Roaring 20s provides cod-reggae backing for Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule to discuss the impact of social media and the nature of fame. [Oct 2013, p.74]

While it's not a great record, the world would be a marginally better place if people were drooling over John Wizards rather than Vampire Weekend. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Nothing here is exactly restrained, but KK&TS seem to have realised that the slower burn can be just as effective as the full blaze. [Oct 2013, p.70]

[The Silver Gymnasium is] the sincerest, most heartfelt album they've yet assembled, and it's all the more powerful for it. [Oct 2013, p.60]

On The Worse Things Get, Case asserts herself less in a literal sense, but paints the most emboldening and endearing portrait of herself yet. [Oct 2013, p.76]

Mon Pays draws defiant inspiration from the recent crisis in Mali. [Oct 2013, p.67]

In short, dense, mesmerising, involving. [Oct 2013, p.63]

This record has all the earmarks of Vernon's next big thing. [Oct 2013, p.69]

A power-shower of dour. [Oct 2013, p.68]

Black gothic grandeur, but with a beige, biscuit-coloured centre. [Oct 2013, p.72]

The album tends toward generic, blocky sci-fi-tronic. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Aldred's voice has also upped a register, his yearning falsetto perfect for pocket space opera "Progress" or the lubricious Al Greenisms of "Fingers Through The Glass." [Sep 2013, p.94]

He left an enormous amount of music in those 10 years, the bulk of it gathered in this much-needed career overview of the forgotten solipsistic genius of rock’s golden age, in which the strike-outs turn out to be as fascinating as the home runs.

It's united by the long shadow of Ibizan euphoria that hangs heavy over his genre-crossing dance music. [Sep 2013, p.95]

This 11-piece ensemble of accomplished veterans positively struts on its third LP since forming in 2011. [Sep 2013, p.95]

[An] intense and atmospheric instrumental debut. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Anyone who's still mourning the passing of Emeralds should shack up with these druids. [Aug 2013, p.68]

"It's A Common Life" is haunted by the ghost of Snapper, a sort of Antipodean Suicide, while the likes of "I Had The Starring Role" and "What Gets Me By" recall the prettier moments of Straitjacket Fits and Bailter Space. [Sep 2013, p.95]

An irresistible set. [Sep 2013, p.97]

Danilova's vocals have a cadence that hovers between uplifting and exhaustingly overwrought, but fans at least will love these vivid, live-feeling renditions. [Sep 2013, p.97]

Impassioned, sparkling with energy and absurdly bouncy, it's a reminder of everything the North Carolina quartet did well. [Sep 2013, p.95]

A work of lyricism and maturity, this is one of Veirs' finest yet. [Sep 2013, p.97]

Nowadays they're of more select appeal, and Where You Stand suggests they're actually quite comfortable with that. [Sep 2013, p.95]

A perfect summer record for those who found the last Beach House album too wintry. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Intriguing and hauntingly lovely, if almost totally one paced. [Sep 2013, p.72]

All their songs unfurl slowly, gracefully... and some might say a little laboriously. Luckily, singer Jamie Lee has a voice that can just about carry his lofty lyrical themes. [Sep 2013, p.92]

This one keeps the focus tight and intimate. [Sep 2013, p.93]

Like any new city, this album may take some getting used to--there's beauty everywhere, but the streets are far from a neat grid. But as you walk them, Holter's genius as a sonic town planner reveals itself. [Sep 2013, p.96]

A potential Urban Outfitters house band, yes, but very far from just brainless cool. [Sep 2013, p.87]

A band that long ago perfected their sound, such collaborations rather suit them. [Apr 2013, p.68]

It's an insinuating set, bordering on morose in places. [Aug 2013, p.74]

Producers Todd Terje and Bjorn Yttling help effect a subtle but distinct shift, without sacrificing FF's Identity. [Sep 2013, p.89]

A record that's complex, inventive and terrifically free-spirited. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Combined with June's remarkably careworn vocals--they suggest that the young Tennessean has been around the block more than once. [Jul 2013, p.77]

It's a colourful, cartoonish world they inhabit, but its trippy qualities are packed with ambitious detail and worthy of serious attention. [Sep 2013, p.94]

It's hypnotic and mind-altering, like a fruitful collision between Boredoms, Neu! and the Grateful Dead. [Jul 2013, p.78]

"I Like It In The Dark" [is] a hurricane of piano boogie, metal guitar, echoes, poetry and reverb that the rest of the LP can never quite match. [Sep 2013, p.86]

It's not much of a move forward, and arguably a step back. [Sep 2013, p.85]

Portentous electronic rock made for audiences that stretch out as far as the eye can see, and choruses pilfered from a mid-'80s installment of Now That's What I Call Music! [Sep 2013, p.97]

No one can actually improve on the perfection of "Wichita Lineman," but the version of "Rhinestone Cowboy" included here, stripped down to grunge guitar and a Willie Nelson-esque vocal, is bold and definitive. [Aug 2013, p.68]

It's an ensemble work, but the tremulous "An Old Peasant Like Me" is especially affecting. [Sep 2013, p.87]

The post-punkish synth-funk of "Pagliaccio" and the "Unchained Melody"-referencing 6/8-time epic "Saviour Self" adds variety, but beneath the sonic modernism lies an artist rather too eager to be Hot Chip's more earnest little brother. [Sep 2013, p.85]

Yes, it's true--this is a great record. [Sep 2013, p.94]

His pieces for banjo, like the revenant lyricism of the title track, are charming, moist eyed miniatures. [Jun 2013, p.74]

Hardcore Poco-heads will reshaped group's Alll Fired Up.... The songwriting, though, is mere genre exercise, mostly, and thin on the ground. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Seductive, maybe--but it rather lacks character of its own. [Sep 2013, p.92]

The terrific Hobo Rocket has many of the admirable assets that made BWD great, but there's a sense in the album's overall finesse that things as far as possible are being taken perhaps a little more seriously than hitherto. [Sep 2013, p.82]

The Civil Wars proves more than capable of producing its own dark drama. [Sep 2013, p.79]

Booker T can still effortlessly access the pleasure principle that transcends musical trends and fleeting fashions, with an instinctive grasp of groove and momentum that speaks directly to heart, feet and head alike. [Sep 2013, p.84]

The Cairo Gang's superb, weighty, meticulous album still manages to pack a mighty punch. [Sep 2013, p.85]

The spread, encompassing piano and mellotron, is pretty; the songs rather maudlin. [Sep 2013, p.85]

The pair's Run The Jewels hits hard but has brains to spare. [Sep 2013, p.87]

Full of sound and furry. [Sep 2013, p.89]

Songs like "That Loneliness" can make Jagwar Ma sound a little clean-living, while the ingenuous "Let Her Go" simply bowls you over with sun-bleached pop-psych. [Sep 2013, p.90]

Jay-z attempts to balance his great wealth, tough history and news responsibility while retaining his grit. Magna Carta... generally pulls it off. [Sep 2013, p.90]

What's here feels a bit decaffeinated, downbeat Moby-ish electronica over which Lynch speaks or sings in a shaky blues croon. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Like a blurrier version of Tame Impala's Lonerism, each listen reveals further pleasures. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Uncanny Valley mostly just splashes around pleasantly in the easy-listening shallows. [Sep 2013, p.91]

Gentle pedal-steel weepies and shimmering, folk-rock beauty are testament to her new-found freedom. [Sep 2013, p.92]

Benjamin "Raffertie" Stefanski invents a kind of haute couture techno-soul on this classy debut. [Sep 2013, p.94]

Aside from the squelchy hypnotism of "In The Air," it's often a little aimless. [Sep 2013, p.94]

It's the darker numbers in which Jewel's muse gleams brightest. [Sep 2013, p.95]

There's much knowingness in his brazenness, and it's a mark of his talent that he stares hubris in the eye and nearly gets away with it. [Sep 2013, p.97]

The venom and rage of the Jim Jones live experience is captured more effectively on this third album than its predecessors, but there;s also greater depth to the playing and writing. [Nov 2012, p.76]

It's the album's deft balance between Sitek's freewheeling and darkly ambient aesthetic and the familiar sub-Beatles melodies that make BE a bold leap forward in the mould of Paul Weller's recent psych-inspired reinventions. [Jul 2013, p.71]

The results are so convincing, the only question is what took him so long. [Mar 2013, p.73]

[Blixa Bargeld is] in a whimsical mood, Mae West-flirtatious on "Come Up And See Me" and the booming "I'm smiling/From the bottom of my fair-trade soul" on the title track. Meanwhile, a delicate cover of The Tiger Lillies' "Alone With the Moon" is dispatched with a rich sonority. [Aug 2013, p.77]

She fails to stand out in a crowded marketplace. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Midwesterner Pokey LaFarge infuses would-be moribund styles with rare vigour, though lyrical concerns are anything but nostalgia. [Jul 2013, p.77]

The Inheritors is a fiercely original feast of experimental sound. [Jul 2013, p.76]

This pairing with the UK Soothsayers collective proves an easy fit, framing Campbell's precise, melodic vocals with intricate horn-led arrangements and adding judicious dub effects. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Almost every one is a pure and lovely miniature. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Immersive and claustrophobic, Ruby Red seems designed for solitary listening under headphones. [Aug 2013, p.72]

This is Clark, now in his 72nd year, as the rumpled poet of American folk-blues, imparting these semi-brisk, string-driven tales with his own unique brand of sad, funny, dry wisdom.

Tiden follows much the same formula [as 2011's Stunden] of Satie-esque piano sketches nestled in softly lapping rhythms, muted electro shadings and vaguely lysergic drones.

The sixth LP covers a familiar spectrum from table-thumping anthems to torrid speed-polkas and booze-punk shanties. But it also features agreeably surreal humour and occasional tender interludes. [Aug 2013, p.71]

He combines a fondness for Lou Reed-style New York street theater with anti-folk and '80s out-of-tune jangle to scintillating effect. [Aug 2013, p.76]

About Farewell is a gentle, rueful, often beautiful record. [Aug 2013, p.75]

Pratt has one of those voices, like Josephine Foster, that remain stubbornly, elusively ageless. [Feb 2013, p.78]

At its best, JBM's follow-up transcends it's self-imposed cliches. [Jul 2013, p.77]

Rickety in construction, it holds up as a work of single-minded, lunatic conviction. [Aug 2013, p.61]

Amid the murk, there are still magnetic, rough-hewn fight songs about heartache and ambition. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Body Music has the feel of an album rushed out for the summer. [Aug 2013, p.67]

Pretty, poignant and educational, too. [Aug 2013, p.71]

It's compact, often menacing strangeness has its own beauty. [Aug 2013, p.71]

A move into electric guitar, Hammond organ and bass bring mixed results. [Aug 2013, p.79]

They display an exuberant charm that's trashy and infectious. [Aug 2013, p.77]

It is a wispy thing, not always easy to grip. But its more soulful moments can be quietly transcendent. [Aug 2013, p.74]

It's fascinating territory and Merchandise sound like a band still exploring thier huge potential. [Aug 2013, p.73]

Kill The Wolf is another ruralist fantasy furnished with tales of witchcraft and maypoles. [Aug 2013, p.67]

This is full-bodied, tuneful and surprisingly friendly, with vocalist Kuperus toning down the swivel-eyed hysteria for some Siouxsie-styled elegance. [Aug 2013, p.65]

West and his Congo crew hook up with On-U Sound's Adrian Sherwood for a familiar set that marries reggae spirituals to the fortified jungle of the soundsystem. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Subtle electronics and the creation of desolate, 3-D spaces is the icing on a seductively ruined cake. [Aug 2013, p.76]

Most of these frothy confections would sit just as well on any of the band's previous 11 long players. [Aug 2013, p.67]

Their seventh studio album removes some of the widescreen electronica and replaces it with a more, stripped back, acoustic vibe that rather suits them. [Aug 2013, p.67]

The effervescent punk-pop of The Breeders is a touchstone, as is Kimya Dawson's ramshakle honesty, but "Lips And Limbs" affects a subtle country twang, while on the terrific "Blue Pt. II," skeletal acoustic acoustics and frank lyrics document a stagnating love affair. [Aug 2013, p.79]

Their habit of singing in close harmony can be pretty but leaves little room for interesting vocal interplay. [Aug 2013, p.68]

The fatalistic and darkening Gothic moods bring out some of the shiniest elements of his prodigious talent and imagination. [Aug 2013, p.67]