When approached on its own merits, the Dave Cobb-produced Be Right Here is a minor classic of the genre. [Feb 2024, p.27]

A voyage in time and space - exploring the Amazon rainforest and transversing the African Diaspora. [Apr 2024, p.32]

He's one of the few guitarists around who can make a guitar solo an article of faith. [Mar 2024, p.25]

Love In Constant Spectacle, is by some distance her most satisfying album. Full of surprises and tantalisingly familiar, it’s the sound of Weaver stretching out and drawing from her wealth of experience to fashion a heartfelt, head-spinning account of grief and solace. [Apr 2024, p.28]

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]

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

Their creative freedom is evident again on their final album. [Aug 2024, p.30]

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

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 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]

Accompanied by a swinging combo in which double bassist Ferg Ireland, pianist Joe Webb and Giacomo Smith on clarinet/sax are outstanding, she captures Vaughan’s depth of expression with perfect control, but proves she’s more than just a talented imitator by authoritatively stamping her own considerable personality on a stark, radical take on “Inner City Blues”, very different from Vaughan’s 1973 version. [Jul 2024, p.38]

The result is her most diverse and audacious album to date. What remains rooted in her jazz origins, though, is her voice. [Jul 2024, p.40]

“Day 2000 Awake”’s warmth, inspired by parenthood, is perfectly poised too, and if “Poor Symmetry” seats her at a piano in Joni Mitchell mood, the pulsing “My Hands In The Water” recalls Kate Bush’s mature, sumptuous pop. [Jul 2024, p.31]

A 3LP set captures Sunday’s entire show, and there’s a shorter ‘best of both nights’ version – which surprisingly, but perhaps thankfully, skips “Country House” – but there’s no questioning the band’s enduring energy and charismatic chemistry, whether emphasising “Under The Westway”’s Bowie fixations or “The Narcissist”’s unforgettable hooks. [Sep 2024, p.29]

Hang In There With Me radiates everything great about Rigby’s trademark Phil Ochs-y folk-punk, and the spectacular “Dylan In Dubuque” is a droll, defiant promise of more where it came from. [Sep 2024, p.39]

Whatever the provenance of these songs, Indoor Safari is marvellous, by any reasonable critical metric a glorious confection. [Sep 2024, p.26]

With Wasser’s careworn voice centre-stage and basic parts recorded live with her simpático band, there’s a new simplicity, swing and airy languor in play on these 12 eloquent, soul-pop songs. [Oct 2024, p.37]

While Jack McNeill’s woodwind accompaniment lends “In The Green Chapel” and “As” a bucolic atmosphere with an edge of ever-present threat. Meanwhile, snatches of Macfarlane’s elegant words add further intrigue to a wonderfully original piece of work. [Oct 2024, p.43]

Seun Kuti leaves no doubt as to who wears the crown on six songs that exude enormous confidence. [Oct 2024, p.37]

Aged 91, Nelson brings gravitas to any lyric, the more world-weary or wistful the better, and these covers fit him like a glove. [Dec 2024, p.36]

Tuttle takes the krautrock flavours even further, with hypnotic Tangerine Dream-ish accents cohering around Michael’s manic melodies. It ends up sounding like nothing else in either Chapman or Tuttle’s respective oeuvres – and there’s where the magic lies. [Sep 2024, p.34]

The album is a fantastic ride along well-travelled spaceways, balancing Ra compositions with an eclectic mix of early 20th-century American music. [Jan 2025, p.30]

It helps that Karen Peris’s voice continues to convey so much warmth and wonder. Likewise, her lyrics captures the tiniest joys of everyday life in modest but very finely crafted songs. [Jan 2025, p.35]

A world of suffering and ribald survival breathes here. [Review of the Year 2024, p.34]

With what Garba Toure terms their Afro-rock'n'roll dialled down, Paul Chandler and the band's co-production deploys their epic cast as distinct elements in ultimately communal music. The studio sounds packed yet with sufficient space for individual contribution. [Feb 2025, p.38]

Just gorgeous. [Jan 2025, p.40]

At other times he falls back on elegantly vintage-clad pastichery, but then the stomping baroque pop duet of "I Gotta Limit" and the sun-dappled wistfulness of "To Live For What Once Was" prick up our ears once again. [Jan 2025, p.31]

Weirdest of all is "Don't Forget Jayne", where JBL freaks out over a wonderfully odd fusion of Taylor's disjointed samba drumming and Wener's smooth jazz guitar licks. [Mar 2025, p.34]