This sombre threesome could use a little humour and warmth, but there is real passion in reverb-drenched, Spector-ish, elemental pastorals like "Rivers" and "Trenches." [Sep 2015, p.80]

Ryder-Jones excels at finding beauty in forbidding places. [Dec 2015, p.78]

Much to admire, even when the provenance is so blatant. [Mar 2016, p.81]

Like 2010's The Shine and 2013's Hoodoo, Rain Crow is thick with nervous trepidation, ominous trips into the rural mindset. [Jul 2016, p.82]

65daysofstatic's soundtrack to the highly anticipated No Man's Sky Game loads up on pile-driving guitar sequences reminiscent of Mogwai, but it's industrial-sized programming, moments of tranquility and chilling electronica confirm the Sheffield quartet's visionary ambitions. [Jul 2016, p.67]

Eve might just be her strongest yet, bold in its subtlety and intimacy, with Zedek's writing bittersweet and observational. [Sep 2016, p.81]

The album unfolds like a fever dream, the instruments bleeding into each other, awash in echo, as Arthur layers metaphors much as he layers the parts of the self-performed album. [Aug 2016, p.71]

Rennie's lyrics remain full of transfixed wonder, sketching places where ghosts swim in the air and sea kelpies call fro, the shallows, while Brett's lugubrious tones are a perfect conduit for songs like "Gold," "Gentlemen" and state -fair attraction "Tiny Tina," the world's smallest horse. [Oct 2016, p.32]

A sturdy, touching arrival. [Nov 2016, p.31]

The songs' real power comes from a sense of foreboding that undercuts the easy listening. [Dec 2016, p.30]

Omar has found a formula that really works. [Feb 2017, p.33]

Some songs skirt close to new age naivety, cloaked by subtle eco-critical blandishments--but Perhacs' quietly magnetic character and charm wins out, in the end. [Nov 2018, p.35]

Well-annotated five-disc boxset. ... The collection does include a fair bit of drearily competent pub blues, but even here there are some glorious moments. [Jul 2019, p.48]

They've leapfrogged stasis and had what sounds like fun along the way. [Jun 2019, p.29]

Songs Of Our Mothers taps into something much bigger than itself. ... It also helps that the music is quite remarkable. [Oct 2019, p.38]

A rich, gothic record, steeped in sensuality. [Jun 2020, p.29]

Lynne's rawest, most intimately person album since I Am Shelby Lynne broke with her country roots 20 years ago. [Jun 2020, p.34]

His workmanship persists. Forever on the skids, but still upright. [Jul 2020, p.27]

The results are successfully restorative, sometimes recalling The Album Leaf's 2000s Sigur Ros collaborations. [Aug 2020, p.33]

The tranquility is transporting and when it ends abruptly after just 34 minutes, the only option is to play it again. [Jul 2020, p.39]

The four-piece deliver their familiar brand of Cali power-pop, at once glossy and heart-on-sleeve. [Jun 2020, p.37]

Bittersweet pop songs are the order of the day, gently psychedelicised. [Jan 2021, p.27]

A quality love letter to the music he committed to early on. At times, it's hard not to wish he'd been bolder and a little less faithful. [Feb 2021, p.36]

There's no showboating and every classically nuanced arpeggio oozes with an elegant, crystalline beauty. [Apr 2021, p.32]

Strummer sounds mostly like he's having a blast. [May 2021, p.44]

The result is an album of glorious hybridity, rooted in ancient griot tradition but serendipitously transformed into an audaciously cosmopolitan melting pot. [Apr 2021, p.28]

Something that scratches the same itch that first propelled him and his audience into a record shop. ... To keep that hunger alive, you need to feed it with new inspiration. What you hear on Fat Pop is the reciprocation of that care. [Jun 2021, p.16]

Purists who flinched when Tame Impala began to morph into a hairier Da¢ Punk may be similarly nonplussed by the sextet’s turn toward blissed-out dance-rock, but everyone else will have a lot of fun. [Aug 2021, p.28]