Adrian Thaws is another decent entry in the latterday Trickypedia, rolling along on circular bluesfunk grooves and furtive whisper-croak boy-girl vocals. [Oct 2014, p.79]

It lacks the debut's punchiness, and a compelling thread to bind those disparate elements. [Oct 2014, p.67]

Derivative, perhaps, but reconfigured in a way which is both expert and highly seductive. [Sep 2014, p.69]

It's '80s pop, but not as you know it. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Schnauss' trademark keyboard washes are a significant feature, at times helping stimulate euphoria beneath often gauzy melancholia, elsewhere adding a soothing Pink Floyd-ish balm. [Sep 2014, p.73]

The template remains classic American pop-rock served with a glaze of summer-fried weirdness, redolent of The Shins, Flaming Lips and Neil Young, but now there's real heart beneath the often twee facade. [Oct 2014, p.67]

Taylor's no alchemist--not yet at least--though Lateness Of Dancers suggests he can write songs that transcend the everyday by hymning its subtleties. [Oct 2014, p.78]

In the absence of original recordings, it's hard to know what to judge these against. [Oct 2014, p.80]

The signature combination of upbeat music and somewhat gruesome lyrical themes works so well for Shovels & Rope that a few leaks spring when they commit themselves to a dive to the depths. [Oct 2014, p.75]

A little over-joyous for most, but a fair achievement regardless. [Oct 2014, p.73]

A finely crafted record, whose artfulness is mediated by informality. [Oct 2014, p.69]

Ryan Adams is very much Ryan Adams being Ryan Adams. [Oct 2014, p.68]

The fragility in her performances is delivered with just the right amount of internal integrity. [Oct 2014, p.79]

Business as usual then--though any choice moments are somewhat let down by Roy Thomas Baker's sterile production and some badly dated keyboard sounds. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Deja Bu, but a thrill worth experiencing again. [Oct 2014, p.77]

Although the The Courteeners are newly mature, they're oddly not yet their own men. [Oct 2014, p.69]

Ganglion Reef configures plenty of their benefactor's favourite modes of garage rock into moderately fresh, often terrific new shapes. [Oct 2014, p.80]

The addition of bassist Bi;ll Herzog lends Earth a gnarliness absent in recent folk-inflected outings. [Oct 2014, p.71]

Beyond the clever production and judicious musical blend is a sensibility and a voice and songs that find Plant still on his quest, still grappling with the intricacies of love, still seduced by distant, misty mountains. His Uniqueness has never been more apparent. [Oct 2014, p.61]

It's for fans only, but that's where Crush Songs' power lies. [Oct 2014, p.76]

Guitarist Hugh Harris can still finesse a scintillating riff, but derivative would-be hipster anthems with hip-hop bolt-on "Around Town" and "It Was London" suggest a band aware that their time has come, and gone. [Oct 2014, p.74]

They sound refreshed again here, even if their classy, Music From Big Pink-inspired roots-rock has changed little from the default settings established by their brilliant debut August And Everything After 20 years ago. [Oct 2014, p.69]

The tense chemistry has been, to some degree, recaptured. [Oct 2014, p.68]

Banks is an earnest singer with an ear for complex anthems--she's at her best when letting big emotions rip. [Oct 2014, p.67]

On their fifth album, it's back go icy, slightly Gothic basics. [Oct 2014, p.73]

Surprises are few on the pair's excellent fourth album Par Avion. [Sep 2014, p.81]

He's a great country singer, armed with the sardonic humour of Todd Snider and the loping grace of Waylon Jennings. [Sep 2014, p.70]

Dico's strong, rich voice dominates an intense, and rather Cohen-esque suite of songs which frequently find her switching gender roles. [Sep 2014, p.73]

If his 20th solo album, The Man Upstairs, is less excitable than the likes of Underwater Moonlight, Fegmania! and Queen Elvis, it's a change that many Hitchcock agnostics will welcome. [Sep 2014, p.68]

Every note of this compelling album backs her up. [Sep 2014, p.72]

Distance takes the intensity of 29013's Blindspot, and doubles it. [Sep 2014, p.77]

Bell's racked howl brings a hardcore intensity to it all, but there's bags of melodic nous just below the scorched surface. [Sep 2014, p.81]

They're immersed in keyboard-assisted '80s pop and brooding white soul, with overtones of New Order and Lloyd Cole, while XCox's Morrissey-like vocals again underscore their love of The Smiths. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Blessed by an amiably husky voice, Jurvanen unfurls elegant melodies and intelligent economical arrangements. [Sep 2014, p.67]

His latest mixes John Fahey-like acoustic work with occasional brief bouts of his familiar electric shredding. [Sep 2014, p.75]

No song here exceeds the five-minute mark, and each one feels finely honed, melodically generous, and designed to penetrate your consciousness. [Sep 2014, p.66]

Alias is where the giddy exhilaration and buoyant lift of early Magic Numbers grows into a bold, spacey and sensational creation. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Martin continues to brew new hybrids of dystopian dub reggae, industrial noise and experimental hip-hop. [Sep 2014, p.70]

Tracks here borrow from the likes of Breach and Disclosure, and, as on "Buffalo," can be weedily underpowered where they once impressively unhinged. [Sep 2014, p.69]

A faithful if condensed cover of Yes' "Heart Of The Sunrise," sweetly sung by Drozd, concludes what is essentially a likeable frivolity, and a stop gap before their next Flaming masterwork. [Sep 2014, p.73]

Taylor maintains the intimacy of Yorkston's sound, highlighting the weary warmth of his voice, and adding instrumental shading, while KT Tunstall and The Pictish Trail bring harmonic depth. [Sep 2014, p.81]

There's artifice in Booker's make-up but the troubled, strutting loner, serving sizzling sides of electrified psyched-swamp blues, is a role he inhabits with conviction and aplomb. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Long In The Tooth, his first full set of secular studio originals since 2005's The Real Deal, has it share [of gems]. [Sep 2014, p.70]

The whole thing feels like a dusky gambol through America's musical past. [Sep 2014, p.81]

Their head conceptualist is now guitarist Helios Creed, who's kept the vision tight, true to the corroded metal, viscous electronics and Burroughsian collages of their signal albums, 1977's Alien Soundtracks and 1979's Half Machine Lip Moves. [Sep 2014, p.71]

It's not earthshaking, but there's nothing wrong with simply being likable. [Sep 2014, p.69]

Wagner is adept at evoking children's half-remembered nightmares. [Sep 2014, p.81]

His wonky debut taps kosmische, post-punk and lo-fi electronic noise, but keeps its sights on the pop hook. [Sep 2014, p.79]

The overall mood is The Band given Taylor Swift's budget, on heartfelt and easily wounded love songs. [Sep 2014, p.78]

L'Aventura could well be his best album. [Sep 2014, p.78]

It's all so ancient that it becomes thrillingly modern. [Sep 2014, p.78]

It's '60s-soul funky rather than frenzied testifying. [Sep 2014, p.76]

Passerby is an acoustic record of great subtlety and warmth, so much that it overcomes the chick-lit preciousness of Randell's lyrics. [Sep 2014, p.75]

If they're sometimes guilty of overdoing the chirpiness, their songwriting crafty is best served on the more subdued "Dearly Departed Friend" and "Sweet Amarillo." [Sep 2014, p.75]

Ex is full of Hawtin's old sleek menace and disdain for obvious peaks, though the sound design is fractionally lusher than that of brutalist texts like Musik (1194). [Sep 2014, p.75]

Chroma strikes a largely upbeat mood, producer Dan Carey foregrounding a McGuinness vocal that's more often irksome than endearing amid the skittering rockabilly beats and lively but derivative soundscapes. [Sep 2014, p.75]

As ever, there's great appeal in his stage patter, where he tests the tension between catharsis and awkwardness.... But he never skimps on emotion. [Sep 2014, p.74]

Credit Dalhous, aka Marc Dall, for making something beautiful but still somewhat unreadable in its intentions. [Sep 2014, p.71]

It's the gently chiming guitars, summery synth lines and Vallesteros' Beach Boy melodies that dominate. [Sep 2014, p.71]

[Robinson] has certainly indulged his preference here, mixing M83-style synth-pop with Daft Punk/Justice bangers and adding assorted nu-rave and EDM tropes, to end up with not much to call his own. [Sep 2014, p.76]

It can feel a little slack-jawed, its dreaminess concealing slight lack of substance. [Sep 2014, p.71]

It's strictly a mood piece, complete with daffy lyrics about mermaids, bicycles and "Gypsy Tears." [Aug 2014, p.81]

Acoustic Classics is a useful update on 1984's live Small Town Romance, with Thompson this time attacking his back catalogue in the studio. [Sep 2014, p.78]

His eighth solo album is a fine place to start investigations of this dappled terrain, in laces a little heavier and more psychedelic than one might expect. [Sep 2014, p.74]

The intensity and drive of the guitars--when they hit--matches the passion and righteousness of O'Connor's mesmerising delivery. [Sep 2014, p.80]

Excessive emoting is unfortunately typical of the record's exhausting inclination toward overwrought histrionics. [Sep 2014, p.74]

[The album] is not so much a radical departure as a dalliance with a marginally more brooding, textural musical aesthetic. [Sep 2014, p.75]

Everything shines out brighter and louder than ever before as they return from a three-year break. [Sep 2014, p.64]

Mellow but heartfelt. [Aug 2014, p.70]

If Hypnotic Eye was just about the snarl, it'd lose steam fast. Instead, it's only one element of a story that's bigger and richer, which is how a storied American band returned to the core principals of yesteryear without having to pretend to forget all they've learned in the meantime. [Aug 2014, p.63]

The overall effect is almost hallucinatory. [Jul 2014, p.83]

Odd--and oddly impressive. [Jul 2014, p.81]

His fourth album is leaner and meaner than 2010's A Train Bound For Glory. [Jul 2014, p.77]

Calling this Wells' pop album does a disservice to its cheerfully experimental tone. [Aug 2014, p.76]

Soul Mining is arguably Johnson's defining work: ambitious, strange, exciting. And, 30-odd years on, remarkably fresh. [Aug 2014, p.86]

Anthology is no means definitive, but it remains a comprehensive overview of a terrific and influential band. [Aug 2014, p.89]

Brilliance and beauty, abounding in equal measure. [Aug 2014, p.79]

The Shabazz sound is sprawling and promiscuous, but also deep, which might make for uneasy listening. [Aug 2014, p.79]

Lewis conducts what navel-gazing there is on The Voyager with her characteristic mordant wit, and she has shed none of her way with an irresistible, deadpan pop melody. [Aug 2014, p.75]

A risk of pastiche is never far away, but Presley staves it off with energy, songcraft, cunning and a renewed, relatively streamlined focus. [Aug 2014, p.81]

From Scotland With Love successfully and movingly unites past and present, old and new, sight and sound. Another diamond. [Aug 2014, p.77]

Over the course of a whole album, a little more ribaldry is required. [Aug 2014, p.81]

Honeyblood is a captivating debut that prizes atmosphere over precision and is characterised by soaring melodies and terrifically spiky lyrics. [Aug 2014, p.94]

Gulp's debut Season Sun is spooked set of crepuscular pop, a Moogie wonderland furnished with some very good songs. [Aug 2014, p.73]

[A] stunningly assured fifth studio album. [Aug 2014, p.80]

My Love IS A Bulldozer is of a similar vintage [as 2005's Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett]. [Aug 2014, p.79]

After soothing us with smoothness, this slick excursion into semi-unlistenable easy listening sounds fantastic. [Aug 2014, p.75]

For the most part, though, this is the Manics as you'd want them to be--thrilling, bombastic and sometimes ridiculous, but still raging. [Aug 2014, p.75]

Feck's gracious lyrical observations of the minutiae only sharpened by such a lovely contrast [to The Clientele's James Hornsey]. [Aug 2014, p.71]

A much warmer, more luxurious record than the brittle debut, the shrillness wiped from Jackson's voice in favour of uncontrived and appealing attitude. [Aug 2014, p.74]

High Life has none of its predecessor's busy, over-caffeinated temperament. [Aug 2014, p.73]

The album has its fair share of filler.... But, at its best, World Peace feels like a perfect penultimate episode in the last season of a beloved TV series. [Aug 2014, p.66]

The 73-year-old [is] in fine voice. [Aug 2014, p.71]

This is one old timer who's still in his prime. [Aug 2014, p.72]

Behind the abundance of route one hooks and rather beige, Gary Barlow-esque vocals, however, there's evidence of emotional heft in the lyrics. [Aug 2014, p.70]

They've got a food ear for summer anthems but Jungle lacks the knowing self-deprecation and tender lyricism of Hot Chip or Metronomy, so all you're left with here is a pleasant pastiche. [Aug 2014, p.75]

By and large, it's contemplation they're seeking. [Aug 2014, p.81]

There's antique gusto, politics, wintry picking from a master, some gothic touches from Britfolk's finest fiddler, and grand notes. [Jul 2014, p.71]