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]