These 10 songs feel bold, nourishing and emotionally resonant. [Nov 2016, p.34]

It's touches like these--the suggestiveness of the pauses, the silences, the miniature worlds between the painterly notes Cooper and Hoare play--that makes Dusk, for all its influences and its rear-view mirror vision of classicist pop, such a seductive album. [Oct 2016, p.30]

Overall, the palette is dusky, the tone understated. [Oct 2016, p.25]

Carson Cox's over-emotive delivery and a bombastic arrangement tip the album's power-ballad finale, "I Will Not Sleep Here," into Night Ranger Territory. Thankfully, the trio is more careful about its point of reference elsewhere. [Oct 2016, p.35]

The only pity is that navigating one's way around the three hours and 20 minutes of music is such a fiddly business. [Oct 2016, p.46]

The underlying sense given off by the LP's inventive chord changes, soaring melodies, eloquent language and silky vocals--notably on the rhapsodic "Semaphore" and "Flight"--is that of a 21st century Joni Mitchell. [Oct 2016, p.31]

It's when Leithauser plays on his home ground of rueful romantic desperation (as he does on the title track), though, that he really hits his stride. [Oct 2016, p.31]

The pair navigate a procession of deep, massaging drones, crashing waves of pink noise and shimmering tone clusters that shift between tranquil calm and coruscating melody. [Sep 2016, p.79]

Despite its old-school roots, Lady Parts sounds sharp and invigorating. [Oct 2016, p.31]

The absence of Kim Deal--who left in 2013--continues to be felt: her natural warmth and goofy charm would add welcome nuance here. [Oct 2016, p.37]

The Staten Island quartet blend the fixtures and fittings of noisy US slacker rock--Sonic Youth drones, Pavement squalls--but add a bubblegum pop sensibility. Their vocalist Joseph D'Agostino, however, remains something of an acquired taste. [Oct 2016, p.26]

He seems to have found his metier on his new label, Lost Map, where he delights in roving electronica. [Oct 2016, p.37]

In the same jolie-laide class as Red Krayola and Pere Ubu at their most ungainly, its ugliness may be a new form of beauty. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Rennie's lyrics remain full of transfixed wonder, sketching places where ghosts swim in the air and sea kelpies call fro, the shallows, while Brett's lugubrious tones are a perfect conduit for songs like "Gold," "Gentlemen" and state -fair attraction "Tiny Tina," the world's smallest horse. [Oct 2016, p.32]

Blood Bitch confirms her singular methodology is now at its most surgically precise and bold. In realising her uncontainable ambitions, one might even suggest it represents Hval's coming of age. [Oct 2016, p.38]

The result is a beautifully atmospheric travelogue on which their voices and guitars, plus occasional harmonica, are accompanied by nothing more than the sound of the rails humming and a whistle blowing. [Oct 2016, p.34]

Ten-minute jazz romp "Night Terrors" aside, Berry's sweet tooth brightens what is otherwise his straightest set yet. [Oct 2016, p.25]

It's the instrumental miniatures that impress the most. [Oct 2016, p.31]

What Acoustic Recordings best illustrates, though, is a consistency to White's songwriting that has endured through his myriad projects, even as his music has swung unpredictably between playfulness and intensity. [Oct 2016, p.48]

This remastered version certainly sounds clearer than the muddy original. ... As far as the songs, go, there are a few surprises, just some frenzied romps through the band's greatest hits at this point. [Oct 2016, p.47]

Cosmonaut is as stylishly warped as ever. [Oct 2016, p.35]

It's an assured and heartfelt work built carefully around McMorrow's falsetto vocals. [Oct 2016, p.35]

The songs benefit from a sharper focus than the quartet ever achieved before. [Oct 2016, p.37]

The album sounds like one good idea stretched out to a meandering and repetitive 40 minutes. [Oct 2016, p.32]

His style is scraggly yet sophisticated, ranging boldly from country drones to rambunctious rural ragas. [Oct 2016, p.26]

It's a sprawling affair. [Oct 2016, p.26]

A set of eloquently sombre, Americana songs heavy on pedal and lap-steel. [Jul 2016, p.79]

It's solemn stuff. [Oct 2016, p.39]

This is one of his richer projects: a breezy Laurel Canyon love-in. [Oct 2016, p.28]

Kin still sounds like the work of a clued-up hipster who doesn't particularly like the grimly effective pop songs that she's able to write. [Oct 2016, p.40]

The material, largely chosen from recent releases, sounds primal and immense. [Aug 2016, p.83]

The five numbered tracks of Trouble total a monolithic 82 minutes and trace heaving faultlines of their own making. [Sep 2016, p.73]

D.A.R.K's serviceable but derivative electronica frames an unremarkable marshalling of collective talents. [Sep 2016, p.73]

This LP leans towards narrative, rather than racking out kits, but its ambition is very welcome. [Oct 2016, p.25]

The trouble with studiousness is its tendency to inhibit invention, and such is the case here on their third long-player. [Oct 2016, p.23]

There are some great passages of live-wire electronica, but more often it's strangely lacking any aura or elemental spark. [Oct 2016, p.39]

An ambitious, perceptive set. [Oct 2016, p.35]

This is a rich offering crammed with songs that are heavy with atmosphere and humour, all wrapped round a voice that demands attention. [Oct 2016, p.26]

Her darkest effort yet, a harowing chronicle of a woman barely keeping herself together. It's also her liveliest effort yet--not to mention her most confidently diverse. [Jul 2016, p.71]

The result is an assured, mostly instrumental album with freeform jazz as its guiding imperative. [Oct 2016, p.40]

His wrinkled brogue--warm, pithy, occasionally fluttering to a falsetto--is a thing of understated beauty in itself, framed in folk-shanty arrangements that make telling use of strings and bagpipes. [Oct 2016, p.32]

Kath pillages heartily from Belgian new beat, braindance, electroclash and EDM cheese to forge brutally effective industrial lullabies. [Oct 2016, p.26]

These seven piano/voice tracks, recorded and mixed live to tape by Tucker Martine, are immediately seductive, balancing spare, bittersweet melodies and billowing space. [Oct 2016, p.26]

Co-producer Tucker Martine pulls out all the stops, building the tracks from subdued openings to majestic climaxes that support but never overpower Israel Nebeker's songs and vocals. [Oct 2016, p.26]

A fairly straightforward indie offering, covering mid-tempo jangle with layers of guitars, and lyrics about growing up and suburban escape. [Oct 2016, p.25]

Her ambitious third record marks anther giant progression in an already distinguished career, and offers provocative thoughts on sacrifice and identity that should outlast its 48-minute runtime. [Oct 2016, p.22]

Without question, Schmilco is Wilco's quietest, most disquieting album. [Oct 2016, p.24]

Sumptuous, orchestra pop lace with lyrical acerbity. [Oct 2016, p.28]

It may be OR's best album yet. [Oct 2016, p.36]

Despite the occasional lapse into polished AOR, this is another classy, sassy step forward from a restlessly inventive pair. [Oct 2016, p.39]

Tracks such as "Dragon Bones" and "Joan Of Arc" have bigger, stickier hooks than anything he's written since "Sheila." [Oct 2016, p.39]

Their ninth album might be their best this millennium; a triangulation of mature soppiness, mitigated contentment and indelible tuneage. [Oct 2016, p.39]

The most radical treatments are the highlights. [Oct 2016, p.40]

The first four tracks are moody, post-rock instrumentals, but elsewhere filthy, squalling guitars and a meaty swing dominate. [Oct 2016, p.40]

Tough, yet seductive. [Oct 2016, p.40]

The Hanging Valley blends whooshing motorik drums, a lyrical archness reminiscent of Wire, and a love for repetition that borders on the pathological. [Sep 2016, p.71]

While this second effort has its engaging moments, Leftwich has stuck dispiritingly close to his early template of delicate folk with hushed vocals and lyrics about bruised hearts and rain. [Sep 2016, p.75]

A record that provides few surprises but at least captures the feral energy of their live shows. [Sep 2016, p.78]

Animal Races offers few departures, being exploratory and decidedly retro, but it's appealingly rendered. [Sep 2016, p.71]

Cameron nonetheless hits the mic with the total hip=grinding conviction, as if daring you to proclaim him an ironist. [Sep 2016, p.70]

The 12 songs on his eighth ares till gloriously strange, though: lyrically as kaleidoscopic as mid-'60s Dylan, and packed with fascinating, contradictory references. [Sep 2016, p.76]

A Place Called Bad augments such high-water marks as 1983's Blood red River with rarities and live tracks like a 1983 demolition job on Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot." All of it whets the appetite for explorations of Salmon's sprawling post-Scientists oeuvre. [Sep 2016, p.88]

For all of their doom-mongering--this record feeds on notions of dereliction and abandonment--Marconi Union always finds beauty in the bleakest places. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Some of it is a little too cosy and overly earnest, White tending to excel on the more spirited likes of the swampy "What's So" and "I've Been Over This Before." [Sep 2016, p.81]

Sometimes it makes sense. A lot of the time, it doesn't. [Sep 2016, p.74]

There's a pleasing lyrical grit to At Swim. [Sep 2016, p.74]

A Weird Exit has an immediacy and coherence that was missing on previous outing, 2015's Mutilator Defeated At Last--a fine album, but not as hooky as this one. [Sep 2016, p.80]

Tonight's Music finds Davies returning to The Moles' first principals of beguiling deadpan psychedelia, as if Syd Barrett had lit out to New Zealand in the 1980s and joined The Chills. [Sep 2016, p.76]

This being a soundtrack and not a convetional Scott Walker album, there is no sign of that pale, lieder that floats through latterday Scott Walker records like a phantom. But there are clear points of continuity between The Childhood OF A Leader and recent studio albums The Drift and Bisch Bosch. [Sep 2016, p.68]

Coomes rasps and hollers across the kind of gurgling voodoo boogie that Suicide or Clinic would consider too deranged to release. [Sep 2016, p.71]

Morgan Delt has moved to Sub Pop and upped the ambition for this excellent follow-up. [Sep 2016, p.73]

Their debut is squeaky-door dub that offers unexpectedly plentiful tunes. [Sep 2016, p.73]

As enchanting as it is, Moon Saloon can inevitably feel overstuffed, such that Adams may best succeed in the album's least ornate moments. [Sep 2016, p.69]

Not exactly groundbreaking, but not reverentially retro either, and full of fizz and vigour. [Sep 2016, p.74]

Loveless' songwriting on Real is sharp, economical and wickedly funny. [Sep 2016, p.77]

The album unfolds like a fever dream, the instruments bleeding into each other, awash in echo, as Arthur layers metaphors much as he layers the parts of the self-performed album. [Aug 2016, p.71]

No Scare careens between sunbaked Americana, dreamy melodicism and more aggressive moves that are less reminiscent of Walker's exploratory folk-rock than the full throttle pummelling of Rosaly's sides with jazz titan Peter Brotzmann. [Sep 2016, p.75]

There's a sense that the artificiality in the sound is being used to anaesthetise the raw emotion, but the sonic fractures can't disguise the loveliness of "A Sport And A Pastime" and "My Fair Lady." [Sep 2016, p.78]

Broad in scope, and naturally playful, this is a spectacular, fresh as the proverbial, triumph. [Sep 2016, p.73]

Eve might just be her strongest yet, bold in its subtlety and intimacy, with Zedek's writing bittersweet and observational. [Sep 2016, p.81]

Tobacco's stew of narcoleptic beats, tape experiments, Vocoder mutterings and vintage synths in states of distress has lost some potency in the nine years since BMSR's classic Dandelion Gum, but remains wholly idiosyncratic. [Sep 2016, p.81]

His fourth album as Lawrence Arabia cuts the potential sugariness of strings-embellished, '60s-influenced pop with reflective, often bracingly direct lyrics and wry humour, but sensibly, no sardonic edge. [Sep 2016, p.69]

There's still a tendency to over-emote with superfluous melisma. But when she's at her starkest and most haunting, accompanied by little more than Beste's piano on "Faded" and "Leave You In Yesterday," she hits the spot unerringly. [Sep 2016, p.76]

The opening title track casually drifts into existence, and the rest follow suit, melancholic blend of twinkling steel guitar, rambling acoustic guitars and wearied vocals. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Of late, Cherry Red have rediscovered a role which had eluded them for years, as curators of scenes and scenes in-between. The material here doesn't do that reputation much harm, revealing a thin but potent seam of transitional, very hairy hard rock. [Sep 2016, p.95]

This unheard set, captured at Athens venue The Mad Hatter in 1983, shortly before the band's dissolution, confirms their two fine studio albums were no fluke. [Sep 2016, p.93]

Wasner and bandmate Andy Stack wield sharp production touches, like the breaths that pan "On Luxury," although Tween can suffer from a slight surfeit of scale over melody. [Sep 2016, p.81]

We're All Somebody delivers high-sheen Billboard country fare, more Keith Urban than back-porch picking. [Sep 2016, p.81]

A delicate album of soft '60s-inflected pop that mostly plays like a great Evie Sands or Bobbie Gentry record. [Sep 2016, p.78]

Apache holds its focus on straight-ahead vintage soul-pop, blending mid-tempo workouts and big weepy ballads with swampy shuffling grooves. [Sep 2016, p.78]

The breadth, scope and sheer suppleness of black SUMMERS'night makes one wish Maxwell worked a whole lot faster. [Sep 2016, p.76]

Collingwood remains, however, the guy out of Fountains Of Wayne, and therefore can't help himself from confecting soaring, sumptuous melodies. [Sep 2016, p.75]

A succinct pastiche of junglist, breakbeat and chill-out fare. [Sep 2016, p.75]

Faun Fables sound more shamanistic than ever. [Sep 2016, p.74]

These crafted tracks are built for dancefloor delirium, yet darkness and unsettlement abound, awkward elegance and cool beauty twinned with repetitious abandonment. [Sep 2016, p.74]

Guitar fans will particularly enjoy tracks like "Life Pass" and "Let It Out," where the solos are enjoyably garish. [Sep 2016, p.73]

The album which confirms that the older, wiser Dinosaur Jr--Dinosaur Sr, if you will--compete on quality as well as quantity. [Sep 2016, p.73]

This is an album filled with earworms, with hooklines and stray phrases that burrow deep into your consciousness. [Sep 2016, p.72]