“Hello, Hi” is one of Ty’s most lean and focused albums to date. But the closer you get, the more you spot its idiosyncrasies. Heartfelt and playful, homespun and surreal, down in the dumps and head-over-heels in love: here is Ty Segall in all his wonderful contradictions. [Aug 2022, p.18]

The Sadies’ nebulous country-rock moves through glistening psychedelia (“Message To Belial”), gorgeous string ballads (“All The Good”) and fierce garage fuzz (“Ginger Moon”). [Aug 2022, p.31]

[A] set of lean, characteristically nuanced, folk-edged songs. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Moonshine is a set piece, but “Greenway”, a nudge at The Beatles’ “Because” with rippling keys and cicadas, and the baffled starburst that is “With You” stand out. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Though their drive to fill all available space causes some songs to grow diff use, their vision coheres on “Taken By The Hand”, a suitably audacious fusion of ferocious post-hardcore and anthemic Southern rock. [Aug 2022, p.23]

The basic formula may be familiar, but Mallinder’s ear for fresh noises and slippery grooves remains as sharp as ever. [Aug 2022, p.29]

This push-pull between melody and twisting beats, veering back and forth between dark and joyous moments, is the crux of this excellent album, one that glides snappily between acid electro, synth-washed indie, crunchy pop and dance-floor rippers. [Aug 2022, p.36]

Purim blends new material with rebooted old favorites here, applying her lush liquid harmonies and dazzling six-octave vocal acrobatics to voluptuous bossa nova reveries. [May 2022, p.32]

Narcissistic (“Black Hole Baby”, a montage of radio praise and day-in-the-life mission statement), earnest (“crushed.zip”, an anxiety-fuelled showcase for singer Orono’s sugary-sad voice) and deeply weird. [Aug 2022, p.33]

Dan Hyndman supplies a reliably cryptic stream of absurdist prattle, though his decision to stick with largely adlibbed lyrics robs Down Tools of some of the force and focus of last year’s excellent Lines Redacted. [Aug 2022, p.30]

Its eloquent yet unfussy nature and thoughtful arrangements are clear affirmation. [Aug 2022, p.33]

There are rowdy barn-raisers, but also melodic, meditative grooves and strange, insidious songs. It’s an album of almost fragile beauty, intense loneliness and raging storms. Not for the last time, Crazy Horse took Neil Young somewhere he wasn’t expecting. It’s just a shame it’s taken us so long to get there too.

They’ve managed to make tonal inconsistencies feel like an actual consistency, rather than being a jarring and detracting experience. They’ve wrangled chaos into submission, and currently sound like no other band out there. [Aug 2022, p.34]

Pearson’s clear knack for melodic songcraft is plentiful, across the breezy “Talk Over Town” or the sugary indie-pop of “Alligator”, resulting in an album that nails introspective songwriting just as seamlessly as it does infectious pop. [Aug 2022, p.31]

Full of hits and misses as it sways back and forth between indie and electro, never quite finding its feet. [Aug 2022, p.30]

There are no giant leaps here, it’s very much Interpol as you know them, but there’s plenty of micro evolutions, impressive production and subtle tweaks to make this a welcome addition to their catalogue. [Aug 2022, p.28]

The effect is kaleidoscopic, as the music constantly moves and morphs to reveal new shapes, colours and meanings. [Jul 2022, p.31]

Bock’s solo work takes a subtler but no less arresting approach, weaving in melodic passages for strings, organ and woodwind and rhythmic calls to her Brazilian heritage in ways that only fully reveal themselves with repeated listens. [Aug 2022, p.25]

GBV’s second of 2022 is another LP packed full of charm, imagination and winning tunes. [Aug 2022, p.26]

The only downside to this soundtrack is that you can’t watch Prince slink around stage or pretend to take a bath with the audience, but at least the Blu-ray. [Jul 2022, p.44]

From the creeping “Let That Sink In” to growling “Warpaint”, Sage Motel is super stuff: check in at your earliest convenience. [Jun 2022, p.31]

Exploratory, visionary record. [Aug 2022, p.22]

The bereft “Have Mercy On Me” and hopeful, lightly gospel “I Have Wandered All My Unending Days” are particularly striking, while the concluding 11-minute instrumental mix works as metaphor for Cave’s faith: immersive and foundational. [Jul 2022, p.25]

Emerald Sea isn’t your average third album. An otherworldly mix of Gustav Holst’s drama, The Flaming Lips’ psychedelia and Broadcast’s retro-futurist exotica, with hints of the band’s earlier Beach House dream-pop, it breaks a fourth wall of sound with “The Glare”’s saturated reverberations, while “Deeper Surround” offers a chimerical carousel ride of synths. [Aug 2022, p.33]

On The Spur, Shelley captures the ache and the sweetness, the loss and the love, the coming and going of it all, with greater scale and skill than ever before.

The pair sparked and quickly knocked out an album that sounds years in the maturing. [Jul 2022, p.25]

The way it weaves this constellation of influence and artfulness into 10 songs that are lighter than air, deceptively simple, yet cumulatively, surprisingly moving. [Aug 2022, p.32]

It starts with rousing rebel anthem “The Real”, and further highlights include the shoegaze drawl of “What’s In A Name?”, the jittery “Silenced” and the sinister growling surf of “You Think I’m Joking”. [Jul 2022, p.25]