There is zero sense on Amadjar that this band in any way playing to an international audience; on the contrary, this music feels hermetic in its focus, guitars picking out bluesy motifs, voices rising together in mournful chorus, all tethered by a simple drum rhythm that approximates the lollop of a camel making its way across the dunes. [Oct 2019, p.32]

Close It Quietly is billed as a collaborative, full-band release--and while the singer's distinctive vocals prevent too radical a departure, even the minute-long cuts here sound sturdier, more confident. [Oct 2019, p.27]

Musically this is arguably his most touching work since the early 2000s. [Oct 2019, p.27]

The follow-up sees them cutting all ties to their bleak kosmische past, shaping Jana Hunter's songs--which reflect politico-personal anxiety about our collective raging competitiveness, among other things--into darkly gleaming and hopeful synthpop panoramas. Hunter's rich contralto is always at their centre. [Oct 2019, p.29]

The intimate, minimal work done by his accomplices serves to channel Pop at his bleakest and most rueful. [Oct 2019, p.34]

Not all of it works--the ballads sag, and the reggaeton-influenced "Paradise" is ill-advised--but much of Miles's playing is on fire. [Oct 2019, p.45]

A deep-breathing, ecstatic joy. [Sep 2019, p.34]

Hynde's default here is swoon and ache. Add her incendiary guitar to Mingus instrumental "Meditation (On A Pair Of Wirecutters)" plus a lovely dubbed-out, spacy "Caroline No" and her one-of-a-kind signature is writ large. [Oct 2019, p.29]

The tunes are getting stronger. [Oct 2019, p.24]

A collaborative project that's all over the map--delightfully so. [Sep 2019, p.29]

Alas, genuinely surprising moments are scarcer on much of Wallop, with rudimentary workouts outnumbering the fresher like of "$50 Million" and its super-charged Chic groove. [Oct 2019, p.23]

This engrossing hour-and-three-quarter work pursues long-form drones at the pipe organ in a way that is both hypnotic and uplifting. [Oct 2019, p.30]

The soft-rock paradigm with its classic Fleetwood Mac/Carole King references is self-limiting, but the songs are lucid and heartfelt in their graceful ruminations on the passage of time. [Sep 2019, p.34]

If this is indeed Crow's last recording, as she's speculated, this cavalcade of hotwired connections is a splendid way to cap off her career. [Oct 2019, p.27]

The pair specialise in primitive house tracks drizzled with acid, which work best when one of their male vocalists drawls sweet nothings deep in the mix. [Sep 2019, p.33]

Much of [Kasabian's] personality comes from guitarist/songwriter/producer Serge Pizzorno, and on this solo project, similar quirks stands out. [Oct 2019, p.36]

Forever Turned Around hovers in a midrange that's objectively nice, but lacks the vigour required of something memorable. [Oct 2019, p.39]

The results are exquisite. [Sep 2019, p.34]

More subdued yet equally captivating follow-up. [Oct 2019, p.24]

Notably rockier than its more pastoral predecessors and all the finer for it. [Oct 2019, p.33]

The film blurs lines between horror and ink-black comedy, and Krlic's score, texturally vast, moodily versatile and unnerving without being bombastic, moving deftly with it as one. [Oct 2019, p.29]

Guild takes a few listens to really seep in, but there are some truly hallucinatory moments here. [Oct 2019, p.39]

Furman's distinctive shrieking, poetic phrasing and postmodernist perspective prevents the work from sounding overtly derivative. It instead borrows the best qualities of its forebears, and fuses them into something new. [Sep 2019, p.22]

Modern nature is an explicitly English affair: unbluesy, unassuming and slightly uptight (in a good way). [Sep 2019, p.36]

Beyond The Door might at times nod to good-time escapism, but it also represents unsullied rock'n'roll in music's most splintered age. [Sep 2019, p.33]

Themes of mind control are sprinkled throughout the record, whose highlights include storm opener "Paradise," the semi-rapped title track, the funky "The Planet Of Straw Man" and closing song "Maria 63." [Oct 2019, p.39]

A Distant Call is full of songs that are pretty good, but it rarely stops you in your tracks. [Oct 2019, p.36]

An album that takes nothing for granted, that doesn't consider your attention a gift, that wants to impart something profound to you. Trust her. [Sep 2019, p.28]