Even if the orchestrations on their first album together are more sentimental than cinematic, father and son harmonise gloriously, finding new emotions within 20th-century standards. [Review of the Year 2024, p.31]

There’s determined strumming amid “Daily Ritual”’s Americana and “Mother Natures Scorn”’s a muscular if unplugged Mazzy Star, but the title track’s almost as ethereal as its title, while “Delilah”’s waltzing, sepia psych exploits John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy theme. [Review of the Year 2024, p.35]

It is noticeably better – cleaner, heavier, less muddy and filled with audacious surprises on headphones. Yet there’s no disguising the curiously wayward nature of these compositions. .... The full, six-disc boxset is an impressive package, drawing together vocal-less backing tracks, scrappy but revealing early demos and some superb 1973 BBC sessions. [Dec 2024, p.53]

A previously unreleased version of Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me” mesmerisingly set to the narcotic pulse of The Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”, a take on country tearjerker “Oh Lonesome Me”, weirdly reminiscent of Leonard Cohen. .... The set ends with Ferry’s first new song in a decade ["Star"]. .... Its smouldering brilliance sounds less a postscript to everything it follows than a new beginning, Ferry nearing 80, still alert to the sound of tomorrow calling. [Dec 2024, p.90]

Freshness shines through on this vivacious eight-track recording of 17 songs, here reproduced in flawless quality – all analogue, promises Young, who mixed the record with Stills. It sounds like a dream. [Dec 2024, p.47]

This new pin-sharp remaster of Talking Heads: 77 emphasises the freshness of the whole endeavour. .... But the real find of this Super Deluxe Edition, and the main justification for its existence, is a previously unreleased live set, forged in the white heat of CBGB on October 10, 1977. Taped a month or so before the performance featured on Side One of The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads, it underlines what an incredible live band Talking Heads were from the get-go. [Dec 2024, p.44]

The final 25-minute-long “Fünf” is most thrilling, revealing what “Animal Waves” could have been had they not been drifting in different directions in the studio. [Dec 2024, p.47]

Created in a similar manner [to 2023's Curyman], Curyman II is every bit its equal. If anything, Verocai’s arrangements feel more baked-in this time, shaping the melodies and hugging Rogê’s playfully darting tenor and fragile falsetto. [Dec 2024, p.30]

Ballads Of Harry Houdini brandishes a sharper focus than many of its predecessors, with “Barfighter” and “Devil Tongue” bristling with tension and those signature guitar lines that move like wreaths of smoke. [Review of the Year 2024, p.34]

The early US albums are particularly punchy, while Beatles ’65 makes an interesting counterpoint to its corresponding European release Beatles For Sale, and this version of A Hard Day’s Night includes four George Martin instrumentals. [Review of the Year 2024, p.43]

This LP could serve as a document of an improvising four-piece at its best. [Review of the Year 2024, p.32]

Now in her seventies, her voice is deeper than it once was, but it remains an instrument of impressive power. [Review of the Year 2024, p.27]

Arnold sings the heart out of her own standards – “(If You Think You’re) Groovy”, “Angel Of The Morning” and a triumphant “The First Cut Is The Deepest”. No “Tin Soldier”, though. [Review of the Year 2024, p.27]

Woof has to be one of the weirdest debut albums of the year, a record that throws everything at the wall in the conviction that some of it will stick and so what if it doesn’t. [Nov 2024, p.34]

This is another set of brilliant, beautiful, occasionally frustrating songs themed around ideas of ending and death. [Review of the Year 2024, p.24]

It might seem late in the day to be claiming they’ve hit their stride, but Too Cold To Hold is the sound of a differently aspected and ultimately more satisfying Warmduscher. [Dec 2024, p.39]

This new 2024 remix by Paul Hicks and Dhani Harrison brings the album into greater relief when compared to previous releases: the orchestral arrangements are brought out of the murk, Harrison’s vocals are clearer and sharper, and the album’s peculiar air of dry, ascetic starkness is increased. .... Rather than being driven by a holier-than-thou smugness, this is an album whose wracked, painful honesty and sense of deep disappointment rivals that of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. [Review of the Year 2024, p.42]

The fuzz-furred riffs of “Edin” and “Sicarus” are infectiously sharp, backed up by satisfyingly heavy rhythmic ballast, and Corgan’s voice, often underrated, is stronger since the strangulated edges loosened with age. [Review of the Year 2024, p.35]

Though producer David Holmes’ disco rhythm tracks sometimes mask it, Come Ahead now addresses addiction and injustice in expansive stanzas. [Review of the Year 2024, p.35]

Seed Of A Seed is simultaneously more confident and more jittery than its predecessor, as though absolute candor was her ultimate musical ambition: the more uncertain she is about something, the more certain she is that she wants to sing about it. [Review of the Year 2024, p.28]

If 2021’s Homecoming marked Du Blonde’s transition from the psychedelic experimentalism released under her birth name to a take-no-prisoners glam-punk persona, its follow-up is that of an ascendant star honing her craft. [Dec 2024, p.33]

The singer-guitarist somehow manages to deliver passages of remarkable intimacy within this sonic immensity, as if the sounds were an externalisation of the ravaged psyche he first exposed on the 2014 modern-day landmark Lost In The Dream. [Dec 2024, p.39]

Kim Deal’s solo debut is sonically wide-reaching yet still intimate, exemplified by one of its best tracks, “Are You Mine”. Pensively dreamy, the tune pairs Lynchian doo-wop with an alt.country twang. .... The title track is a stunner too, all swelling strings and booming brass that brings to mind Scott Walker’s avant-pop. [Dec 2024, p.33]

Whatever reductions Kinawuka and his producers may have made in regards to the music’s breadth, the songs on Small Changes more than compensate for that when it comes to depth. Nor is there anything small about the emotions they contain or the pleasures they evoke. [Review of the Year 2024, p.37]

It’s a tough balance to pull off, but it works seamlessly, and is clearly the result of a band who intuitively understand the dynamics and pull of the dancefloor as much as they do the art of crafting pop, art-rock and the odd indie banger. [Nov 2024, p.43]

Arrangements are denser and somehow tenser than the relaxed studio recordings, with “Partition” building to a fervent drone and “Natural Information” riding a wild groove kept in check by Callahan’s steady vocals. [Oct 2024, p.33]

Cannell makes good on the promise in that music, interfacing with Bingen in convincing ways, her bass recorder and harp improvs. Warped by delay, both are paced and wild, chimeric and oneiric. [Dec 2024, p.33]

It’s a compelling set, from the menacing “Flowers Like The Rain” and quasi-hardcore of “Six Six Seven (Monsieur Faux Pas)” to the gluey, narcotised “Bring It On”. [Oct 2024, p.40]

The 11 songs form a pensive biography of sorts, though perhaps only intermittently about Sid himself. [Nov 2024, p.37]

There are a few stumbles into the synth-pop abyss, but this material feels somehow less galling than examples from Western Europe or the USA, as though the evident excitement in exploring new technology gifts the songs a certain, welcome, naiveté. Even The Forest Hums really kicks into gear when we hit the Kyiv underground of the late ’80s and early ’90s. [Dec 2024, p.52]

Efterklang deal exclusively in Big Music and there are plenty of stirring passages – “To A New Day” could be Take That; Mabe Fratti provides cello – and it all flows, rather too safely, at a steady pace. [Sep 2024, p.30]

Agreeably gruff-voiced, world-weary, Yello-ish electro-ballads dominate, but too many lyrics strain for portentous poetic melodrama, accidentally invoking Father Ted’s “My Lovely Horse” instead. [Nov 2024, p.34]

Aged 91, Nelson brings gravitas to any lyric, the more world-weary or wistful the better, and these covers fit him like a glove. [Dec 2024, p.36]

The familiar finger-picking textures and soft-sung romantic paeans of 2019’s Cala have been superseded by an almost ghostly atmosphere, as echo-swathed, lysergic-sounding reveries evoke spellbinding romantic visions. [Dec 2024, p.37]

An exploration of what common ground there might be between it and Prophet’s usual métier of deadpan country rock. It turns out to be substantial, as does this album, from the shuffling Colombiana of “Betty’s Song” to the drawling Tom Petty vibes of “Sally Was A Cop” to the near Glen Campbell-ish “Red Sky Night”. [Nov 2024, p.41]

Echoes of Conor Oberst abound but the tunes lack the same charm, with even covers of Spacemen 3 (“Sound Of Confusion”) and Townes Van Zandt (“No Place To Fall”) unable to keep ears pricked up. [Dec 2024, p.37]

Johnny Marr, straps in for the mellow acoustic “Solitary Confinement”, a standout amid many high-calibre moments. [Dec 2024, p.37]

It’s an album that is as broken as it is beautiful, a balance that Elverum appears to be gleefully embracing. [Dec 2024, p.28]

“You Possess Me” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” are out-and-out power ballads, while the ramshackle roar of another cover, The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks”, is arguably closest in spirit to what went before. [Nov 2024, p.40]

The result is a revelation. “As Above So Below” and the joyous, sax-assisted “Love Weapon” positively glow, Clément’s gentle chanson like a golden cord that guides you through their labyrinthine twists and turns. [Dec 2024, p.35]

“Love Resurrection” exhibits a more redemptive, albeit Yazoo-like energy. Later work, too, is transformed, with “Filigree”, from 2013’s The Minutes, now a poignant piano ballad and B-side “Tongue Tied” (from 2002’s Hometime era) getting the electronic polish it deserves. [Nov 2024, p.40]

Nina Nastasia’s contributions to “Iron Bones”’s Enomeets-Yorke somnolence reminds us how Strawberry Hotel, like so much of Underworld’s catalogue, frequently renders the prosaic romantic and the banal consequential. [Dec 2024, p.34]

She presents another batch of intimately detailed songs – from the anxious ballad “Dreaming Of Falling” to the exultant rocker “Driver” – in sturdy, string-accented settings that seem wholly unified with her intentions. [Nov 2024, p.43]

A strong start to a (hopefully) fresh chapter. [Dec 2024, p.37]

The expansive Pomegranate sees Parks explore a swirling, neo-psychedelic landscape, against which she sets husky, whispering vocals that can’t help but recall Mazzy Star. There’s some great, imaginative songwriting here. [Dec 2024, p.37]

Simple, graceful, moving, tender. [Nov 2024, p.26]

Presented largely stripped of 1967 production values – acoustic folk with a bit of reverb – but still sound innately lysergic. [Sep 2024, p.33]

Public Service Broadcasting devote a concept album to the tragic aviatrix’s final voyage, this time overlaying their soundscapes not with samples but with her writings brought to life by actors. These retain our interest more than some of the music they punctuate. [Nov 2024, p.41]

A serrated synthesis of goth, industrial and synth-pop conducted at a histrionic intensity, 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto… sometimes feels deliberately difficult. But it is also inspired enough to be worth the effort. [Dec 2024, p.39]

Nothing here matches the astonishing brutalist bubblegum of her 2018 debut, but on tracks like the soaring “Love Me Off Earth” you can still feel the unearthly radiance of this vanished star. [Dec 2024, p.39]

He’s less distinctive-sounding on the Oasis-style anthemics of “Got To Let You Go” and “Never Said Goodbye”, however. The boyish high register of Bugg’s voice lends itself most effectively to a certain ’60s beat group sound, which helps “All Kinds Of People” and the La’s-style rumble of “Breakout” get pulses racing more effectively. [Dec 2024, p.32]

The Prodigy are an influence on tracks like “So What” but the sound of KLF and Underworld underpins “Sicko” and “I Can’t Lose You”, while Madonna’s ’90s collaborations with William Orbit are in the background of several tunes. [Dec 2024, p.33]

Martin’s work as The Bug has always dealt in heaviness, but Machine is particularly inspiring for its lethality, its intensity. [Dec 2024, p.32]

An album of beautiful songs that sound like something you might get from an unusually upbeat Leonard Cohen. [Nov 2024, p.43]

Despite the obvious threads, songs as good as “Nullspace” and “Soonish” transcend any cynicism, and you’re left bathing in a welcome optimism. [Dec 2024, p.35]

It is difficult to argue, however, that the second batch of Pixies records have been as thick on quality. It’s a trend that The Night The Zombies Came does little to buck – though the spectacular surf-psychedelia of “Motoroller” could have made Bossanova, and the glorious thrash of “Oyster Beds” snuck onto Trompe Le Monde. [Dec 2024, p.37]

There are writing collaborations with the likes of the Chemical Brothers on the beautifully woozy and remarkably tender “Ballad (The End)”, which further serves to hit home the increasing breadth, scope and versatility Owens possesses in her far-reaching electronic compositions. [Nov 2024, p.41]

A record that pivots around like the Minutemen; delivered with a verve that comes with a clarity of identity. [Dec 2024, p.36]

Sitting somewhere between alt.rock, indie-pop and a singer-songwriter album, it’s a neat balancing act that feels personal and intimate yet also sonically ambitious. [Dec 2024, p.37]

Bleed is more about wayward drift than some of The Necks’s most-loved albums, like 1999’s Hanging Gardens, but there’s tenderness in its seeming austerity, and beauty in its chill. [Nov 2024, p.40]

Loaded with guests, from Slash to Tom Morello, it’s no-frills hard rock which, while occasionally a little dated and clichéd, still has plenty of fizz to it. [Nov 2024, p.40]

The likes of “D&T”, “Alice” and the cheekily titled “A Gaslight Anthem” are destined to inspire sessions of air-punching by anyone who still believes a life might be saved by three chords, the truth and a glass of the good stuff. [Nov 2024, p.37]

While Songs Of A Lost World is not as angry as Pornography or as claustrophobic as Disintegration, it instead possesses an immersive, graceful beauty and more energy than you might expect. [Dec 2024, p.113]

Seun Kuti leaves no doubt as to who wears the crown on six songs that exude enormous confidence. [Oct 2024, p.37]

While nowadays one might be tempted instead to call this ‘post-jazz’. Nonetheless, perhaps the best way to think of Butterss’ work is as simply ‘jazz plus’. It’s suitably inclusive and ultimately most reflective of her sweeping ambitions. [Nov 2024, p.32]

With synths foregrounded for their texture and percussion a feature, they’ve shifted orientation without losing their identity. [Nov 2024, p.34]

The darkness of his vision remains unmatched. [Oct 2024, p.36]

While the songs sometimes get swallowed up in the maelstrom, Ackermann’s unit proves more than capable of manifesting a sort of grotty malevolence rarely heard since Killing Joke’s imperial phase. [Nov 2024, p.41]

Frequently offers moments of joy. A wider range of live musicians – harp, clarinet, violin, vocal ensemble – give songs like “Collect Color” and “Big Dipper” room to breathe and lend sparser, more electronic-based tracks like “Violetlight” and “Heartwood” a sense of intimacy by comparison. [Nov 2024, p.37]

It’s material that’s fascinating just as much for what it tells us about pop culture as it does Lou Reed, from a time where pop and rock hadn’t become overly codified and nobody exactly knew what music teenagers would fall for. [Nov 2024, p.55]

Tracks like “Our Hometown Boy” and “Chrome Mess” stand out, all high-chiming happy-sad harmonies and fuzzed-up bubblegum psych-pop jangle, but a richly flavoured, wonky-fringed, charmingly sloppy-slouchy mood shapes the whole album. [Nov 2024, p.37]

Combines Richard’s quietly soulful voice with sparse soundscapes in even more affecting style. [Nov 2024, p.41]

Doubling down on the Deadhead-to-Lagos sound of “Frisco Beaver” may mean fewer surprises but the band’s loyal herd will no doubt savour the greater prominence of keyboard-driven freakouts and the greater fullness of grooves like the one that powers the mighty “Ouroboros”. [Nov 2024, p.36]

Their first LP is an imaginative amalgam of electronic pop, avant noise, psych-folk, freeform jazz and kosmische on a panoramic scale, which both delights and surprises. [Oct 2024, p.37]

So full of imagination and life-enhancing radiance that you could wallow in their fragrance all day. [Nov 2024, p.43]

This companion volume of archives gives us an opportunity to hear the roads not taken, the hesitations, to feel the jeopardy at each artistic crossroads and experience the risk and wonder of the journey anew. Across seven hours, six discs and 98 tracks, this is an astonishing bounty. [Nov 2024, p.44]

The band shift tempos and settings constantly, veering into the space rock of Tangerine Dream and the kosmische jams of Can. In these juxtapositions between styles, Blood Incantation find an operatic drama as big as all outer space. [Oct 2024, p.33]

He writes evocatively about his home state of Texas, which lends these songs a vivid backdrop. [Nov 2024, p.31]

With the band showing no loss of force or focus, the latest is another essential if discomfiting listen. [Nov 2024, p.36]

Honey finds Snaith embrace sampling and AI vocal processing to refine a sound that pops with possibility. [Nov 2024, p.34]

The outpouring of creativity is exciting: but where this clearing-out of the songwriting archives leaves The Smile now is anyone’s guess.

While Jack McNeill’s woodwind accompaniment lends “In The Green Chapel” and “As” a bucolic atmosphere with an edge of ever-present threat. Meanwhile, snatches of Macfarlane’s elegant words add further intrigue to a wonderfully original piece of work. [Oct 2024, p.43]

It’s an incredible, accomplished confection, kept on track by Greep’s way with a tune and the grotesquery of his ear-catching lyrics. [Nov 2024, p.36]

Whether her anguish is existential or emotional is uncertain, but the song’s downbeat nature makes it an unusual album exit. What is abundantly clear is that Bock’s creative star is very much with her. [Nov 2024, p.38]

Moonchild Sanelly guest on “Streets Is Calling”, woozy dub soundscapes accompany “The Traveller”, Afrobeat and Afro-Cuban rhythms collide on “Shaking Body”, and the sense of jazz as a hybrid, liberating form is unselfconsciously embraced. [Oct 2024, p.33]

It leaps between the glitch-hop of “Bezerk” to the android hymn “Don’t Go”; from the thumpy funk of “In My Head” to the pulsating UK garage of “Something”. It also employs some audacious samples, like the drumless samba that backs “Walk In The Park”, or the Cuban rumba groove under the vaporous soul of “Mood To Make Love”. But it’s unified by Lowe’s soft, supple voice and a quiet air of hope, warmth and radiance. [Nov 2024, p.40]

It may surprise some, and disappoint others, but this is a record that ultimately finds Sparhawk turning pain into a kind of spiritual beauty. In that, it continues his work of over three decades, from the spectral I Could Live In Hope right up to the imploded noise of Hey What. [Sep 2024, p.22]

There’s the customary minor-key acoustic lilt played out at a range of tempos somewhere between rumba and reggae, served with the occasional light garnish of bleeps. Far from being a problem, that’s almost certainly the way Chao’s fans like it. [Oct 2024, p.35]

Thurston Moore’s ninth solo album might begin with a weirdly angular nursery rhyme set to sparse plucked strings but he’s soon bending his guitar into all sorts of freaky shapes on an album that stands among his best solo works. [Oct 2024, p.37]

Finds his laconic voice soundings more Lou Reed-like than ever. The songs, though, are classic Wynn, all psych and jangle. [Sep 2024, p.39]

It can be quite hard to pin down what they’re trying to do. This makes Orchestra Hits curious, even if their mining of goth and the ’80s, with its attendant melodrama and gestural angst, isn’t always successful. [Oct 2024, p.41]

Their pop songs always leave traces in the memory, but the real gems occur when they take it slow and low. [Nov 2024, p.43]

With Wasser’s careworn voice centre-stage and basic parts recorded live with her simpático band, there’s a new simplicity, swing and airy languor in play on these 12 eloquent, soul-pop songs. [Oct 2024, p.37]

Five Dice, All Threes sounds like they’ve caught up with themselves: even if Bright Eyes are struggling to scrape together optimism about the future, there is every reason why their fans should. [Nov 2024, p.30]

A dazzling set that even outstrips 2020’s Source, with the bearing of a modern classic. [Oct 2024, p.34]

The irresistible “It’s Mine Now” cheats tragedy by taking ownership; “Siren Song” finds its folkloric sea legs after flailing; “Grand Final” grabs the moment with jubilant pop panache. [Oct 2024, p.40]

It’s all interestingly varied stuff, although the chopping and changing of styles makes it hard to get a handle on who The Voidz really want to be. [Oct 2024, p.33]

Channelling their individual talents for explorations of the sublime, they make effects-heavy and expansive dronescapes that upset “post-rock” assumptions while tilting obliquely at Alice Coltrane’s organ/synth works, Swans, Suicide and Scott Walker’s avant-gardism. [Nov 2024, p.43]