Unreleased mixes, instrumentals and PiL's semi-legendary 1979 concert at Manchester's Factory are worthy additions, stretching the dense, dubby miasma out for four hypnotic hours. [Dec 2016, p.51]

This gradual sense of revelation is reflected in Gas’ musical development. Each album has its own characteristics.

Weighty and impressive. [Dec 2016, p.49]

Everything is done with the casual-sounding confidence that comes with hard experience. [Dec 2016, p.38]

Marc Collin's French collective remain a one-trick pony, but it's still a great trick. [Jan 2017, p.28]

This is arguably The Coal Porter' finest yet--a deft, thoughtful and beautifully arranged set with an airy sense of melancholy. [Nov 2016, p.25]

At times, mellifluous minimalism shades into mundane monotony, but these electro-mechanical reveries mostly achieve a kind of hypnotic power through accretion and repetition. [Jan 2017, p.24]

It's a mind-boggling assemblage of swingin' 50s "space-bop" like "Soft Talk" and "Super Blonde," processional chants such as "Rocket #9" and "Journey To Saturn." and electronic keyboard voyages like "The Perfect Man" and "Disco 2021," an edited taster of the monumental "Disco 3000." [Jan 2017, p.46]

Some of the rather quizzical couplets here, all of them set to heart-wrenching chord sequences that hark back to the band's favorite 1970s guilty pleasures. It set SFA apart from the world of Britpop in the mid-'90s. [Dec 2016, p.51]

This double-CD set offers clues as to how Welch and Rawlings got there [on Revival], and glimpses down roads not taken. [Jan 2017, p.49]

Future Standards is both an intimate, low-key experience and a highly welcome new detour. [Jan 2017, p.25]

Bushnell provides that perfect kind of bass you barely notice. Keltner's percussion is a different story. Captured mostly in first or second takes, he doesn't so much keep the beat as respond to what Young is doing, an improvised interplay of odd, shaggy patterns. The record often becomes a duet between Young and Keltner. [Jan 2017, p.20]

There's nothing fussy about the way Chatham County Line continue to go about their business, their acoustic music occupying the sweet spot between Del McCoury and The Jayhawks. [Jan 2017, p.22]

Harvey maybe a bit too in love with a crunchy delay/distortion footswitch combo, but the likes of "Space Monkeys," he and his younger guys make a creditable, spacey blues. [Jan 2017, p.27]

The theatricality of the Nick Cave-penned "Late Victorian Holocaust" and Roger Waters' "Sparrows Will Sing" perfectly attuned to her autumn-years, grand-dame image. [Dec 2016, p.28]

Utterly addictive and reality-shifting. [Jan 2017, p.21]

[Haxan] presents the Stockholm quartet at the top of its game. [Jan 2017, p.23]

A couple of tracks are interesting alternatives versions of songs from A Weird Exit, while on the all-new pieces, the general mood is mellower than usual. [Jan 2017, p.31]

She produces a cumulative effect that's both shattering and exhilarating. [Jan 2017, p.31]

They situate their voices on a pillowy bed of experimental pop, freak folk and, best of all, the sax-enhanced exotica of the title track. [Jan 2017, p.31]

The mood is pained, the production suitably spare, pushing the singer's understated lyricism to the fore. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Patience is required to navigate his smirking in-jokes. [Jan 2017, p.28]

The angry bricolage of noises, voices, stabbing guitar and jittery programmed drums sounds like the world splitting apart, the first of a series of scarified dubscapes created by The Pop Group and their perfect collaborators. [Jan 2017, p.28]

[A] sonically rich, mostly great album. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Her third album finds her developing her instrumental palette, often allowing moody strings rather than piano to dominate arrangements. [Jan 2017, p.28]

The high concept here is a paean to the ancient Greeks, inspired by the derring-do of gods and heroes: "Diana By My Side" and the breakbeaty "Mars" are suitably Elysian. [Jan 2017, p.28]

Devil Music's relentless velocity and heaps of fuzz and reverb are easy to savour even if it could use more songs as strong as "Lion's Den" and Patterns." [Jan 2017, p.27]

Spread over two discs, it can get a little samey, but "Here Comes Revenge" and "Moth Into Flame" have plenty of bounce. [Jan 2017, p.27]

The LP struggles a little in variation of pace and tone, and the auspicious spark fizzles out somewhat but the end. [Jan 2017, p.24]

The follow-up is a considerable upgrade. [Jan 2017, p.23]

Infatuated by the noirish romance of European coldwave, the likes of "Portland U" and "Collene" cast Stewart as something of a bedroom modernist. [Jan 2017, p.22]

At their best, on "Someone Far Away" and "Give Up," the group blends pop sparkle and melancholy indie charm in the manner of The Chills. [Jan 2017, p.21]

An exhaustive audio souvenir of a momentous event, simply to remind us--and perhaps Bush, too-- that it really happen after all. [Jan 2017, p.16]

A measured set. [Jan 2017, p.23]

Blue & Lonesome feels like a major reassessment from a band, returning to the source and in doing so reminding us why they mattered in the first place. [Jan 2017, p.26]

"Blue Noise, Black Lake" and "Rusty Machines, Dusty Carpets" both overdo the tension-release dynamics--but it is always compelling. [Dec 2016, p.35]

"Close To You" confirms how much she sounds like Karen Carpenter but, amid the over-familiar songs, most interesting are the relative obscurities. [Dec 2016, p.35]

Out Of Times sounds slight, so pop-driven that it feels weightless; in '91, it sounded like a triumph, but really it was a herald of triumphs to come. There is, however, something extremely reassuring about the volatility of this album, its out-of-time-ness, which suggests that the music isn't simply confined to the past but thrives in the present. [Dec 2016, p.46]

Bachman proves himself an extremely resourceful player, as well as a masterful storyteller. [Dec 2016, p.25]

For now, Lady, Give Me Your Key shows us some of the steps Buckley took, during a feverishly creative year, to pursue the totality of music.

Andrew Dragazis' fifth album is masterfully serene. [Nov 2016, p.25]

It's a document of poignant intimacy and imagination, characterised by simple melodies, devastatingly heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the odd burst of euphoric pop. [Dec 2016, p.38]

The songs on Ruins are sharply focused and blessedly heavy. [Dec 2016, p.36]

Though the title track and "The Magic In You" recall his early triumphs, it's all a bit 'shoe-business' as usual. [Dec 2016, p.37]

Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay balance their belligerent side with a refined, progressive sensibility, a side increasingly foregrounded on Woman. [Dec 2016, p.30]

The songs' real power comes from a sense of foreboding that undercuts the easy listening. [Dec 2016, p.30]

While the deliberate shapelessness can sometimes appear strangely listless, the rhythmic intensity of "Abstract/Actress" takes things to another level, with the pair working the sound into a primal fury of feedback and clamour. [Dec 2016, p.25]

The sheer length and repetitions make end-to-end listening of these six sides something for the dedicated, but as a tribute to a still-missed talent, it testifies.

Though lacking killer songs, Wainwright is always a compelling vocalist, variously evoking Patti Smith, Debbie Harry and Piaf. [Dec 2016, p.38]

There's a lot to take in, but the standard is remarkably consistent and occasionally dazzling. [Nov 2016, p.31]

Following much beauty and polymorphous perversity, the climactic take on Histoire De Melody Nelson's "Cargo Cult" is a fittingly epic finale. [Dec 2016, p.30]

It's not quite as majestic as last year's self-titled album, but still a cut above. [Nov 2016, p.32]

A troubling journey, but happily an ongoing one. [Dec 2016, p.35]

While there's a shining beauty that recalls Stereolab and The Sugarcubes, the mood is overwhelmingly melancholic and extremely infectuious. [Dec 2016, p.35]

A towering success. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Slugger is low-key but, true to form, leaves a mark. [Dec 2016, p.37]

There's still a preponderance of fuzzy guitars--notably on "Ching," where they almost overwhelm Lorena Quintanilla's vocals--but elsewhere, as on "It Must Be The Only Way," her dreamy vocals provide a welcome contrast to droning guitars. [Oct 2016, p.32]

The arrangements are meticulously layered rather than stripped down, dynamic drum tattoos, dramatic basslines and an epic amount of reverb ensuring the sounds is as panoramic as the "unplugged" tag can accommodate. [Dec 2016, p.37]

Sadness is necessarily these songs' anchor, but there's hope and resolve, too. [Oct 2016, p.35]

[A] largely tentative set. [Dec 2016, p.38]

Dour, yes, but possessed of a regal sort of beauty. [Nov 2016, p.26]

The addition of EDM and hip-hop elements to the arsenal have a reinvigorating effect. [Dec 2016, p.37]

As ever, it all coalesces around that voice, and its still potent conjuring of beauty and darkness. Timeless music, for heavy times. [Dec 2016, p.34]

Eternally Even affords James the opportunity to take his music to places My Morning Jacket are less likely to inhabit. The result being that his solo albums are rapidly becoming profound statements in themselves, rather than mere sideshows to the main event. [Dec 2016, p.31]

A feelgood record with a troubled soul. [Sep 2016, p.70]

The lighter moments are more endearing. [Dec 2016, p.28]

Exhilarating or jarring, depending on taste. [Dec 2016, p.26]

As ever it's Collins' wonderfully unfussy voice that is the star. [Dec 2016, p.26]

Spanning conflicts from China to Chile, Algeria to Israel, the songs have a shared universality and power that makes up for the way the Anglification process erases cultural context. It works because Moddi's delivery is empathic and superb. [Nov 2016, p.32]

A decade on the formula hasn't change much. [Nov 2016, p.37]

FLOTUS ranks as one of Lambchop's most confounding to date, an album whose form and content are united in intimate, private purpose, but which may well turn out to be one of their best and most accessible. [Dec 2016, p.18]

Of their own material, "Glory" best captures the ensemble in full flight--fluid rhythms, breakneck percussion and melodic patterns--while the sweeping "Remain" foregrounds McCaslin's expressive sax skills. [Dec 2016, p.32]

The charming meld of discordance and melody is displayed throughout, with Rønnenfelt shrieking and hissing above tar-thick bass, piano stabs and guitar. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Often the music sounds aimless in its open-endedness, too uniform in its cruise-control tempos, but the austere, restrained arrangements reinforce the world-weariness of Roberts' vocals, which recall Townes Van Zandt at his most bluesily pensive. [Nov 2016, p.37]

All the usual Madness fixtures are present--the jaunty ska-meets-Motown rhythms, the tricksy chromatic chord changes, the well-crafted narratives. What much of the album lacks is any kind of heart. [Dec 2016, p.32]

Two Vines mostly sticks with the tried-and-true. [Dec 2016, p.26]

Strands is one of Hauschildt's finest efforts, unfolding through a dense fog of ambience and gently bubbling electronics, always staying weird and disobedient enough to offset its new-age tinge. [Dec 2016, p.30]

There's an appealing disjuncture at the heart of this collaboration. [Dec 2016, p.32]

On their third album, this Brighton via London quintet seem to have finally harnessed their Krautrock pulses, shoegazy guitars and MBV distortion to some decent songs. [Dec 2016, p.38]

Their collaborative debut is inventively dippy. [Dec 2016, p.38]

The racket they raise compensates in exuberance what it lacks in subtlety. [Dec 2016, p.37]

Music Must Destroy finds original members Segs Jennings and David Ruffy in reassuringly rude health, bludgeoning their way through a bunch of songs that weld punk and metal. [Dec 2016, p.37]

Overnight is their most ambitious record, as well as their most accomplished. [Dec 2016, p.26]

There's a certain modish charm to the opener, "Lucifer's Dreams," while "Finest Hour" show an aptitude for gentle balladry. Elsewhere, though, sub-Smiths smartarsery abounds. [Dec 2016, p.26]

There's still a noisy edge to the group and some moments do shine, such as the LCD Soundsystem-like "Welcome To Hell" or the sneering "I'm Sick," but largely the album feels a little lost and confused. [Dec 2016, p.26]

When their formula works, like on the Brian-Wilson-joins-Radiohead splendour of "Thousand Thoughts" or the soul-weary, sci-fi lullaby "Blue Faces," they can sound untouchable. The lush, mechanised, bluesy trip-hop of "Driving Nails" and the sub-Underworld shouty gallop of "Stay Tribal" are diverting enough, too. But Archive's blind spot is a fondness for graceless pomp-rock. [Dec 2016, p.23]

Alone is filled with tremendous vocal performances. [Dec 2016, p.24]

Even as Atrocity Exhibition plumbs depths, Brown remains a savvy operator. [Dec 2016, p.25]

The songs are pillowed by vaporous electronic backing that recalls the slow-moving, aquatic drift of Push The Sky Away and the sonic explorations of Cave and Ellis' Minimalist Soundtracks. [Dec 2016, p.26]

An over-produced set of soppy ballads, Eagles-styled soft-rock and cod-disco. Sadly, the once great voice is shot, too. [Dec 2016, p.28]

Not quite essential, but a neat genre exercise. [Dec 2016, p.30]

Lacking only a killer single, Big Box Of Chocolates has a great balance of rockers, ramblers and ballads, giggling throwaways and low-key philosophising. [Dec 2016, p.30]

The absence of imagination here is a tad dispiriting. [Dec 2016, p.30]

On Apricity, Syd Arthur brings a blessedly light touch to their breezy psych. [Dec 2016, p.38]

Admittedly, without seeing the play--which officially opens in London on November 8--the soundtrack feels an incomplete experience. At its most successful, Lazarus finds new ways of presenting well-known songs; an unenviable task for Hey and his seven-piece band.

Yes, it's largely tuneless, the guitars and drums about as co-ordinated as a set of blindfolded square dancers, but the sisters' naive approach yields endless wonder. [Nov 2016, p.52]

The Ramones, like Warhol or Lichtenstein, were masters of doing one thing brilliantly and repetitively--something reinforced by the second disc of this set, which contains singles and unreleased demos, including tracks that would appear on subsequent albums such as “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl”, “You Should Never Have Opened That Door” and “I Don’t Care” but could easily have fitted on Ramones.

Glimmers of Blonde Redhead's future can be divined throughout Masculin Feminin, whether in Kazu Makin's girlish vocals, or Simone Pace's snaking, restrained drum parts; even in their juvenilia, Blonde Redhead were looking through their own sophisticated, idiosyncratic filter. [Oct 2016, p.49]