His guitar and bass playing are rather more agricultural than his rhythm-keeping but this all adds to the character of his freestyle philosophising. [Jul 2024, p.39]

The peppy “Setting Sun” recalls the guitar jangle of the band’s early days, but for the most part this is a bold and seductive exploration of symphonic pop that relishes pushing envelopes at will. [Jul 2024, p.31]

These essentially dour, '90s synth sounds aren't an obvious nirvana, though, but a wounded vocal sensitivity sometimes suggesting Midlake and Harp's Tim Smith, and deceptively crafted lyrics, add complexity to the prayers for peace. [Jul 2024, p.39]

While the album is rooted in Ennio Morricone’s dusty spaghetti western soundtracks and Daniel Lanois’ high-lonesome ambient, songs like the spacy “El Fantasma” and the kaleidoscopic title track ground their psychedelic drift in the intense chemistry between the two brothers and the way they play off each other supernaturally. [Jun 2024, p.33]

O’Rourke mastered, and in some cases remastered, all the music and it sounds appropriately fantastic. .... There’s a real narrative sense that their story has come full circle, but naturally it’s presented in this abstracted way, intentionally sequenced to feel like a film presenting flashbacks, in Grubbs’ view. [Jun 2024, p.40]

It's a lovely record: McCartney is typically chipper, the song selection outstanding and the sound fabulous. [Jul 2024, p.52]

Morton's naive delivery gives "Purple Yellow" the poignancy of Portishead, and UB40's Ali Campbell popping up on "Broxtowe Girl" feels like a fever dream. [Jul 2024, p.38]

This luxuriant collection is one of Moby's most consistently inviting and uplifting in years. [Jul 2024, p.38]

The Quebecois duo channel Suicide's proto-punk minimalism on the charming, drum Machine-driven "L'ile Aux Bleuets" and take rhythmic cues from Stereolab on English language ode to simpler times "Parc De Beauvoir" - while album standout "Le Fei" is four minutes of giddy, childlike joy. [Jul 2024, p.31]

Although it's an album that demands immersion, Butler does allow himself to - musically - cut loose, wielding his guitar with trademark flair on "Pretty D" and "Living The Dream". [Jun 2024, p.30]

Overly indebted to its inspirations - among them Ghetts, Stormzy and The Streets - it may be, but the stroppy "I Bhfiacha Linne" and "Rhino Ket", a moody techno/dancehall hybrid, are hard to deny. [Jun 2024, p.36]

He returns in double-quick time with more selections from his 80-song lockdown splurge, but this time in a gentler, almost uplifting mood. .... Radical optimism rather suits him. [Jul 2024, p.31]

He's best on matters of the heart: "Father" is a spectral journey to a lost 1970s of family intimacy and may be the most affecting song yet in a catalog stuffed with heartbreakers. [Jul 2024, p.32]

The finished work is a smorgasbord of all of their best bits. [Jun 2024, p.34]

There's an appealing innocence to their songs about the daily joys and troubles of tribal life, and the overall effect is as charming as it is arresting. [Jul 2024, p.41]

Throughout his three-decade career, E has brought a hushed beauty to the act of staring into the abyss, and his use of space on EELS TIME! (all caps for added irony) makes this lonely guy seem that much more lost in space. [Jul 2024, p.32]

Only a couple of tracks into Bonny Light Horseman’s third album, it’s clear this is something special. Beauty erupts from the vocal harmonies of Eric Johnson and Anais Mitchell, who lift the Technicolor folk-rock of “Lover Take It Easy” into something close to heaven. And then it keeps getting better. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Swamp Dogg shows how music can speak truth to power on the ballad “Songs To Sing” and rousing “Rise Up”, which features that rarity in bluegrass: a face-melting electric guitar solo, courtesy of Vernon Reid. [Jun 2024, p.39]

Their largely extemporised debut traverses free jazz, drone, spiritual music and experimental rock, establishing moods from contemplative to panicky and eruptive. [Jun 2024, p.29]

This third album is their richest and strongest to date. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Bandleader/pianist Bill Payne opted for an album of blues covers, making the jobs of replacement guitarist/ singer Scott Sharrard (who played a similar role with Gregg Allman) and drummer Tony Leone less daunting. The rejigged Feats perform their modest mission masterfully. [Jun 2024, p.36]

They’re back in the studio together, finding profundity in the commonplace, from a cheap cup of coffee to watching an infant’s first steps, on nine songs which range from the acoustic balladry of “Never Apart”, with its banjo and folk harmonies, to the scorching cowpunk of “Love Of AGirl”, via the classic country-rock of “Country Kid” and the plaintive melancholia of “2020 Regret”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

There’s avintage, spooked quality to the dreamlike “Woke Up And No Feet” and “What Doesn’t Work What Does” as she layers and edits her vocals, filling in gaps with piano and guitar, to create ahighly alluring portrait. [Jun 2024, p.30]

His gruff grumble suits the narrator’s weary stoicism, and not for the last time on this album, those gnarled fingers wring flamenco flavoured miracles from the fretboard of that battered, antique Martin. [Jun 2024, p.28]

Their trademarked scuffed jangle sparkles on the likes of “Pine For You”, and such downbeat cuts as “Rifled Through” demonstrate that none of their facility for the lachrymose epic has ebbed since “Taillights Fade”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

Diamond Jubilee feels like the work of an artist operating at the peak of their powers who is able to harness and crystallise all that potency and charge into a record that, on the surface, should be far too large, messy and stretched out to contain such a cohesive body of work. [Jul 2024, p.36]

Her songs feel so neatly woven that they deny all attempts to tease them apart. Listening to Night Reign, you mostly find yourself focusing on Aftab’s voice – a rich and smoky thing, gentle and open-hearted on “Whiskey”, reaching back through the centuries on “Na Gul”. But it also shows she has a keen eye for a collaborator. [Jul 2024, p.29]

His ninth album rests on his strengths. His balladeer’s voice is a steadying comfort on “Heavy Rain”, adding subtle Orbison shivers on “I’ll Never Get Over You”. Duane Eddy-like twangs judder through murder ballad “Two For His Heels”, and a guitar solo scorches “Deep Space”. The album’s beating heart, though, is “People”, a supernal acoustic tribute to Sheffield. [Jun 2024, p.33]

The melodies are uniformly strong, the guitar playing never less than stunning: This is top-quality Thompson. [Jun 2024, p.39]

Crowded House’s eighth studio release ticks all the expected boxes. Pitch-perfect harmonies and inventive chord sequences abound. .... Where it falls short, perhaps, is the absence of the full-blooded radio-friendly hits of old, although the shuffling “All That I Can Ever Own” is a close cousin to 1993’s “Distant Sun”. [Jun 2024, p.32]

These are distressed, in-limbo songs. Their unlikely latter-day alliance with Dave Fridmann adds poignantly lavish flourishes and echoing space-age keyboards to the dead-end punk tattoo of “I Don’t Fucking Know What I’m Gunna Do” and monotone monologue and suffocating synths of “Nothing/Everything”. [Jul 2024, p.35]

If the meandering electronic maelstroms of “Letter To My Daughter” and “Waking Up” don’t have the melodic hooks to gain the same traction, there’s a bewitching feel to it all that endures nonetheless. [Jun 2024, p.29]

The lullaby-like psych of “Side By Side” and the more insistent rhythms of Amama’s title track are both enriched by the avidly experimental bent. Even better are the summery “(Alone In) Brussels” and “Dust Bunny”, which sound like they could be long-forgotten yé-yé hits gone warped and frayed after too long in the sun. [Jul 2024, p.32]

Jess Hickie-Kallenbach’s woozy, bluesy, melismatic moans, Finlay Clark’s detuned guitar crackles and David Kennedy’s scrambled action-painting drums can become a little unrelenting over the long haul. But standout tracks like the combustible, centrifugal “Silver Grit Passes Thru My Teeth” and the brooding, tempo-twisting “M M M” reward patient listeners with hypnotic intensity and off-kilter beauty. [Jul 2024, p.39]

A record that is quietly powerful in its delicate yet emotional execution. [May 2024, p.39]

Hyperdrama boasts the same kind of air-punching swagger and imaginative ambition that made Random Access Memories so inescapable. It also benefits from a similarly formidable guestlist. [Jul 2024, p.35]

“Poppies” is an aching, Beatle-esque waking dream, half-heard car radio for company, prime Aimee Mann a comparison. Cleveland’s distorted electric guitar, cool, Stereolab-like synth glides and dub Ethio-jazz further colour the scene. [Jul 2024, p.35]

Noel Gallagher, who has been writing with Weller since 22 Dreams, co-pens one of the best songs he’s put his name to in a while: a stomping piece of glammy punk called “Jumble Queen”. .... Elsewhere, Weller’s own songs are also beautifully enhanced by other collaborators. [Jul 2024, p.24]

Producer Aaron Dessner’s quick working pace and embrace of imperfection have helped deliver a rawer set of songs written when Atwell was weaning herself off antidepressants and feared feeling’s return. [Jun 2024, p.29]

It's a beautiful-sounding record with tracks like "Somber The Drums" and "Everyone Out" providing moments of tender poppy beauty amid the general sense of decay. [Jun 2024, p.32]

“MC Mambo” by the mixed-heritage German-Ghanaian collective Pepper, Onion, Ginger Salt is aborderline novelty quasirap number that oozes wonky DIY charm, like much of this uneven but absorbing collection. [Jun 2024, p.50]

If that means she sometimes leans into apparently clichéd sentiments on “Keep Calm Carry On”, “Do Or Die”, the Buddhism-evoking “Om Shanti Om” or even her gossamer-soft cover of Dire Straits’ “Why Worry”, her whispery vocal style, often accompanied by plucked acoustic guitar and understated strings, still captivates. [Jun 2024, p.30]

Enchanting. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Lives Outgrown is a quite different prospect to Gibbons' previous work - more intimate, more personal, coloured by the grief and goodbyes se has weathered in recent years. But it is still possible to find a thread that runs from here to Out Of Season, and back to Portishead. [Jun 2024, p.23]

If it can feel a little hermetic, he’s at his best on the Eno-ish lullaby “First Responder”, where strings and lap steel drift in like a summer breeze. [Jun 2024, p.39]

On their second outing, these three peripatetic musicians pick up more or less where they left off on their 2022 debut. This is no bad thing. [Jun 2024, p.27]

The result is a highly engaging, emotionally rich debut, where defiant working-class pride anthems like “Dig!” jostle for space alongside the soaring urban blues confessional “This Here Ain’t Water” and the joyously puerile playground chant “Shithouse”. [Jun 2024, p.29]

As LaFarge tells it, Rhumba Country is partly the tunes he hummed to himself while reaping and sowing. Fine tunes they are as well. [May 2024, p.35]

The results range from flights of lysergic beauty on “Rainbow Ball”, “Split Screen” and “Seen” to a burst of jagged, early-days energy on “Nothing To Do”. For the first time in ages, they’re not overthinking it. [Jun 2024, p.36]

This is a stark and often moving listen, setting her coldly operatic voice against a backdrop of billowing modern classical and wintry electronics. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Arab Strap songs mostly have a strong, vinegary flavour, and this is abracingly sour album over the long haul. The relentless misanthropic grind can drag in places. But as ever, Moffat’s withering scorn is sweetened by beautiful poetry, tender emotion and self-aware, bruise-black humour. [May 2024, p.36]

At its best, like the gorgeous, nine-minute “Round The World”, his bittersweet sound feels like the work of an art-music auteur. [May 2024, p.30]

So how does that chaos translate into making music in your fifties? With greater depth and variety, it would appear. [Jun 2024, p.36]

What strikes you is the sheer variety of styles and textures that Keenan and Cargill were playing around with. It’s a shimmering patchwork of ideas and moments, some more realised than others, some beautiful, some stark. .... Spell Blanket is a glimpse at what might have been. A memory of the future. [May 2024, p.42]

This merging of hypnotic rhythms with pulsing electro is apparent throughout, especially on squelchy tracks like "Got To Be Who U Are", and the result is a potent fusion. [Jun 2024, p.36]

Tracyanne Campbell still writes exquisite songs that don’t sacrifice melancholy for cleverness, and the band still provide smart arrangements that nod to country, Motown, Brill Building pop and other distinctly American sounds. [May 2024, p.32]

A cresting, rolling record of complexity and depth. [May 2024, p.24]

Ranging from explosive Afro-funk workouts by Petelo Vicka et Son Nzazi and Les Bantous de la Capitale to more psych-influenced stunners by Abeti et Les Redoutables and Zaiko Langa Langa, these rediscoveries are thrilling enough for Congo Funk! to deserve a place next to African Scream Contest among Analog Africa’s most indispensable collections. [May 2024, p.53]

Despite remarkable playing and energy that charges through much of this record, it’s also contemplative, varied and tender at times, with the gentle sway of tracks like “Takoba” hitting as hard as the noise and fury of “Sousoume Tamachek”. [May 2024, p.38]

The LP opens with “My Golden Years”, a delectable mélange of Harrisonian 12-string riffs, Wilsonian harmonies and layer-cake hooks, and reaches its apex with the glorious Beach Boys homage “In The Eyes Of The Girl”, with Sean Ono Lennon co-producing and playing bass. [Jun 2024, p.35]

Jazz remains the root of his sound, with Washington’s saxophone as bold and vibrant as ever. But the grand orchestral sweep of albums past is pared back, replaced by adeeper engagement with hip-hop, funk and soul. [May 2024, p.41]

Though Chasny’s folkier inclinations generally prevail over Six Organs’ equal affection for psych explosions, it’s still thrilling to hear him set the controls for the big red sun in the final minutes of “Summer’s Last Rays”. [May 2024, p.41]

An album that has bite and snarl but also a wonderfully woozy and unfurling sense of groove. [Jun 2024, p.36]

There’s something galvanising about the way they’ve signed off with their best album in decades. This is not to slight previous albums like Perpetuum Mobile or Alles In Allem, but the group are on particularly excellent form. [Jun 2024, p.26]

Opener “I Suck At Grieving” is a musical marvel, a song about losing a parent that’s genuinely fun to sing along to. “Jealous” is a garage-rock Gen Z remake of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”, while “Pretty Good For A Bad Day” – a duet with All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth – offers a clever sense of perspective. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Throughout, Rademaker's tremulous vocals and endearing slacker persona imbue his songs with a heart-tugging humanity. [May 2024, p.34]

“Stock Horror” offering aghostly absence, its additional sepulchral weight midway through welcoming what could be ameteor shower, while the amorphous “Dim Hopes” ultimately brings brighter skies too. Similarly, “We Were Vaporised” effects alanguid transubstantiation. [Jun 2024, p.39]

Another radical musical/ psychological metamorphosis. [Jun 2024, p.39]

Muttered vocals and jazzy trumpet combine on the unsettling “God Save The Queen”, and even Mary Lattimore’s harp and Lonney Holley’s graceful voice can’t disguise “Guilty”’s uncomfortable challenges. [Jun 2024, p.37]

Rhett Miller’s quartet crank up the cowpunk on the likes of “This World”, “Falling Down” and “Chased The Setting Sun”, but time, inevitably, has tempered their collective experience. [Jun 2024, p.37]

There’s acreaky Sunset Boulevard synth-pop air of nostalgia to much of Nonetheless, but just when you’re ready to dismiss it, they pull out “Love Is The Law”, adream collaboration between WH Auden and John Barry, which shoots straight into the Top 10 of their indisputably greatest songs. [Jun 2024, p.37]

Jain often subverts the placid mood with playful details, like the fractalised vocals that fill "Our Touching Tongues" or the synth arpeggios that add a sprightly energy throughout. [Apr 2024, p.35]

The music here swells, surges and rages without ever losing the vulnerability at its core. [May 2024, p.31]

Forgiveness Is Yours sometimes becomes too diffuse, hampered by a surplus of bold ideas that do not get all the necessary follow-through. But it Abounds with queasy pleasures all the same. [May 2024, p.32]

Light Verse rejoices in its playful details. [May 2024, p.35]

Fu##in Up captures Young and the Horse on blazing form. Nelson makes acapable duelling partner for Young, working intuitively alongside Old Black’s grizzled solos, while Lofgren’s honky-tonk piano lends ashimmying quality to these craggy, elemental songs. [May 2024, p.41]

A sublime composition. [Feb 2024, p.37]

At just 25 minutes, it’s very much a listen-through, though the percussive clattering and ominous synthesiser hum of “Names Make The Name” constitute a standout. [Apr 2024, p.41]

His voice might not be as powerful as it was – “This Ain’t Rock And Roll” sees him push it to the throaty limit –but it still has range, control and versatility, while his phrasing is consistently imaginative. [May 2024, p.30]

On the first LP, the 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic adds top-heavy accompaniment to his melodic playing. .... On the second LP, however, the 11-member Umbria Jazz Orchestra sounds simultaneously nimbler and heavier. [May 2024, p.32]

Supremely inviting, warm and ruefully radiant. .... A crown on a career still going strong. [May 2024, p.31]

The result sits somewhere between Mazzy Star and Broadcast, exploring a liminal space between the more propulsive moments of the album. [Apr 2024, p.41]

The band's first full-length project with prolific writer-producer dan Carey mostly stays within familiar punk-funk parameters, but is generally an infectiously kinetic, richly detailed, timeless affair. [May 2024, p.29]

A squealing noise-rock juggernaut that balances gruff anthemicism with a certain improvisatory elan. [May 2024, p.38]

This is a fretful and ferocious record, lyrically much preoccupied with things having ended or appearing about to end, but musically much more blaze of glory than any kind of funeral pyre. [May 2024, p.40]

Thematically and musically, this is classic Hawkwind –epic space-rock with science-fiction lyrics –resulting in a double album crammed with songs like “The Tracker” or “Traveller Of Time And Space” that could have been written at any time since 1970 and therefore fit seamlessly into one of rock’s great canons. [May 2024, p.34]

The power of Cotton’s compositions for Engelchen lies in both its clarity, and its lack of affectation. She’s sensitive to the story, conveying it through simplicity. [Apr 2024, p.31]

Not everything hits the target, partly due to strangely sluggish pacing, but impassioned weepies like “Work Today (And Tomorrow)” and the sarcastic, agreeably sloppy “Everybody’s Somebody” showcase an impressive vocal and emotional range. [Apr 2014, p.31]

Resounds with the liberated feeling of an artist who not only has something to say but an audience to say it to. [May 2024, p.35]

Metz's latest combines the Jesus Lizard's Goat-era aggression with PiL's Album-era rigour. [May 2024, p.38]

Yummy can be lyrically awkward as Tim Booth addresses conspiracy theories and digital addition. Often, though, influences brewed via innocent '80s indie and lusty Emo ambience spark arresting hybrids. [Apr 2024, p.35]

Who Will You Believe is the sound of a man who has not only grown into himself, but is finding that, despite dents and losses, he's kind of enjoying life. His trademark country-rock jangle glistens. [Apr 2024, p.39]

Pop-minded producers Dimitri Tikovoi and Dan Grech-Marguerat add a sheen to the Up The Bracket-style clatter, and unexpectedly stately arrangements. [Mar 2024, p.32]

The predominant flavour here is a sort of manic hedonism, but scratch the sequinned surface and you find some witty social commentary and a seam of vulnerability. [May 2024, p.35]

The highlight is "I'll Do Whatever You Want", a gentle nimbus of melody featuring fellow flute convert Andre 3000 and Floating Points' Samuel Shepherd on twinkling Rhodes. [May 2024, p.39]

There are surprises everywhere. While "R&B" and "Nearly Daffodils" are sprightly, irreverent post-punk, the influence of Black Country, Nee Road nd Radiohead are evident on the complex, proggy title track and the diverse, hushed final third of the album. Lily Fontaine's lyrics, to are deep and funny. [Apr 2024, p.32]

The result is a richly produced album of breezy, melodic and infectious indie-rock with hooks galore. [May 2024, p.31]

Characterised by a laid-back, full-band sound, this heartfelt music exudes the warm thrill of catching up and looking back among old friends. [Apr 2024, p.35]