The result is endearingly scattershot. [Dec 2018, p.39]

Now and then she's too laconic for her own good but the self-deprecating humour of "It's So Weird" and "Staying In" hits the mark. [Feb 2019, p.27]

There's a spiritual quality to these streams-of-conscious compositions, which sound open-ended as though she's posing questions to the woods around her. [Feb 2019, p.34]

He straddles the line between known and unknowable, and that's a mighty fine place to reside. [Feb 2019, p.28]

A further shift away from the full-throttle krautrock of their early years into something more sumptuous. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Like much of Kent's work, the mood is melancholy and the focus is on her intricate production. There's plenty to admire in Kent's elegant phrasing, her cello longing and mournful. [Feb 2019, p.27]

There are moments where gusto, melody and thunderous guitar riffs meet to powerful effect but there are some tired moments to wade through to get there. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Feedback-soaked rockers like "Little Drama" are played with maximum oomph, but much like, say, Ty segall, Krol laces his songs with all manner of sly twists and turns. [Feb 2019, p.29]

Apart from the odd off-kilter minor key melody, they sound anything but bereft as Bagg's dreamy soprano, layers of melodic synths and soaring strings cast a dramatically romantic sheen over their pain. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Psychedelic beguilement a la Syd Barrett and Wyatt-ish pastoralism bent into eccentric shapes figure, but variety is key. [Feb 2019, p.30]

The author's humanistic, heart-first approach, coupled with his songs' compellingly opaque expression and egoless playing makes reliability more rewarding. [Feb 2019, p.22]

The spacious, Neil Young-ian rumbling of the title track and the bulked-up power-pop of "Spiked Flower" both see co-founders Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge venture beyond the template of Raise and Mezcal Head without making the faithful worry they've ditched their distortion pedals. [Feb 2019, p.34]

This is voluminous in length and style. [Feb 2019, p.33]

Rough-hewn thrills abound. [Jan 2019, p.21]

Painted Image is as stylistically omnivorous as it is emotionally acute. [Feb 2019, p.24]

Classical-inflected electronica, with nary a chrome-plated breakbeat in sight. [Feb 2019, p.34]

With Fool, his focus is as much on method as material. [Feb 2019, p.27]

It's good to hear him finally write and record with a proper band. About The Light is at its best when it takes advantage of this new freedom. [Feb 2019, p.29]

It's less punky and psychedelic than anything they've done before, sounding more like a piece of self-conscious, well-crafted Americana by, say Richard Hawley or Alex Turner. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Love Hates lacks some of the naive charm of their debut and a couple of attempts at Garbage-style industrial pop set the album off on the wrong foot. But the all-or-nothing passion that courses through "The Breath Of Light" and "For The Wild" is quite something. [Feb 2019, p.29]

BAG's core values remain intact, but it's an exhilarating advance. [Feb 2019, p.24]

This is no desperate grab at nostalgia, then, rather a chronicle of important personal moments reexamined through the lens of time. [Feb 2019, p.30]

The album is perhaps a little lacking in knockout tracks but instead highlights Bear's clear talent as a producer with a craft for melody and rhythm. [Feb 2019, p.37]

It's understated excellence at best, perhaps a little inoffensive at worse, and entirely a continuation of the aesthetic the Brooklyn-based guitarist has honed for the last two years. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Most consistently enthralling album thus far. [Feb 2019, p.36]

Violence, guilt, betrayal and despair assail singer-lyricist James Graham's protagonists, while Andy MacFarlane marshals something miasmic, sometimes glistening synth glides and doleful guitars, suggesting Johnny Marr's wilder Smiths experiments. [Feb 2019, p.37]

If the music at times fails to convey the particularities of her lyrics on the trip-hoppy "Memorial Day," Van Etten remains an insightful chronicler of small moments that produce overwhelming emotions. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Overall there's a warmth lacking on last year's lo-fi Swim Inside The Moon. ... Elsewhere, echoes of Bon Iver and label boss Sufjan Stevens suffuse "All Your Life," his rejection of suicide, while "Time's" whistled melody confirms his latent optimism. [Feb 2019, p.26]