In the china shop of his last five years' work, this LP is the bull. [Jul 2015, p.70]

It's stuffed with Staxy beats, clicking bass and Hi-Life bounce. [Jun 2015, p.81]

His debut is characterised by frantically over-driven beats, but is as soulful as it is dance-insistent. [Jul 2015, p.80]

Despite the odd moment when you're not sure quite what she's on about, she still stabs like a stiletto. [Jul 2015, p.77]

All in all, it's a match made in heaven. [Jul 2015, p.75]

Much more than just a fan curio. [Jul 2015, p.81]

For the most part, this is a short, sharp and generally satisfying voyage into Ash's heady past. [Jul 2015, p.71]

Quarters four 10-minute jams allow them instead to indulge their more experimental side. [Jul 2015, p.77]

There's a lot going on here. [Jul 2015, p.69]

There are reasons to cheer aside from survival--cultish single "Open Fire," "Mighty Wings" and the Rush-like title track. [Jul 2015, p.73]

Frozen Niagara Falls is still a rocky ride in places. [Jul 2015, p.81]

The rough-and-ready songwriting is all part of the conceptual high-jinks. [Jul 2015, p.81]

Simple Songs is a major statement from a brilliant, mischievous singer-songwriter. [Jul 2015, p.80]

Simply gorgeous. [Jul 2015, p.80]

Parker's songs still cut and slash, at times with righteous indignation, and The Rumour are focused, just within a different lens. [Jul 2015, p.79]

The songs are underpinned by euphoric, tangled guitar rock a la Japandroids, transformed by Quinlan's defiant joy. [Jul 2015, p.77]

Panoramic, synthetically symphonic and a lot of fun. [Jul 2015, p.77]

The definitive post-millennium Fall album remains 2008's Imperial Wax Solvent, but this is a credibly bitter pill to swallow. [Jul 2015, p.75]

The choice arrangements are alive with conviction. [Jul 2015, p.73]

He has a weakness for think, hackneyed lyrics, but a flair for inspired juxtapositions, too. [Jul 2015, p.71]

What In Colour reveals is the sheer scope of Smith's skills as a songwriter and producer. [Jul 2015, p.68]

Introspective, diaristic songs that make a virtue of their simplicity. [Jul 2015, p.76]

Welch delivers clunky self-help lines wrapped in elemental metaphors. [Jul 2015, p.76]

It's often closer to the music the group made during their 2000 comeback. [Apr 2015, p.69]

The outcome is a raucous, rough-and-tumble blues-rock album. [Jun 2015, p.71]

This invigorating swansong by the Anglo-Italian duo finds Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia bowing out at the peak of their powers. [May 2015, p.84]

Undeniably, they are a dance band first and foremost, but fans of Tinariwen will find plenty to love in raw soulful numbers like "Koana" and Farila." [Jun 2015, p.83]

Gelb's semi-surreal observations lace things together. [Jun 2015, p.77]

A record that achieves a great deal with only a few raw materials. [Jun 2015, p.73]

This one needed longer in the incubator. [Jun 2015, p.81]

[A] neoclassical treat. [May 2015, p.78]

Their debut takes SBB's percussive "Congotronics" sound and twists it into dramatic new shapes. [Jun 2015, p.78]

A Doug Sahm/CCR vibe runs through much of this debut. [Jun 2015, p.71]

The Word pick up where they left off on their 2001 self-titled debut. [Jun 2015, p.84]

There are many wise, deceptively simple insights on this wonderful album. [Jun 2015, p.82]

Containing only nine lithe and varied songs, Multi-Love is anything but a whimsical indulgence. [Jun 2015, p.79]

Produced by Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos, this latest project sees her moving away from the playful whimsy of her debut in favour of looser, gritter textures. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Mutilator is very much in the vein of a 2013's career-topping Floating Coffin. [Jun 2015, p.83]

The Superchunk frontman journeys to the early '80s, where punk was dissolving, songs were becoming introspective and straightforward rumble of rock was being corrupted by synthesisers. He does it with precision. [Jun 2015, p.78]

Runddans is 39 minutes of continuous music, most closely related tot he percolating grooves of Lindstrom's Where You Go I Go Too. [Jun 205, p.81]

It starts promisingly.... Elsewhere, sadly, The Traveling Kind is rather a plod. [Jun 2015, p.84]

Pleasantly surprising, then to hear Moonlust take a rather more delicate approach. [Jun 2015, p.76]

The evenness of the performances here is striking. [Jun 2015, p.74]

It's a savvy and sweetly skewed set. [Jun 2015, p.73]

Generally, Dumb Flesh is more gleaming and monolithic than ever. [Jun 2015, p.71]

It's a dynamically compelling set that taps Black Sabbath, Chic, Killing Joke, Elmer Bernstein and Paolo Conte, Mike Patton's extraordinary (six octaves) voice its focus. [Jun 2015, p.76]

The duo's third add little to territory explored by Broadcast and Sterolab, but there is still an alluring soft-porn sexiness to avant-Kraut Moog-pop excursions. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Platform is not a manifesto, but it feels like a galvanising challenge to Herndon's peers to embolden their ideas, broaden their horizons and push on into an undiscovered continent of sound. [Jun 2015, p.70]

This set of sentimental cappuccino funk is as intimate and provocative as anything Murphy's put her name to, the eight songs a fussy fusion of Balearic soul and bohemian synthpop. [Jun 2015, p.80]

This Montreal master proves himself, yet again, a consummate songwriter and master of atmospherics. [Jun 2015, p.84]

Writing separately, frontman Rim Wilson and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Carbury have come up with material that falls between the Broadway musical and the motivational speech. [Jun 2015, p.77]

Smart, sexy stuff. [Jun 2015, p.84]

Hardy's agile vocals and lyricism are never in doubt, but shine brighter on light touch arrangements. [Jun 2015, p.76]

With I Can't Imagine, she's hit on the right combination of inspiration, kindred spirits and setting. [Jun 2015, p.78]

There's a strangely disarming quality to Rose Windows' second album. [Jun 2015, p.80]

Quieter, more ethereal tracks such as "Lone Wolf" have less of an impact, showing that Landshapes are at their best when they're loud. [Jun 2015, p.77]

An album that frequently feels to be about growing pains, Sprinter may, like its predecessor, not quite be Mackenzie Scott's defining moment. All the same, it shows enough promise that we should take that as a profound positive. [May 2015, p.68]

Short, but invigoratingly sweet. [Jun 2015, p.77]

What most impresses is its warmth, dynamism and unforced difference. [Jun 2015, p.84]

A touch of monotony creeps in, although they keep it at bay through sheer volume on the closing, eight-minute "Harpooned." [Jun 2015, p.84]

Mostly these dry, derivative, rather dreary songs of endeavour are a hard slog. [Jun 2015, p.84]

The set is more interesting the more it delves into the songwriter's prodigious output, generally beefing up what it finds. [Jun 2015, p.81]

The band are at their best when they put their heads down and rock. [Jun 2015, p.83]

A wonderfully anomalous effort. [Jun 2015, p.81]

A genuine 2015 classic. [Jun 2015, p.77]

There's a softness and elegance to Trickfinger. [Jun 2015, p.83]

He roughs up synth-wave and jungle on "Apathy" and "Fading," but does so with a certain tenderness. [Jun 2015, p.81]

Impressively, Gardner's instrumnetals such as "Grey Lanes" and "All Over" show how he can effectively summon up an exquisite nostalgia for an invented '60s. [Jun 2015, p.76]

Stetson and Arcade Fire violinist Sarah Neufeld dart and dovetail elegantly, h er playing the piercing counterpoint to his imposing low end. [Jun 2015, p.81]

A record that comes on like a loving homage to the venerable Seattle label's gnarly rock of yore. [Jun 2015, p.80]

Abandoning their trademark has forsaken their identity. [Jun 2015, p.80]

Open-hearted vulnerability is what sets them apart--the desire to be cool dissipates with age, leaving them to restore funk, the album's major underpinning, to its maximalist glory following years of sublimation from bedroom musicians. [Jun 2015, p.76]

Weller's 12th solo album is characterised by cut-ups and sound collages, built around riffs and grooves. There are fadeouts and fade-ins mid-song, vocals come heavily treated, instruments are strafed with sound effects. Essentially, Weller is making a virtue of his processes. [Jun 2015, p.65]

The sense of fun has dissipated on Born Under Saturn, an hour of faintly psychedelic heads-down boogie. [Jun 2015, p.75]

It never quite matches the promise of the excellent opening half. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Much of that atmosphere [from previous albums] remains on Captain Of None, thanks to whispered vocals and a focus on the courtly pluck of a viola da gamba. [Jun 2015, p.73]

Funny, smart and so elegantly poised. [Jun 2015, p.73]

Their prevailing operatic bleakness has barely changed in the intervening 14 years. [Jun 2015, p.72]

The pill is somewhat sweetened by Braids' glossy new sound, a feelgood revamp that pairs swooning electronics with upfront drum'n'bass and will do some damage at large outdoor events. [Jun 2015, p.72]

All told, it's an awful a lot to listen to, but the scope is majestic, the ambition outrageous and the music magnificent. [Jun 2015, p.72]

[Producer] Wally Gagel, who helmed the 2013 EP "Fade Away" and now California Nights, gets it right, cranking up the reverb and multiplying Cosentino's vocals to achieve the Spector-esque wall of sound the duo has been aiming for. [Jun 2015, p.71]

Through it all runs an ingrained psychedelic streak which is organic rather than synthetic, James and co tripping out on the glory of a sunset, a beach at dawn, a mile-high mountain view. [Jun 2015, p.68]

A set of 14 patrimonial ballads drawn from all corners of Britain's folk heritage. [Jun 2015, p.69]

On occasion, the production on Who IS The Sender? threatens to swamp the plain-speaking poetics of Fay's lyrics with soupy sentimentality.... But just as often, producer Joshua Henry correctly gauges the tenor of these songs. [May 2015, p.74]

It's the thump and clatter of a 1950s backbeat filtered through the boogie of 1970s glam-rock. [May 2015, p.71]

Colours Of The Night is mostly served well by the extra hands, the songs breathing with quietly assured movements. [May 2015, p.71]

So distinctive and confessional is Eska's voice that she's created a British pastoral music that defies classification. [May 2015, p.73]

If the results are amiable rather than arresting, at this far down the road, that's surely enough. [Apr 2015, p.75]

Ba Power feels like another dramatic leap forward and a further landmark in the integration of African tribal rhythms and western rock'n'roll. [May 2015, p.85]

No News more or less repeats the formula {of its 2013 debut], with equally pleasing results. [Apr 2015, p.76]

They've delivered a less disposable, more reflective and yes "mature" set with their latest. [May 2015, p.83]

Pokey LaFarge's seventh long-player echoes and expands his mastery of bygone styles. [May 2015, p.75]

There is much to enjoy in The Past We Leave Behind's darker moments. [May 2015, p.78]

Jackrabbit is two songs and three interludes of grandiose, tuneless narrative better suited to Broadway. [May 2015, p.80]

This terrific second album from the ex-jazz singer Shah carries with it a clear air of assurance. [May 2015, p.81]

While some of N.E.W. feels a little undercooked, there are also fantastic moments. [May 2015, p.71]

It's a dynamic soundbed for her arresting singing. [May 2015, p.77]

It's edgeless, overly polite, and arranged within an inch of its life. There's little room to move. [Apr 2015, p.71]