An album that is clearly having a blast while showing blatant disregard for genre convention. [May 2026, p.37]

Friko's second is sonically ambitious but just as immediate. [May 2026, p.29]

With her voice repaired to the mesmersing breaking point of There's Always Glimmer, the closeness of her almost-whisper is startling on "Everybody Around Me Dancing" and "Moon Not Mine", although it's her light-touch production - vaguely New Age and recalling Cassandra Jenkins - that truly elevates this intimate folk record. [May 2026, p.33]

Their sound is accordingly pared down, the overall tone downbeat and perhaps appropriately rueful. [May 2026, p.34]

Cast in pale sunlight with a touch of frost and Darby's fragile, close-mic'ed voice their focus, these 13 unflinching songs call to mind "Some Velvet Morning" and "fade Into You". [May 2026, p.29]

It's a partial return to the jazzy pop sophistication of early-'80s sets Night And Day and Body And Soul, but with more aggressive percussion. His trademark wit is especially evident. [May 2026, p.32]

This is more of the same bucolic electronica and smudgy rave that Fake does so well. [Mar 2026, p.32]

This incarnation features plenty of impressive fusion pyrotechnics from guitarist John Etheridge and saxophonist Theo Travis, but the highlights dig deep into Soft Machine's legacy. [Mar 2026, p.36]

These esoteric pieces sometimes splash around in puddles of flimsy whimsy, but with enough moments of luminous beauty to reward an immersive dip. [May 2026, p.26]

Total Dive is once again remarkably cohesive. .... There’s a dramatic urgency to a lot of this music that’s sometimes distantly reminiscent of the REM of, say, “Begin The Begin”, or the wild upheavals of “Just A Touch” from Life’s Rich Pageant, perhaps the dark churn of Document’s “Oddfellows 501”. [May 2026, p.20]

The shape, tone and settings of songs from "Gitarhum" onward shift their author's stance and point her somewhere else, perhaps yet to be determined. That they do so without throwing her off balance is another mark of Evergreen In Your Mind's achievement. [May 2026, p.28]

Life Slime is anything but maudlin, though, as Lynch ad producer Mike Lindsay fashion spry, agreeably wonky electropop from an arsenal of synths, samplers and other instruments. [May 2026, p.34]

The results are as striking and challenging as you'd expect. [May 2026, p.35]

"Greetings From Mars" touches on Lana Del Rey's desolately pretty Americana, with Nagler's voice reserved yet reaching ecstatically high. [Apr 2026, p.36]

Bright Spirit is a wide-ranging set flooded with singer-guitarist Kavus Torabi's metaphysical imagery. [Apr 2026, p.33]

An album of incredible acoustic maximalism and conspiratorially whispered melodrama - enjoys the theatrics of its acidity. [May 2026, p.33]

Julie takes lead on a few numbers, but otherwise this is raw, classic Childish. [May 2026, p.29]

Gentler hues are to the fore on the soft strum and harmonies of Teenage Fanclub's "Lonely Night", coming as near as dammit to an indie Crosby, Stills & Nash. They veer from the template just once, on the slow country rock of "Me And Magdalena". [Apr 2026, p.26]

Idiosyncratic to the last. [May 2026, p.29]

A stepping stone to more original work to come? Could well be. [Apr 2026, p.29]

Pernice's stately tastefulness, acoustic guitar studded with slide and steel, offers honed adult reflection, not excess. [Apr 2026, p.36]

Phased guitars recall that past's sweetest '60s spot as lyrics touch on wider, cosmic delay. The epic "Might As Well Ne Me, Florinda" is the best of two Robert Hunter co-writes. [Apr 2026, p.33]

These songs, still beautifully disruptive decades later show why the music outlasted the club itself. [Feb 2026, p.50]

Distracted may be his most coherent album to date. Less prone to abrupt zigzags than its predecessors, it's his smoothest, too. [May 2026, p.35]

There's an urgency to The Leaf Library's latest that's unlike anything we've heard from them before. [May 2026, p.33]

Too often the slick production feels overwrought like a bad Cure facsimile and the songs struggle to breathe, though the murkiness at least conveys the sense of doomed romance. [Apr 2026, p.26]

One of those albums that evokes a tangible mood; in this case, somewhere adjacent to the sun coming up after a rollercoaster of a night out. As such, it's frequently wonderful. [Apr 2026, p.34]

The album is a magnificently heavy double of downtuned, epic riffing. [Apr 2026, p.36]