The dominant flavor is deliberately faceless and club-friendly electro, but the highly finessed sonics and subtle attention to detail emerge over repeat listens. [Apr 2012, p.88]

The band's smarts and muscle come together with a resounding whomp on the new LP. [Apr 2012, p.75]

He's never sounded quite so bitter as he does on Wrecking Ball.

This painful exercise in manufactured soul-baring Is a genuinely grim proposition. [Apr 2012, p.82]

This singer-songwriter neatly balances the darkly troubled with the charmingly childlike, acoustic clunkiness with intricate finger picking. [Mar 2012, p.98]

Wilner hits a few gorgeous highs. [Mar 2012, p.90]

It's an ingenious arrangement, featuring juddering, minimal percussion, spare piano chords and vocoders that soar to the edge of the studiosphere, worth the price of the album alone. [Mar 2012, p.84]

Phantom Limb mine a solid seam of Southern soul, rock, country, and gospel. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Musically, too, he became far more adventurous than both Roxy Music and the New Romantic legions who echoed the original glam-rock innovations, his work paralleling that of questing artists like Scott Walker and Talk Talk.

It all sounds like a band working out who they are. [Sep 2011, p.88] [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

This is urban-global rather than world music. [Mar 2012, p.92]

With its fidgety electronica and shredded rave, 11th album Parastrophies might've raised eyebrows in 1996, but today there are few Spotify playlists that would unironically accommodate squiggly chip-tunes. [Mar 2012, p.92]

Guthrie's work endures because if its essential big-hearted hospitality--and Farrar, Johnson, Parker and Yames have mad themselves right at home. [Mar 2012, p.93]

Like Maja Ratkje, Jenny Hval and Bjork, Hukkelberg adds another to her already impressive catalogue. [Mar 2012, p.87]

It's all unceasingly beautiful. [Mar 2012, p.81]

The album's heavily layered ambi-rock confections indulge the duo's mutual love of spangled guitar effects, tinselly twinkles and pearly dewdrop shimmers. [Mar 2012, p.97]

It's quite beautiful, even if it feels a little pacific and lav-lamp-like in the long haul. [Feb 2012, p.84]

Will Ozanne comes across as a milder version of James Blake. [Mar 2012, p.84]

These are beautiful songs with a murderous heart. [Feb 2012, p.90]

Screws Get Loose is crammed with infectious pop and arch lyrics that recall The Runaways or Shampoo. [Mar 2012, p.101]

Stewart's preoccupation--narcissism, sexuality, body horror--translate into a sort of febrile synth-pop, dotted with orchestral excursions and abrupt electronics. [Mar 2012, p. 107]

Wong works up from trickling sounds as seemingly innocuous as mid-morning TV music to a rumbling, looped ferocity. [Mar 2012, p.107]

Ghostory is supposedly a concept-album song-portrait, but [the album] feels as evanescent as expensive perfume. [Mar 2012, p.98]

This rather too eager-to-please set doesn't quite live up to its promise. [Mar 2012, p.82]

Every track is a precision-tooled triumph. [Mar 2012, p.81]

This, the follow-up to his lo-fi 2010 debut Learning is a dark business. [Mar 2012, p.97]

White has not only fashioned a terrific album from less than ideal circumstances, but one that finally feels like a worthy successor to No Such Place. [Mar 2012, p.96]

One-hit wonders no more, White and de Martino now sound prepared for a big pop future. [Mar 2012, p.101]

Hotel Sessions is infinitely more charming than the finished item. [Feb 2012, p.91]

LA Woman is at times a raw and bluesy affair, but still one of exquisite taste and judgement. [Feb 2012, p.84]

Brave and bonkers. [Mar 2012, p.94]

Derek Miller's flashy axemanship and Alexis Krauss' swoon are compromised by sanitized production. [Mar 2012, p.98]

[The album recalls] the warm, breezy charms of labelmates Beach house. [Mar 2012, p.92]

A musical time machine. [Mar 2012, p.82]

Here the pair [Richard Swift and Damien Jurado] resume roles for an equally enchanting follow-up. [Feb 2012, p.96]

The album's highpoints, particularly "Show Me Everything" and "This Fire Of Autumn" showcase a band who seem to have rediscovered new ways of putting together their already impressive constituent parts. [Mar 2012, p.101]

The Caretaker creates ambient music that doesn't merely settle in the background but is evocative of memory and loss. [Feb 2012, p.83]

The songwriting is always of a high quality. [Mar 2012, p.79]

It does feel [like] a somewhat softer collection than its predecessor. [Feb 2012, p.84]

A remarkable, genre-defying album. [Mar 2012, p.86]

If you fell for Real Estate and their peers, here's the root. [Mar 2012, p.81]

It's frequently impressive and occasionally lovely, but often loses its soul in Emmanuel's relentless barrage of spectacular effects. [Mar 2012, p.107]

Ultimately though, Tennis are too polished and MOR to rival the peaks of the trio's edgier peers. [Mar 2012, p.101]

The odd gauche moment remains, but her plaudits are not undeserved. [Mar 2012, p.98]

While house purists might find it juvenile, and there are some aimless passages, the lo-fi production is beautiful. [Mar 2012, p.87]

Mr. M is bold in arts and surprisingly experimental. [Mar 2012, p.76]

These 13 examples can get annoying when they stray into willful atonality, but really hit the spot when he lingers on simple themes. [Mar 2012, p.81]

Angular oldies like "Map Ref 41N 93W" and Kidney Bingos" still sparkle, and the relentless "Drill" is boring in all the right ways. [Mar 2012, p.107]

His blend of house and Eurodisco soon settles into a bland formula of bittersweet Balearic fare. [Mar 2011, p.98]

Todd Terry and Masters At Work's percolating euphoria warms every groove on this intelligently realized debut. [Mar 2012, p.79]

Like The Fall, PSB are always different, always the same. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Americanized rock'n'roll that sounds as modern as it does vintage 1970s and effortlessly blends AC/DC riffage, Fleetwood Mac AOR and White Stripes punk-blues pyrotechnics. [Mar 2012, p.79]

At times, as on "De Javu," it's a dazzling new dimension, but some may await his return to more conventional zones. [Mar 2012, p.90]

Kweller is a disarming presence and an unpretentious sonic architect. [Mar 2012, p.90]

The Blondes' expansive synth jams can sometimes feel a little directionless. [Mar 2012, p.81]

There's a striking purity to this record. [Mar 2012, p.79]

This collection is ample testament to one of the last great English avant-pop careers. [Mar 2012, p.84]

This album is made with care, love and expertise and it shows on every song. [Mar 2012, p.80]

Other tracks hide catchier tunes amid the quagmire of guitar. [Mar 2012, p.79]

A graceful, distinctive album. [Mar 2012, p.101]

James Graham's ragged brogue remains deeply affecting, humanizing this unsettling music. [Mar 2012, p.101]

This score suggests many of those Nine Inch Nails tricks hold good. [mar 2012, p.97]

2007's Burnt Toast & offerings established her as the natural successor to Lucinda Williams--this does not contradict the notion. [Mar 2012, p.97]

Meiburg's troubled tenor is abetted by sinewy arrangements full of the disquiet of that decade. [Mar 2012, p.95]

In this mood, 57 minutes with Barnes is exhausting. [Mar 2012, p.94]

Already it feels like they're playing to a rapidly disappearing crowd. [Mar 2012, p.89]

This handsome debut bristles with ideas that could lead to some truly remarkable music later on. [Mar 2012, p.89]

The lustrous "In Your Light" alone should see his name on billboards. [Mar 2012, p.87]

It is Lanegan's most accessible to date. [Mar 2012, p.83]

Impeccably arranged, the whole thing plays out like an extended, pragmatic version of "A Day In The Life." [Mar 2012, p.82]

Air seem to have found little fresh inspiration in his bricolage. [Mar 2012, p.79]

Other Lives are clearly kindred spirits of The National, but there's not a single clunky or derivative note here. [Sep 2011, p.93]

The best moments ion this latest from Francois Marry come with added West African sparkle. [Feb 2012, p.86]

The old-timey accompaniment and Dalton's bluesy vocals perfectly suit Hardin's exquisitely sad songs. [Feb 2012, p.83]

All over the shop stylistically--but a keen handle on dynamics and narrative holds it all together. [Feb 2012, p.97]

The patchwork of Orb-like sonic tapestries and guest vocals by some uncharacteristically gnarly rock veterans is not hugely original, but still manages to engage. [Feb 2012, p.84]

The result is four meandering tracks. [Feb 2012, p.89]

Royal Trux's '80s junk aesthetic has since been appropriated by James Ferraro et al, but Herrema does it with a sneer that's hard to resist. [Feb 2012, p.81]

In many ways Clay Class is another helping of their broken blues and Stuckist infra-poetry, charting a Fallen landscape, stripped even of grotesque enchantment. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Dramatic and ravishing, 100 Acres of Sycamore is some achievement.

The trio's blend of live performance, samples and electronica is hardly groundbreaking. [Feb 2012, p.98]

Laura J. Martin's debut album is an extraordinary and eclectic mix of flute, loops, mandolin and xylophone. [Feb 2012, p.92]

All and all, it's a little too cool for its own good. [Feb 2012, p.97]

Cooing fragmentary, dreamlike lyrics in a fuzzy-warm purr, this young singer's kittenish vocal affectations will grate on some... [but] Dillon redeems her whimsy with promising nods towards Bjork, Joanna Newsom and Lykke Li. [Jan 2012, p.84]

The mood flickers between foreboding and playful; blues for modern times. [Jan 2012, p. 93]

Starts loud, alienated and proudly rockist, and stays right there. [Jan 2012, p. 93]

Delrey loves rock'n'roll, but fuses it with drum machines, vintage synths and mischief. [Jan 2012, p. 84]

An unusually poetic songwriter revelling in his proximity to nature. [Jan 2012, p.88]

These Aesop-style animal-themed fables combine elegantly quirky orchestral chamber-pop arrangements with barbed and knotted lyrics. [Feb 2012, p.84]

Back On Time is restlessly inventive without being overwrought. [Feb 2012, p.97]

An album that is as eccentric as it is atmospheric. [Feb 2012, p.90]

It's the intoxicating instrumentals, "Boudica" and "In Motion Slow," that remind you of her capricious talent. [Feb 2012, p.91]

Some tracks suffer, not from a lack of inherent quality but from the fact that you've already heard any number of perfectly decent, faithful reading of them. [Feb 2012, p.88]

Enjoyable stuff. [Feb 2012, p.81]

There's a punch that saves them [from] drifting into coffee-table politesse. [Feb 2011, p.98]

Gonjasufi's nervous energy makes MU.ZZ.LE strangely soothing. [Feb 2012, p.86]

Klara and Johanna Soderberg have crafted a remarkably mature work. [Feb 2012, p.84]