that [promises both new delights and reassuring old comforts], their banked harmonies as warm and familiar as the blissful psych-country of "Riverview Fog" or the Clarence White-era Byrds stylings of "God Bless The Infidels." [Mar 2017, p.39]

The overall mood is bright, hovering somewhere between the lyrical directness of Jonathan Richman and the West Coast energy of Tom Petty. [Mar 2017, p.37]

A rather beautiful debut. [Mar 2017, p.32]

The songs themselves trip by with a deceptively casual air. [Jan 2017, p.27]

It's the haunted croak of the band's main singers, Ibrahim and Abdallah, that are the main draw: the sound of heartbroken gangleader, the world-weary soldier, bravado replaced by tenderness. It's a sound that suits them perfectly. [Mar 2017, p.22]

The alleged political subtext is pretty opaque, while the rich sonic mix strays into tasteful inertia in places, but the prevailing mood is eclectic and energised. [Mar 2017, p.37]

Lovely for a few songs, the narcoleptic, yet semi-cinematic visions risk homogeneity by the album's end. [Mar 2017, p.35]

Sick Scenes is certainly a messy affair, stylistically, and overrun with densely packed lyrics, though it's not entirely without charm. [Mar 2017, p.32]

The more melodic and less maniacal "Melting" and "Sleep Drifter" point toward newer ambitions and influences. Especially welcome is the turn toward Middle Eastern and North African sounds on "Anoxia" and the title track.[Mar 2017, p.32]

Despite his melancholy rep, Lekman's rarely sounded sunnier. [Mar 2017, p.32]

A high-flying triumph. [Mar 2017, p.26]

Delve further into Human, though, and you find sterile R&B and schlocky, overwrought lyrics. [Mar 2017, p.37]

On disc the effect can be bludgeoning--although you can hear that onstage it must make for a wild night out. [Mar 2017, p.26]

The flirtations with more dissonant sounds throughout also point to a welcome eagerness to roughen up the latest results of Surfer Blood's ongoing quest to find the happy medium between the Pixies and The Hollies. [Mar 2017, p.40]

As devil worshiping goes, this is pretty funky stuff, with a tight and bouncy tone throughout. [Mar 2017, p.35]

The music here should captivate anyone who ever imagined what a Burial remix of Arthur Russell's World Of Echo might resemble. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Somewhere, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer and Mose Allison are tapping their feet and smiling. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Omar has found a formula that really works. [Feb 2017, p.33]

If only Thomas' smart-ass, sing-song drawl was as appealing as his songs. [Feb 2017, p.38]

On much of This Is Steve, he comes off as a one man jam band. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Despite its heady beauty, a gloomy fatefulness also shapes this set. [Mar 2017, p.30]

A more sombre, focused affair [than 2015's covers album of Taylor Swift's 1989]. [Mar 2017, p.23]

It's all insanely catchy. [Feb 2017, p.33]

The album is only 30 minutes liing, but that's plenty enough exposure to live electricity. [Feb 2017, p.26]

Throughout, the songs are delivered with a powerful undertow that recalls Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Their breakneck energy highlights the thrilling strangeness of their structures and textures. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Tourist In This Town fairly fizzes with the excitement of striking out alone, and justified confidence that hers is a voice worth hearing. [Mar 2017, p.26]

It's less dynamic, but the prog-folk flavours remain intact, with penny whistles and acoustic guitars central to its two sentimental, sometimes meandering halves. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Pleasingly, Segall's root wildness is enhanced by their [Ben Boye, Mikal Cronin, Emmett Kelly, and Charles Moothart's] jamming virtuosity. [Feb 2017, p.37]

While its faintly folkish, alt.pop songs fail to reveal any feral side to the bassist of Bombay Bicycle Club, they prove his compositional chops while radiating a pleasantly frosted glow. [Mar 2017, p.40]

Little Fictions is the sound of a band doing what it's always done, and doing it with style. [Mar 2017, p.28]

Such a stylistic spread can leave it slightly centreless, but a strong emphasis on groove runs throughout. [Mar 2017, p.25]

Their largely improvised debut explores a gorgeous cosmic jazz with shades of Michael Rother and Cluster, Benn helming modular synth, Duffin adding tasteful gusts of sax. [Mar 2017, p.40]

RTJ3 is the pair's most focused and mature work to date. [Mar 2017, p.34]

With pleasing inevitability, A Shadow In Time does not disappoint. [Mar 2017, p.25]

Sampson has broadened her horizons on this largely self-produced album, mastering a richer range of sounds and styles clipped synthfunk to sleek R&B to sumptuous gospel-pop. [Feb 2017, p.37]

Deconstructing socio-cultural norms rarely sounds like so much fun. [Feb 2017, p.24]

A different, more elegant affair. [than 2014's Mosaic]. [Feb 2017, p.38]

The band aren't afraid to diversity. [Feb 2017, p.30]

There are shades of The Smiths and The Sundays in the likes of "Strange Warnings" and "Take Yourself With You," while opener "Colour Of Water" is a near-perfect piece of electro-pop, at once wistful and joyful. [Feb 2017, p.24]

Within its narrow punk framework, the music is reasonably effective. [Feb 2017, p.24]

An album that finds wildness in unexpected places. [Feb 2017, p.16]

Somewhere on the feral fringes of indie civilisation, Half Japanese remain kings of their own tiny jungle. [Feb 2017, p.28]

Lush and lively. [Feb 2017, p.29]

A fine album. [Feb 2017, p.35]

A characteristically indefinable collection guaranteed to please their larger continental fanbase. [Feb 2017, p.35]

While the duo's tempo remains measured and its atmosphere is typically grand, thanks to a 40-piece orchestra, Iris puts more emphasis on modular synths. [Feb 2017, p.38]

They nevertheless sound irresistibly fresh and zesty. [Feb 2017, p.23]

Morrissey's rather affectless delivery drains any celebratory urge from "Grease." But "Sunday Morning" is a triumph. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Migration, road-tested in SJ sets, finds Green cruising into that emotional landscapes occupied by the likes of Jon Hopkins and Mark Pritchard. [Feb 2017, p.23]

The best and the worst thing about these, as with the rest of the album, is that it's impossible to think of a better descriptive adjective than "Cohenesque." [Oct 2016, p.40]

Johnston suits the form, finding a hitherto largely latent frailty and vulnerability in his voice. [Jan 2017, p.24]

The portraits of Hey Mr Ferryman, shaped into gorgeous studies of sympathy by Bernard Butler's production, are compelling in their starkness, their raw, unchecked humour, and their kindness toward people who, as Eitzel says, are looking for "something that will lead them to light and safety." [Feb 2017, p.20]