Bovell's take doesn't suggest new approaches, so much as reinforce and highlight what was already there. [Dec 2021, p.45]

The lasting impression is of a record whose most tangible identity is that of a band on the verge of change contemplating their own back pages. [Dec 2021, p.47]

As with her best material, it's an album to lip-synch for your life to. [Oct 2021, p.31]

On this generous and kaleidoscopic soul album, Harding holds nothing back. [Dec 2021, p.30]

While themes of race and gender are woven into this richly sensual second, notably the defiant spoken-word piece “Changes”, they do not define her kaleidoscopic work overall. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Sweeping strings and sparse piano merge deftly with Jordan’s melancholic voice on “Light Blue”, while the fingerpicked “c. et al.” is bare-bones heartache wrapped up in tender beauty. [Dec 2021, p.33]

A lyrical treasure trove, but the biggest surprise of the self-produced album is the richness of the sound. Nadler’s usual sparse, gothic folk style is emboldened by well-chosen collaborators from Simon Raymonde to Emma Ruth Rundle. [Dec 2021, p.31]

He's honest about uncertainties both personal and political. [Nov 2021, p.25]

His second album is a rich, meaty fusion of jazz, grime, hip-hop, dancehall and reggae. [Dec 2021, p.26]

A heavily disguised break-up album, which secretes its sorrow beneath waves of gushing pop. [Dec 2021, p.29]

Giske spins the likes of “Cruising” and “Void” into bold extended pieces that are gripping in their poignancy and intensity. [Dec 2021, p.27]

I Don't Live Here Anymore delivers even more of their characteristic questing wallop. [Nov 2021, p.22]

Their second studio album of 2021 has its own idiosyncratic mood board: mariachi horns on “The Bell Gets Out Of The Way”, a string section on “High In The Rain”, unsettling séance speak on “Razor Bug”. Triumphant closer “My (Limited) Engagement”, meanwhile, sounds like (yet another) outsider art tour de force for the primary school-turned-lo-fi visionary. Never indifferent, never quite the same. [Dec 2021, p.27]

Shouty Japanese pop-punk quartet Chai guest on wonderfully bleepy “More Joy!”, Giorgio Moroder assists with the thrilling digital disco of “Beautiful Lies”, Bowie’s pianist Mike Garson guests on the elegant ballad “Falling”, while producer Erol Alkan adds a dancefloor-friendly sheen to proceedings. [Dec 2021, p.27]

This is still music with a lot of virtuosity, and a great many notes, but it and its players are living its adaptability, as the evidence reveals all we have previously believed this composition to be, a confluence of free improvisation and what later became “spiritual jazz”. [Dec 2021, p.43]

The faithful arrangements deprive the collection of any real edge – "Elle Et Moi" should be sexier – but this is not the place for surprises. [Dec 2021, p.25]

He tells a sad story but one enlivened by his skills as a guitarist, his expressiveness as a singer and his insights as a lyricist. ... Every song has at least one line that will stop you in your tracks, some songs two or three. [Nov 2021, p.18]

It's Fohr's stunning vocal that drives the album. [Nov 2021, p.27]

The retro-futurist fun peaks with the bopping space-disco of the title track and the irresistible "Refractions (In The Rain)," while loungey sax and self-help guides to meditation smooth "On The Other Side..."'s journey to the stars. [Nov 2021, p.27]

Harris makes the most of the means available to her and allows her songs to land the way they need to land. [Nov 2021, p.34]

Tim Showalter has channelled his grief after losing loved ones and the agony he endured getting straight into a set of nakedly emotional songs, while producer Kevin Ratterman has erected a reverberant wall of sound to match the scale of his outpourings. [Dec 2021, p.35]

Texis sounds like a band having more fun than they have had in years. [Dec 2021, p.33

These are recorded almost as demos, in a more intimate and lo-fi way than usual, bringing him even closer in sound as well as spirit to the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Ron Sexsmith. [Dec 2021, p.33]

The sinister slow-burn of "Application Apparatus" and Tom Tom Club-worthy quirk of "Trullo" are further indications of their rude state of health. [Dec 2021, p.31]

Unpredictability is its greatest asset. [Dec 2021, p.31]

A captivating set, aided by a full band that shift is between artful, countryish ballads ("Simple," "Ride") and cabin-fever rockers ("Face," the abstract "Gem"). [Dec 2021, p.27]

Their most collaborative but also most pointedly personal, reckoning with loss, queerness and self-actualisation through music that is as adventurous as it is immediate. [Dec 2021, p.27]

Despite Chris Martin's underdeveloped lyrics – "Be an anthem for your times" at least explains his motivation – there's something reassuring in their ham-fisted urge to bring people together. ... Glam-stomper "People Of The Pride" or well-meaning power ballad "Let Somebody Go," and instrumentals harking back to earlier Eno adventures offer pleasant reprieves. [Dec 2021, p.25]