The result is a fresh and invigoratingly modern take on black music and as far removed from a musical history lesson as you get. [Mar 2013, p.69]

[It's] a kind of remedial emo-psych-rock, where dunderheaded riffs meet go-nowhere spurts of electronics, while ponderous guitar shadows equally ponderous keys. [Mar 2013, p.68]

It's not as scintillating as we've come to expect from the OutKast camp, but plenty of fun nonetheless. [Mar 2013, p.67]

His technical prowess is thrilling in its time signature hopping. [Mar 2013, p.65]

Mid Air amounts to 14 enigmatic variations on this mood, just piano, voice, the occasional pale moonbeam of orchestration, which miraculously never feels monotonous or morose.

The album seems designed to be experienced immersively in the solitude of a dark room. [Feb 2013, p.78]

Their chemistry is obvious. [Feb 2013, p.74]

Howling from the eye of the storm, Scott Hutchinson's raw holler and bleakly poetic worldview remain the key points of emotional connection. [Feb 2013, p.73]

Theirs is a likably punked-up take on the noise blizzard thing. [Feb 2013, p.74]

Sun-dappled, retro Americana dominates their second album, albeit overlaid with an arsenal of sonic tricks. [Feb 2013, p.70]

Not as good as the original, but an interesting afterthought. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Reviver is a plugged-in, dreamrock album that owes more to the beardy Brooklyn scene. [Feb 2013, p.70]

Less outre than much of Patton's work. [Feb 2013, p.80]

For the most part, Green and Shapiro come over like a couple working their troubles in group therapy through gritted teeth. [Feb 2013, p.73]

It's certainly a bold move that will either send them stratospheric or sink them completely. [Feb 2013, p.71]

This luminously lovely collection is well-judged and intensely personal. [Feb 2013, p.74]

All up, a subtle repositioning that deserves attention. [Feb 2013, p.79]

La Costa Perdida brings them full circle, back to their Californian roots. [Feb 2013, p.80]

He's made one of the great albums of modern Americana, and one suspects that a reluctant star is born.

He shines brightest on the slower material.

This is desert blues that doesn't just trudge into the horizon, but stops to admire the sunset. [Feb 2013, p.69]

More pastoralism wouldn't go astray, but Centralia is very charming. [Feb 2013, p.77]

Welcome tweaks to the template, but Schnauss could do with taking a more dramatic step out of his comfort zone. [Feb 2013, p.78]

Few, if any, artists are pushing the boundaries of traditional music further. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Whispering Trees presents rain-sodden English romanticism of the Nick drake/Bill Fay school occasionally ramped up to cosmic proportions with the help of the Radar Brothers' effects units. [Feb 2013, p.78]

The band excel at giving fans perfectly plotted two-minute bursts of disgust and attrition, epitomised by the splendidly immature, "F*** You." [Feb 2013, p.69]

Only the lovely, finger-picking folk of "Ceilings" and the pulsating "Breakers" approach the perkiness of their breakout single, "Airplanes." [Feb 2012, p.74]

They sacrifice a bit of their identity in the trade-off [to be more pop.][Feb 2013, p.80]

It can at times be truly excellent 21st-century pop, but too often the songwriting just doesn't match up and many tracks are just multitracked signifiers with no connecting tissue. [Feb 2013, p.81]

It's all well-crafted, but the end result can often sound like a slightly disjointed compilation album. [Feb 2013, p.70]

Let It All In is all kitchen-sink realism and mordant one-liners best exemplified in the TS Elliot-influenced "Some Day Better."

The edges may be sharper, the outlook less austere and self-contained, but Villagers are still defined by songs which deliver hook upon hook. [Feb 2013, p.82]

The best thing about Coming Out Of The Fog, then, is that it's charged with possibility--paradoxically, by stripping Heumann's songs back to their core, simplifying and reducing, he's opened up a space in which the group could really ride into the sun. [Feb 2013, p.72]

Wash the Sins Not Only the Face proves they have the songs to match their mood but too often tend to wallow in kohl-eyed cliche. [Feb 2013, p.71]

The defining breeziness of Buddy & Jim could never be mistaken for an ill wind, as such, but there are moments at which it's hard not to wish they'd invested a fourth or even a fifth day in the work. [Feb 2013, p.70]

The Joy Formidable continue to keep British rock sexily sturdy. [Feb 2013, p.74]

Weber masks the scale of the enterprise with typical grace. [Feb 2013, p.77]

Wobble and Levene reunited for this brightly lit, muscly rock collaboration. [Dec 2012, p.79]

At first, Fade sounds like more of the same--which is no bad thing. Stick with it, and the influence of producer (Tortoise') John McEntire becomes apparent. [Feb 2013, p.81]

He's continuing his romp through totally unfashionable styles, armed with his endearingly earnest voice and a lot of flutes. [Feb 2013, p.77]

The outcome never exceeds the sum of its parts. [Feb 2013, p.73]

Last original member standing David Thomas remains inscrutable, defining Lady from Shanghai as an album of dance music. [Feb 2013, p.78]

Hills and valleys, warts and all, Complete Columbia is simply a singular, staggering body of work, throwing down challenges in all directions.

It's a reflective set, enlivened by joyous offerings from The Civil Wars and Carolina Chocolate Drops. [Feb 2013, p.75]

The expanded set illustrates the inventiveness of their playing and the original template of their sound was a strong one--these were louder protest songs for a louder time. [Feb 2013, p.94]

The production is beautifully OTT, with everything stretched and digital, zeroes and ones working binary overtime to warp some of Herrema and Hagerty's greatest anthems into robotic rock mantras. [Feb 2013, p.94]

Its cavernous production, Massed campfire guitars and rolling melodies conjure prairies, river and mountains from shore to shining shore. [Feb 2013, p.75]

Though feisty honky-tonk numbers like "I Don't Do Windows" shimmer, the worldweary ballads--especially the Johnson/Alison Krauss duet "Make The World Go Away"--are Sublime. [Feb 2013, p.74]

Ferraro pulls off the trick of sounding cheap and luxurious all at once. [Feb 2013, p.73]

Utterly self-contained, 10cc's collision of Brill Building Craft, Beatles hooks and proggish daring still sounds, for the most part at least, curiously modern. [Jan 2013, p.89]

It may just be a hobby or distraction, but on this showing they've got serious legs. [Jan 2013, p.80]

This is music that continually slips away from you even as you chase down its essence. [Jan 2013, p.80]

It doubtless works best heard in the cinema or the home theatre, and especially in the context of Julian House's beautifully lurid title sequence.

There is no better evocation of the dawn of a new, more questing consciousness than Joni's early albums.... Unfortunately, Joni's Jazz Odyssey leads her into less agreeable territory on the double-album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Mingus, the tribute album of songs co-written with the late Charles Mingus.

It is not the truly transcendent album some may have read in the runes, but it contains several hints that such greatness may, finally, be within his grasp once more.

With Bergsman's dourly dreamy voice and wistful songcraft, it's recognisably indiepop, but sent delightfully pie-eyed on Blur Hawaiians. [Dec 2012, p.77]

Ultimately, it's that compassionate vision of song that resonates through Life Is People, as Fay observes the passing of the days with redemption in mind.

Cut The World blow Hegarty's songs to grander scales. [Sep 2012, p.73]

This is a good, not great record, which you probably don't need to hear, unless you're already immersed in Fennesz's world. [Oct 2012, p.79]

He decided to record the constant cacophony of construction in his Prenzlauer Berg district, reassembling the treated drilling and grinding into haunting ambient pieces. [Dec 2012, p.76]

Blur have released three compilation albums, but none of them point up the band's engagingly contrary creativity and elastic pop nous quite like these two discs.

Fair to say, you won't hear anything like it. [Nov 2012, p.79]

From the Top of Willamette Mountain sounds more confident than the UK debut he released earlier this year.

Desertshore is really only the jumping-off point (Beachy Head?) for an album of ultimately rather bleak electronic songs.... The strongest performances, in fact, come on the two tracks vocalled by Cosey herself.

The uninitiated will find it a good place to start. [Jan 2013, p.81]

Dirty Glow is packed with playful, occasionally disorienting tracks. [Jan 2013, p.80]

An in-joke gone horribly wrong. [Jan 2013, p.80]

Inspired, frustrating, wayward, indulgent, funny, heartfelt and eclectic, taken in one sitting it's far too much, like gorging on the most excessive turkey dinner with all the trimmings. [Jan 2013, p.97]

An album which is a little too anodyne, but redeemed by an engagingly human warmth and unforced sincerity. [Jan 2013, p.83]

Luxury Problems is distinguished by the piercing vocals of Stott's former piano teacher, Alison Skidmore; looped, layered and heavily reverbed, they coil elegantly around Stott's brutalist constructions. [Jan 2013, p.83]

The Voices are usually disembodied munchkin bables which flutter appealingly around the mix, but sometimes Stumbleine makes proper songs. [Jan 2013, p.82]

While the lack of any sound less than 30 years old does occasionally grate, Zeros ends up capturing a sinister cinematic vibe than John Carpenter would be proud of. [Jan 2013, p.82]

Into The Future is a heroic act of denial, nonetheless. The remaining Brains still burn with magnesium-strip intensity. [Jan 2013, p.82]

An album crammed with adhesive melodies. [Jan 2013, p.81]

A welcome return. [Jan 2013, p.81]

In places it has a feel of soundtrack work, strangely restrained for such club fiends, but their grasp of pensive, unsettling dynamics is firm. [Jan 2013, p.80]

The remixers' default mood is kind of middle-of-the-road electronica, neither daring nor danceable. [Jan 2013, p.79]

It's certainly cinematic, and there are nods to Morricone. [Jan 2013, p.79]

Mostly, he comes across as a one-man Arcade Fire. [Jan 2013, p.79]

The result is both pensive and romantic, a work filled with vividly poetic snapshots. [Jan 2013, p.79]

Life & Times is a winning showcase of their uptempo moods. [Jan 2013, p.77]

[A] stunningly well-designed and authoritative record. [Jan 2013, p.77]

The fourth album finds them touting a tougher sound with the addition of a second guitar, but the strident, passionate voice of Erika Wennerstrom remains their calling card. [Jan 2013, p.77]

Like Tragedy & Geometry, it's awash in vintage synthesised sounds with which fans of Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel will be familiar, but remains considerably more concise than this (and its predecessor) suggests. [Jan 2013, p.77]

Post-Bush, post-9/11, post-financial crisis, they sound more like [a] documentary. [Jan 2013, p.77]

The entire album has a refreshingly spontaneous feel, the result of their cutting the dozen songs live, including Parker's vocals. [Jan 2013, p.75]

Well worth the wait. [Jan 2013, p.74]

Her technical brilliance remains stunning; it's now matched by her maturity and modernity. [Jan 2013, p.74]

[van Wissem's] solemn, minor-key lute lines become ensnared in Jarmusch's riptide of guitar feedback and fading chords. [Jan 2013, p.74]

Deer Creek Canyon is dappled with sad-slow shuffles and lovely ruminations on escape, the roll of the seasons and her roots in Colorado. [Jan 2013, p.73]

Bastards sounds like a new Bjork album rather than a cursory add-on. [Jan 2013, p.71]

This impressively diverse and full-bodied debut by 22-year-old Parisian producer Jeremy Guindo is a heartening advert for electronic dance music's blissful spirit of perpetual self-renewal. [Jan 2013, p.71]

As a reminder that music is fundamentally there for our pleasure, The Jazz Age is splendid. [Jan 2013, p.68]

In sentiment and execution, Feeling Mortal is more Hank than Dylan, yet there's a subtle poetry in the way the lyric flits between life and death, dreams and wakefulness.

The acid test of any recorded OST is its ability to stand independent of image and dialogue and on that count, Hill's latest as Umberto more than measures up. [Dec 2012, p.78]

Aside from the Ryan Adams-esque "Bonfires." on their second album the more scruffy, down home elements of Alberta Cross' 2009 debut have been buffed to a stadium sheen. [Sep 2012, p.71]+

Hampson has a discerning ear for when and how to place sounds to best offset each other. [Aug 2012, p.73]

Wonderful it is too, King's rich baritone and Dalgleish's emotive voice delivering a baker's dozen of duets that carry the sting of authentic Country Classics. [Jan 2012, p.94]