All 10 tracks on his solo debut album are effectively reiterations of the same song, but it's a terrific one. [May 2016, p.79]

There's something bleak about this music, but it is spacious, often epic, too. [May 2016, p.73]

It's the raw-cut trinity of JB, Otis and Solomon Burke that informs this album. ... Expect delights throughout. [May 2016, p.69]

As ever, he showcases a poetic turn of phrase and hopscotches across a dizzying array of styles. [May 2016, p.69]

Even when the mood turns slow and swampy on "Chain Of Keys" and "River Anacostia," the intensity never wavers. [May 2016, p.74]

The droll self-awareness and blunt strum of their songs may have you thinking of The Go-Betweens, but it's more a general stylistic flourish that has The Goon Sax coming across as classic Brisbane pop. [May 2016, p.74]

The disparate elements feel abstract and abrasive in places, yet the whole is sumptuously melodic and sonically rich. [May 2016, p.75]

It's undeniably awe-inspiring and effective stuff, nut for fans, there's a sense of well-worn tropes entering half-life. [May 2016, p.76]

Bang Zoom Crazy... Hello could very well be the band's most consistently thrilling long-player since the Carter administration. [May 2016, p.70]

Even when the prevailing mood of introspective understatement threatens to sink into the maudlin or overwrought, there's an urgency about This Path Tonight that keeps things buoyant. [May 2016, p.77]

these are largely piano-centric tunes, tastefully embellished with pedal steel, guitar and subtle gospel harmonies, armed with a baroque-pop sensibility that claims the middle ground between Harry Nilsson and The National. [May 2016, p.69]

This second album by Minneapolis trio Night Moves was worth the wait. [May 2016, p.78]

A typically excellent set of unusual songs. [May 2016, p.82]

Throughout Azel, the mix of the two genres allows for an even greater sense of uplift and collectivism in a music that always carried the communal at its core. [May 2016, p.72]

Stephen McBean's merry bunch have toned down the heavier impulses of 2010's Wilderness Heart on this fourth album, plumping instead for a collision of gruff psychedelia, trippy space-folk and pulsing electronica. [May 2016, p.69]

[Super] has some darkly twinkling moments.... The rest is at the very least a reminder that PSBs remain a lively genre of their own creation. [May 2016, p.78]

This follow-up feels almost like business as usual. Luckily, there are a clutch of standout songs. [May 2016, p.75]

Price's excellent debut wastes absolutely no energy trying to address her place in the country-music ecosystem, and gets right to telling us who she is, rather than who she ain't.... Her voice is the record's real star: controlled, infectious, and rich with enviable natural twang. [Apr 2016, p.63]

This is a focused record by Weezer standards, one that play to their strengths (sun-kissed tunefulness, nerdy introspection, loud guitars). [May 2016, p.82]

The album, recorded live in a village hall on the shores of Loch Ness, is tremendous fun. [May 2016, p.76]

For better or worse, no-one else is making records quite like this. [May 2016, p.82]

Plucking samples from wannabe grime MCs and unknown divas and weaving these into his uplifting electronica proves surprisingly moving. [May 2016, p.79]

Kempner's raw honesty encompasses the droll as well as the despairing. [May 2016, p.78]

Largely instrumental, but with some strong vocal hooks, this is music of ascension. [May 2016, p.76]

The lovely songs have such a languid unity of purpose. [May 2016, p.75]

Vocalist Nicholas Wood's doomy proclamations are frequently buried amid murky guitar and electronic textures, which can obscure the songs somewhat. [May 2016, p.75]

Sentimental yet experimental, ii suggests Liima could be the band Efterklang always wanted to be. [May 2016, p.75]

Essentially the second half of their epic third album, the trio are in blistering form on III's seven tracks. [May 2016, p.75]

Clark turns in one continuous lachrymose piece that ebbs and flows with sinuous grace and is edgy enough to intrigue Hollywood. [May 2016, p.71]

Oldham's rustic configurations have been replaced by the fine Chicago kosmische act Bitchin Bajas, who provide authentic relaxation tape vibes and stretch the parameters of Oldham's songcraft. [May 2016, p.69]

Blues reveals itself to be a barnstorming triumph that channels Led Zep, Free, early Fleetwood Mac, Jeff Beck and even Dire Straits into something fresh and invigorating. [Apr 2016, p.70]

No other pony does his one trick half as well. [Apr 2016, p.76]

Stiff flirts with mainstream etiquette--Ethan Johns produces--before resorting to the sort of hyperdriven, math-tinged choogles that have served the band so well over six albums. [Apr 2016, p.82]

Not a decline, but a deliberate descent. [Apr 2016, p.92]

It's a bittersweet study of fate and circumstance that resonates long after it's over. [Apr 2016, p.70]

Taking cues from Lord Byron and Rome, this solo album from the former Race Horses singer is a dramatic affair. [Apr 2016, p.75]

A delightful, horn-infused love letter to Morrissey's best solo work. [Apr 2016, p.76]

Grimly compelling. [Apr 2016, p.66]

Fleeting, once again, is a loving, diligent and honest attempt by Jones to pay fingerpicking homage to his hero. [Apr 2016, p.74]

This album pushes and pulls in so many directions, it should fall apart; remarkably, it doesn't. [Apr 2016, p.72]

While there's nothing here to equal his career-changing hit "P's And Q's," opener "Hail" comes close with its down-and-dirty signature riff. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Much to admire, even when the provenance is so blatant. [Mar 2016, p.81]

It's covers that make the bulk of the songs, and some are more successful than others. [Apr 2016, p.90]

As on debut Eighteen Hours Of Static, there's a sinister feel, as if you are being sometimes stalked an sometimes assaulted, often, as in the case of "So Much You," in the same song. [Apr 2016, p.69]

It's a typically sharp uppercut from the former lynchpin of The Broken Family Band and Singing Adams. [Apr 2016, p.67]

Though the sonic palette, beautiful and immersive, warm like a hot mug in the frost, the dubstep-derived hints of double-time, perpetually held in reserve, create the ominous feeling of an attack dog straining at the leash. [Apr 2016, p.69]

A lack-Qluster addition to the Roedelius catalogue, perhaps, but fascinating in its own way. [Apr 2016, p.79]

The varied works of this Portland-born bassist and singer have suggested a giant talent that spills out of jazz into Brazil, R&B, music theatre and even thrash metal. This semi-autobiographical concept album pushes her deep into art-rock territory. [Apr 2016, p.79]

With its wild swings between pummelling dirges and more symphonic exercises in doom-mongering, seventh album, The Gospel, evokes the more artistically ambitious but no less menacing likes of Killing Joke and Swans. [Apr 2016, p.69]

Rarely do you sense the real pain that underpins these limp ballads and her aggressively mannered delivery. [Apr 2016, p.75]

If anything, it can feel a little too smoothed out, and some more grit in the production wouldn't go astray. [Apr 2016, p.71]

Everything feels remarkably fresh and unforced. [Apr 2016, p.68]

Trees might be the best '70s antecedent; the Japanese Ghost a more modern analogue for these seething reveries, tantalisingly poised on the edge of freak-out. [Apr 2016, p.74]

A visceral, candid and thrillingly propulsive depiction of her efforts to work through her father's abandonment when she was a child. [Apr 2016, p.81]

This expertly wrought debut is an impressive platform for twentysomething polymath Heloise Letissier. [Apr 2016, p.71]

Pond Scum is an archive project, albeit one delivered with all the caginess we expect from this most capricious of singer-songwriters. [Apr 2016, p.90]

If their third album doesn't exactly do anything new in the field, it is undoubtedly well observed. [Apr 2016, p.82]

Life Of Pause demonstrates a more playful and propulsive approach. [Apr 2016, p.82]

One of his most engrossing albums yet, a gorgeously unsettling collection of itchy electronics. [Apr 2016, p.81]

To their credit the quartet's swaggering garage rock, stuffed with grit and glam, has a certain edge, largely due to frontman mark Saunders' Welsh-accented sneer. [Apr 2016, p.81]

One of the most coherent and surprising big-ticket pop albums in years. [Apr 2016, p.79]

Peachy-keen harmonies, pop smarts and salacious detail make a simple but effective combination. [Apr 2016, p.78]

Thankfully, they rewire this timeless aesthetic with more open-minded affection than stifling reverence. [Apr 2016, p.73]

El Guincho is a kind of Iberian Kanye, and this is a twisted fantasy of wine-bar techno: busy, brash and migrainey, at its adventurous best on "Comix" and "Mis Hist." [Apr 2016, p.71]

Overblown and occasionally excruciating, I Love It...'s fearless perversity nonetheless puts most "alternative" bands to shame. [Apr 2016, p.67]

Not even this collaboration's most thunderous moments detract from the quieter power of the singer's frank, free-associative lyrics. [Apr 2016, p.74]

It's a more poignant epitaph to their fine career than the dour and sometimes impenetrable The High Country. [Apr 2016, p.77]

Unique and inspiring. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Barbara Barbara... makes explicit the band's influence, as well as their core strengths. [Apr 2016, p.81]

Dreamy, trippy and filled with elegant hooks, it's his best yet. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Girl At The End Of The World extends and advances on its predecessor's spirited reboot. [Apr 2016, p.74]

The garbled way in which The Coral piece these disparate elements together creates an odd, timeless and cosmic music, buzzing with energy, and very much their own. [Apr 2016, p.80]

What might have been a dry academic exercise is in fact a seductive display of its polyphonic subtleties, which Bourne bends into mood-shifting soundscapes. [Apr 2016, p.70]

Even if several songs see them veer too close to conventional power balladry or Joy Division karaoke, Holy Esque are mostly wise to favour the first part of the time-honoured go-big-or-go-home strategy. [Apr 2016, p.74]

Jenkins conveys his obsession with sound beautifully. [Apr 2016, p.71]

Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello appear as duet partners, affably resigned to not competing with that unmistakable undimmed voice. [Apr 2016, p.75]

Convenanza is only Weatherall's second album, but it feels as if he's been making this fantastic, moody music all his life. [Apr 2016, p.82]

Grandfeathered is no great progression from last year's Everything Else Matters, but there is genre-defying richness and depth to [the] tunes. [Apr 2016, p.78]

United Crushers establishes a more muscular sensibility for the American quartet. [Apr 2016, p.78]

A soaring, Ian McLagan-dedicated Small Faces cover, "All Or Nothing," is the spiritual centrepiece of the set, but every song arrives with crisp melodies, burning guitars and impassioned vocals. [Apr 2016, p.81]

Faithful to the source material and occasionally inspired. [Apr 2016, p.81]

The added muscle suits them and you wish there were more of it. [Mar 2016, p.76]

You Know Who You Are is a smart, dynamic effort that breaks some new ground. [Apr 2016, p.76]

Little on Painkillers would sound misplaced on any given Gaslight Anthem album. Which, if one is predisposed to the band's hearty but thoughtful brand of rock'n'roll, is no bad thing. [Apr 2016, p.73]

A jumbled record that veers from Screamadelica nostalgia to wobbly Bontempi soul to hushed acid-folk without ever quite finding a sound of its own. [Apr 2016, p.79]

Arrangingtime functions as both a means of closure and a creative reboot. [Apr 2016, p.82]

Leschper meditates on creativity, identity and self-doubt in a voice that's equal parts Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, while the music--played by a full band--runs the expressive gamut. [Apr 2016, p.76]

A cameo from run The jewels is a final treat on an album full of them. [Apr 2016, p.76]

The lack of ironic twists is both slightly unsettling and hugely refreshing. [Apr 2016, p.83]

The swinging, jazz-country arangements are perfect, too, hitching the polished, romantic sophistication of the songs to a down-home, rootsy bonhomie that draws comparison with Dylan's reinterpretations of the Sinatra songbook on 2015's Shadows In the Night. [Apr 2016, p.78]

While Heather McEntire's wonderful voice is a natural country conduit, there's not quite enough around it, her bandmates opting to frame her tones in fairly pedestrian roots-rock settings. [Mar 2016, p.76]

A mildly Enya-fied take on the kind of astringent orchestral punk pumped out by Montreal's Constellation label, it has its moments. [Mar 2016, p.77]

These dusky vignettes are embellished with delicate shades of cello and synth, making them most suitable, like his debut, The Houseboat And The Moon, for a quiet night in. [Feb 2016, p.71]

The rewards are high. [Mar 2016, p.73]

While the arrangements are loaded with clever touches, the LP comes off like an exercise in technique, preventing Price from reaching the transcendent moments she's clearly capable of. [Mar 2016, p.76]

Flashbacks to The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld and the KFL's Chill Out are inevitable, but there are woozy hints of early Black Dog on "C," too. [Mar 2015, p.77]

Sonically adventurous, Phase is unafraid of chunky choruses, bedroom confessionals and twisted synth arrangements. [Mar 2016, p.75]

This is bustling rock'n'roll that doesn't think too hard about much else. [Mar 2016, p.82]