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]

While the aural palette's novelty value fades by the halfway mark, the final spin cycle provides a thrilling conclusion to this ingenious exercise. [Mar 2016, p.76]

comforting reel-to-reel tap hiss haunts each track, and you imagine this will sound particularly good on vinyl. [Mar 2016, p.96]

A groovy, engaging listen. [Mar 2016, p.83]

Plaza, finds them bedding down with a more cautious and concise approach. [Mar 2016, p.78]

Another reliably excellent offering. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Love Yes is a dazzling electronic set that throbs with energy and emits a sensual glow befitting its focus on love, desire and sexuality. [Mar 2016, p.81]

Brave, challenging and arrestingly original. [Mar 2016, p.79]

The cod-mystical lyrics to tracks such as "Infinite Sun" and "Mountain Lifter" suggest that embers of the hippy-dippy sitar rockers survive, but a short, Hare Krishna-style sitar and acoustic guitar chant called "Hari Bol (The Sweetest Sweet)" suggests that dear old Crispian has an awareness of his own ridiculousness. [Mar 2016, p.75]

A seriously strong debut. [Mar 2016, p.80]

A blurring of fictionalised murder ballads and heartfelt break-up songs, Feed The Fire clothes breathy, emotive vocals in weeping strings, tremolo guitar twangs and ethereal electronica. [Mar 2016, p.78]

Tasteful stuff, for sure, but The Gamble could take a few more risks. [Mar 2016, p.77]

Haunting songs rooted in old-time country, Southern Gothic and humming electric ambience. [Mar 2016, p.72]

There's no shortage of melancholy here, but it's of an understated and universal kind. [Mar 2016, p.74]

It's an absolute belter if you like your R'n'B raw, red-blooded and defiantly vintage. [Mar 2016, p.75]

His solo debut respects the US traditions that nourish him while reflecting his own history. [Mar 2016, p.82]

His eighth sticks largely to the template. [Mar 2016, p.69]

Their second album is a little too comfortable. [Mar 2016, p.73]

With Suicide's spooked primitivism and Depeche Mode's throbbing anguish as blueprints, Sartain's synthesised shock treatment is a compelling segue from his spartan rockin' past. [Mar 2016, p.78]

Among the handful of minor gems, the title track is particularly ravishing. [Mar 2016, p.71]

This is the work of a star-crossed original in full flow. [Mar 2016, p.73]

The M Ward-produced Livin' On A High Note is a wonderfully chiselled Stax forgery. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Most of the artists here, among them Moby, Miike Snow and Cibo Matto, find rich source material at the melodic end of her catalogue. [Mar 2016, p.77]

The results are suitably polishes, but their pleasures are ephemeral. [Mar 2016, p.71]

The result is typically elegant and--perhaps surprisingly, given the circumstances--uplifting work about the affairs of the heart. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Painting With is striking because it manages to distill the essence of Animal Collective into 12 slices of bite-sized psych-pop that have the punchy immediacy of a Ramones album. [Mar 2016, p.65]

For all Keely's best intents though, Original Machines falls short of genuine enlightenment; simultaneously too much and not enough. [Mar 2016, p.75]

If this is a window to his world, we can barely see a thing. [Mar 2016, p.76]

On occasion, the chintziness of the production undermines Maine's sentiment, but at least now he's learning to be himself. [Mar 2016, p.77]

Cinematic in scope, ruthlessly ambitious in execution, this is not easy listening. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Due to Joe Dilworth's propulsive drumming and Holger Zaf's synth work, these 12 tracks never stray into stuffiness. [Mar 2016, p.71]

Along with kitchen-sink detail, there's real poignancy in the Canadians' second set. [Mar 2016, p.77]

The musical richness and genre-blending confidence adds up to a quietly great album. [Mar 2016, p.82]

The sisterly joie de vivre marks out Songs Of Separation as a very special record indeed. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Though occasionally betraying signs of metal fatigue, mostly Hidden City is vibrant fun. [Mar 2016, p.72]

The instrumentations are the highlights. [Mar 2016, p.82]

Often, however, it's the catchy, heads-down belters that win you over. [Mar 2016, p.81]

Raitt isn't breaking new ground--she's emphatically marking out the turf she's owned for 45 years. [Mar 2016, p.78]

Often these widescreen productions are more effective at the most minimal. [Mar 2016, p.76]

In a field of her own. [Feb 2016, p.79]

For much of the album, there's a poppy ebullience reminiscent of the MTV-friendly '80s Elton. [Mar 2016, p.70]

A crop of startling, striped-down songs. [Feb 2016, p.78]

Like their debut, Not To Disappear evokes bot the gauzy fragility of Cocteau Twins and the offbeat ingenuity of Kristin Hersh, though this time it cranks up the amps. [Mar 2016, p.72]

The idiosyncratic chamber-pop o these 14 songs evokes The Kinks, XTC and the more melancholy side of Hot Chip; like much of their past work, it's musically intricate, too. [Mar 2016, p.73]

Turin Brakes makes no attempt to fix what isn't broken, honing their melodic, acoustic-based forays into rootsy genres. [Mar 2016, p.81]

The seething mood is familiar but the cursory electro beats offer little of the grimy richness of primetime Tricky. [Mar 2016, p.81]

Their music rarely sounds like the blues: "Let Me Get By" is a fiery funk waltz, "In Every Heart" a 6/8 Stax-styled ballad with woozy horns, while the blue-eyed soul of "Crying Over You" segues into a flute-led raga. [Mar 2016, p.81]

More intriguing are the songs that tap into Throwing Muses' vein of chiming offbeat indie-pop, familiar tales of teenage yearning elevated into something more glowing and magical. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Where her other albums are more varied, this all-guns-blazing pop portfolio is a touch wearying. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Seattle three-piece Night Beats swoop into Who Sold My Generation oozing confidence. [Mar 2016, p.77]

A reliance on rabbity non-sequiters, plus a tendency to change genres every 11 seconds, makes the point of it all rather hard to grasp. [Mar 2016, p.77]

The Brooklyn five-piece's second record resembles an ordinary collection of pebbles--unlike their early sea-washed gems. [Mar 2016, p.73]

Weird--but in a generally good way. [Feb 2016, p.75]

A set of abstractions that are essentially pop in nature, rather than avant-garde. The seduce from the start. [Feb 2016, p.84]

A strikingly confident record. [Feb 2016, p.74]

Night Fiction emerges as an engaging sampler of his range as well as his virtuosity. [Feb 2016, p.78]

The spirit of the band's old leader Ronnie Lane comes shining through. [Feb 2016, p.80]

A darkly impassioned mix of hip hop, art rock and electronics that connects to indigenous street music as well as to Gil Scott-Heron, The Ruts and TV On The Radio. [Feb 2016, p.84]

Unreconstructed but entertaining when they get the balance right. [Feb 2016, p.76]

A moving tribute to an unsung talent. [Jan 2016, p.75]

Kelly Zutrau's pure voice is full of tiny, yodelling curlicues that sound oddly Appalachian, and the songs have the sturdy melodies and heart-wrenching lyrics we associate with Nashville. [Feb 2016, p.84]

Even if Howes favours an almost cosy retro futurism, the results are unpretentious and often lovely. [Feb 2016, p.77]