The dentist-drill whine of Klachefsky's voice will scare off all but the hardy, but Boats rock regardless. [Jul 2013, p.71]

Six albums in, they remain fond of that very Swans pursuit of ecstasy through repetition. [Jul 2013, p.69]

On the whole, it's a little in hock to its influences, although the closing eight-minute title track is a fine exception. [Jun 2013, p.73]

The results go beyond folk, with flurries of orchestration and discord adding rusty grandeur to Flemmons' pained vocals. [Jun 2013, p.69]

A return to a winning formula, if not an emphatic return to form. [Jun 2013, p.79]

Its eight songs are distinct and stirring. [Jul 2013, p.80]

This is space-age folk music from an elaborate sound sculptor. [Jul 2013, p.75]

The sole new composition, "Prungen," is a funked-out blast of galloping synth arpeggios, while the terrific "Music! Dance! Drama!" fires up a cyclotron of raucous electro-punk fanfares and weapons-grade xylophone riffs. [Jul 2013, p.77]

The Weighing Of The Heart marks a fresh start for Schott, whose decision to sing brings a warmth and intimacy to her music-box miniatures. [Jul 2013, p.73]

All the hustle, serendipity and moments of beautiful clarity that characterise urban life are here in nuanced, very modern song. [Jul 2013, p.78]

The nicest moments come when his simple structures are allowed to do their thing. [Jul 2013, p.75]

Slow Summits is bold and immediate. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Aside from the odd burst of medieval flute, their fifth album is unlikely to scare the horses, striking a neat balance of darkly powerful and whimsical. [Jun 2013, p.70]

This is what The Graceless Age as a whole does so unforgettably, bearing witness to a burning world. [Sep 2012, p.70]

Rarely since the Laurel Canyon heyday of CSNY, Jackson Browne et al, has the confessional mode been quite so unashamedly mined for artistic ore. [Jun 2013, p.68]

It's a treat to finally hear Moyet stretch herself on a classy and engaging modern collection that's only really let down in places by the santitised electro of one-time Bjork and Robyn producer Guy Sigsworth. [Jun 2013, p.76]

The album never lags completely, but its fair to say that the band aquit themselves far more strongly on "You Haven't Got A Chance" and "I Watch You" than on rather less comprehensively developed garage rock like "Go Blow A Gale." [Jun 2013, p.69]

Their brand of gut-wrenching emo, aligned to fearsome fantasy rock remains both wildly overcooked and deeply derivative. [Jun 2013, p.79]

The animal kingdom looms large but human experience is still at the core of Rennie's surreal couplets, given added portent by Brett's compellingly mournful baritone. [Jun 2013, p.73]

She hasn't acquired any other new weapons here, though, sticking to her usual palette: intimidating, sludgy-but-spare garage that builds like someone surreptitiously tightening a thumbscrew. [Jun 2013, p.76]

It works well, the results low-key but luminous. [May 2013, p.69]

At times the backdrop is so subtle that the end result is almost like an aria. Elsewhere the tunes deliver more pf a punch. [Jun 2013, p.75]

There's barely a wrong-placed note on the whole magnificent album. [Jun 2013, p.81]

The mood is heavy throughout, but only the closing, exhausted "Katla" outstays its welcome. [Jun 2013, p.81]

The clutch of pre-album demos on LP3 of the boxset reveal how tightly plotted her vignettes were before The Breeders even entered the studio.... The post-Last Splash EPs are manna from heaven for college rock connoisseurs.... The only black mark against LSXX is that the brighter, re-recorded single versions of “Divine Hammer” and “Saints” serve to make the album originals sound a little underpowered.

Perhaps for the first time, The National sound relaxed in their skin. [Jun 2013, p.77]

Its collision of tea-time melodrama and Gary Barlow make her sound more Pop Idol than pop idol. [Jun 2013, p.67]

It is the instrumentation that offers the complexity, bringing texture to this deceptively simple-sounding album. [Jun 2013, p.72]

An unmissable craftman. [Jun 2013, p.69]

It's a record that manages to sound deeply affectionate without being sentimental. [Jun 2013, p.70]

Laurie reprises his well-intentioned but essentially unconvincing bluesman shtick. [Jun 2013, p.75]

Not everything works, but somehow everything fits. [Jun 2013, p.66]

The occasional glint of mandolin and fiddle fails to alchemise Time's glossy LA rock, or excuse some shocking lyrics. [Jun 2013, p.79]

In a genus so often characterised by grandiloquent gesturing, this is drama of the pensive and underplayed kind. [Jun 2013, p.74]

Songs Cycled is opaque and entirely accessible. [Jun 2013, p.80]

It helps that The Child Of Lov, while not big-studio slick, is so imaginatively realised. [Jun 2013, p.70]

Volume 3 is terrific when M. Ward's heavier production subsides and Deschanel's voice freely suggest swinging from lampposts in a romantic swoon. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Anyone partial to the distinct strain of English folk from yesteryear, namely the sylvan otherness of Trees or dawn-of-the-70s Fairport, will find plenty to toast in the music of Wolf People. [Jun 2013, p.81]

A more enjoyable pairing of words and music this year it's hard to imagine. [Jun 2013, p.63]

Too many of these frictionless Eurodisco makeweights only prove that great, urgent, heart-tugging electro-pop is easy to stimulate but difficult to pull off successfully. [Jun 2013, p.75]

MCII hits you with the immediacy of a record that you're listening to for the first time but feel like you've already heard a thousand times and yet still aren't bored of. [Jun 2013, p.70]

While there's nothing wildly original on In Technicolor, the energy and attitude that relative youngsters Georg Conrad and Marius Bubat stir into their psychedelic synthpop and off-kilter electro suggests that they know the rules well enough to be able to gently subvert techno cliches. [May 2013, p.69]

It's a beauty. [Jun 2013, p.81]

Their fourth album continues in the vein of 2011's Last Night On Earth, divining its inspiration from cool, crisp '80s US new wave, "Every Breath You Take" bass lines, Brat Pack soundtracks and wistful songs about girls. [Jun 2013, p.76]

The songwriting basks in his love of music, freedom, friendship, dogs and tractors. [Jun 2013, p.78]

The sparser moments are undoubtedly tender, but the reverential glow soon dims, and the cliched cries of empowerment don't help. [Apr 2013, p.74]

Cox's wistful croon and a proto-motorik chug are as wonderfully deadly as ever. [Jun 2013, p.71]

It all kinda works. [Jun 2013, p.73]

There are some creative dead-ends, but there is enough here to warrant a reappraisal. [Jun 2013, p.94]

Kate St. John's arrangements are suitably elegant, but most of the performances here are proof that Drake's gaunt, under-performed songs do not welcome wobbly bottom-lipped reinterpretation. [Jun 2013, p.81]

It's an impressive cast, matched by the energy and eccentricity of the contemporary and traditional songs alike. [Jun 2013, p.81]

It's a riot of scattershot styles. [Jun 2013, p.81]

Images Du Futur is an altogether sleazier affair on which Suuns, toughened and grubby from two years on the road, come into their own. [Jun 2013, p.79]

[The] excellent follow-up [to its 2010 debut] finds John Kowalski and Rian Trench playing to their strengths with horizons newly broadened. [Jun 2013, p.79]

Light Up Gold packs 15 songs in 33 minutes, and most are great. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Fandango, their fifth album, is built of the same stuff [as 2011's Buffalo], though with a grander sense of scope and ambition. [Jun 2013, p.78]

While the album is too long, he consistently crafts a fine tune. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Nelson being Nelson, this lackadaisy tends toward the affable and charming more often than not. [Jun 2013, p.76]

Off The Record marks a return to form. [Jun 2013, p.69]

Jello is still in good voice, so this could basically pass for a mid-80s Dead Kennedys album, were it not for the contemporary references. [Jun 2013, p.69]

There is splendid piano-pop, leanly recorded excursions in cosmic prog, and evidence of an occasional charming eccentricity. [Jun 2013, p.71]

While there's pleasure to be had from the band's exuberant MC5-meets-AC/DC racket, their dubious tales of salt-of-the-earth hookers, as found in "Call Girl Blues," and drunken lechery, outlined the willfully crass "Hungover And Horny" takes the retro vibe too far. [Jun 2013, p.71]

Heza still contains several terrific examples of hooky guitar pop. [Jun 2013, p.73]

He successfully channels Sam Cooke, especially on "We Don't Sleep" but the album's length and lo-fi production makes Bye Bye 17 appear disconcertingly slight. [Jun 2013, p.74]

Audacious and urgent. [Jun 2013, p.74]

It's all enjoyably preposterous. [Jun 2013, p.75]

The tone of observational distance build to an understated climax with "Shadow Boy." [Jun 2013, p.74]

This second album feels less mannered than 2010 debut Fields. [Jun 2013, p.75]

It works beautifully. [Jun 2013, p.75]

Recording session helmed by Spoon drummer Jim Eno drew the band out of their comfort zone, with generally positive results. [May 2013, p.65]

Cigars all around for these sludge-metal/grunge veterans, then, with a set that values hand-on-heart appreciation over novelty. [May 2013, p.74]

Some nice wordplay and a sultry cameo from Asia Argento ensure that Praxis Makes Perfect is fun, if musically flimsy. [May 2013, p.75]

Ready To Die was never going to match Raw Power. When you’re 65, rekindling youth’s righteous fury can sound like grouchiness or--worse--play-acting. But there are worthwhile moments, mostly when Williamson leaves space for Pop to express his vulnerability.

Johnston's own songs, though jauntily paced, come with familiar themes of isolation, despair and the cruelty of love. [May 2013, p.73]

Electric guitars squall in the climax of "Gonna Be Good," setting up the cinematic strings of "Someone New." Thereafter, however, the muted acoustic arrangements convey little of the poignancy contained in Kelly's lyrics. [Feb 2013, p.74]

It's an accomplished, evilly wrought set piece, but the acid-etched disco blues of "Poison Apple" is a standout. [May 2013, p.79]

An engagingly simple and yet sophisticated third album, full of elegant melodies, shuffling percussion and bewitching Marling-esque vocals. [May 2013, p.67]

While all perfectly pleasant and expertly played, there's a nagging wish that Richey would break out of her comfort zone more often. [May 2013, p.76]

Hardy's voice is considerably less breathy than in her '60s and '70s heyday, though it now has a pleasing steeliness to it. [May 2013, p.72]

Occasionally things get somewhat overcooked into Del Ray-ish melodrama. The More understated moments--"Fool" and "All Of Me"--are beautiful, slow-burning torch songs. [May 2013, p.68]

SeiTang's solo project is about extracting the trance-inducing goodness from equipment resurrected from the cusp of analogue and digital ages, so Badalamenti/Lynch Twin Peaks and Vangelis' Blade Runner are key reference points. [May 2013, p.78]

Pretty straight by the Puppets' wobbly standards, but still bewitchingly unhinged. [May 2013, p.74]

For those of us in love with Something/Anything and A Wizard, A True Star, recent Rundgren LPs have us squinting our ears, trying to locate the genius hidden behind obfuscating layers of electronic bluster. [May 2013, p.76]

There's nothing insubstantial about this fabulous comeback. [May 2013, p.68]

The Low Highway settles into a sustained crosshatching of strummed and plucked strings, paralleling the feel of a road trip, the initial elation giving way to an endless pattern of forest and farmland as America whizzes past as a steady 90mph. [May 2013, p.72]

Though the 18-minute celestial sludge of "The Opulent Decline" conjures all the right imagery, you suspect Oneohtrix Point Never invariably got there first. [May 2013, p.67]

It's too early to pass judgement, but in pursuit of Burdon's stated ambition to "finish my career with my head held high," 'Til Your River Runs Dry finds his mission fully on course, a hero returned. [May 2013, p.64]

Dawes come into their own as an articulate, self-assured SoCal rock band. [May 2013, p.69]

Humility and sobriety suits a band who have never sounded more fresh and alive. [May 2013, p.73]

Passages of modish electro show that they're certainly on top of things, yet their heart remains pure pop. [May 2013, p.75]

The results are extraordinary. [May 2013, p.76]

They don't sound so zeitgeisty anymore, but [single] "Mosquito" caterwauls mightily, and the closing "Wedding Song" is a feat of lip-quivering sensitivity up there with "Maps." [May 2013, p.79]

It's the record fans of her explosive live shows always hoped she would make and a career highlight. [May 2013, p.79]

It's a tough, late-night, soul-searching kind of process that Kurt Vile signed up for here. It's a testament to his talent that he takes it so seriously, but makes it all sound effortless. [May 2013, p.61]

The results may lack the stamp of originality, but the likes of "Silver Living," "Giving Out," and "I Know It's You" are vibrant, brimful of melody and lots and lots of fun. [May 2013, p.71]

If Sigur Ros shared a cottage in Dovedale, they might just sound as magical as this. [May 2013, p.71]

From the Ground Up takes a heartland rock template and imbues it with tougher, weather-beaten elements asking big questions. [Apr 2013, p.72]

It's the bruised and pensive love songs, such as "Broken Thoughts" and "Ninja," and the sci-fi sleaze of "Chainsaw," that stick and make The Ascent a contrived pop product with its heart and mind intact. [May 20113, p.79]