A typically perverse decision to substitute a US remix for the standard version of album closer "Tomorrow" does little to deaden the impact of an album that owned its moment every bit as much as The Queen Is Dead. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Singles Collection Volume 3 betrays its genesis as something of a grab bag. [Apr 2014, p.94]

The larger-than-life Elton of the live stage gets a workout on "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" and "Benny And The Jets," pounding rockers on the most impressively diverse collection in his catalogued. [Apr 2014, p.91]

An album that is startling as it is likeable. [Apr 2014, p.74]

Now manifesting more of an intense, slow burn than a fierce blaze, they sound no less anguished. [Apr 2014, p.74]

Bassist William Cashion and keyboardist Gerrit Welmers match him for breathless passion, whipping up a stirring synth-pop writ in bold emotional colours. [Apr 2014, p.74]

Creepy but beautiful. [Apr 2014, p.73]

Unfidelity is too turbulent to be purely scenic in the Boards Of Canada sense, its plaintive melodies hemmed in by the gurgles and clanks of some sinister, unmanned waste disposal plant. [Apr 2014, p.73]

This is another uplifting, honest set. [Apr 2014, p.71]

The band's arch, apocalyptic howl is frequently interrupted by industrial pummelling and passages of heads-down skronk, to the point where you genuinely have no idea what they're going to do or say next. [Apr 2014, p.71]

Teeth Dreams is The Hold Steady's least fussy, least mannered, least arch album. Not coincidentally, it's possibility their best. [Apr 2014, p.63]

An ultra-gentrified karaoke set. [Apr 2014, p.77]

Analogue synths and electronic drums combine with distorted tribal chants to darkly compelling effect. [Apr 2014, P.77]

We Got A Love rarely deviates from DFA's tried-and-tested disco-punk template. [Apr 2014, p.81]

It may be a little too restrained in places, but this is a quietly confident debut. [Apr 2014, p.74]

An exemplary set. [Feb 2014, p.76]

It's like walking through smoke and mirrors towards an utterly empty dancefloor, a kind of nightmare inversion of TNGHT's rave exuberance. [Apr 2014, p.73]

Lost In The Dream is calmer and more confident than previous efforts, songs stretching out beyond the six-minute mark if the feeling is right. [Apr 2014, p.83]

Though beautifully produced, over 40 minutes these spacious, electronic soundscapes sometimes lacks bite, blurring comfortingly but unimaginatively into one another, their euphoric ambitions too often thwarted by their meanderings. [Apr 2014, p.81]

Their methodically slothful hybrid of Angelo Badalamenti, Bill Evans and Sunn O))) is much prettier and more restful than one might imagine, [Apr 2014, p.69]

Whether it's the ramalama of "Dorner Party," sleazy synth jam "Funny" or the brooding "Do The Vibrate," revved up and slightly ramshackle is how BL troll across this superior barroom set. [Apr 2014, p.69]

Parker Millsap's second album is possessed of classic troubadour restlessness, drenched in the Pentecost but headed onto country/folk/blues highways tramped down by everyone from Johnny Cash to John Fullbright. [Mar 2014, p.79]

There are many fine moments here. [Apr 2014, p.76]

They continue the template of their superb I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling cassette last year. [Apr 2014, p.78]

Inspired concept, superlative execution. [Apr 2014, p.76]

The sound they've fashioned is glossy and supersaturated while still exhibiting the subversive impulse that yielded the supremely catchy but subtly sinister smash "Pumped Up Kicks." [Apr 2014, p.74]

Atlas is dominated by a saturated prettiness that seems at once virtuoso and effortless. [Apr 2014, p.68]

After years of striving, makes Augustines a band that now sound energised by palpable relief. [Apr 2014, p.69]

Their fourth album, self-produced and recorded in Berlin, finds the smart hooks and spiky lyrics all present and correct. [Apr 2014, p.69]

This album feels like a new beginning. [Apr 2014, p.70]

There's a sustained congruence about the rhythms and textures that make The Take Off and Landing of Everything seem like an extended and mediation on certain musical and lyrical themes. [Apr 2014, p.72]

The results are sparkling, upbeat and infectious. [Apr 2014, p.73]

While they're not doing anything particularly new, the mixture of bile and valedictory swagger here is exhilarating. [Apr 2014, p.73]

There are a couple of duds, but songwriters Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen, a kind of grungy hipster take on Sweden's pop factory, still have a tremendous hit rate. [Apr 2014, p.74]

The rest can't quite match this opening brace ["The Upsetter"], but there are gems throughout. [Apr 2014, p.75]

The overall tone may be sombre but it's expressed with such a weightless delicacy, shaded with occasional harmonica and piano, that it's hard not to feel transported. [Apr 2014, p.77]

This is a tremendously assured album, beautifully paced and full of great rockers. [Apr 2014, p.77]

Exposed and vulnerable, Funk has seldom sounded so sensible. [Apr 2014, p.78]

As a whole, demanding of patience. [Apr 2014, p.78]

While traces of heaviness remain--see the cacophonous climax to "B&E"--Guilty really finds itself in tender moments. [Apr 2014, p.78]

There are a few moments of longueurs, where the songs come off a little too session muso. But this new, becalmed Perhacs reveals a clear eco-political message articulated with subtlety and nuance. [Apr 2014, p.79]

While English Oceans carries its quota of Truckers staples, there's also much that sets this fantastic 10th studio album apart from its predecessors. [Apr 2014, p.82]

Holly lacks the heat and fire that makes the best so damn thrilling. [Apr 2014, p.83]

Songs from the wellspring of third-album VU; a few nods toward New Order; some charming turns of phrase. And on it goes.... [Apr 2014, p.83]

Double Exposure can sometimes come off sounding precious, a bunch of genre studies without that mysterious extra something--this grit ain't turning into a pearl. But when they stretch out, as on "Mandorla At Dawn," The Helix move with loose-limbed grace. [Mar 2014, p.83]

Occasional throwaway aside, there are some real gnarled beauties on display here. [Mar 2014, p.80]

Quality levels are high, with Cate Le Bon's sleek Krautpop chanson "Gallant Foxes" and Claire Tchaikowski's aqueous ambi-folk ballad "That Fever" helping to excuse a small handful of underpowered, over-polished numbers. [Mar 2014, p.73]

His band know their way around '80s-influenced bluster-pop, and carry it off through sheer deadpan lack of irony on this strangely beguiling second album. [Mar 2014, p.79]

You Should Be So Lucky is tailor-made for connoisseurs of musicianship at its headiest and most tasteful--the kind of record you're proud to own, matching the pride of all those who participated in its creation. [Mar 2014, p.68]

These pallid songs comprise a barely disguised homage. [Mar 2014, p.80]

The mix of cryptic lyrics and childlike whimsy wears a little thin over the long haul. [Mar 2014, p.75]

Cherry's still youthful voice and angsty lyrics feel somewhat disconnected from these dubby rumbles and dirges. [Mar 2014, p.73]

More fun are the African-tinged "Radio Bemba," "Odeon," where New Orleans meets Irish tin whistle, and the Mexico-meets-Chopin "Black Hibiscus." [Mar 2014, p.80]

It's sensitively poised and technically perfect. [Mar 2014, p.80]

Over 10 minutes or more, he wisely avoids manipulative builds and drops, leaving a compelling opacity. [Mar 2014, p.76]

Understated acoustic shuffles give the record a sense of the passing of time, as does the tender regret of "Snowflakes In The Sun." [Feb 2014, p.81]

Four of these tracks run well past the 10-minute mark and pack in an exhausting series of musical ideas that most artists would be content to spread more thinly over an entire album. [Mar 2014, p.79]

The material forms a coherent, hard-hitting song cycle about blue-collar hard times. [Feb 2014, p.76]

For the fourth album in a row, they've moved the goalposts, challenging themselves to apply their whooping idiosyncrasies to a new aesthetic framework. [Mar 2014, p.70]

Darkly entertaining, thoughtful and a little threatening, St. Vincent fizzes with enthusiasm and the uncontrollable strangeness of life. [Mar 2014, p.74]

The record's best moments are slow-mo funk cuts like "Laughter" and "Praise" where Jones' silky falsetto finds a sweet spot east of Prince and Earth Wind & Fire. [Mar 2014, p.78]

Cumulatively Morning Phase can feel too consistent in mood and pace. [Mar 2014, p.65]

Burn Your Fire for No Witness feels like a big step forward from its predecessor, Half Way Home. [Mar 2014, p.81]

This box set might test that familiarity [of the Beatles catalogue]. It's like returning home to find the furniture has been moved around, or thayt someone has built new rooms to put your stuff in. It's not that these are bad rooms--they're just not quite where you expect them to be, and certainly not how the architects conceived the building. [Mar 2014, p.90]

Ellis' purist, even traditionalist, voice is the perfect vessel for his sanguine portraits of ordinary people, battered and bruised but never without hope. [Mar 2014, p.72]

Persson shows she is still a dab hand at melodic indie-pop, as she tackles floundering relationships, failing memories and new horizons. [Mar 2014, p.82]

Illum Sphere has been well-placed to see how dubstep fragmented into house, garage, minimalism and avant-garde gestures, and he reflects all of these in his debut LP. [Mar 2014, p.78]

Finn's third solo album is a lush, multi-layered affair, making full use of its producer. [Mar 2014, p.76]

These 18 short tracks comprise a refreshingly un-self-conscious reinterpretation of lo-fi punk, '90s slacker rock, shoegaze an d bedroom electronica, but each one dodges categorisation. [Mar 2014, p.78]

These dead-earnest takes are suffused with existential melancholy, as the group's feathery vocals bring uplift to the heavy emotional burden of the songs. [Mar 2014, p.71]

There's very little quite like it, and it's much wilder than it first seems. [Mar 2014, p.77]

Cheatahs brings to mind the era's second-tier acts, such as Swervedriver and Drop Nineteens--faint praise, but praise all the same. [Mar 2014, p.73]

Immaculately crafted as ever, even if his enviable ability to pastiche everyone from Elvis to The Beach Boys ultimately obscures his own musical identity. [Mar 2014, p.75]

As a collection of friendly collisions, an impulsive document of how music can bring people together over musical and cultural boundaries, it's well worth the visit. [Feb 2014, p.79]

It's a most welcome trip back to what he does best. [Feb 2014, p.81]

This English-language version is a beautiful thing. [Dec 2013, p.63]

It all too often sounds like Metronomy's secret Hackney-themed indie project. [Mar 2014, p.78]

Tremendous stuff. [Mar 2014, p.83]

These are strong songs, only occasionally hampered by the over-ripe allegorical nonsense advertized in the album's title. [Mar 2014, p.85]

{The album] bears many of the assured and lyrically deft hallmarks of Basher's own work. [Mar 2014, p.79]

It's an album of disco torch songs with the usual glib lyrics about good times and sexy dancers replaced by light-hearted queer/feminist sloganeering. [Mar 2014, p.82]

A happy music that isn't bland; Held In Splendor makes that toughest of tricks sound easy. [Mar 2014, p.82]

Sumie blends Japanese and Scandinavian folk, singing crisply over repetitive acoustic guitar patterns. [Mar 2014, p.83]

A focus on electric violin adds a mildly jarring echo of Curved Air to the Canadians' seventh, but the apocalyptic "Austerity Blues" and wistful "Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom" encompass their extremes of post-rock paranoia and Popol Vuh transcendence. [Mar 2014, p.83]

Infinite loops and surging crescendos constitute a psychedelic session more about melancholic beauty than foreboding. [Mar 2014, p.83]

This arrestingly adventurous debut is a densely layered mash-up of shudders and drones, narcotically twisted beats, gospel-infused vocals and surreal wordplay. [Mar 2014, p.85]

Angel Guts: Red Classroom is by turns darkly unsettling and unintentionally funny. [Mar 2014, p.85]

Welcome signs of movement after a lengthy stasis. [Mar 2014, p.80]

Smith's lyrical flights of fancy come off somewhat top-heavy, but by and large such bookish pretentions feel like something to appreciate, not castigate. [Mar 2014, p.79]

Bold, visionary and, in places, spine-tingling. [Mar 2014, p.78]

McGuire's experiments with more conventional structures and arrangements don't always come off--the chuntering drum machines can makes things feel a little brisk and muzaky--but when he hits the spot, track titles like "In Search Of The Miraculous" don't seem too far-fetched. [Mar 2014, p.78]

Katy B weaves various threads of London clubland into glittering pop flax, and this second LP is a triumphant consolidation of her position as the voice of nocturnal youth. [Mar 2014, p.78]

A substantial return to form. [Mar 2014, p.73]

The first half of Mind Trap is dedicated to a sort of naifish folk-rock, flirting with the banal but occasionally happening on moments of quiet loveliness. [Mar 2014, p.73]

There remains a belligerent subtext to his nostalgic fantasias. [Mar 2014, p.73]

While the familiar swagger is present and correct both in the Bowie-influenced "Spiderhead" and the crackling "It's Just Forever," these moments are leavened by quieter, more reflective tracks such as "Hypocrite." [Mar 2014, p.72]

[The] mostly instrumental pieces point up the rich musical subtleties and contemplative mellowness of the originals. [Mar 2014, p.72]

Their slick, mirthless approach and Roman Rappak's self-satisfied delivery threaten to turn Breton into Topman art-rock mannequins in the mould of Everything Everything and Alt-J. [Mar 2014, p.72]