Most convincing are versions of Xiu Xiu's thunderously anthemic "I Luv The Valley OH," Clinic's irrepressible "Tomorrow," and intimate wordiness of David Thomas Broughton's "Ambiguity." Coldplay's "Hurts Like Heaven," however cannot shake off its provenance. [Dec 2013, p.72]

San Fermin proves Ludwig-Leone to be a fantastically ambitious songwriter on the way to finding a voice of his own. [Oct 2013, p.74]

The music does not so much take off as forever taxi toward the boundary fence. [Dec 2013, p.70]

This LP is their most uncompromising yet. [Dec 2013, p.74]

If there’s any justice, Mug Museum should break Le Bon out of her current cult status. [Dec 2013]

Their horizon expands via garage-psych incantation "In The Roses" and chugging closer "Everybody Knows," which suggests a Granddaddy epic; the Shjips' ragged country-rock opus is clearly some way off yet. [Dec 2013, p.75]

Peace On Venus is a fine example of what they produce. [Dec 2013, p.65]

"Comic" interludes like "Tie My Pecker To A Tree" lose them a point, but electronic-strafed epic "I Told You I Was Crazy" shows these proto-grundge "three dumbasses" have interests beyond neolithic riffing. [Dec 2013, p.70]

Rice is at his best when indulging his penchant for punk bubblegum. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Surfing Strange hits similar touchstones to Waxahatchee--Sebadoh, The Breeders, that whole '90s grunge wave--albeit with rather more noisy brio. [Dec 2013, p.74]

Her strident approach to country means she excels at rockabilly-flavoured tunes. [Dec 2013, p.71]

The hooks on tracks like "You'll Carry On Real Nice" are the kind of value-meal stodge that clogged the tail end of Britpop. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Guthrie's work here gives birth to social conscience in pop culture, and this 157-track set, gets it all down in the context it deserves. [Dec 2013, p.82]

This live site from New Year's Eve 2011 reminds why these songs are firmly embedded in NZ music folklore. [Dec 2013, p.81]

The sequel is at least that record's [Just Across The River] equal as he again revisits some of his best known songs. [Dec 2013, p.71]

It's those who deviate furthest from Fela's template who reap the greatest rewards. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Other versions are so microscopically different from the originals that you wonder why they've bothered. [Dec 2013, p.71]

It's an LP that gets through more ideas than most indie bands can manage in a lifetime. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Bitter but sweet enough. [Dec 2013, p.71]

Epic in scale, World Boogie Is Coming is an extraordinary amalgam of envelope-pushing studio manipulation and DNA-fuelled deep gut grooves. [Dec 2013, p.71]

This take on the horrors of 9/11 could seem shallow, but he nails it. [Nov 2013, p.69]

The Coincidentalist, as with most things Gelb puts a shoulder to, is a thing of strange, understated pleasure. [Nov 2013, p.68]

An unusual taste that's well worth acquiring. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Essentially this is Korn returning to their familiar discomfort zone. [Dec 2013, p.70]

The listlessness of the structures is initially offputting, but the tracks begin to reveal luxurious depths. [Dec 2013, p.69]

Those acquainted with the slow and soulful pace of Griffin's recent work may be surprised by her ability to let rip here. [Dec 2013, p.69]

If the results can be unremarkable the album is redeemed by Nelson's engagement on most cuts. [Dec 2013, p.68]

The rest of the album freewheels around American music with a virtuosity and spontaneity that belies the group's indie-rock roots. [Dec 2013, p.67]

The band have come a long way since 2000's reissued Dead Meadow, but some of that early bombast and arresting variety in dynamics would not go amiss, even if, individually, Warble Womb's 15 songs. [Dec 2013, p.67]

The songs are warmly hypnotic: pitch-perfect pop. [Dec 2013, p.66]

A newly acquired taste for Gilbert O'Sullivan-style upright piano puts the accent on cheeky fun on his ninth solo album. [Dec 2013, p.66]

His guttural, rat-tat flow is raw and unleavened, but it's the way he uses it--in flights of fancy and feats of mischief--that's truly the nub of his appeal. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Frankie Rose's 2012 tour de force Interstellar cuts the same fabric slightly more elegantly, maybe, but Blouse's frills are anything but cheap. [Dec 2013, p.65]

Somewhat erratic, yet frequently satisfying. [Dec 2013, p.65]

On the five tracks sung solely by the Blind Boys, the record comes off as Vernon intended.... By contrast, the remaining six, each featuring a contemporary guest artists, are problematic. [Dec 2013, p.65]

It's Isbell's best album yet, and suggests that he'll do better still. [Dec 2013, p.64]

The pair's voices twin eerily and sound effortlessly young and restless on a stream of adorable alt.pop melodies. [Dec 2013, p.70]

His fourth album is unlikely to convert the legions of naysayers, but some sparks of invention penetrate the blanket of aural blandness and vapidly anthemic pop. [Dec 2013, p.66]

It might just grow into an even better record than The Courage Of Others, as one get used to the way it replaces Smith's precision and popcraft with the new Midlake's love of digression and sonic adventure. [Dec 2013, p.62]

The quartet concentrated on developing more pleasurable lines, and on well-structured songs rather than open-ended jamming. [Dec 2013, p.59]

Free Your Mind, looks to the two summers of love--psychedelia in 1967 and rave in '89--for inspiration and is mixed by Tame Impala's guru Dave Fridmann, yet its tasteful blend of chugging acid and euphoric choruses means it resembles an elaborate Screamadelica pastiche. [Dec 2013, p.66]

Ambient ebb and flow aside, vocals and synth/guitar motifs show Outside as a pp record, while a darkly urgent cover of Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "Strange Form Of Life" provides unexpected topspin. [Nov 2013, p.67]

The girls have made a gorgeously restrained full-length debut that intimates both youthfulness in its most innocent state and startling self-awareness. [Nov 2013, p.74]

Yes, it’s fascinating at times to be a witness to the meticulous construction of great music, but the contents of this boxset feel a mite desperate, rather than generous, and the flabbiness of its 11-minute jams is entirely inappropriate for an album that famously doesn’t contain an ounce of fat.

At times it recalls the hyper-vivid, motorik jazz of Stereolab circa Cobra And Phases; elsewhere, it's closer to Tropicalia given a 21st-Century re-boot. But the very best songs here incorporate everything, unexpectedly changing shade. [Nov 2013, p.75]

A vivid, shapeshifting debut album. [Nov 2013, p.74]

The lumbering "Livingston Bramble" aside, the music is elegant and winding. [Nov 2013, p.74]

There's a rich atmosphere of Americana on the faith-questioning "Falsetto" and the hop-skipping hoedown "On My Conscience," while the lover's lament "Priscilla" and emotional navel-gazing of "Half Of Me" find him dallying on the outskirts of John Grant pop grandeur. [Sep 2013, p.86]

For the most part, it's an effective addition.... The only real snag here is Rose's voice, which sometimes sounds so detached as to be barely present. [Nov 2013, p.78]

Fanfare rummages through the past in a way that will provide aural comfort food for many Uncut readers and writers but Wilson has found a way of personalising and transforming these fragments into a very contemporary music. [Nov 2013, p.61]

If the relationship to the original often seems tenuous, there's nothing abstract here: each note wrings something potent and direct from its origin. [Nov 2013, p.76]

There are still missteps--the ungainly "Chain My Name" and "Spilling Lines"--but between these sit a brace of casually innovative slow jams. [Nov 2013, p.76]

It's a typical cyclical riff and chant but, unlike other Tuareg bands, driven by full drums. Elsewhere, the quieter "Achaka Achail Aynaian Daghchilan" comes complete with subtle blues flourishes. [Nov 2013, p.79]

It's a genius pop album by a genius pop singer-songwriter. [Nov 2013, p.70]

Wenu Wenu is at last the genuine article. That it also captures the chaos of his live show is no small achievement either. [Nov 2013, p.80]

There's no denying the monstrous likes of "AO" and "Fast Seconds" are well constructed, but they're little more than assemblages of over-familiar parts. [Nov 2013, p.78]

[The set] has ramshackle charm. [Nov 2013, p.89]

The official line on In Utero is that it's a raw uncomfortable document of a band in turmoil and a songwriter on the edge. That's partly true, but it's also cathartic, invigorating, full of terrific, scabrous pop songs, and a good laugh to boot. [Nov 2013, p.86]

Much of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy is content to sit, lost in a maze of Echoplex, navigating its own navel. [Nov 2013, p.81]

A slight tendency to clutter is in evidence, but when the band pare it back, it's magical. [Nov 2013, p.81]

Thile is in a different class to the aspirational dabbling of contemporary music's most famous interpreter of Dowland, Sting. [Nov 2013, p.79]

With each track developing at an imperceptible pace, this is subtle but irresistibly compelling. [Nov 2013, p.69]

A joy to listen to. [Nov 2013, p.69]

Dent May favours freewheeling, psych-funk pop that nods at The Beach Boys and The Carpenters, but adds notes of samba, mariachi and '50s lounge music. [Nov 2013, p.69]

It's a wonderful pop album and there's a genuinely delightful innocence here. [Nov 2013, p.69]

The prevalent mood is somewhat dour, and the loss of Steve Shelley blunts some of the dynamism in Disappears' dogged repetitions. [Nov 2013, p.69]

It's all subtly regal, abetted by banjo, fiddle and mandolin textures. [Nov 2013, p.71]

Less ambitious than the album that spawned it, but a worthy companion piece nonetheless. [Nov 2013, p.71]

The reggae-tinged "Fol-de-rol" is a definite low, but elsewhere this is a competent, if unsurprising, effort. [Nov 2013, p.71]

[Fuzz is] eight glorious tracks of heavy, frantic and, yes, extremely fuzzy, proto-metal. [Nov 2013, p.71]

Despite the defiant attitude and serious subject matter, their excitably chaotic squalls, leaves a trail of sonic pile-ups too often both predictable and over-familiar. [Nov 2013, p.72]

The Julie Ruin are best when playing it a little goofy. [Nov 2013, p.74]

A bit of editing might not have gone astray, but it's hard to begrudge McCombs space to roam when his horizon is so impressively broad. [Nov 2013, p.75]

Overlooking the rare lapse into anodyne mellowness, it would appear Evelyn's got his future-soul mojo back. [Nov 2013, p.75]

Dan Lopatin champions sounds that fall between futurological cool and nostalgic resurrection, and here takes them to a new level of melamine gloss. [Nov 2013, p.76]

There's the sense that primarily, they're out to please themselves, but that's of little issue when the result is a string of three-minute knee-tremblers played with excellent chops and plenty of gusto. [Nov 2013, p.76]

Fabricius presides over a judicious mix of Urban Outfitters indie, finger-picked folk and offbeat electro that demonstrate her range and leaves the listener drowning in honey. [Nov 2013, p.76]

One of his better efforts. [Nov 2013, p.75]

It's as powerful as it is invigorating. [Nov 2013, p.67]

While "Incense At Abu Ghraib" has a horror auteur's knack for intimidation, a shrill whistle barely masking the sound of feet on metal stairs. It's masterful, though it'll leave you feeling like a speck of gravel in self-destructing world. [Nov 2013, p.72]

There are some beautiful moments here.... Also some difficult ones. [Nov 2013, p.67]

It gets a bit ploddy at times, but their knack for a good tune, a sweet harmony and the odd fiery guitar break keeps it all on the right side of mellow. [Oct 2013, p.75]

Like much of the rest of this fine record, [final song, "It's Summertime Again"] sounds like a forgotten hit beamed in from some beatific version of the past. [Nov 2013, p.77]

[Working with four young producers] isn't necessarily an ideal recipe for coherence, but [Giles] Martin--the producer of the music for Love, Circue du Soleil's Beatles show, and for the Rock Band video game--keeps it under control.... with each song treated as an individual entity and allocated its own musical resources. [Nov 2013, p.64]

Last Night is ambitious, mature and noisy. [Nov 2013, p.78]

Over the long haul, it occasionally falls in the nebulous place twixt atmospheric and song, but "Paper Trails"--the Delta blues seen through an xx-like electronic sheen--is a thing of fine-wrought beauty. [Nov 2013, p.68]

An oddly uneven set. [Nov 2013, p.67]

One Breath is a boldly cinematic work that is filled with passion and drama. [Nov 2013, p.67]

Impressively, in a nod to Avery's crowd-pleasing and circuit-bending skills, this is a techno album that seldom sags. [Nov 2013, p.65]

As powerfully new wavey as 2009's Backspacer at the start but also a testament to the band's more oddball meandering elsewhere, the commitment of Eddie Vedder's delivery brings a veracity even to some of the more ponderous ballads that can be the band's mature years default position. [Nov 2013, p.76]

You may well own these already, but the value of this collection is as a portrait of the artist through time, and a compilation of the irresistible outpourings of a man who never really knew who he was. [Nov 2013, p.83]

While the overall sound is massive, it's become somewhat restricted in tone and texture, most tracks careering towards climaxes of cacophonous synth whines and heavy rock guitars, a narrower palette than on previous albums. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Hoodoo is spellbinding stuff, a new high mark in a delightful late-career renaissance. [Oct 2013, p.64]

A records that spurts gloriously in all directions. [Oct 2013, p.65]

Hook-heavy hummability abounds, but most interesting are the newer "My Song" and "Let Me Go"--darkly atmospheric chunks of contemporary R&B/Hip-pop. [Oct 2013, p.68]

Internal Sounds is a sparkling conflation of '69-vintage Byrds, early Burritos and psychedelic country helped along by the odd splash of boiling surf. [Oct 2013, p.74]

Aventine remains pleasingly measured and minimal. [Oct 2013, p.72]

The Glasgow guitarist's follow-up is more singular, placing Hubbert's spidery flamenco-influenced instrumentals alongside some less compelling vocal outings. [Oct 2013, p.70]